The Sun.
London, England, 1844-10-03 00:00:00

PARLIAMENTARY PAPER.

NEW ZEALAND.—(CONTINUED.)
" To have proceeded in this manner, and to have
assumed at once all unoccupied land to belong to the
Crown as a right inherent in the sovereignty, would
,have been attended with no sort of injustice to the
natives, and would have been conducive to their real
interests. The unoccupied land, previously to Eu-
ropean settlement, was of no- value to them, they
were neither a pastoral people, nor one living, like
the North American Indians, by the chase, and
therefore requiring a great extent of country for
their support; they derived their chief subsistence
from the produce of the soil and agriculture, rude as
it was, and, according to the witnesses who have
been examined by your Committee, hardly a thou-
sandth part of the available land was thus made use
of by them. _ _

"A very different policy, with respect to the
ownership of land, has been pursued, and has been
attended with very unfortunate results. Mr. Spain,
who was sent out from this country by Lord John
Russell to investigate the claims of land of settlers in
New Zealand, appears to have been furnished with
no precise instructions as to the object of the in-
tended inquiry, and the mode of conducting it; and
as he, in common with the Governor and the other
colonial authorities, adopted the conclusion that no
land could be considered as vested in the Crown, or
in the New Zealand Company, by virtue of an
agreement with the Crown, which could not be
shown to have been fairly purchased from the natives,
there was begun a protracted and most unsatisfac-
tory inquiry as to the nature of these purchases. It
was impossible that the inquiry, having this object in
view, could be of a different character, since, if the
point to be determined was the validity of purchases
from the natives, it followed that it was necessary to
ascertain not only the bona fide nature of the sup-
pd sale, but also the title of the vendors to the
he
property of which they claimed to dispose. The
d of arriving at any satisfactory conclusion
upon either point was insurable. The evidence as
to the reality of alleged sales was almost invariably
contradictory and confused, as might reasonably have
been anticipated, considering what imperfect means
of communication there were between the parties,
and how little one of them understood the nature of
such transactions. As to the title of the vendors, the
case was still more hopeless; the evidence before
your Committee, both oral and documentary, leads to
the conclusion that the natives of New Zealand, till
they learnt to do so from Europeans, attached no idea
of value to unoccupied land, and that though they
had some vague notions of certain circumstances
(frequently connected with their peculiar supersti-
tions), giving preferable claims to particular tribes
over particular districts, yet, practically, the right by

