CORRESPONDENCE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume IV, Issue 165, 4 March 1854, Page 3 (Supplement)

CORRESPONDENCE.

I To the Editor of the Lyttelton Times. I Christchurch, Feb. '22nd, 1854. I Sir. —I was not a little astonished to read fjm your last paper the following clauses of IHis Honor the Superintendent's opening |speech :— I " You will perceive that a proposal has [been made by Mr. Sewell, which will pemand your serious consideration. It appears from the accounts that the Association jjiave expended in the service of the settlement a larger sum than that which they Received by the sales of land. This over-ex-penditure has been temporarily provided for Ipy loans from private individuals on the security of the property held by the Asso.ciation, and their agent now proposes to |transfer that property to the Province, upon Icondition of its making provisions for the Joutstanding debt; " and a little further on Jhe. Says, " The wording of the 76th clause |ofthe Constitution Act seems to intimate Ithat the subject is one to be dealt with [peculiarly and especially by your Council." I am confident that 19 persons out of 20 ;on reading the above loosely-worded statesmen t, would understand that the transaction , Mr. Sewell and the Council spoken : of in the first part of it is what is alluded to in the 76th clause of the Constitutional Act. Nothing however can be farther from the fact. It appears that the Association spent in various ways more money than they received by the land sales ; which excess of expenditure having been met by different members of the committee of management, the Association endeavoured to secure the repayment of it, partly by lands purchased for that purpose in various parts of the colony, and partly by mortgages .^effected en public lands at that time held by the Association in trust for the public. Now the 75th clause of the Constitution Act states, that it shall not be in the power of the General Assembly to repeal or interfere with " all or any of the provisions " of the Ist or 2nd Act of the Canterbury Association. "Provided always, that on the expiration, or sooner determination of the functions, powers, and authorities now vested in °f lawfully exercised by the said Association, the provisions of the present Act shall come Nito force as regards the lands to which the said Act relates."

The 76th clause empowers the Canterbury Association to transfer, and the Provincial Council to accept "all such functions, powers, and authorities, —upon such terms and conditions as shall be agreed upon," between them. His Honor therefore must be entirelymistaken if he supposes fhat the powers alluded to in these two clauses mean the power of the Association over its corporate property, and I fancy Mr. Sewell would be loath to admit it either ; for the 75th clause distinctly shews that whenever the provisions of the Constitutional Act regarding the lands in the Canterbury Block ccme into force, all the functions, powers, and authorities, which the Association are empowered to transfer by :he 76th clause must have previously determined, Now it is a fact that the contingency provided for by the concluding part of the 75th Clause has arrived, that the powers, &c. of the Canterbury Association have long since determined by the act of Sir J. Packington, (and Mr. Sewell last week made it one of his strongest points in the celebrated Battle of the Seal, an account of which I regret has not yet found a place in your columns, that the Association was so utterjy extinguished that its common Seal had become a mere curious antique, worth £5! that it h?.d not even power to use it to complete the conveyances for parties who had purchased land from them when in the plenitude of their power.) And that the provisions of the Constitution Act with regard to the land within the Block have already come into force is a matter of notoriety. The right of the Provincial Council to take these debts and lands is quite another question. The thirteen restrictions on their powers of legislation mentioned in clause 19, do not, as far as I can see, prevent the Council acquiring public property at the expense of public debt if it be so minded. Unless indeed the Bth restriction might be ' considered to prevent their levying dues on the jetties and wharves, which is part of the property Mr. SeweJl lays claim to. With this exception, which Ido not think a valid one, there can be no doubt that the subject is one the Provincial Council have a right to deal with. I only object to the lugging in the Constitutional Act as giving sanction to such a proceeding, whereas it makes no allusion to the subject whatever. . Now, Sir,, having cleared the ground, I shall proceed •to enquire what is this " property- held by the Association," proposed to be transferred to us through our representatives, and what title either equitable or legal'the'Association has to hold it. It may be divided as I stated before into two classes ; the lands, purchased by the As- I sociation of itself under authority of the 2nd Act of Parliament, and called the Lord Lyttelton Trust Lands : and, secondly, the various reserves for public purposes, with the property erected on them. These consist as near as I can recollect of the jetty and wharves at Lyttelton, the Agent's house, Barracks, Stores, &c, with the lands adjoining them. The town reserves of Lyttelton and Christchurch, the parks and Government domains belonging to the latter town. (With regard to the Lyttelton town reserves, Mr. Sewell has I believe since his arrival here abstracted it from this category, and placed it under the Lord Lyttelton trust, a litttle piece of transfer which he can doubtless satisfactorily account for.) As far as regards Lord Lyttelton's Trust, I would say nothing, for although the legal right to parts of it may be questioned, yet no one will I think object to their equitable title to it. But their right to keep as their own the

