THIRTEENTH REPORT OP THE DIRECTORS OF THE NEW ZEALAND COMPANY.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume I, Issue 10, 14 December 1844, Page 4

THIRTEENTH REPORT OP THE DIRECTORS OF THE NEW ZEALAND COMPANY.

You will so readily perceive the inexpediency of any present allusion by us to the question, relating to New Zealand and the proceedings of the Company, which are now under examination by a select committee of the House of Commons, that we need make no further apology for remaining silent ou those pointy until after the committee shall have made its report to the House. It is this consideration alone which induces us to abstain from laying before you to-day copies of despatches which we have recently received from New Zealand, And which communicate intelligence of considerable importance, and, in some respects, of a favourable character. We shall not fail to take a suitable opportunity of communicating to you all the particulars. In pursuance of a promise contained in our Twelfth Report, we now submit to" you a more complete statement of the financial position of the Company than we were able to prepare in time for your special meeting on the 26th of April last. An appendix to this Report will also contain various documents, which would have been appended to the Twelfth Report if there had been sufficient time to get them ready for the press, together with a letter from your principal Agent in New Zealand, relating to the probable acquisition of Port Cooper as the site of the intended colony qf New Edinburgh, and a letter from ourselves to Mr. Rennie on that subject. Since the preparation of the last annual Report, four vacancies hays been occasioned in the Direction by the retirement of Arthur Willis, Esq.,; the Hon Frederick Tollemache, M.P. ; John William Buckle, Esq. ; and William King, *E*q; -Tbsir^plaeoi hay* been respectively filled by the election of Archibald Hastie, Esq., M.P. ; Jeremiah Pilcher, Esq. ; George Lyall, jun., Esq. ; and Alexander Currie, Esq. The following Directors retire by rotation at the present meeting, namely : — thhe Hon. Frances Baring, the Deputy Governor ; James Robert Gowen, Esq. ; the Right Hon. Lord Petre; Jeremiah Pilcher, Esq.; Viscount Courtney, M.P. ; and Sir Isaac Goldsmid, Bart. ; and are recommended by us for reelection. On the election of Mr. Pilcher to be a Director, Richard Edward Arden, Esq, ; was elected an Auditor of the Company in his room. We recommend that the present Auditors, namely, Thomas Frederick Evering.Jiam, Esq. ; William Curling, Esq. ; and Richard Edward Arden, Esq. ; be re-elected for the ensuing year. It is our intention to call a Special Meeting of the Proprietors as soon as it shall be in our power to commnnicate to you any specific information as to the prospects of the Company. New Zealand House, Broad-street Buildings, June 28, 1844.

