TWELFTH REPORT OF THE DIRECTORS OF THE NEW ZEALAND COMPANY.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume III, Issue 132, 14 September 1844, Page 110

TWELFTH REPORT OF THE DIRECTORS OF THE NEW ZEALAND COMPANY.

After our report of the 29th ultimo, you will not be much surprised to learn that our representations to the Colonial Department therein mentioned have been entirely without effect. The Secretary of State has rejected all the proposals which we snbmitted to his lordship in the hope that he would afford us the means of continuing to pursue the objects of your incorporation. We have not been favoured with any explanation of the grounds of that refusal. Lord Stanley merely tells us, that he " declines the discussion of any further propositions " for the present. You wiU find the whole correspondence on the subject in Appendix A to this report

That correspondence will explain to .you how it happened thai at your adjourned meeting on the 29th ultimo, we laid before you in our eleventh report a suggestion which was made to nt.by the Colonial Department, and which, ifwe had adopted it, would have assumed the form of a new p*o« posal from the Company to the Government Our reason* for declining that suggestion are fully stated in your Governor's letter to Lord Stanley of the 2d instant. ,

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In examining the correspondence in question, you will not fail to remark a singular contrast of matter and tone between our representations and Lord Stanley's answer to them. We described without asperity or inculpation the ruinous state of your affairs, and the deplorable condition of the once prosperous settlements which you founded ; we pleaded, not too earnestly we still hope, but at all events in terms of proper respect towards the organ of the Government, for a favourable construction of our views and motives, and for such present assistance and future good-will from his lordship's department as we deemed essential to the welfare of both race* in New Zealand, and to the restoration of your powers of usefulness as a colonizing body. The only answer we receive is severe personal reproach. Excepting as relates to the amount of dividends paid to you, and the establishments maintained by us, we are not blamed for any misconduct in the direction of your affairs ; and the exception itself forms a personal imputation. For the rest, Lord Stanley's censure is not bestowed upon the Companyfor any abuse of powers or neglect of duties ; it does not belong to any of the matters of a public nature to which we had called his lordship's attention ; it has no tendency to save the colon sts and natives of New Zealand from the disasters which threaten them. Our temperate appeal to his lordship's justice, humanity, and sense of public policy, is only met by reproach, so merely personal as to be confined to charges of indiscretion and bad faith in our conduct of the negotiation. Disapprobation of the hand-writing of our letters would not have been more entirely personal, though, of course, far less offensive. When you shall have further observed, by your Governor's letter to Lord Stanley of the 18th instant, how utterly groundless those personal imputations are, we think you will agree with us in abandoning for the present all hope of placing the Company on a better footing of relations with the Colonial Office.

It would be wrong, however, to conceal from you that an impression prevails amongst us, that Lord Stanley himself does not participate in the constant ill-will of the Colonial Office and its officers in New Zealand towards this Company, which the correspondence in the appendices discloses. When you shall have seen all the proofs of their jealous hostility, you will understand the practical importance of the distinction here drawn between the Secretary of State and his subordinates.

We have received with much satisfaction, from a considerable number of the proprietors, holding a large amount of stock, a written assurance of their approbation of our conduct in declining to accept a temporary loan of £40,000 from the Government, secured on the whole property of the Company. In addition to the objections to such a proceeding, which are set forth in your Governor's letter to Lord Stanley, Mr. Hope's letter of the 4th instant satifies us that, if we bad adopted the proposal, you would have gained nothing but a very brief respite from pecuniary pressure, and would have been thereby precluded from acquainting the public with the true condition of your affairs as respects the relations of the Company with the Colonial Office. This has been too long concealed, by our unwillingness to believe in its existence, and by our fears lest any public complaint from us should only make bad worse. In our whole management of your affairs, there is nothing with which we can reproach ourselves, save too long a silent endurance of blow after blow to your interests and those of the settlers in Cook's Strait, from quarters where your incorporation by her Majesty led us to expect sympathy and friendly co-operation ; and we assure you that, painful as are the circumstances which now oblige us to tell you the worst, they afford us relief from a less tolerable burden of responsibility and anxiety. The correspondence in Appendix B contains the agreement made with Lord Stanley, in the month of May, 1843, and alluded to in your Governor's letter to his lordship of the 29th February last, together with his lordship's instructions to Governor Fitzßoy, on the 26th of June, 1843. We request your particular attention to these documents.

