LAND SHARKS.
J.v our leading article of yesterday we showed that the slanderers of the settlers of Auckland, tho members of the two Houses of Parliament at Home, were themselves more deserving of the name of "land-sharks," than those to whom fhey apply" the term. Wo showed how tlie "New Zealand Company" which purchased for a few blankets, red night-caps, firelocks, powder, and jews'liarps, "a territory as large as Ireland," and resold tho same to intending emigrants at the rate of £1 per acre, was composed mainly of the nobles, the country gentlemen and merchant princes of Britain, and that many, we believe very many, of the names of the present members of either House of Parliament at home, and we might add, of the Aborigines Protection Society, will be found also on the deeds of that infamous, gigantic land-shark-ing Institution, "tho Sew Zealand Company." We showed how those '" honorable gentlemen of England" resorted to the meanest of practices and deceits to allure emigrants to their oflice —we showed how these truly christian and philanthropic gentlemen who now cry aloud that the settlers of New Zealand are anxious to despoil the native of his lands—when they felt native claims to be awkward obstacles to their designs—actually petitioned the then Colonial Secretary, Earl Stanley, to disregard the treaty of Waitangi, asking " whether the treaty of "Waitangi, made with naked savages by a consul invested with no plenipotentiary powers, without ratification, by the Crown, could be treated by lawyers as anything but a praiseworthy device for amiisivi/ andpacif/ini/ xavta/csfor the moment.'''
"We shall go a step further 011 the present occasion, and show that to the selfish aims, the unworthy trickery and meannesses of the very men who now revile us, arc to be traced the causes of the present shedding of blood, and in all probability the future extermination of tlie Maori race. To quote the words of " Swainson," " from an early period of the settlement, angry relations sprang up between lite Company's settlers and the Natives." This was indeed tho beginning of strife. To the lands which the "land-sharks" of the New Zealand Company pretended they had bought, and on that pretence re-sold —they had no legal title whatever. The claims of some few of the Native owners had been perhaps satisfied and this was all, other and rightful claimants amongst the Native owners arose and these claims were resisted by the Company's settlers and servants. Hence the iirst shedding of blood, the massacre of "Wairau. From that day to this the feeling of jealousy and suspicion once aroused against us, has increased until it merged into the more definite form of the land league, and bore fruit in the practical attempt on the part of the Natives to drive the Pakcha into the sea. The New Zealand Company, as we all know, was a bubble, in plain language, swindle. As an index of the class of men by whom this fraud was perpetrated and carried on, we shall give the names of the Governor, and deputy Governor, and Directors in 18-14. It will, then, be seen that we are not wrong in imputing to the leading men at Koine the very charges which tliey now hurl at the settlers in this Province. .Joseph Soamcs, Esq.,' Governor ; Hon. Francis Baring, Deputy-Governor: Directors:—H. Aglionby Aglionby, Esq., MP. : .T. Elliker Boulcolt. Esq. ; .1. "W. Buckle, Esq. ; Charles Buller, Esq., M.P. ; Viscount Courtenay. M.P. : Sir .1. L. Gold-s-mid, liart. ; ,J. I\. Gowen, Esq, ; A. Ifastie, Esq., M.P. ; Sir 11. Howard, Bart., M.P. ; "W. Hutt, Esq., M.P.; Viscount Ingest re, M.P. ; AY. King. Esq. ; 11. D. Mangles, Est)., M.P,; S. Mirjoribanks, Esq., M.P.; A. jNairne, Est). : Lord Pet re; J. Pilcher, Esq. ; Sir.J. Picric. Bart.; Alderman .1. A. Smith, Ksq., M.l'.; "William Thompson, Esq.. M.P.: E. G. Wakelield, Esq., and G. F. Young, Esq. Many of these, as our readers arc aware, are the names of men who have seats in either House ; but these are. but the representative men of the class of which this high land-sharking institution was composed. If we take the directory for another year, we shall find names of men of the same class — the class which now is attempting to crush civilisation in New Zealand, and to take revemje. on lite .settlers of Auckland, who were mainly instrumental in working the downfall ot* the infamous scheme which had been concocted and carried, out in England for fleecing intending emigrants to New Zealand, and for cheating the natives out ot their hind. The end of tho Company was as disgraceful as its reign was shameless. It was not long before the entrapped emigrants, like Martin Chu/./.lewit in Eden, found out that the) —not the, land—had been sold. They struggled on for a time, but the dupes at last turned upon the Company. We address you," said they, ml as supplicants f.u- vour bounty—not as men suing for favour at viur hands—but as parties deeply and grievously "i:-jured: as men protesting against great wrongs initiated 1 >v you, and, as such, demanding redress. .And to wha'tuiusex are the disasters which have befallen us a'tributubie You cannot anc! dare not deny that the immediate and proximate cause of our ri:in has been the non-fullilnicnt by you of the contract formed with us seven years ago." We find after this the Chairman of tho Company thus addressing the Secretary ot State:— " The accounts which have reached home have produced a like cessation of income from laud sales here ; for 1 he Commissioners' Court has rendered them unmarketable, . • • and the Company has altogether ceased to ottain any return from its lands. These uiliicu.tios must, we think, lie ascribed to one cause - naiuelv, the dispute respecting the Company s til, :s lo laud." This i:, tile one thing which appears lo .i.ne led io all the h.i.i Mood between the natives and the settler-. 