, which ter, itory was held, was that of the strongest.
Your Committee need hardly point out the manifest
absurdity of attempting to apply the notions of Eng-
lish law, with respect to landed property, to such a
state of society, and the utter fruitlessness of an en-
deavour to disentangle the complicated and conflict-
ing claims set up by different tribes to wild land, th s
inquiry having to be conducted by Europeans, igno-
rant both of the language of the natives, and of their
barbarous and superstitious customs, on• which the
claims to land very frequently depended.
" The policy adopted of entering into such an in.
quiry, and of acknowledging the claim of the natives
to payment for the unoccupied lands, has had effects
very injurious to the interests both of the settlers
and of the natives themselves. With respect to the
settlers, by preventing them for so long a period
from obtaining possession by a secure title of the land
they required for cultivation, it has given a most
serious check to the progress of improvement, and
very greatly retarded the arrival of the time when
the colony would have been able to procure food'
enough for its own consumption, and also something
to export in payment for the various supplies it re-
quires from the mother country and from other
quarters. To the natives this policy has -been still
more injurious, it has created a strong feeling of irri-
tation between them and the settlers, from the ex-
istence of which they cannot fail ultimately to be the
chief sufferers ; the large amount of property they
have received in payment for land which was of no
real use to them before, instead of being of perma-
nent advantage to them, has been speedily and im-
providently consumed, and has only served to excite
in them the passion of cupidity, and to produce
quarrels amongst themselves, which, in one case at
least, have broken out into open war. Even Mr.
Clarke, the Chief Protector, who has insisted so much
upon their obtaining a very high price for their land,
has admitted that the 'sudden affluence' to which
they have been raised has had 'an unfriendly in-
fluence on their moral improvement.' The worst con-
sequence of all, as it appears to your Committee of
the course which has been. pursued, is, that it has
lowered the authority of the Government over the
natives, and given rise, on their part, to claims which
it is greatly to be feared they will not peaceably be
brought to forego ; and which yet cannot be allowed
without the sacrifice of the principal means of pro-
moting the advancement of the colony. We beg
particularly to refer, in support of what we have now
stated, to the long report of Mr. Spain, the Com-
missioner of Land Claims, dated 12th September,
1843, and to the dispatch of the Acting Governor of
30th October, 1843, and its inclosures. On reference
to these documents it will- be found that the effects
attributed by your Committee to the policy, which has
been pursued, are distinctly recognised by those of the
public servants in the cvlony by whom that policy
has chiefly been maintained. It is also peculiarly
deserving of remark, that precisely the same difficul-
ties in establishing to the satisfaction of the natives
the validity of sales of land alleged to have been
made by them, which, in the case of the settlements
in Cook's Straits, have been attributed to the careless
mode of proceeding adopted by the Company's agents,
have since been experienced to fully as great an ex-
tent with respect to purchases made on behalf of the
Government in the northern part of the island by the
Protector of Aborigines himself. In the letter of
Colonel Godfrey (one of the Commissioners of Land
Claims) of February 10, 1843, will be found an ac-
count of the embarrassment created by the positive
denial by the natives of the validity of a sale of land
which Mr. Clarke reported had been made to him, as
agent to the Government, with every possible pre-
caution, in the year 1840. If these and similar claims
are rejected, we cannot but apprehend that, after the
concessions already made, much dissatisfaction, if not
resistance, is to be anticipated from the natives; on
the other hand, if the claims are admitted, we see no
security whatever that additional payments now made
for land formerly supposed to have been sold will give
any permanent satisfaction, and will not, on the con-
trary, serve as a stimulus to still more unreasonable
demands hereafter, while, even if such payments
should be final, we cannot but regard it as a great
misfortune that large sums of money should be eo
applied. In Mr. Spain's report, already quoted, he
estimates that from five to six thousand pounds will
be required to compensate the natives for the blocks
of land already surveyed by the servants of the
New Zealand Company, in the southern part of the
Northern Island; and in making this estimate it ap-
pears (though this is not very, clear) that he contem-
plates leaving them in possession of the grounds they
actually occupy. If this land is to be paid for at so
high a rate, it is obvious that it will create in the
minds of the natives an expectation that similar
prices will be given for the land that will hereafter
be required, and thus an enormous charge will be en-
tailed upon the progress of future settlements. While
we were considering our report, additional evidence
of the magnitude of this evil has been laid before us.
"The land, it must be remembered, derives its only
value from the application of European labour and
capital • it, to .Ine natives mu
eventually be taken from the price paid for it by
settlers, either to the Company or to the Government,
and will be so much deducted from the fund, which
ought to be most carefully husbanded and applied to
the great purposes of promoting emigration, and of
meeting the first and pressing wants of a young
settlement, as for instance, the construction of roads
and bridges, and the building and endowing of
churches, schools, and hospitals. For these purposes,
in which the British settlers and the original inhabi-
tants are equally interested, every shilling wanted
which the emigrant can afford to pay for land,
without trenching too deeply on his available capital ;
and it appears to your Committee to be equally con-
trary, both to real justice and to sound policy, that
large sums of money should be -taken from a fund de-
voted to objects of such high importance, in order to
be given to barbarous tribes, 'who at best will unpro-
fitably squander what is so improvidently placed at
their disposal.
" Your Committee have found it necessary to enter
more at length than we could have wished into the
question, whether the ownership of unoccupied land
ought to have been considered as vested in the Crown
or in the native tribes, because, in our opinion, all the
difficulties which have been experienced in the colo-
nisation of New Zealand are mainly to be attributed
to the erroneous view of this question, which has been
taken by those to whose hands the powers of Govern-
ment have in these islands been committed. But
erroneous as they believe the policy hitherto pursued
to have been, they are sensible of the great difficulty
which may now be experienced in changing it; and
bearing in mind the great distance of these islands,
and the consequent impossibility of knowing what
may be the state of affairs there, when any instruc-
tions that may be sent out shall reach the Governor,
they are not prepared to recommend that he should be
peremptorily ordered to assert the rights of the
Crown as they believe them to exist ; all they advise
is, that he should have clearly explained to him what
those rights are, and the principles on which they
rest; and should be directed to adopt such measures
as he may consider best calculated to meet the diffi-
culties of the case, and to establish the title of the
Crown to all unoccupied land as soon as this can be
safely accomplished. lie ought also, we conceive, to
be directed to grant legal titles to the actual oc-
cupants of land, unless under special circumstances of
abuse, requiring in those cases in which it may seem
to be proper reasonable payment from the settlers for
land so granted to them.
"The observations already made will enable your
Committee very briefly to express their opinion on
the question which has led to so much discussion, as
to whether the New Zealand Company are entitled
to call upon her Majesty's Government to put them
in possession of a large extent of land, without refe-
rence to the validity of their supposed purchases
from the natives. If the view which we have taken
of the right of the Crown to the whole of the unoc- ,
cupied soil of New Zealand, and of the nullity of all
private purchases of land from the natives, be a cor-
rect one ; and if this were also the view of the then
Secretary of State at the time that the arrangement
with the New Zealand Company was concluded; it
follows, as a matter of course, that by that arrange-
ment it must have been intended to give to the Com-
pany a claim binding, in good faith, upon the estate
of the Crown, to the number of acres awarded to
f th
not in any way be affected by the characteroit
was
them by Mr. Pennington ; and that this claim could
ose
supposed purchases from the natives, which
fra_gement to set
wn e have already
fully stated our reasons for
athsiedev
thel conclusion to which
eer altogether nbiect of
null thaendwh invalid.
to the rights of the
we have come with res t pec
Crown; we have, there ore, only to add, that we
o _
e
cannot doubt this conclusion to b completely in
ac-
cordance with what were the views of the then Secre-
f State, since we find that the charter under
tart' o
he Great Seal, by which. New Zealand was erected
into a separate colony, rind the original instructions
under the Royal Sign Manual, which were drawn u
at nearly the same time that the arrangement with
the Company was under discussion, were couched in
terms which, as we have already observed, clearly
imply that the ownership of land by the natives was
regarded as being confined to that which was ac-
tually occupied and enjoyed by them,' and that all
unoccupied land was vested in the Crown ; while the
acknowledgment of any claim of right on the part of
Europeans to land, in virtue of supposed sales from
the natives, was in the most explicit terms denied."
(TO BE CONTINUED.)
A deplorable rnf--'

ieplorable catastrophe occurred a few days ago
at Saint Tropez, in the Var. A servant girl who had
been sent by her mistress to make some purchases at
provision-warehouse, was standing in the shop on a
plank which covered an opening into the cellar, when
the plank broke, and she fell into a vat in which was a
quantity of crushed grapes in a state of fermentation.
A young man who was crushing grapes near the spot en-
deavoured to extricate the poor girl, but was himself
overpowered by the gas from the vat, and both perished.
.

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