LAND CLAIMANTS' BILL.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume X, Issue 495, 30 August 1851, Page 119

LAND CLAIMANTS' BILL.

Sir — In pursuance of the intention expressed in my letter of last week, I now proceed, with your permission, to offer a few remarks upon the Resolution* of July, and the position of purchasers of land in this settlement as defined by them. I set out by assuming and asserting that the remodelled scheme of July, 1847, is of the same force as the original " Terms of Purchase " under which land was sold in Nelson, and that no authority short of the Imperial Parliament is competent to alter or infringe these, emanating, as they did, from a chartered Company, and having been issued with th« knowledge and sanction of the British Government. Of this I shall now proceed to offer proof. In the first place, to shew the light in which the matter was viewed by one of the contracting

parties, the resident purchasers to wit, and the agents of the absentees, the very first of th& Reßolutious declares—' 1 That it is indispensable that the Company should apply to Parliament for an Act to enable them to make the adjustment in the Bcheme of the Nelson settlement now proposed." And we have since learnt that the Company took the tame view of Jhe matter as ourselves, and did contemplate applying to Parliament, but abandoned the idea in consequence of some difficulty which presented itself on putting it into practice. In relinquishing the prosecution of this atep, admitted to be necessary according to the strict letter of the law, the Directors no doubt considered that the consent of the Company on the one hand, and the all but unanimous consent of the purchasers on the other, whether resident or absentee, gave to the- arrangement a moral force almost equivalent to the force it could have obtained from strict legal sanction, and reduced their risk of penalty to something so insignificant, that they might safely afford to overlook it. Nor was it fur the purchasers to press this question upon the^Company, if they chose to be satisfied without the guarantee suggested. For the settlers ran no risk in the matter. An infraction of the original Terms of Purchase, if made the ground of legal complaint, would be visited upon the Company alone. Now, it is just possible to argue that, inasmuch as the arrangement of 1847 never received the necessary sanction of law, all that has been done under it is illegal. But if this position be maintained, then the original Terms of Purchase are still in force, and cannot be departed from. And then, until the 221,000 acres of the original settlement are disposed of, no land can be sold here, excepting by what the New Zealand Company modestly called " ballot," but what in plain English was lottery. All persons or parties who are bent]upon disregarding the Resolutions of July, of which genus the General Council is the single illustration that we have yet met with, will do well to consider that in avoiding that Scylla, they inevitably fall into a much worse Charybdis. . There is no alternative. You must either admit the remodelled scheme to have the force of law, or else you must fall back upon the "original Terms," with all their charming conditions and consequences. But, sir, perhaps I was wrong in saying that the General Council repudiates the Resolutions of July. The General Council refuses to be bound by any such general law. It pursues a more independent course. It adopts our arrangement, when it thinks proper to do so. It ignores it, on the same all-sufficient grounds. It abolishes the lottery system as we have done, but it awards special compensation to absentees, which we have not done. Has the General Council any authority to supersede or modify the scheme of the settlement? In Feb., 1847, it appears that the Directors "introduced a Bill into the House of Commons, ia which it was proposed that this power should be conferred on the Company bylthe local legislature which it was thought possessed the best meanß of making itself acquainted with the necessities of the case. But it was opposed by an influential member of the House, on the ground that it would confer on the Colonial Legislature the powers of the Imperial Parliament : this opposition was concurred in by Lord J. Russell : and the Bill was in consequence suspended at the time, and ultimately withdrawn." This quotation will be held, I imagine, sufficiently to settle the point. But the Government may say that in awarding compensation to absentees, they have not done any violence to the scheme. There is no saying, in short, what the Government may not say. It behoves us therefore to suppose the Government in this position of defence, and to inquire how far it is tenable. In the first place, then, it is evident that by the Resolutions of July there is one prescribed method by which campensation can be awarded to purchasers, and that method is arbitration. Now, will the General Council pretend that they constituted an arbitration court? Who ever before heard of self-constituted arbitrators? and.jwith the exception of the Welsh magistrate, who'avowed that he preferred hearing the evidence one one side .only because the opposite evidence always bamboozled him, who ever before heard of judgment given upon the testimony of the witnesses of the accusing party alone. But even supposing that the committee of the General Council could by any perversity of reasoning be construed to be an arbitration court, which we entirely deny, we further contend that the Resolutions do not warrant any general measure of compensation to absentees. It is time, however, to inquire what the Resolutions do warrant, and what is the position of absentees under them. I venture to submit the following propositions as deductions from them, which it is impossible to gainsay : — I. The only Resolutions which at all affect the question of compensation, over and above the compensatory incidents of the scheme, are the 2d and 19th. By the former of these, recourse to arbitration is open to every one, and claims to " additional compensation" maybe preferred. In the latter, the committee state that they can perceive no mode of meeting the merits of all the cases contemplated, " except the recourse to arbitration of special claims provided for by the 2d Resolution." A purchaser, then, to obtain an award of compensation under the 2d Resolution, must shew that he is an especially injured man ; but the speciality of the absentees' case is this— that he has remained all along in the land of railways, steamboats, churches, schools, theatres, and new police ; while the actual settler has been struggling with forests, torrents, wildernesses, swamps. natives, disbonest joint-stock companies calling themselves fostering and stepmother Governments

