The Sun.
London, England, 1845-03-19 00:00:00

NEW ZEALAND AND LORD STANLEY.

Mr. MASTERMAN presented a petition from the City of
London, praying the ,House to make some reparation to the
New Zealand Company for the injury they had sustained in
that colony:
The petition, on the motion of an Hoes. Meereea, was
ordered to be printed.
Mr. G. W. HOPE then rose to move for certain papers re-
lating to New Zealand, and to answer the charge which had
been made by the New Zealand Company against the Noble
Lord the Secretary fur the Colonies. He commenced by
stating that he believed it was fully understood the other night
that the general question relating to the affairs of New Zealand
should be left untouched until after East, r, and he therefore
proposed to abstain from taking up that part of the subject, and
he could not but hope that lion. Members who followed him
would follow his example. He made no apology for trespassing
upon the time of the House, because he felt it to be his duty to
give, and the House to hear any explanation he might be en-
abled to make to the personal charge which had been made
against his Noble Friend the Secretary for the Colonies. He
had felt anxious to open this part of the New Zealand question,
fot, when he last addressed the House on the subject, he did so
with souse degree of warmth, which could not be deemed ex-
traordinary, because improper conduct had been imputed to a
Noble Friend, who, he was sure, was quite incapable of it. He
had no doubt he should now be able to give such an explana-
tion of the matter as would not only satisfy the House
but the Honourable Member for Cockermouth himself.
Now, the charge that had been made against his Noble Friend
at the head of the Colonies, if he understood it rightly, was
this, that he had come to an arrangement with the New Zea-
land Company in May, 1843, and that having undertaken to
give certain instructions to the Governor of New Zealand, he
had given those that were inconsistent with them ; and that, in
short, he had given one set of instructions to the New Zealand
Company, arid another to the Governor. Now he felt satisfied
that he should be able to show that those charges were totally
unfounded, and that the Noble Lord had acted
in the only way he could do towards the Com-
pany, consistent with his duty. It was not his
wish to go into personal communications or discussions, but he
would refer at once to the letters that had passed upon the
subject. The first letter was written on the Bth of May, after
a communication and interview with the Noble Lord. That
letter referred to a proposal on the part of the Company to
purchase land at Auckland, to the appointment of a judge, and
to the formation of a Government on the island, and then it
referred to the Company's title to land. The arrangement at
first proposed a conditional title should be granted on the
Company purchasing the land, and in case the Company should
ask for greater rights, and they could not be given, or that the
Company had to make compensation, that then the Crown
was to assist the Company in making any bargain. The Noble
Lord at once assented to the proposal for the purchase of
land at Auckland, as would be seen by the letter he would
read. The Hen. Gentleman then read the letter, showing
that the proposal had been made and agreed to. The ar-
rangement proposed referred to those three points he had al-
luded to only ; and thus matters stood at the time of the
death of Captain Hobson. On the 15th of June, 1843, a
letter was written to Lord Stanley by Captain Fitzroy,
containing five questions; three of those questions referred to
the arrangements he had previously noticed, the other two
related to different subjects. Now, what was the course Lord
Stanley had pursued? Why, with respect to the three first points,
Captain Fitzroy was referred to the correspondence ; and with
respect to the others, he was told that they referred to an in-
complete arrangement. As to the correspondence which the
Noble Lord had been charged with keeping back, it had been
made confidential, in consequence of the proposal being re-
ca led, which was the substance of the letters, after Captain
Fitzroy had sailed. No instructions had been shown to the
New Zealand Company, except those to which he had referred,
and those instructions had been given without reserve. He
wished to avoid every irritating topic. The question was, how-
ever, whether the Noble Lord at the head of the Colonial-
office had been guilty of an intentional decep-
tion, in keeping hack this correspondence? The New
Zealand Company having received the correspondence,
on the 12th of February, said, in reply, on the 29th, that they
regretted that Lord Stanley appeared to have understood the
agreement in a different sense from that which they had at-
tached to it. Now, he must direct the attention of Hon.
Members to a letter written before that period. In that letter
he found a passage in which the New Zealand Company stated
that they had the greatest reliance on Captain Fitzroy's inten-
tions ; and, as regarded the Noble Lord, so far from stating
that this was an act of gross deception, the letter concluded by
stating that they left the matter in his Lordship's hands, with
entire reliance on his good faith. He hoped that the effect of
a calm and temperate consideration of the subject would be to
induce Gentlemen to withdraw the charges made against the
Noble Lard, for the first time in his life; for let that Noble
Lord's faults and failings be what they might, until now no
man ever charged him with duplicity.—( Hear, hear. )
Mr. C. BULLER said he could assure the House that he
rose with the greatest pain to make any remarks in reference
to the conduct of the Noble Lord (Lord Stanley), but the
statements of the New Zealand Company had been publicly
made, and by those statements, if he had any regard for his
character, he must publicly stand.—( Hear.) He was not
there to ask for any vote of censure with regard to the Noble
Lord's conduct, but to defend certain statements made by the
New Zealand Company, complaining of substantial wrong done
to them by the Noble Lord, with respect to the matter to which
the motion referred. Those statements had been before the
public a whole year; and though the Noble Lord was in that
House when it was first made, he had not brought the matter
before the House. It was not their fault that the matter
had been brought before the House. It was elicited by the
Right Hon. Baronet (Sir R. Peel) reading a letter of the New
Zealand Company, which he had endeavoured to turn against
them ; and he should be extremely glad if the discussion that
evening should clear a public question from those bitter and
acrimonious allusions with which it had been mixed up. lie
had felt that the Hon. Gentleman the Under Secretary of
State for the Home Department was placed in a very difficult
position ; and in order that he might have the fullest advan-
tage in reply, he should close by moving, as an amendment, for
all correspondence which had passed between Lord John Rus-
