To the Editor of the Nelson Examiner.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume IV, 25 October 1845, Page 135

To the Editor of the Nelson Examiner.

Sir — We, the undersigned agents for the tanagement of lands in this settlement purlased by persons resident in England, take the irliest opportunity of noticing a paragraph in :e leading article of last Saturday's Examiner, hich we conceive most seriously to affect the iterests that we represent.

In that paragraph a hint is thrown out of the i risibility that the Company's right to the Waiuu district may not be established, and of its :cupation in that case by means of a tenancy i nder the natives.

As this is the first suggestion of the kind we have ever known publicly made, we think it o ur duty to the absentee landowners at once si rongly to protest against even the appearance o f a doubt of the Company's ultimate possession v f the Wairau, and of its distribution to the holders of rural land orders. Although the n^elancholy events of June, 1843, interrupted the surveys then in progress there, we have always considered the appropriation of the district fcpr the rural lands of the Nelson settlement a question already determined, and its distribution t6 their purchasers a point of good faith on the part of the Company. Their final acquisition of the land must be merely a question of time : a nd at all events, we can imagine no circumstances which could justify them in abandoning, o r waiving in any degree, a right the establishment of which can alone enable them to fulfil ixp any equitable manner their contracts with the plroprietorß.

Practically, we hold that the only two parties justly interested in the annexation of the Wairau Plain to the Nelson settlement, are the Company, and the landowners as a body; and that the paramount object to be obtained is the appropriation of it to the latter as soon as possible. I ending the final settlement of the Company's c laims, we apprehend no opposition would be r used to its being used for pasturage, were its peaceable occupancy practicable: but it must He evident that the strongest objection exists to the creation of another interest which might itself assume the character of a vested right hereajfter, by fresh arrangements with the natives opposed alike to the Company's engagements and to the interests of their purchasers, whether colonists or absentees. j Without entering further into a subject which ought perhaps never to have been mooted, We remain, sir, Your humble servants, ! F. Dillon Bell. j Alfred Fell. -"Nelson, Oct. 24. . H. Seymour. ! [We really think our correspondents are crying out before they are hurt. If they will favour us by reading over again the article in question, they will perceive that our object was merely to ek press the absolute certainty that exists of the Wairau Plain somehow or other becoming a piart of the Nelson settlement. We meant to «ky that even if (which we strongly deprecate) tjie Government should not fulfil its duty by patting the Company in possession of the Wairjiu, still, even in that extreme, and we think inn probable case, the settlement would not be deprived of the beneficial occupation of that district. So far from denying, or wishing to encourage denial of the rights of the landowners thereto, we willingly acknowledge them, and ate prepared strongly to insist upon them if necessary. All we wished to say was that even *f\ the shameful injustice of disregarding those

rights should be committed by Government refusing the district in question to the Company, still the settlers need not despair of obtaining it by other means.-— Ed.]