11. The only class of persons directly Bpecified a 9 meriting compensation, is resident original purchasers being cultivators. . 111. It appears that on a conference with the Principal Agent, the Resolutions were, so far modified, that he expressed his willingness " to refer all claims for additional compensation in land to arbitration in the > settlement*" It is upon the 2d Resolution, with this engrafted condition, that the awards in compensation made to resident purchasers have been based. IV. Although neither in the Resolutions nor he Report is the question of special compensaon to absentees directly met,' it is nevertheless fairly to be inferred from their general tenor that it never was contemplated. V. In the reduction of the size of the settlement, the accompanying reselection, and the grant of the new town at Waitohi, the absente* purchasers have participated along with tbe residents in the compensatory incidents of the scheme, and there is accordingly no parallel between tbe cases of the absentee purchasers of Nelson and those of Wellington, to whom the Company has granted compensation. VI. The scheme of July sets out by waiving all question of strict right, and is declared in the Resolutions to be founded on the " necessity of some equitable compromise." The last is the point to which I particularly wish to direct attention ; for in arguing this matter, are we not perpetually met by the question, do you deny the right of the absentees to compensation? As a thing of strict right I never did, nor do I yet deny it; but I ask, did £125 or £150 fully compensate the resident, and satisfy his demands of strict right? No; and, as I eaid last week, four times this sum would not do it. Why, then, did he not claim what he was entitled to ?—? — because, in order to settle a question of vital importance to the country, he was willing to agree to a compromise, and to accept a mere fractional part of what would meet his losses. And every absentee agreed to this as well, who did not signify his dissent from the scheme, or who, in point of fact, assented by reselecting his land. There are even some (one at all events) who, by referring their claims to arbitration, have in the most emphatic manner possible signified their acceptance of the July Resolutions. And yet we are now told that the government will release these gentlemen from their contract, and, after the claims of the actual settlers hava been adjusted on the basis of a compromise, will satisfy the claims of absent land speculators on the basis of strict right. It comes after all to this — if you wish to do justice in the spirit which has governed the previous proceedings, you must inquire what is the difference in loss between an actual settler, and an absentee. Some persons have a very easy rule for this. It may be called the rule of half, or ad valorem compensation. They say, whatever the resident is entitled to, the absentee is entitled to half; which, if it is presumed to have any foundation of justice at all, may be taken as equivalent to saying, that the losseß of the latter have been just half as great as those of the former. We have been accustomed to look at the matter in . a different light. Few persons will deny that the losses of the residents have been more than £150, putting altogether out of sight the question of interest of money. Let us assume, then, without attaching any importance to the particular sum named, that they were, if expressed in a money value, or reduced to damages, £300 on an average. The resident, then, has suffered a loss of £300 more than the absentee. But if the former is to be satisfied with receiving back one-half of this, he is still a loser of £150; while the latter, or absentee, who receives no compensation at all, is in relation to the resident a gainer of £150. If the two are to be treated absolutely alike, strictly according to the measure of their losses, the absentees' compensation must ba expressed thus — minus £150. In framing the provisions of the Ordinance under discussion, the Government assumes to be fulfilling the contracts of the New Zealand Company. Where, then, is the evidence of any contract from which compensation to absentees can be inferred? The contract between the Company and its purchasers is the Resolution of July. If, under that contract, absentees can obtain compensation, well and good; but if that contract will not yield them compensation, then they have not a shadow of a claim. And how is it, we further ask, that this absentee claim has made its appearance in so sudden and mysterious 1 a manner ? Two or three months ago, when the Governor published the sketch of his intended Land Claimants' Bill, there was not a whisper of compensation to absentees. And yet one would suppose that his Excellency must have been in possession of every document, as far as Nelson is concerned, from which the contracts of the Company might have been inferred. And how is it, we ask again, that the Company, when invested with the powers of Government, and administering the Crown demesne in New Munster, did not admit and liquidate this claim of the absentees? Therejhas been. abundant time to do it, and yet the thing was not done, nor are we aware of any document having emanated from the Company prior to their surrender of their Charters, in which any such claim was admitted. In May, 1849. we find the Company thus writing {vide. 25th Report) : — "But advices subsequently received shew that the exclution [i.e., of the absentees] was deliberately made on the merits of the case ; that compensation to the residents was intended to be awarded on the ground exclusively of the losses and personal privations to which they have been subjected in consequence of having ventured themselves and their families, as well as their capital, in the colony : that therefore, in ths opinion of the settlers, from which opinion the Governor does not appear to have dissented, the nonresidents had no claim to a similar award ; and that to admit them to it would, by increasing to a very large extent the quantity of land to be granted gratuitously and without provision of funds for colonising purposes, inflict a proportionate injury upon the settlement. It is .now evident, therefore, that in the majority of.non-resid«nt caiei any further refer-