public property they [formerly held in trust is quite another thing, and it behoves every colonist strictly to enquire into their title to these lands, and i f they agree with me as to the invalidity of the Association's claim, to urge most strongly on our representatives the necessity of abjuring the monstrous assumptions of Mr. Sewell, and to take the necessary steps to assert-the public rights over the property he would so unjustly withhold from us. I know I may be accused of boring your readers, as I entered fully into the question last year, in several letters I addressed to you under the signature of ZYX, and I am well aware, that such letters emanating from one ignorant of law are open to the charge of presumption ; but considering the pressing importance the question has assumed to us all, and that no one learned in the law has deemed it worth his while to take up the cudgel for his fellow-colonists, I trust the public will pardon me if I endeavour to lay before yor, as shortly as I can, the arguments I then adduced at length. The Canterbury Association were legally established by the Act of Parliament, dated 14th August, 1850. The 2nd Clause of this act, provides that the Association shall dispose of the lands subject to them in two ways, either by sale to purchasers or by pasturage licenses; " but subject to the con- ■ ditions following, and to the terms of purchase now or at anytime existing respecting the same as hereinafter mentioned." By these conditions it will be perceived that while the sale of town and rural land is defined and provided for, the whole of the Reserves for purposes of Public Utility (a distinct class, be it remembered, from what are usually called The Town Reserves) are exceptedfrom sale at all. The 9th clause enables the Canterbury Association to alter their terms of purchase. While the 11th enacts that nothing contained in the act shall I prejudice the rights of the first Colonists, " under tha terms of purchase first hereinbefore mentioned," viz., those which were current when the act passed, dated April 22nd, 1850, you will observe that the Act legalizes both the conditions and terms of purchase. It was under these terms, and under the protection of this first act of Parliament, that the first body of colonists, in which I was included, left England in August, 1850. We entered into engagements with a body which possessed certain limited powers, but which was unable to acquire corporate property in land, in Canterbury, much less to mortgage lands which it had reserved and held in trust for the use of the public in the various ways specified on their maps at the period of their reservation. On these grounds I deny the right of the late Association to any corporate rights over any lands reserved for public use prior to the publication of the 2nd Act, dated Aug. 7th, 1851. But Mr. Sewell says that the act of that date gives the Association power to appropriate by deed for public use lands already reserved, and also under' the tern:s of the Charter to mortgage them to pay the debts of the Association as being their corporate property. Now to this assertion I would reply that no act of Parliament is retrospective unless it expressly states itself to be so. That is to say that the second act does not undo, or render void, deeds already done under the authority of the firs; act. If lam in error, I should be much obliged if Mr. Sewell would not only assert b-'t prove it. Secondly, setting aside, for the sake of argument, my first line of defence, let us enquire what are the powers the second act really gives the Canterbury Association, and how far they are identical with those claimed by Mr. Seweil.

