WANGANUI.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume IV, Issue 171, 14 June 1845, Page 58

WANGANUI.

To his EXCELLENCY CAPT. FITZROY, R.N.

Sir — Upwards of nine months have elapsed without any notice being taken of a letter which I had the honour of transmitting to your Excellency through the usual official channel; and the circumstance that our letters of address and congratulation upon your Excellency's first arrival in the colony are also unacknowledged, is, I trust, a sufficient reason for now addressing your Excellency through the medium of the public press. It is also necessary that the objections to this settlement, recently made in the Legislative Council, should be refuted, in a manner equally public as that through which they have now been circulated. Your Excellency, on March 11th, observes, "at Wanganui there were many thousand natives ; in one pa 1,100 fighting men; no vessel can go there with safety," &c, &c. Petre is not so inaccessible by sea as your Excellency appears to have been given to understand. There exists an extensive bar at the mouth of the river Wanganui; but a similar objection may be raised against the majority of large rivers in New Zealand : but there is over

this bar a channel sufficiently deep to admit coasting vessels at least four times larger burden than those generally used at present in Cook's Straits. And this channel is capable of great improvement. The Rev. Mr. Taylor, who has recently made a most accurate census of the natives belonging to this river, finds only a total of 3,243 men, women, and children. Of this number not one thousand fighting men could be mustered; and owing to their private feuds, he positively assures me that not one-half of these could ever be arrayed against Europeans. Permit me here to remark that, from their extreme anxiety for the arrival of new settlers, their present exertions to protect the residents from any future incursions of hostile tribes, and their sarcastic (though just) remarks respecting the long promised payment for their land, they would mdat indignantly resent any attempt of the Local Government to annihilate this settlement.

On the 27th March, in reply to Mr. Heale's motion for refusing any police force at Petre, in order to drive the settlers nearer the capital, your Excellency remarks, " that Petre was qo< the high road between Wellington and Taranaki, and had become the resort of bad characters driven out from those places." This, I must admit, was the case about three years since, and previous to the establishment of a police force. But latterly the most troublesome characters we have had came from Auckland; who, not finding such a lawless state of society as was reported, were soon obliged to seek another refuge. I must, in justice to the working men of Petre, assure your Excellency that they are a most industrious and intelligent class, most of them maintaining their families in a very praiseworthy degree of respectability. I find, on referring to our police records, that not one man has been committed for trial, or our gaol been occupied by any prisoner, for more than a whole year.

I cannot suppose that the high authority vested in your Excellency could ever be so indiscreetly used as to sanction a proposition like Mr. Heale's. His reasons in support of iLsre based on error: for the import duties alone paid by the inhabitants of Petre have very nearly doubled the Government police expenditure here, so far back an we have any data sufficiently accurate for a reference to be made, viz., from October 1, 1843, to September 30, 1844: in this year £430 was paid in duties on tobacco, spirits, teas, sugar, &c. ; and the Government disbursed only £220, exclusive of £60 received from two licensed houses in Petre. We have, also, upwards of 200 inhabitants, instead of 130, as Mr. Heale asserts. And even supposing for a moment that Mr. Heale's statements were correct, I cannot but consider such a sweeping measure at once unjust, cruel, and impolitic. Unjust, because undeserved; as it would be a melancholy reward for the anxious perseverance, industry, and privations endured by the settlers at Petre for more than four years, to be thus exposed to an unstemmed tide of the dregs of society. Cruel, because productive of misery and ruin : for happy homes would be made desolate and years of toil wasted by such a capricious use of almost despotic power. It would, indeed, be offering bread and giving a stone, to thus drive away families, and grant them, as a recompense, allotments of land which they had not the means left to cultivate. Impolitic, because dangerous: for all restraint upon crime being removed, Petre would indeed become the resort of runaways, who would set the law at defiance and foment rebellion among the justly irritated natives. It would also, most assuredly, prompt us unanimously to avail ourselves of the privilege we enjoy as British subjects and the influence we possess as gentlemen, to properly represent our case to the Home Government. On behalf of my fellow-settlers, let me now impress upon your Excellency that it is not an increased expenditure of the Local Government's funds that we are anxious for ; but we most earnestly request that no unnecessary delay may take place in fulfilling your Excellency's promise of an immediate payment being made to the natives, of the sum awarded to them by Mr. Spain : and then to remunerate our past exertions, by directly granting a Crown title to the whole block of land claimed here by Europeans, according to the plan signed in May 1844 by the Crown Commissioner, Colonel Wakefield, and Mr. Clarke. The necessity for completing this arrangement becomes daily more imperative. And to have passed in silence over the remarks above alluded to of your Excellency and Mr. Heale, would justly entitle us to be charged with supineness or indifference. Forbearance, extended beyond a certain point, ceases to be a virtue and becomes a crime. " Sunt certi denique fine*, Qoos ultra citrtque nequit contistere rectum."

The inhabitants of Petre now stand on the threshold of these limits; and therefore the voice of remonstrance is respectfully, yet firmly raised, to shield them alike from interested misrepresentation and official neglect. I have the honour to remain, your Excellency's most obedient humble servant, May 21. Jno. Nixon.