A FORGOTTEN POLITICAL PROJECT.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 776, 14 January 1887, Page 12

A FORGOTTEN POLITICAL PROJECT.

(contributed.) _ Nothing perhaps better shows the ambitious purposes of the New Zealand Company than the proposal made by its Directors in 1845 relative to the establishment of a proprietary Government in the islands of New Zealand. The New Zealand Company had not been prosperous in its affairs, or judicious in its land purchases, and seeing financial embarrassment in the near future, hit on the device here detailed for the maintenance of its credit and for the consolidation of its power. Possessing colonising functions before the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, or the formal declaration of New Zealand being a British colony, the Company had, it is said, worried our first sailor Governor to death—for Hobson died at the' age of 49 of a broken heart, if such a fate can befal a British tar ; and now the official ruin of Fitzroy may be said to have taken place. The New Zealand Compauy took possession of New Zealand, or a portion of it, in 1839, and the Crown in 1840 ; and a conflict of authority necessarily sprang from the rival powers. The Crown and the Company held distinot views as to the ownership of the soil in New Zealand, and on the land question the importance of the possession of the islands hinged. The Crown, by Treaty, vested the lands in the aboriginal inhabitants; the Company regarded “the soil as unappropriated wherever it vras not in some way occupied,” and sought to vest the “ownership in the Crown.” The Crown, it muet be remembered, made the Treaty of Waitangi after the date of some of the Company’s land purchases, and as the principles animating the two colonising factors were antagonistic to one another, concord in action could not be expected between them. The missionary influence, at least in the North, overshadowed both the Crown and the Company, and though the mission influence was loyally given to the representatives of the Imperial authority, our sailor Governors were not fit to cope with the statesmen, who, wily and wary, possessed of wide-spread influence, controlled the proceedings of the New Zealand Company. Hobson and Fitzroy , were the only Governors chosen by the Colonial Office from the Navy. Captain Grey came from the other branch of tbe service, and was made of less ductile stuff than his predecessors. And here it may be said in passing that it was in Sir George Grey’s first term of office in New Zealand that nearly all the antipathies he has engendered, both among the mission families and the servants of the New Zealand Company, were sown. From the New Zealand House, dated sth May, 1845, came the suggestions for the consideration of Lord Stanley on behalf of the New Zealand Company “ relative to the establishment of a proprietary Government in the Islands of New Zealand.” , The writer appears to have been Mr Charles Buffer, M.P. The “suggestions” are capable of much consideration without impairing a full abstract of their meaning. Lord Stanley is assured that “the geographical circumstances of New Zealand present the Company with the means of satisfactorily reconciling the interests of the Natives, the colonists, the missionaries, and the Company, and of putting matters on an entirely new and sound footing.” Let us see how it was proposed that this should be done. First, as to the missionaries, who were entitled to the first place. They had done much in the thirty years since Marsden came. They had abolished cannibalism; they had constructed and printed a written language ; they had taught the rising Maori generation to read and write their own L tongue ; they had partially destroyed slavery, and the sacredness of the tapu; and had practically put an end to the tribal wars. The writer of the “suggestions” says “The chief scene of the missionary labors has been the northern peninsula of the Northern Island. The great proportion of the native population is there. Auckland is there, with the tribes with which the colonial Government has come in contact. The chiefs, whoße independence we acknowledged, are entirely included in that district ; and there alone can the Treaty of Waitangi have any legal force, because there alone can it be asserted that the title of the Crown was founded on cession.” The Northern Peninsula should be made a separate Government. Whether it could be directly placed under the missionaries we cannot pretend to determine. But at any rate the religious societies should be assured that it should be kept strictly under their system ; that European colonisation should not be encouraged in it; and that the missionaries should be allowed to retain their influence over the Natives, whose interest should be the main care of the Government.” It may be said the peninsula offered few attractions to the Company, and was thus relinquished without compunction. The Natives were numerous there. Extensive appropriations had already been made there in favor of the mission families and others. The land was scarce that was available for colonisation ; it offered few in ’ucements to immigrants ; but it was declared to be of great aud exceptional value to the Crown, as it contained ‘ ‘ the positions most desirable for the purposes of a naval station commanding the Pacific,” and wa3 the sole repository of kauri timber. The missionaries being thus provided for, the Company proposed to obtain for itself dominion over the whole of the Middle Island and Stewart Island, and that portion of th. 6 Northern Island which would be included “between the sea and a line drawn from Kidnappers’ Head, in Hawkes Bay, on the East Coast, running straight west till it meets the Ruahine Range, then along that range to the mountain Rangitoto, and thence down the river of Mokau to the port of Mokauonthe West Coast.” Roughly stated, the area proposed to be handed over to the Company was the whole of New Zealand save the province of Auckland and a moiety of the Provincial District of Hawkes Bay. The old Company was to be merged into a new and larger one, having a subscribed capital of £1,000,000, and the new establishmeat was to be formed on the “model of the old proprietary Governments on the North American Continent.” The new province, as it was to be termed, was to be named Victoria, and the Company (the Victoria Company), was to possess all powers of government within its