Your Governor's letter of the Bth of May, 1843, specifies, in the form of a proposal from the Company to the Government, the terms and conditions of an agreement which had- resulted from much private negotiation between the Colonial Department and ourselves at the close of a long and very hostile controversy. You must keep in mind, that the substance and very words of the proposal were determined at interviews between the parties, and by a private correspondence ; and that the public correspondence which followed was a mere execution of the previously settled contract The formal and unqualified acceptance of the proposal by Lord Stanley was conveyed to us by Mr. Hope's letter of the 12th May, 1843. The agreement between the parties was, as it were, finally executed on that day.

The only person who could carry that agreementjinto effect on behalf of the Government was Captain Fitzßoy, just then appointed to succeed the deceased Captain Hobson as Governor of New Zealand. It appears that the two letters which form the agreement were very properly placed in Captain Fitzßoy's hands without comment from Lord Stanley as to the meaning of their words. Doubts, however, seem to have been expressed to Governor Fitzßoy by somebody as to the meaning of very important parts of the agreement; and he accordingly wrote to Lord Stanley, on the 15th of June, 1843, requesting an interpretation by his lordship of the passages whose ambiguity had occurred to somebody. On the 26th of the same month, Lord Stanley answers the questions put to him. We beg of you to examine his lordship's despatch. In our opinion, it had the effect of materially varying the agreement That despatch was not communicated to us until the Ist of February hut; nearly seven months after Governor Fitzßoy had quitted this country; and when it would have been idle in us to express how much we differed with Lord Stanley as to the true interpretation of the words in the agreement. We can positively assure you, however, that we should never have entered into an agreement containing such words as those of Lord Stanley's interpretation of the agreement into which we did enter. If that interpretation had been communicated to us a.t the time, we should have endeavoured to persuade Lord Stanley to recall it, and, failing in that tttempt, we should have protested against an iopoftaat variation of the contract by one of the parties to it without the consent of the other.

That variation, however, took place not merely without our consent, but without our knowledge. We were not even afforded an opportunity of submitting to Governor Fitzßoy (with whom we had at that time held frequent and most friendly personal communications) our view of the meaning of the agreement, as opposed to that of the other contracting party. Our local agent, whom we instructed to carry out our part of the agreement according to its words — to fulfil the engagement which we had contracted according to the terms of the contract — is probably not even aware of the new interpretation of the engagements of the Government which has been given to Captain Fitz Roy in the shape of instructions. And even if the Governor should communicate those his instructions to our agent, the latter will be wholly ignorant of our views on the subject. We are bound fast to our engagements, while the Local Government is set free from the obligation of viewing Lord Stanley's engagements with us in the sense deliberately agreed upon between the parties. This disregard of good faith by the Colonial Office may be productive of very serious practical wrong towards you and the settlers in Cook's Strait We proceed to an explanation of this danger.

