THE NEW ZEALAND COMPANY.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XII, Issue 602, 17 September 1853, Page 7

THE NEW ZEALAND COMPANY.

[Atom tha Timct, April ll.} Lord Grey, on bis first appearance in this Parliament, last Thursday, said that the charges of frand and malversation brought against the New Zealand Company are groundless, and that those who made them must be convinced of their groundlessness, since they do not move for a committee of investigation. We assert, on the other hand, that these charges are true ; and that Lord Grey knows them to be true, and this we will endeavour to prove. When a case is transparently clear, there is no need of overlaying it by a committee, and since the publication of the paperso n New Zealand, ordered to be printed on the Ist of July, 1852, it were idle to pretend that any investigation could make fraud and malversation clearer. In a letter to Lord Grey, dated the 19th of August, 1848, the Commissioner for New Zealand uses these words :

— " There is a sum of eight thousand and upwards owing to them from members of .their own body of Directors, for which they hold overdue promissory notes, for advances made to them out of the Company's funds for the payment of instalments on shares." Upon this letter, Lord Grey, through his under secretary, on the 9th of September, observes, — " That theie was very great and objectionable irrsgularity in the transaction by which they permitted some of their own body to become indebted to the Company." Is this charge groundless ? Again, on the 11th of June, 1849, when, it will be remembered, the Directors were carrying on the Company with a part of the £236,000 advanced, and subsequently given to them by Parliament, under the act of 1847, for colonizing purposes only, it was reported to Lord Grey by Mr. Cox, the Commissioner, that a sum of £525 was voted to a Director for special services performed in 1841-2 and a further sum of £837 for feei due to Directors for their attendance from the Ist of June to the 21st of September, 1842. Parliament advances money in 1847 and the following years for colonizing purposes, and the Directors divide portions of it among themselves for services rendered many years before. This is officially notified to Lord Grey, and he now says the charge of misappropriation is groundless, and that those who make it know it to be groundless. Next at to the groundlessness of the charge of fraud. We assert that Lord Grey is cognizant of the fraud committed by the Directors, and that he has himself, under his own hand, santioned its continuance ; and for proof of this we rely entirely on letters addressed to or received from the Colonial office. On the 28ih of February, 1848, the then New Zealand Commissioner wrote to Mr. Huwes a letter, of which the following is an extract, and of which no one of the statements has ever been disputed by any one : — " You are aware that the Company submitted a case regarding their liabilities to their Nelson land purchasers to their counsel, Mr. Buckle, who returned an opinion, dated November the 6th, 1846, to the effect that the Company had no tenable defence against actions for the return of the purchase money and for damages for breach of contract ; that they then submitted the tame case to another counsel, Mr. Lloyd, who returned an opinion, dated January the 1 8th, 1847, at variance with Mr. Buckle's, and favourable to the Company's non-liability. It appears that the Company had occasion to address Earl Grey on January the 26th, 1847, a letter, in which they referred to the favourable opinion on their case without alluding to the existence of an unfavourable one ; and on January the 28th, 1847, they address a separate and confidential letter to their agent, Colonel Wakefield, regarding the said case, which they transmit to him, accompanied by Mr. Lloyd's opinion alone, without any allusion to the existence of Mr. Buckle's ; and in this letter to Colonel Wakefield they refer to the cognizance they had already given Earl Grey of the favourable opinion, and instruct Colonel Wakefield to make whatk ever use his discretion may dictate of the contents of the documents in question." Annexed is the following extract from Colonel Wakefield's letter :— " The confidential communication made to me by the Court of the legal opinion of the reponsibility of the Company to compensate their purchasers who have not yet had an opportunity of selecting a portion of land purchased by them, has been sufficiently promulgated by me to dispel a notion on the part of some of the purchasers that it would not be in vain for them to seek compensation by legal proceedings." Here, then, Lord Grey was apprised of the eomminion of a fraud, and of its

success. That he so understood it himself we have his own written statement, in a letter dated the 3rd of March, addressed to Mr. John Abel Smith, one of the New Zealand Directors ;— •

"I hardly know," says Lord Gcey, "bow I can allow the Nelson settlers finally to agree to an arrangement to which they may have agreed only under the erroneous impression that the only legal opinion obtained by the New Zealand Company on the matter in dispute was in favour of the Company and against the claims of the settlers. I am, for my part, entirely unable to reconcile to my ideas of what is fair and honourable dealing the conduct of the Company, who, having the opinions upon the disputed claim of two lawyers, one of the3e being in their favour, and the other decidedly against them, sent out to the colony, with the view of influencing the settlers, the favourable opinion, entirely concealing the fact that any other existed."

This is Lord Grey's own opinion of a charge which he now, without the addition of a single new fact, declares to be " groundless." Happy would it have been for Lord Grey if he had always held this language ; but in the interval between the 3rd ai.d 9ih of March bis convictions underwent a remarkable change. In a letter of this dute, he does not doubt the strictly honourable intentions of the Directors, though he thinks it unfortunate that such an opinion was not communicated to Colonel Wakefield, and admits that this, in some cases at least, influenced the conduct of the settlers. On the 31st of March, 1848, Lord Grey addressed a letter to Governor Grey, in New Zealand, enclosing the two opinions, stating that the Directors " would deprecate their being communicated to the public, and that be, Lord Grey, agrees with the Company, that it is by no means desirable to communicate copies of the opinion of counsel in cases like tha present to the public." The information was withheld, and the settlers left to their fate.

These extracts have been long, because we were anxious to take nothing for granted, but to rest the case entirely on documents brought under the notice of, and emanating from, Lord Grey. We will briefly recapitulate what we have proved. Lord Grey has had brought to his notice, officially, the fact that the New Zealand Directors divided among themselves the public money with which they were intrusted by Parliament for purposes of colonization, and lent to members of their own body the money of their shareholders, for which he himself officially reproved them ; yet he declares these charges to be "groundless." Lord Grey received from the officer whose duty it was to report it an account of a fraud, involving the suggestion of falsehood and the suppression of truth, practised by the New Zealand Company on remote colonists, whom it was his peculiar duty to protect. That he fully knew the nature of the transaction is shown by hia letter of the 3rd of March. Yet this transaction he sanctioned and assisted by expressly enjoining the Governor of New Zealand to conceal the document which would have given the settlers a true view of their rights and their wrongs. Once more we call upon Lord Grey to explain, not merely his acquiescence in this fraud, but the active assistance which he gave to it by his letter of the 31st of March, 1848. We do not want to know what was his opinion of the New Zealand Company, we want to know why he set up again a detected imposture, and gave his best assistance to the success of a transaction which he stated himself to be quite unable to reconcile to his ideas of fair and honourable dealing.