Colonial Secretary's Office.

New Zealand Gazette and Wellington Spectator, 10 December 1840, Page 2

Colonial Secretary's Office.

Sydney, 28th Oct, 1840. Gentlemen, — I do myself the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 23rd instant,iii answer to mine of the _Oth, communicating to you the decision of Sir George Gipps with respect to your application on behalf of the s.-ttlers at Port Nicholson: and in reply to the several points urged in your letter, I am directed by His Excellency to inform you as follows. 1. — That in requiring that the lands set apart for the use of the natives should be approved by the Lieutenant-Governor, His Excellency did not mean that such lands should not in the first instance be selected by the Officers deputed to select them by the Company. His Excellency's object was to reserve to the Government the right of interference in any case where injustice might appear to have been done to the natives, and this, His Excellency thinks, may be effected without rendering the settlers insecure in the tenure of their own allotments, unless some case of great and glaring injustice should be exposed. The Official Protector of the Aborigines would be, moreover, a more fit person to judge in the first instance of such injustice than the Surveyor-General. 2. — Should any question arise as to the extinction of native title to the lands comprehended within the settlement of 110,000 acres, the same principles must be~appliedin the solution of them. The Government have hitherto assumed, and are still willing to assume that the native title has been fairly extinguished; but the Government must reserve to itself the right of enquiring into, and redressing any injury that may be proved to have been committed, and this is the more necessary as the Government was in no way a party in the purchase of their lands, and as His Excellency is not even at the present moment informed what has been paid for them. 3. — With respect to the individuals who may claim land within the settlement, you have rightly apprehended His Excellency's meaning. Such individuals must be dealt with under the Act of Council, in the same way that they would be dealt with if the land claimed by them were required for any public purpose : in fact the formation of the settlement is a public purpose — they therefore cannot retain their lands in it: — but any compensation which may be awarded to them by the Commissioners for the loss of their lands must be made by the settlers collectively, or by the Company. 4. — His Excellency wishes it to be understood that it is out of his power to give the settlers an absolute guarantee to their lands, his acts in respect to them, like all the other acts of his Government, being subject to the approval of Her Majesty. I have the honor to be, gentlemen, Your most obedient servant, (Signed) E. DEAS THOMSON. Dr. Evans, R. D. Hanson, Esq., and Henry Moreing. Esq., Deputies from the Settlers at Port Nicholson.