The Sun.
London, England, 1845-02-10 00:00:00

THE AFFAIRS of NE W ZEALAND

No. I.
COPY OF A DISPATCH FROM LORD STANLEY TO

- _
GOVERNOR FITZROY.
Downing-street, August 13, 1844.
Sir,—ln my dispatch, No. 27, of the 30th ult., I en-
closed to you the report and proceedings of the Com-
mittee of the House of Commons, appointed to inquire
into the state of New Zealand, and into the proceedings
of the New Zealand Company. On reference to the pro-
ceedings, you will perceive that the Committee were far
from unanimous in their opinions, and that some of the
most important of their decisions, including one upon the
selection between two sets of resolutions, as the basis of
their report, were sustained by very narrow majorities.
Nevertheless, I cannot but apprehend that this report,
carrying with it, as it must be admitted to do, the au-
thority of a Committee of the House of Commons, may
add to the difficulties of your position, less indeed by the
..practical measures which it recommends than by the
principles which it lays down, and on which it proceeds ;
principles which I know to be opposed to your own
views, and which, if you were to attempt to carry them
into practice, would, I fear, lead to most unhappy con-
sequences.

tihe report, you will observe, proceeds upon the as-
sumption that " the uncivilised inhabitants of any coun-
try have but a qualified dominion over it, or a right of
occupancy, and that until they establish amongst them-
selves a settled form of government, and subjugate the
ground to their own uses by the cultivation of it, they
cannot grant to any individuals, not of their own tribe,
any portion of it, for the simple reason that they have
not themselves any individual property in it;" and the
Committee add, " that if the view which they have than
taken of the right of the Crown to the whole of the un-
occupied soil of New Zealand, and of the nullity of all
private purchases of land from the natives, be a correct
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 arrangement it must have been
intended to give to the Company a claim, binding in
good faith, upon the estate of the Crown to the number
of acres awarded to them by Mr. Pennington, and that
this claim could not in any way be affected by the cha-
racter of those supposed purchases from the natives,
which it was the very object of the whole arrangement to
set aside as altogether null and invalid."
lam not sure that, were the question one of mere
theory, I should be prepared to subscribe unhesitatingly,
and without reserve, to the fundamental assumption of
the Committee, and I am sure that it would require
considerable qualification as applicable to the aborigines
of New Zealand. There are many gradations of " un-
civilized inhabitants," and practically, according to their
state of civilisation, must be the extent of rights
which they can he allowed to claim, whenever the terri-
tory on which they reside is occupied by civilised com-
munities. And it cannot be denied that, among " unci-
vilised nations," the New Zealanders hold a vary high
place, certainly far above the inhabitants of the other
Australian colonies.
The aborigines of New Holland generally are broken
into feeble and perfectly savage migratory tribes,
roaming over boundless extents of country, subsisting
from day to day on the:precarious produce of the chase,
wholly ignorant of or averse to the cultivation of the
so], with no principles of civil government, or recog-
eition of private property, and little, it' any know-
ledge of the simplest forms of religion, or even of
the exist.?nce of a Supreme Being. It is impossible
to admit, on the part of a population thus situate, any
rights in the soil which should be permitted to inter-
fere with the subjugation by Europeans of the vast wil-
derness over which they are aeittered ; and all that
can be required by justice, sanctioned by policy, or re-
cam:lended by humanity, is to endeavour, as civilisa-
tion an 1 cultivation extend, to embrace the ab ,rigines
within their pale, to diffuse religious knowledge
riming them, to induce them, if postible, to adopt more
settled moles of providing for their subsistence, and to
uffard them the means of doing so, if so disposed, by
an adequate reservation of lands within the limits of
eulivation. But the position of the N.w Z-aland. r:s
of the Northern Island, at the time of its occu-
pation by Great Britain, was the r, verse of all this.
Comparatively speal;ina, their territory was not of vast
ease nt, though unquestionatly far more than s.uffic'ent,
ineler any ci, cumstences, for the actual populatiein. Their
male, though nut their sole, subsistence, was derived from
agriculture, rude inked, but continuous; rights of pro-
perty. as between trlla3 and trite., and of individuals
of each tribe t.!s• se, were recognised and well under-
stood ; they had been for many years in intercourse
with English traders and wilt Christian missionaries ;
many of them had adopted Christianity ; many were
acteetinted with the English language end with letters,
and at this moment a Mao, i Gaze I is published in
New Zealand, an i widely circulate:l among them.
I cannot think that it would h. either iust or practica-
ble to apply the same rule with regard to the occupation
of land, to classes of aborigines so widely differing from
each other.
' '

But, whatever may be the right theory, it is indis•
putable that in practice a distinction has been drawn by
the Acts of the Britibh Go% erntnent.