The Bth clause, which is the one chiefly bearing on the subject, empowers the Association to reserve and appropriate by deed, for any of the purposes to which the funds of the Association are by the Letters Patent made applicable, any part or parts of the land being at the time unsold cr unappropriated, and that every such deed shall declare the purpose for which the land therein mentioned is to be reserved and appropriated ; and then the land sfiall vest in the Association for that purpose. It also provides that the Canterbury Association shall pay for each acre the current price as charged to an ordinary purchaser. It further forbids them to purchase at all, unless the money then in band applicable to the fund for the service of which the land sought to be bought is to be appplied, be sufficient for the purchase. That is to say, that if the land was wanted to build an emigrants' barracks on, it was not to be purchased unless the Emigration fund was in a state to bear the expense. I should like to ask Mr. Sewe.ll, —Have these conditions been fulfilled in any of the purchases alluded to ? Do the deeds state in every instance the express purpose the land was appropriated to ? or, rather, do they state that the principal purpose of all the purchases was to enable the Association to secure the payment of their debts by effecting mortgages on the property ? and, secondly, was each separate fund at the period of purchase in the state of solvency required by the act? It is notorious that such was not the case. Mr. Sewell's answer to these and simliar objections I understand to be— " Take it for granted that all said against the title of the Association be true, the only party in a position to complain is the General Government, ami that, having accepted payment for the land, has put it out of its power to complain of a bargain to which it was thereby a consenting party." This argument, fitting enough perhaps from the lips of an unscrupulous advocate, sounds, I think, strangely inappropriate from the mouthpiece of the chivalrous Lord Lyttelton. But it is based on a totally false assumption. The home Government never did sell a single acre to the Canterbury Association : it merely deputed to that body the power of.selling land under certain conditions, and those only. If the Association, taking advantage of the impossibility of the Government making enquiry into the legality of each sale, pay over the required proportion of the proceeds of sales they have fraudulently made to themselves on other than the legal conditions, will the acceptance of such monies by the Government bar proceedings against the Association? I rather think not I _My argument, then, is this. The Association had power under the first act to reserve lands from sale as rural laud, and to apply the same to certain specified purposes, and have no power to alter that reserve to the prejudice of the rights of the first purchasers. That the first body of colonists acquired a right to purchase land in a town of 10: JO acres in extent, and that none of the land sold in that town should be sold to any one for less than £48 per acre ; and further, they had a right to purchase as their rural land the laud lying immediately adjacent to the town. Fti:t!..'r, they have a right that all lands reserved lor a special public purpose shall be kept, for that purpos • alone, and shall not be.burdened with the payment of the interest of a debt acquired without their consent and subsequent to their contract with iho Associ-.ition. That the ciaim of the Association to the whole of the Reserves is invalid on these grounds; hut wish regard to the Town Knseryes of Ohrislehureh it is palpably so, because tin; Association do not pretend to liavb- paid fur ih (:m Juore lv? v lue p,.j cc of

rural land; so that, had it been open to the Canterbury Association to purchase them by reservation instead of sale by auction, the sale would be invalid, because they had only paid £3 out of the £48 due. For these reasons, and because the 2nd Act is not retrospective, I deny their right in law. Their right in equity (which, however is rather late to urge, as they have aheady taken their stand on their legal title) is equally unsound, as the first body, at least, of the colonists were not consenting parties in any way to the expenditure of the money sought tc be recoveied in so dishonourable a manner. The question may be asked, "Do you hold that the Canterbury Association has no power to acquire corporate property in Canterbury?" Of course it has the power, but such property must be purchased in the open market for the same price and subject to the same conditions as if purchased by an ordinary colonist. Whether the Lord Lyttelton Trust is so or not is a question the Members of the Committee can settle amongst themselves, but it is monstrous to assert that Public Trust property is the corporate propevty of the Canterbury Association, as the Bth clause only empowers the Canterbury Association to convey the Reserves, &c by deed to themselves, to be held in trust for its specified public use, and no other. Trusting that an indulgent public will pardon this rather lengthy attempt to " teach our senators wisdom," I remain, Sir, your obedient servant, Alfred C. Babkek. P.S. I have been informed that the Committee of the Provincial Council are at this moment engaged in investigating the ac-

counts of the late Association, with the vie\r of completing the proposed purchase. Should they nut first of all have ascertained whether Mr. Sewell has any "right to sell at all ?

To the Editor of the Lyttellon Times. Sir, —I was in the act of complaining that the Provincial Government are as backward in furnishing accounts as the ex-Can-terbury Association, when the "Government Gazette" of the 26th January fell into tny hands, and in it I found a detailed statement of the Revenue and Expenditure of the Province during the past Quarter. As the " Gazette" can of necessity obtain but a limited circulation, we have a right to expect that you will republish thos"e portions of it which are of general interest; and what can be more interesting to the tax-payers of Canterbury than an account of " how their money goes ?" Unless they obtain this, their responsible Government is a mere sham. The local authorities seem to have furnished the necessary information with unusual promptitude, and I trust it will not be through the remissness of the Lyttelton Times that such information is prevented from reaching the public at large. Your obedient servant, A Tax-payer. Chrisfchurch, Feb. 14th. [The limited space at our disposal theweek the " Gazette" was published necessitated our giving, only a very meagre abstract of the statement referred to. A press of pother interesting matter has hitherto prevented subsequent notice, and the insertion of our correspondent's letter ; we make room this week by presenting our readers with four supplementary pages.]