Port Nicholson. (From the Wellington Spectator, June 7.)

Daily Southern Cross, Volume 1, Issue 14, 22 July 1843, Page 4

Port Nichols on. (From the Wellington Spectator, June 7.)

We have inserted the correspondence between Mr. Wansey and Colonel Wakefield, as we find it in the Colonist, because we consider they are very important, not only as bearing upon the great question at issue between tho settlers of Port Nicholson and those of the other Company's settlements, but because we differ with the Company's Agent as to his interpretation of the law as referred to by him, respecting the obligation of the government to protect individuals in the undisturbed possession of any property, they may think themselves entitled to take possession of. If we mistake not, the holders of the Wanganui Land Orders were assured by the Company's Agent, that he would reimburse them any reasonable expense they might be put to by the demand of the Natives, for any further utu for any particular plots of ground in, that district, and if we are right in our

conjecture upon that point, we think a fortiori that, where there appears to be a denial of any sale at all on the part of the Natives to the Company's Agent; and, consequently, no possibility of any holders of the Company's script or land order, having a shadow of a right to take possession of an inch of land, his claim to compensation is doubly strengthened, than if he had only to compensate them for some isolated patches cropped, or prepared for cropping. \ But what we more particularly are struck with, is the Company's Agent's definition of the legal term taking possession. In a military point of view, we all know what the mode of taking possession is, whether of lands, goods, or chattels ; men, women, and children, and the mode by which they are hold or disposed of, when once acquired. But in the more sober and peaceable mode of civil proceedings, the fact of taking possession of a man's land during his absence, upon the assumption that we had pttrchased it of a third party, will not in our opinion, constitute 1 such a possession as to intitle the individual so acting, to the protection, in the maintain- | ancc of such wrongful possession, and we will go further and say, that if there have been any illegal proceedings, as far as we have any means of judging, these have not been on the part of the natives, and if it should upon mii vestigation turn out that the conduct of the natives is borne out, and they have 'not been paid, whether the Agent acknowledges the principle or not, wo strongly suspect the Company will find that they are not only [ liable for the losses incurred by the settlers, in endeavouring to obtain possession of what they had been led by their agents to suppose was their property, by deed of transfer on their part, but for damages for breach of contract. That the Company's Agent may be mistaken as to the nice distinctions of the law is not surprizing, but that the Company with the facilities which they have within their reach, of getting the best advice upon all matters of business, should fall into the same error, or as it appears to us to say the least of it, more palpable error, of mistating a case, and obtaining an opinion upon it, and then grounding their conduct upon tho result of that opinion, is greatly to be deprecated. They say through their Principal Agent, " they decline to make any compensation for losses which the settlers may undergo from the aggressions of the natives, as in the instance you represented to me on the 4th May, last year." "They consider it to be the duty of the Government and not of the Company to protect tho settlers, and compel the natives to respect the law, and to seek redress in case of their thinking themselves aggrieved from the constituted authorities, and not by acts of violence and rapine, mutato nomine, &c." Tho Agent is pleased to draw a paralel with this and tho neighbouring Colonies, and says, " In all the neighbouring Colonies, and in other parts of this Island, outrages on property have been made by the aborigines witliout the seller of the land being held responsible for the loss." We are not aware of what tho instances are which have occurred in this island, but we should say that the person claiming the right to sell, must first prove that he had a j right so to do ; which is denied by tho other inferred, contracting party, the Natives. As regards the proceedings in the neigh- 1 bouring colonies, the mode by which they j were acquired, and the fact that tho land was at first acquired by grants from the Crown, destroys the analogy between the two cases.