11 was the direct cause of tho '.tuhappv business at Cloudy .Bay, and of the subsequent disastrous state of feeling." Thus, it will be scon, that according io the very acknowledgment of the Chairman, bad blood between the natives and settlers was tirst caused by the acts of the Company, and that it reached its climax in those days in the massacre at AVairau, i.e.. Cloudy .Bay. And yet these arc the men who tax the coloniste'of New Zealand, the settlers of the Pro*
vince of Auckland, with having alienated (to use the words of Earl Grey, Lilely spoken jn tlie House of Lords,) the affection of the Natives fromthe Imperial' Go'veiifiricnfc iAu attempt was made by the Compan} r to tlirow the onus of ill faith, in keeping to their bargains, 011 the Natives, but the report of the Land Claims Commissioners, sooit afterwards made public, authoritatively showed that they had sent out settlers from England to occupy land which they had never purchased, and that they had actually sold to them land to which they never had a claim. " I am of opinion," reported the Commissioner of Land Claims, " that the greater portion of the land claimed by the Company in the Port Nicholson district, and also in the district between Port Nicholson smd Wanganui, including tho hitter pla"e, has not been alin' ated hy the natives to the New Zealand Company; and that oilier purl ions of the same district have been only partially alienated by tho natives to that body : and it appears to me, so far as the evidence has gone, that all the Company's purchases were made ill a very lot>se and careless maimer." After this aro we not justified in applying tlie word 11 swindling" to the conduct of these noble and honourable gentlemen, and in hurling back in their teeth, the epithets of " land sharks" and despoilcrs," words which they arc now so liberally flinging at the settlers of Auckland, whenever New Zealand a flairs arc under discussion I No depth of chicanery and deceit wa- too base for these men. They desired as members of a Company to repudiate the claims that the settlers whom they had sent out had uponthem. just asthey repudiate now. as statesmen, the claims of colonists upon the mother country, and they resorted to this artiiice. The opinion of their own counsel, a man of known ability and standing, and a member of the Company, was, that they were liable, not only to return to the Nelson land purchasers the prices paid for the laud with interest thereon, but that they were also liable to their dupes lor compensation for losses which these unfortunate men had sustained at their hands. This legal opinion was not ndeed to their liking, and what did they do in their dilemma ? We have heard of the '' honor " of the British gentleman, but we have never looked for such a definition of the term, in practice, as this. They submitted tho case for the opinion of another legal authority, a creature of their own, and of course obtained one of tho kind they wished for. This opinion they palmed upon tho settlers in New Zealand as the opinion of the lirst counsel applied to. and the weight of the name falsely attached to it entrapped the settlers at a distance of 1(5,000 miles into making a compromise disadvantageous to themselves. If this is not swindling we should like to know what is— and the men whodid it,readers,arc many, very many, of them the men who now charge the sol tiers of Auckland with land-greed," and with seeking quarrel with the natives, in order to dispossess them of their land—with doing, as they did, when they asked Lord Stiiiilcy to set aside the treaty of AVaitangi— as a mere farce enacted to. amuse naked savages—asking for British interference to assist in despoiling native owners of lands solemnly guaranteed to them. On a further occasion we shall show how, individualsnowhigli in authority at home, assisted the Company in the commission of the very acts which they now—when they profess to believe that it is in contemplation by the settlers of Auckland to renew them, —denounce as heinous and worthy of all reproach.-—Sep-tember 21'
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Bibliographic details
New Zealand Herald, Volume I, Issue 276, 30 September 1864, Page 6
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1,690LAND SHARKS. New Zealand Herald, Volume I, Issue 276, 30 September 1864, Page 6
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