THE POVERTY BAY SETTLEMENT.

Auckland Star, Volume XI, Issue 3243, 11 December 1880, Page 3

THE POVERTY BAY SETTLEMENT.

(To the Editor.)

Sir —Though not wholly unaccustomed to newspaper controversy I had hoped to be able to avoid the indulgence during, my stay in Auckland, but. your, paragraph of this evening,' respecting me and the Poverty Bay Special Settlement, is so circumstantial, that I feel obliged to depart from my resolve, and claim permission for a brier, reply. 'You say, "Mr G. M. Reed has, it is understood, arranged with the New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Agency to take over the 12,000 acres at Poverty Bayceded^for a special settlement. Mr Battley, the Secretary Mr the Company, left for Gisborne yesterday to complete negotiations." Permit me to say that there is not a shadow of foundation for the statement. I have never had communication on the subject with either the New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Agency, or any. other financial institution in the colony; and further, the nature of my arrangements with my party precludes the necessity or possibility of such a thing. Apart from the question of the propriety of making such a private financial arrangement with a Loan Company a matter of newspaper publication, even had it been true, I think if the matter were of sufficient public interest for publication, it should have been worth the trouble of previously ascertaining whether it was correct, especially as I was in town at the time. lam quite sure that you wish well to the enterprise, but I am equally sure that there are persons in Auckland and elsewhere, who, with various motives, wish to see it banked; hence the various sinister and entirely unfounded rumours that have from time to time been industriously spread, Far be it from

me to say that there would have been anything improper in such an arrrangemcnt with the New Zealaud Loau and Mercantile Agency, but as a matter of fact such a thing never entered my head. Standing now as I do outside of the charmed circle of the press, I can fully enter into the spirit of the sport enjoyed by the frogs in the fable. —I am, &.,.

G. M. Reed,