When you shall have read the correspondence in Appendix C, you will have no doubt of the accuracy of the common opinion, which traces the present lamentable state of things in New Zealand to the policy of the local authorities in attempting to colonize without means, instead of merely governing the colonists and natives. Hence came the establishment of the seat of Government at Auckland, where there was nobody to be governed, not far from one of the extremities' of a narrow country 800 miles long, and practically more distant from the great bulk of the colonist population than either New South Wales or Van Diemen's Land : hence also the systematic endeavours of the Local Government to discourage settlement in the centre of New Zealand — to encourage, by very unscrupulous means, the re-emigration to Auckland, or its neighbourhood, of emigrants from this country, who had been taken out at the Company's expense and settled on its lands. The success of these endeavours would inevitably have proved ruinous to the Company's settlements. Our duty to those who had purchased land from us, whose money we had spent in conveying population to that land, with a view of giving it value — our duty to all the colonist inhabitants of the shores of Cook's Strait, who had settled there under an assurance that the central parts of New Zealand would be the field of the Company's operations — our duty to you, whose property in land was all there; commanded us to resist — most urgently forbade us to aid in giving effect to — the views of the Local Government in this respect. Any neglect of these obligations would have subjected us to severe and deserved reproach from the colonists, whose reliance upon us demanded that we should take a special care of their interests. You will understand, therefore, with what reluctance we consented to that part of the agreement with Lord Stanley, of May, 1843, by which we engaged to take lands at Auckland, and to colonize there. The suggestion that we should do so came to us originally from the Local Government of New Zealand, in an extract from Governor Hobson's despatch to Lord Stanley of the 26th of March, 1842, which was communicated to us by his lordship on "the 27th of December in the same year. We viewed that suggestion as part and parcel of the system that sought to promote the colonizing prosperity of Auckland at the expense of Wellington, Nelson, and New Plymouth. It appeared to us of a piece with Governor Hobson's strenuous efforts to induce the body of colonists who settled at Nelson to plant themselves in the neighbourhood of Auckland. We knew also that the project, which had not been kept a secret in New Zealand, was regarded with no less favour by members of the Local Government and others having a personal interest in serving Auckland at the expense of Cook's Strait, than with suspicion and alarm in the Company's settlements. You may ask with impatience, what then induced us to consent ? Our answer is, we felt that the interests of the settlers and proprietors were so completely at the mercy of the Colonial Office and the Local Government, with respect to the vital question of land-titles in the Company's settlements — that the proceedings of the Local Government in that respect were leading to such fearful results— that the total ruin of your settlements, and terrible collisions between the settlers and natives, seemed so likely to grow out of the then state of the landtitles question : — on all these grounds we deemed it our duty to obtain some determination of that question by means of almost any sacrifice. Our consent to the engagements with respect to taking land at Auckland was the price which we paid for Lord Stanley's engagements with respect to landtitles. We undoubtedly entertained hopes that the Company might, by colonizing at Auckland, put an end to those feelings of jealous rivalry between the Company's settlements and that of the Government, which had arisen from the efforts of the Government to colonize without means. Even these hopes, however, were chiefly encouraged by the appointment of Captain Fitzßoy as successor to Governor Hobson. We felt assured that Governor Fitzßoy would execute Lord Stanley's engagements as to land-titles, according to the letter and spirit of the agreement Our reliance on Governor Fitzßoy's strict sense of justice and honour remains undiminished ; but the letter of the agreement has been altered by additions, which, in our opinion, greatly alter its spirit These alterations relate only to Lord Stanley's engagements: ours stand as before. We pay the price agreed upon, but are deprived of the engagements in consideration of which we consented to the bargain. Our part of the bargain has probably been fulfilled, for we lost no time in desiring our agent to carry it into immediate effect We look with alarm for news of what may have come of Lord Stanley's engagements, as altered by T»*"*eif without our consent or knowledge. But we have not yet made you aware of all the practical importance of the alterations in question ; still less of all the grounds on which we should have declined to enter into the agreement if an opportunity of forming a judgment upon it as now altered had been afforded to us.

By referring to the correspondence in Appendix C, you will learn that, as respects the Company's rights to land in New Zealand, the agreement with Lord Stanley in May, 1843, was substituted for

