CANTERBURY PASTURAGE REGULATIONS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume I, Issue 52, 3 January 1852, Page 6

CANTERBURY PASTURAGE REGULATIONS.

On {lie 27th of August a public meeting of intending colonists, and others interested in the Canterbury Settlement, was held at the offices of the Canterbury Association. The attendance was numerous", as it had been previously announced that on this occasion the Committee of Management intended to make known and explain certain conditions for the licensing of pasturage in the settlement, which had been framed in pursuance of recommendations from the local council of colonists, and of powers conferred on the Association by an Act of the Imperial Parliament recently passed. At this meeting, Mr. Sewell stated at some length the recent proceedings and present position of the Association. At the end of the session of 1849,^ an Act had been passed for the purpose of carrying into effect the arrangements which had been made between the Canterbury Association and the New Zealand Company, to give to the Association " the power to sell the land on certain terms, the price of rural land being fixed at , 3/. per acre." That Act also gave a general power to demise pasturage land at U. per 100 acres. This, however, was a power of a very limited kind, and it had only been exercised so far as consistent with the rights which were annexed to the freehold purchasers. In the last session of parliament another Act had been obtained which greatly increased the powers of the Canterbury Association over the settlement. Under the existing system the only mode in which land could be disposed of in the Canterbury Settlement had been either by way of actual freehold sale, or by pasturage licenses at the rate of five acres for every acre of freehold land, over which there was, in addition, a right of pre-emption. This, of course, left unprovided for the entire tract of open unappropriated lands in the settlement; and the present Act of Parliament vested in the Association full power to deal with those lands in precisely the same manner as the Crown itself would be at liberty to do. Consequently, it was now open to them to regulate the use, by license, of those unappropriated lands in the manner which might appear most expedient. The suggestions from the colony with reference to those lands did not appear to have been framed with quite a due reference to the powers of the Association and the rights of the land-purchasers, and though the Association might be disposed to adopt the views of the colonists to as great an extent as possible, yet if they adopted them to the full, it would amount to a departure from the scheme of the Association. The colonists had proposed in the first instance, that they should offer to every holder of a run a fixed and certain tenure of his run for fourteen years. They also suggested that the holders should have a pre-emptive right over their runs, and that they should be compensated for improvements. All these suggestions would, perhaps, have been of great advantage to the colony, and in that case there would have been no objection to conceding them^ if they would not have interfered with the rights of the laud-purchasers. The Association, however, was bound to keep the whole field of the settlement open for the selection of the land purchasers, and this was altogether inconsistent with the proposition of thecolonists. Upon the whole subject the committee had come to the following resolution-.— " The committee having taken into consideration the 9th section of the Act of the 14th and loth Victoria, c. 89, giving power to the Association to grant timber licenses ; and the tenth clause, giving the Association various powers over the unsold and unappropriated lands within the said settlement, so long as the same shall remain unappropriated, and, in particular, the power of regulating the use of the land under pasturage and timber licenses ; and having further read and considered the report from the council of colonists, containing' recommendations relative to pasturage licenses, together with Mr. Godley's letter thereon :— "Resolved, that by the provisions of the several Acts of Parliament and Terms of Purchase as settled with her Majesty's government, upon which the Association's contracts with land purchasers must be hiisfid, until 100,000 acres of land are sold, the right of land-purchasers to select their freehold and pasturage allotments out of the entire field of unappropriated land cannot be in any way restricted ; that any conditions for giving t0 squatters a fixed tenure as •against such laud purchasers, or a pre-emptive right, or a claim io compensation for improve-

ments over the unappropriated pasturage, would be restrictive of the rights as guaranteed to such land purchasers. "Resolved further, that, subject to the belorcmentioued conditions, from which the Association have no power to depart, the framing of regulations for licenses of such unappropriated pasturage, and the terms thereof, be entrusted to the Association's chief agent in the colony, and that he be instructed to act therein as he may think best, with the view of facilitating and encouraging to the utmost of his power the occupation of unappropriated land by pastoral capitalists. "And further, that the Association's chief agent be empowered to carry the said provisions of the said tenth clause of the said Act into effect, in such manner as he may think fit, consistently with the conditions imposed by Act of Parliament, the Association's charter, and the terms of purchase settled with her Majesty's Government."