EARLY NEW ZEALAND.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 228, 27 September 1938, Page 8

EARLY NEW ZEALAND.

!In your issue of September 22 is a letter which indicates a difference of opinion between two of your correspondents as to whether 1814 [or 1840 dates the "coming of law" to New Zealand. This would appear to be a legal question on which the views of laymen should be accepted with diffidence. I should like to ask each of the gentlemen concerned whether they do not think that the year 1839 mark* the date upon which New Zealand joined the Empire, whereupon the law automatically "came" to it (i.e., applied), and if they da alt concur in this proposition, how do they diipoa of:- (1) The statement in the Parliamentary Return (England) of 1845 that New Zeabtai was acquired by settlement in 1839, and (2) the statement in Halsbury's "Laws of Eafr land," Vol. XI. (article, "Dominions, Colonics and Dependencies." written by Professor Berriedale Keith, the eminent conetitntioaal " lawyer, of Edinburgh University), that New • Zealand became a dependency of New Sooth Wales in 1839, whereupon the law of New South Wales (-ve., English law, as modified by New South Wales statutes or ordinance*) would automatically apply T Would Profeawr Rutherford be good enough to explain what be means by "technically there is some point in this" (i.e., in the contention that the Law came in 1814) ? How. in any technical sense, could the Law com* „o Xew" Zealand in 1814, if it was not then a British possession? And why would the commissions be invalid only after 1817, if Xew Zealand had not been British territory in 1814! Does the professor suggest that it is arguable New Zealand was a British colony 25 or 26 years before most people think it was! Our centenary on that view is about a quarter of a century in arrear. I