confines, save that of making treaties. The laws of England were to be in force until’ superseded by fresh enactments that were not, however, to be repugnant to the laws of the Mother Country. The settlers were to be given representative institutions after the expiration of twelve months from the date of the charter, but the Company was to have the power to determine the constitution of the representative body. For the same period it was to have the power of making laws and imposing taxes, _ but after that . date “they should, in the language of the old proprietary charters, have those powers with the consent of the freeholders of the province or their representatives.” The Company was to be prohibited from paying a dividend of more than 10 per cent., from trading or banking, but it might have such powers of lending money as the Company it proposed to supersede possessed. The new province was to bear its “ proportion ” of the colonial debt, but nothing was said either as to its mode of allocation or amount. Ifc was, however, in its Native policy that the most curious and startling proposals, or “ suggestions,” were made. The estimate of the number of Natives in the Colony, their location, and their assignment, is so curious, that no excuse can be needed for their reproduction. They are grouped in the following manner : North of Auckland ... ... ... 25,800 On the Waikato and its tributaries 24.000 Tribes of the East Coast, from the mouth of the Thames to Hawkes Bay , 57,800 On Cook’s Strait and in the Middle and Southern Islands ... ... 7,290 114,890 Without attempting a careful analysis, it may be said that the last figures on the list, i.e.. 7,290, were supposed to represent the Maori population of the new province of Victoria, leaving a balance of over 107,000 souls to the care of the missionaries and the Government. That the figures were fallacious was evident from the census taken by Judge Fenton in 1858, where the Maori population north of Auckland was only some 8500 souls. What the decrease had been in thirteen years we have no means of computing. But “small as the number of Natives within the new province ” was assumed to be, the Treaty of Waitangi was to be upheld in such portions of the North Island as were included in its boundaries. A sum of money, subject to agreement, to prevent, however, all fraud or delay in the settling the questions which arise under the second article of the Treaty (see note) was to be paid over forthwith to her Majesty’s Government “for the purchase of the territorial rights of the Natives.” To carry out this part of the plan a commissioner was to be appointed, who was to be a “man of really, high character and position,” to be paid ,“a handsome salary,” whose duty would be to purchase the Native rights without delay, which “ at the end of three years should be declared to be extinguished.” A man, it was added, possessed “of sense, with a right will to effect the object, would have no difficulty in doing it within the time.” The elevenths, generally called “tenths” by the Company, were to beset apart for Native reserves, and a “ Protector of Natives might be appointed by Her Majesty, with power to act for them in civil or criminal cases,” while they were to have “all the rights, privileges, and franchises of British subjects.” On the matter of self-defence, it was proposed that the Company should have power to raise troops and militia, and equip vessels as in the old charters ; and that, if the Company required the presence of regular troops, it should defray their whole pay and expenses while stationed in the Colony or employed in its defence. Such in limine was the proposal of the New Zealand Company, to which Lord Stanley, on May 23rd following, repliedr- “I regret to be under the necessity of informing your Lordship (Viscount Ingestre, M.P.) that Her Majesty’s Government, having maturely examined this project, find that the difficulties of proceeding on the basis thus suggested are insuperable ; and thus the plan for a proprietary Government in New Zealand collapsed. It is profitless to speculate on what might have happened to the Colony and the people in it had Lord Stanley returned a different answer, since no one can “ look into the seeds of time arid say which grain will grow and which will not.” (Note) Article ll.—“ Her Majesty the Queen of England confirms and guarantees to the chiefs and tribes of New Zealand, and to the respective families and individuals thereof, the full, exclusive, and undisturbed possession of their lands and estates, forests* fisheries, and other properties which they may collectively or individually possess, so long as it is their wish and desire to retain the same in their possession ; but the chiefs of the united tribes and the individual chiefs yield to her Majesty the exclusive right of pre-emption over such lands as the proprietors thereof may be disposed to alienate, ah such prices as may be agreed upon between the respective proprietors and persons appointed by her Majesty to treat with them in their behalf.”