ence will be unproductive of advantage. With the exception of one dais of persons, their claim* must be considered as having virtually been, already referred and negatived." Such was the view entertained by the Court of Directors of absentee claims to compensation, in May, 1849, But we are sick of hammering at this subject, for there is not reason enough upon the opposite side to get up a good argument. We see nothing in the Government measure but uncalledfor interference with an adjusted question, and the infliction of a gratuitous but enormous injury upon thisssettlement. We see the burden of absenteeism, under which we at present groan, doubled upon our shoulders, a complete suspension of emigration, and a drain from the resources of the colony into the pockets of absentee landowners, against which no country will be able to make head. He mnst be a very sanguine man, indeed, and have an astonishing amount of confidence in the development of this part of New Zealand, who, under impend* ing arrangements, can predict for it a career of rapid prosperity. It would be hard enough for the actual colonists to see their prospects blighted in this manner, from the operation of a cause grounded upon justice, still it would be their duty to submit. But it is infinitely intolerable when they reflect, that this proceeding violates all tbe principles of equitable dealing, and sets at defiance the arrangements by which the resident purchasers, poor simple people, believing in the inviolability of contracts, settled their own claims. And the quarter from whence tbe blow has come neither renders it more endurable, nor does it lessen the painful surprise with which it has been received. The 12th clause of the 13th Chapter of the Royal Instructions comes into force on the Ist of September next. Legally speaking, it is suspended at present : morally speaking, it never can be, for it asserts that which is reasonable and just, and nothing more — " All the lands so ascertained as aforesaid to constitute the demesne of our Crown in New Zealand, are and shall be holden by us, our heirs and successors, in trust for the benefit of our subjects, and especially for the benefit of such of them as have settled, or as shall hereafter settle, within the said islands." From the New Zealand Company's Land Claimants' Bill, one would be led to suppose that her Majesty had reversed the terms, and instructed the Governor to consider in the first place the interests of the land speculators of London and Halifax. Many other questions will present themselves to any one who takes tbe trouble to study what has been done, and what is about to be done : but were I to follow the subject into all its ramifications, I Rhould trespass upon your patience and columns to a very unusual extent. And as I Bee by your advertising sheet that there is to be a public meeting on the subject next week, I trust to hear tbe matter still further discussed, and its inevitable consequences more fully pointed out. I [trust, sir, there will be a good attendance, for you may depend upon it that, in matters of this sort, eilencs under injury is construed into indifference and assent, and repetitions are thus invited. I remain, &c, A Resident. LAW AFFECTING BILLS OF EXCHANGE. Sir, — Some discussion has arisen amongst the trading part of our community as to the degree of liability of the different parties to a bill of exchange. Perhaps the following summary of the laws on the subject may be useful to them: — 1. Tbe drawer of a bill of exchange, if it be not paid at maturity, may maintain an action against the acceptor, to recover the amount and interest. 2. If a bill of exchange be not paid when it becomes due, tbe payee may sue either the drawer or acceptor at this option, or he may have an action against each. 3. If a bill of exchange be not paid when it becomes due, the holder to whom it has been indorsed, and who is called the indonee, may maintain an action agaist the acceptor to recover the amount and interest. 4. If a bill of exchange, in the hands of the payee, be not paid when it becomes due, after being duly presented for payment, the payee may maintain an action on it against the drawer to recover the amount and interest. 5. If a bill of exchange, in the hands of the payee, be presented to the drawee for acceptance, and he refuse to accept it, the payee may maintain an action against the drawer for the non-acceptance immediately after the refusal to accept; it is not necessary to wait until after the expiration of the time when the bill would be due, if it had been accepted. 6. If a bill of exchange in the hands of an indorsee be cot paid when it becomes due, after being duly presented for payment, the indorsee tnay maintain an action against the drawer, to recover the amount and interest. 7. If a bill of exchange in the hands of an indorsee be presented to the drawee for accepance, and he .refuse to accept it the indorsee may maintain an action against the drawer for the non-acceptance, in tbe same manner preI cisely as the payee may, and immediately after acceptance has been refused. ; 8. If a bill of exchange in the hands of an indorsee be not paid when due, after being duly presented for payment, the indorsee may raainI tain an action for the amount and interest against any previous indorser on the bill. | 9. If a bill of exchange, in the hands of an indorsee be presented to the drawee for acceptance, and he refuse to accept it, the indorsee may commence an action for the non-acceptance against any previous indorser on the bill immediately after acceptance has been refuted. The authorities in support of the foregoing propositions are given in the 2d ' volume of Archbold's Nisi Prius. Yours, &c, . . .IW. T. Locke Tbavbbs.