another agreement into which we entered with Lord John Russell in November, 1840, when the latter noble lord was pleased to advise her Majesty to grant this Company a Charter of Incorporation. By what it will be convenient to term Lord John Russell's agreement, the Company abandoned all title or pretence of title to any lands purchased or acquired by them in New Zealand, other than the lands to be granted to them by the Crown under that agreement ; and it also undertook to raise a further capital of £200,000 in addition to its original capital of £100,000. Both the surrender of the lands and the additional subscription of capital were clauses of the agreement insisted on by Lord John Russell. On the other hand, his lordship engaged that you should receive from her Majesty a grant of as many acres as the Company had expended crowns in the business of colonization ; and it was further agreed the parties that the quantity of land so to be granted by the Crown should be selected by the Company within a certain district, to the whole of which they had previously laid claim on the ground of purchase from the natives when New Zealand was a foreign country. The obvious principle of Lord John Russell's agreement was in harmony with all the dictates of experience and sound policy in such matters. The Government stepped in between private colonizers and the natives ; forced the colonizers to abandon their claims to land, founded on contracts between themselves and the natives ; forbade the Company to perform a function so exclusively proper to the Government as the extinction of native titles ; and itself undertook a task in which none having a private interest should ever be allowed to participate. It was only by a strict observance of this sound principle of Lord John Russell's agreement that the colonization of New Zealand could be expected to go on with benefit to the settlers and natives, or without the infliction of terrible evils upon both races. You will find by the correspondence in Appendix C that this principle was utterly disregarded by the Local Government, which seems always to have treated Lord John Russell's agreement as waste paper. A Court of Claims was established in the midst of the district to which the Company had acquired a claim by native purchase when there was no British authority nor any other government in New Zealand ; and into this court the Company wat called as a party, and required to establish .the claims which Lord John Russell's agreement had properly compelled them to abandon. The natives were the party on the other side. Intermediate parties appeared in the form of whites claiming to nave purchased from natives before the Company. The court consisted of a gentleman who did not understand a word of the native language. The interpreter of the court held the office of sub-pro-tector of aborigines, and, in that character, not only prepared out of court the claims of the natives against the Company, but acted as their counsel in court. There has since been added to his functions that of arbitrator, to assist in determining the amount of compensation to be paid by the Company to natives under decree of the court. He had been appointed, moreover, to the office of Sub-Protector of Aborigines by his father, the Chief Protector for New Zealand — a lay missionary, personally and largely interested in whatever might affect the value of landed property at and near Auckland. There was no surer method of raising the value of land near Auckland' — no more certain means of promoting colonization near Auckland at the expense of the Company's settlements — than by decisions of the Court of Claims adverse to the Company, or by delay in coming to any decision. The court sat for nearly two years without deciding a single case. When you are informed that the gentleman filling the incompatible offices of protector and interpreter, and subsequently of arbitrator, was under twenty years old at the time of receiving these appointments — when you reflect on the right qualifications for the office of protector of aborigines in a country like New Zealand, such as experience, habitual prudence, weight of character, and perfect freedom from even the. suspicion of self-in-terested bias — when you consider how the real value of land, and the ideas of the natives on that subject, had been altered by British colonization — when you think of the utter confusion of ideas which even now prevails among the natives with respect to their own rights to property in land — and when you make allowance for the facility, and the hope of profit for themselves, with which some of the whites might instigate the natives to set up new and extravagant claims for compensation, — you will not be surprised at the failure of the Commissioner's Court to produce any but the most deplorable results. In our opinion, the massacre at Wairau flowed directly from it.

But it is not to the court that we object, or have ever objected. A Court of Claims seems to have been necessary, in order that the native title should be extinguished by the Government. What we object to is, the making of the Company a party before the court, instead of only a witness on behalf of the Crown, according to the principle of Lord John Russell's agreement That agreement contained, in fact, a surrender by the Company to the Crown of all the land which you previously claimed in virtue of purchase from the natives. If the Company and other Europeans claiming to have once purchased from the natives, had only been called as witnesses to satisfy the commissioner that the purchases had really taken place, the follies and calamities of such a litigation as actually occurred would have been avoided. The spectacle which that litigation presented, excited a general ridicule. The claims and counter-claims, direct and intermediate, were as numerous as the considerations alleged to have passed, and the proofs of contract were various and conflicting. Some of the parties in this strange contention of private interests employed English attorneys and barristers ; one or other of the languages used was always unknown to one or more of the parties interested; the very thoughts of the several parties on the subject of property in land were so different, as to be respectively incomprehensible-; the parties best informed on the subject in debate — the natives, whose law of real properly was to be the guide of the court — never had any law of the sort, but only vague, diversified, conflicting customs ; and, to crown all, the court itself, whoie functions were really more important and more delicate than those of the Governor, consisted of a country attorney recently imported from England. ITo bt tonitmud.J