sell and the New Zealand Company. Now the complaint which
he had to make on that occasion was that by the transactions to
which the Honourable Gentleman had adverted the New
Zealand Company had suffered substantial wrong. In
order to justify this complaint, it would be necessary for
him to call attention to the agreement of the 12th of May,
1843, and to point out the difference between that agreement,
and the agreement for which it was substituted with the Noble
Lord the member for the City of London. The agreement
between Lord John Russell and the New Zealand Company
was to this effect:—Having acquired a little land, by certain
purchases' which they said they had made from the natives of
New Zealand, prior to the assertion of her Majesty's authority
in the island, it became necessary that the Company should
make some arrangement with respect to those claims. There
never was any dispute as to the way in which those claims were
to be adjusted; but it was agreed that an amount should be
taken proportioned to the expenditure which had been
incurred. Now the difference which arose was this—
They imagined that the agreement with Lord John Russell
made their claims dependent only on one inquiry—namely, an
inquiry before an accountant ; whereas Lard Stanley said that
there was a court established in which their claims must be in-
quired into, and that they must go there to determine the
validity of their purchases from the natives. A long, and, he
was sorry to add, a warm controversy took place on the subject ;
arid, while it lasted, the operations of the Company were totally
suspended, and, their title being discredited, no land could be
sold. Of 14,000 inhabitants of the colony, 10,000 derived
their title under the New Zealand Company, and depended on
them for their secure possession. Lord Stanley made them
two offers, neither of which did they accept. On the death of
Captain Hobson, the Governor of the colony, when a new
Governor had to be sent out, it was proposed that a fresh ar-
rangement should be made, and negotiations for that purpose
were entered into. On the Bth of May a letter was trans-
mitted by Mr. Somes to Lerd Stanley, containing the pro-
posals of the New Zealand Company. This document was
prepared by both parties—it reduced their views to writing.
On the 12th of May an answer was received from the Hon.
Gentleman opposite ; and if all the rest of the correspondence
had been conducted in the same spirit, the negotiation would
have had a very different result. What he complained of was, that
from that hour the spirit of the letter to which he had referred
was deviated from.—( Hear, hear.) The spirit in which the
Government acted was everything in a matter of this kind.
Lord Stanley stated that he was prepared to issue instructions
to the Governor of New Zealand, founded on the proposal of
the Company themselves. They were naturally anxious to
know what those instructions were ; and on the part of the
New Zealand Company he went to the Under Secretary for
the Colonies. A letter of the 19th of May, enclosed two letters,
which he called the agreement as to the instructions.
The first letter was dated the Ist February, and the second the
26th of June, 1843. It was a painful and a difficult task to
occupy the attention of the House with such a matter, hut he
was desirous not to make accusations, but to state specifically
what were the faults they found with the Colonial Secretary,
and to place before the House how the second instructions of
February, 1843, differed in spirit anti in letter from the first.
The first objection they entertained was against the proceed-
ings of the Government as to the land at Auckland ; they looked
en them as having been a distinct violation of the letter of the
agreement. The two great objects of the Company in taking
land in the neighbourhood of Auckland were, first, that they
might be on good terms with the Governor; and, secondly,
that, in obtaining it through the Government, they should get
rid of any further trouble with respect to proving their title.
The Company never intended to make any purchase of it of
the natives in the neighbourhood of Auckland. Their letter to
Lord Stanley was worded entirely in accordance with that
view; they said the Company would abandon their claim to
50,0001. worth of the land they had already purchased,
if credit were given them for an equal amount
of land in the neighbourhood of Auckland. The Company
were ready to abandon their claim, not to sell it ; they aban-
doned their claim not to any specific fifty thousand acres of
land, but to 50,0001. worth of the whole quantity they had
purchased elsewhere, and to the whole of which they were en-
titled. There had never been any dispute as to the quantity
of land to which they were entitled. Therefore, the terms of
the agreement fully bore out their meaning, which was, sup-
posing the claim of the Company amounted to one million of
acres, they would only claim 9)0,000 acres, as they were to get
the other fifty thousand in the neighbourhood of Auckland.
Instead of the Company selecting its land in a certain district to
the southward, it, for the purposes of the Government itself,
suggested by Lord Stanley himself, asked to be allowed to select
a portion of it in the neighbourhood of Auckland. Now, they
contended that this claim had been specifically set aside by Lord
Stanley's instructions of February, in which he directed the Go-
vernor to ascertain if the title to the land to be granted to the
Company could be satisfactorily proved by them. The Com-
pany charged this as a distinct violation of the agree-
ment.—( Cries of " Hear, hear.") It was entitled
to a certain quantity of land in the south ; they abandoned the
claim to that land, for fifty thousand acres in the north, and
then they were required, for these fifty thousand acres, to go
before the Commissioners and establish their title to it !
Another resolution was one much more at variance with the
spirit of the agreement. It was of the greatest importance to
the Company that the Government should interfere itself to
put an end to all the disputes with the natives. As long as the
natives imagined that the Company (which they knew was in
disfavour with the Government) was the party they had to
contend with, the Company knew that the demands of the
natives would be raised to a very great amount, and that they
should have all kinds of difficulties in snaking arrangements with
them. The Company, therefore, wished the Government to
make the arrangement with the natives, that their claims might
be extinguished for a reasonable SIMI. They asked the Govern-
ment to do its best to aid the agents of the Company in effect-
ing these arrangements with the natives; and what they meant
was, that the Government should act for the Company as ii
would have acted for —( Hear,
.h,efarra.n)k And what war.
Lord Stanley's answer ? It was a rooss
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Governor applied ton Lord Stanley for further explanations.