Up to 1839 this country re..ognized the chiefs of New
Zealand as the heads of an independent community; and
when in that year the unauthorised settlement of the
country had rendered necessary the interposition of
some higher authority, the Marquis of iNormanby, then
Secretary of State, expressed his concurrence in the
view taken by a Committee of the House of Commons
in 183 G, " that the increase of national wealth and
pow,r, promised by the acquisition of New Zealand,
would be a meat adevate compensation for the injury
which must be inflicted on the kingdom itself,, by em-
barking in a measure essentially, unjust, and but too
e;-rtainly fraught with calamity to a numerous and in-
offnsive people, whose title to the soil, and to the so-
vereignty of New Zealand, was indisputable, and had
so!emnly been recognised by the British Govern-
ment." lie repeated, on the part of the Govern-
ment, the acknowledgment of New Zealand, " as
a sovereign and independent state, so far, at least,
as it was possible- to make that acknowledgment in
favour of a people composed of numerous dispersed
and petty tribes, who possessed a few political relations
to each other, and were incompetent to act, or even to de-
liberate, in concert ; but that the admission of their
rights, thus qualified, was binding on the faith of the
British's Crown;" and ho also " disclaimed, on the part of
the Queen, for herself and for her subjects, every pre-
tension to seize on the islands, or to govern them as a
part of the dominion of Great Britain, unless the free and
intelligent consent of the natives, expressed according to
their established usages, should be first obtained;" and,
acting on this view, the British Government directed
their agent to accept from the chiefs the grant of sove-
reignty on conditions which were subsequently embo-
died in an instrument bearing date the 6th of February.
1840. By the second article of this instrument, which
was officially promulgated and laid before Parliament,
" lirr Majesty the Queen of England confirms and gua-
rantees to the chiefs and tribes of New Zealand, and to
the respective families and individuals thereof, the full,
exclusive, and undisturbed possession of their lands and
estates, forests, fisheries, and other properties which they
may collectively or individually possess, so long as it is
their wish and desire to retain the same in their posses-
sion. But the chiefs of the united tribes, and the indi-
vidual chiefs, yield to her Majesty the exclusive right of
pre-eruption over such lands as the proprietors thereof
may be disposed to alienate, at such prices as may be
agte ed upon between the respective proprietors and per-
sons appointed by her Majesty to treat with them on that
behalf."
Personally, neither you nor I are interested in now
considering whether this policy were wise or unwise.
Before the present Government assumed any responsi-
bility for the affair.; of New Zealand, not only had these
steps been taken, and obtained the sanction of Parlia-
ment, but an officer had been appointed to administer the
Government ; laws had been passed by a local legisla-
ture for regulating titles to land ; Commissiouers had
been sent out for the settlement of those titles, subject to
enactments previously passed, and guided by instruc-
tions issued by my predecessor. Nor does it seem to
me that such an inquiry is useful for any practical pur-
pos", in reference to the future. What you and I have
to do is to administer the affairs of the colony in re-
ference to a state of things which we find, but did not
create, and to feelings and expectations founded, not
upon what might have been a right theory of coloniza-
tion, but upon declarations and concessions made in the
name of the Sovereign of England.
You will observe, indeed, that the Committee admit
that " erroneous as they believe the policy hitherto pur-
sued to have been, they are sensible of the great diffi-
culty which may now he 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 instructions that may
be sent oat shall reach the Governor, they are not pre-
pared to recommend that lie should be peremptorily or-
dered to assert the rights of the Crown as they believe
them to exist; all they advise is, that lie 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 difficulties of the case, and to establish the
title of the Crown to all unoccupied land as soon as this
can be safely accomplished."
The Committee state elsewhere, "We have observed
that the terms of the treaty are ambiguous, and, in the
sense in which they have been understiyal, have been
highly inconvenient; in this we refer principally to the
stilaul4tions it
perty in land: the
with respect. to the right of pro.
information which hat been laid be-
fore its shows that these stipulations, and the subsequent
proceedings of the
firmly established in Governor,th founded upon them, have
w'aich they had then t 7 minds of the natives notions
tit very recently entertain of their havingbeen taught to
proprietary title of great
value to land not a
the fact, that your measures must occupied:i sntl;ce framed in reference
I cannot overlook
founded on interpre-
le the existence of such nontiuo
,:stions of law and treaty hitheresa admitted by. the au-
armed entertained by a
au-
thorities at home and on the spot
of people,
high-spirited, warlike, and well
in British justice, and whom riate Is
por.a,nt, by a conciliatory curse, to bring most m-
Into more
close connexion with, and mere complete subjection to
British authority.
P e ex !tint to which native rights to lind might be
ad,nitt,,(l !is yogi may remember. matter of fret',qnent
and anxiius discus iion between its previous to your de-
parture from England ; and you are aware that, fling
the information necessary for the purpose not to be with-
in my reach in this country, r constantly refined to the
New kwaland Company to define authoritatively here so
oliffi milt and important a question. On the one hand, to
restriei: those rights to lands actually occupied for culti-
vation appeared to me wholly irreconcileable with the
large words of the treaty of Waitangi, "lands and es-
tates, forests, fish,.ries, and other properties isinch they
may coil, ctively or individually Possess," and ofwhl
which,
" the full, exclusive,, and undisturbed possession" is
elereby "confirmed and guaranteed to them." The
chi:u of the Crown to all " unoccupied" land, to the ex-

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