Waieau Dispatch. — It appears from the commencement of the despatch that, at the date of Lord Stanley's writing it, the only information of which he was in possession was contained in two despatches from Mr. Shortland, and their enclosures. These despatches of Mr. Shortland's were both dated the 13th of July, 1843 ; and the enclosures appear to have been Mr. M'Donogh's well-known manifesto — a despatch from him to Mr. Shortland — a despatch from y»ung Mr. Clarke-^-another from his father — the " dark horizon " proclamation of Mr. Clarke, senior — Mr. Shortland's own proclamation, authorizing the natives to drive off the settlers — and^trpe or two other documents of less importance. One of Mr. Shortland's despatches and these enclosures were v <forwarded by Lord Stanley to the Directors of the New Zealand Company, and are printed in the Appendix to the Twelfth Report, .^fhe other despatch from Mr. £jji§rtland referred to in Lord Stanley's recent oak does>not appear, Mr. Snortfand's despatch, which with its enclosures is referred to by Lord Stanley as the foundation of his decision upon the merits of the case, is dated, as we have observed, the 13th of July, 1843, and the documents contained in it are all of an earlier date. The despatch itself consists merely of a repetition of the substance Mr. M'Donogh's statement enclosed in it. Now, on the 14th of July, 1843, the very day after Mr. Shortland wrote his account of the affairs from Auckland, Mr. M'Donogb, in a correspondence with Colonel Wakefield, at Wellington, retracted many of the most important particulars of this statement : and a few weeks afterwards Mr. Shortland was obliged to issue another proclamation to counteract the mischievous effects which his former one had produced. We remember at the time the indignation of the settlers in Cook's Straits at the promulgation of these documents, and the predictions hazarded by ourselves and our Wellington contemporary, that the false accounts reaching home without the retractations would do infinite mischief. This is what has taken place, as now appears too plainly from Lord Stanley's despatch. When he wrote it he had leceived the false accounts ; he had not received the retractations ; and, in ignorance of them, he adopts views .which tend to defile the memory of the dead, and possibly to prevent the satisfactory adjustment of the position of the two races in "this colony^ One of the most important facts, and indeed the basis of the whole argument on which the Colonial Office (we will not say Loid Stanley) rests its decision, is, " that the land on which Mr. Cotterell's hut was erected was in the possession of the chiefs and their tribes, and hud been so from time immemorial, and that they claimed to be the proprietors as uell as occupants of the soil. That the natives were and had ever been the actual occupants of the soil, is -not disputed." So says the despatch under consideration. Now everybody in Cook's Straits knows that these expressions are calculated to convey an impression the very reverse of the fact. They would lead the reader to suppose that the surveyors of the New Zealand Company had seized on land on which Rauparaha and his followers who perpetrated the massacre were actually residing, and where they had been residing among the hones of their ancestors from iime immemorial. Would the Colonial Office have laid so much stress on the supposed fact, if it had known that Rauparaha and his followers had never occupied the Wairau — that they resi led permanently on the other side of Cook's Straits — that they crossed from that other side to the Wairau to interrupt the surveyors, aud that so far from their having occupied the Wairau from time immemorial, they had no connection at all with the southern | parts of New Zealand tUI about ten years agowhen they came thither from the northwarcf, and in the course of bloody wars exterminated the inhabitants of the Wairau, and then returned to the other side of the Straits, where they continued to live till the time of the massacre ? The Colonial Office, however, may be pardoned for falling into this error, since the expressions used in the official documents of the Local Government naturally lead to it. They all, and particularly Mr. Shortland's despatch, speak of Rauparaha as if he and his tribe had left their usual place of residence at the Wairau to attend temporarily the Court of Claims at Porirua, and on their return found their favourite haunts usurped by the New Zealand Company. They do not say so in so many words, but, by " the He inferential," they bring .their readers to that conclusion ; and we lately saw an English paper which, giving an account of the massacre avowedly adopted from the Government account, did so expressly state it; and it is evident that the Colonial Office took the same view. It is, we repeat, the very reverse of the fact. Rauparaha and his natives lived at Porirua, on the north side of the Straits, where the court w»s held, tod crossed over

to a place they never occupied on the south side of the Straits, namely^ the Wairau, merely for the purpose of interrupting the surveys; having no sort of claim to that place except one founded on a recent act of bloodshed- and extermination; nor could the occupation of the district by the Company have inflicted any, the remotest; injury on Rauparaba or the natives who joined with hhri in the massacre, even if the Company had not (though it alleges it had) purchased the district from them. The Colonial Office declines discussing the question " whether the title of- the Company or of the natives were the better," on the mistaken supposition just referred to. It is a pity that the real state of the case was not known to the Colonial Office ; the more so as the Land Commissioner has recently decided that the Company's purchase of Blind and Massacre Bays was good and valid, and it is known that the Wairau (on which he has not yet adjudicated) was paid for with the same foods and money and conveyed by the same Ueed as' those Bays. Now, whatever the Colonial Office may think, we cannot help thinking that if it should prove that the Company had actually purchased the Wairau from Rauparaha, every shadow of a right on his part to resist their occupation of it was gone, and that nothing can more materially affect the merits of the case than this circumstance which the Colonial Office declines discussing. Our readers will perceive that the view taken by the Colonial Office of the degree of subjection to English law in which the natives stand, accords pretty closely with Captain Fifczroy's own declared views on the subject, and that the, Native Exemption Ordinance, which renders it impossible to bring a native to trial withont the consent of his chiefs, and, if convicted, impossible to punish him without his own consent, is likely to meet wich the full approbation of the Colonial Office. As regards the bearing of the view now taken by the Colonial Office of the native liability to English law, on the merits of the proceedings of the Wairau, it must be remembered that it differs entirely from the view taken by Lord John Russell j in his celebrated instructions to Governor Hobson, where he expressly states that (unless where exempted by the Colonial Legislature) the natives would be amenable to English law in all particulars. At the time of the Wairau massacre, that was the doctrine- put forth at the Colonial Office, and no exemption of the natives had then heen ordained by the Colonial Legislature. In attempting, therefore, to carry English law into effect against the natives, the Police Magistrate had at least a high authority for what he did, and one which, indeed, as an officer of Government, he would seem to have been bound to obey. Besides which, in arguing this part of the case, it should never be forgotten (thought it is not adverted to ia the despatch we are considering) that the police magistrate and Captain Wakefield had, a very short time before the Wairau massacre, put the law (or what they thought the law) in force against a native chief in Coal Bay, under circumstance exactly similar to those at the Wairau, except in the former case the native chief was actually occupying and residing, which the natives at the Wairau were not, — it should not be forgotten, we say, that their conduct on that occasion had received the express appt obation of the Local Government; though Mr. Shortiand, when subsequently reminded of the fact, endeavoured to | shelter himself under the plea that the quesI tion at Massacre Bay was " about coal," and at the Wairau " about land." In the summary of the events at the Wairau, as given in the despatch, it is stated that the police magistrate was at the head of fifty armed men, and that " his followers were not even sworn in as. special constables." This is disingenuous. - The inference -in-, tended is that there was no attention paid to proper forms, and that the array was not civil, but military. But the fact is that that though several of the followers were not sworn in, some were, as is stated in Mr. Shortland's own account; and the Police Magistrate also had with him the chief constable and some of the petty constables of the district, clearly giving the transaction a civil and not a millitary aspect. The blame attributed to Mr. Thompson in styling the .warrant the " Queen's book " and himself the " Queen's representative," we are at a loss to appreciate. We cannot ourselves conceive any more appropriate method of describing to a savage the nature of a warrant and the office of a magistrate ; and indeed the title of Queen's representative, or at least Government representative, is, we see, weilded as a matter of official course by the present police magistate of Nelson. However, on these technical points, and with regard to the little bit of pedantry shout "forcible entry," we may safely leave the Colonial Office to itself. Colonial Office law, and "crowner's quest law," are apt to be about on a p»r ; and the modest affirmation

of the writer of this despatch, " thjtt he knows of no lav " to such and such fen effect, may be given implicit credence to* Nor, indeed, would we willingly condescend to. justify the acts of our lamented fel-low-settlers on what the despatch before us calls " the low ground of mere technical law." It was not because the natives had burned down a wigwam of rushes and boughs that Mr. Thompson and Captain Wakefield freely risked and freely lost their lives — it was not because the savages had created a trivial disturbance against the Queen our mistress. A reference to forms, to warrants, and to titles might be necessary to give their proceedings the appearance of that justice which they had in view which was to check the systematic opposition that the ignorant barbarian was offering, and still successfully offers, to the progress of civilization, and to ensure for the community of which, they were the head, and the colony of which they were members, that tranquillity and security from savage interruption which laws administered with firmness can alone ensure — that tranquillity and security which never were and never will be purchased by premiums paid for aggression, nor by exempting the aggressors from the legal consequences of their acts. — Nelson Examiner.