NEW ZEALAND SPECTATOR AND Cook's Strait Guardian. Wednesday, April 7, 1852.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VIII, Issue 697, 7 April 1852, Page 2

NEW ZEALAND SPECTATOR AND Cook's Strait Guardian. Wednesday, April 7, 1852.

The Memorial of the settlers has been answered in a manner as satisfactory and complete as the most sanguine of the Memorialists could ha\ r e expected or desired. No delay is suffered to intervene; his Excellency with that consideration and sincere desire to promote the interests of the settlers which he has always manifested, at once determines to postpone his visit to Auckland, and to devote his undivided attention to the completion of the Company’s contracts rvith its purchasers in this settlement, in the way most satisfactory to the latter, by the immediate issue of unconditional Crown I Grants to their lands. The announcement of this fact has diffused universal satisfaction, and has won his Excellency golden opinions from all classes. The immediate issue of Croxvn Grants is calculated to confer the greatest benefits on

the settlement, and we arc extremely glad Yve were able to announce the important fact by a Supplement previous to the Midlothian's sailing, since we are persuaded that the knowledge of it in the mother country xvill be productive of very beneficial results, in imparting confidence and in encouraging emigration to New Zealand. All other questions connected with land, however important, are subsidiary to this, which may be regarded as the corner stone of the social fabric. It is impossible that greater ignorance of the real state of public opinion could be exhibited by any set of men than has been displayed by the Faction rvith regard to this question. Every assertion they have made has been contradicted, every prediction falsified, every anticipation proved to be unfounded. They

find to their utter dismay the bulk of the community, the wealth, intelligence, and respectability of the settlement, nearly all the oldest colonists, and the country settlers arrayed against them; seven hundred and seventy-seven to twentyfour —Lombard Street to a China orange

—fearful odds — a preponderance that completely crushes them and reduces them to utter insignificance;' Driven from one subterfuge to another their last desperate effort is in affectingto deny the legality of the Crown Grants, and in attempting to raise suspicions as to their validity. That these Grants will be as valid and unquestionable as they are unconditional, that there is not the most remote probability of their ever being disturbed, that these suspicions are as unfounded as the other statements and assertions of this party will shortly appear from the following considerations. The agreement between the Government and the New Zealand Company was that Government should fulfil the con tracts of the Company with its purchasers An Act of Parliament is accordingly passed to enable it to do so, by issuing Grants to original and derivative purchasers. But as all the provisions necessary to determine the actual rights of derivative purchasers (asbetween themselves), and othermatters, could not be made in all their detail by either Government or Parliament in England, a proviso was adopted from the Act passed in 1846 to enable the Company to issue conveyances, which proviso was introduced in order to keep the ground open for the making by the local legislature of the detailed provisions required. The Act declares that grants shall be issued, but as it did not give sufficient powers to the local Government to decide as to true ownership, and actual pieces of land in disputed cases, it puts such a limitation on grants issued under its authority, and in these cases otilly, as wouldprevent their precluding the local legislature from giving the powers necessary to decide as to such ownership. The “ Land Claimants Ordinance,” then, having provided the machinery necessary for deciding these points, and supplied what the Act intentionally left defective, is of course to be regarded as supplementary or ancillary to the Act. Had the proviso under consideration not been inserted in the latter, the grants issued under it, withits incomplete powers as to determination of ownership and definition-of lands intended to be conveyed, would have given an absolute title at once, perhaps, to wrong owners or for wrong pieces of land, and the redress and amendment of these wrongs would have been impeded by all the prescriptive weight and authority attached to an ordinary Crown Grant; but the ordinance, in its completion of the imperfect Act, having provided the means of satisfactorily deciding on these particulars, the object for which the proviso was inserted is done away with; the machinery it was; enacted to allow the introduction of has been introduced. The long and short of it is, that the ordinance is enabled by this very proviso to step in and supply the defects of the Act, and is therefore not repugnant but supplementary and auxiliary to it.

That this view of the relation between the Act of Parliament and the Ordinance is the correct one, is put beyond the possibility of a doubt by the fact—which any one may satisfy himself of by comparing them—that the general provisions of the 51st clause of the Act of 184 G arc actually copied verbatim in the Land Claimants Ordinance, the proviso, the object of which has been above described, being of course omitted. The new form of the conveyance adopted by the Company was arbitrarily adopted by themselves under discretionary powers given by the Act, not in obedience to any direction imperatively imposed by it. That the Ordinance was passed before the New Zealand Company’s Settlements Act was received matters nothing to the question. It by anticipation, in fact, supplied the defects the proviso of the Act intended to give the local legislature an opportunity of supplying. But entirely consistent and supplementary provisions do not become, it is almost needless to say, repugnant to others simply because they were enacted previously, or even without reference to those others. The simple fact is that they are not repugnant, and are therefore not overthrown by the Act. Of course our view of the consistency of the Ordinance with the Act of Parliament refers only to the question of Crown , Grants, the validity and legality of i'ssuI ing which our opponents affect to ques- • tion.

The William Alfred arrived on Monday from Sydney, after a passage of 15 days. English news had been received at Sydney to 2nd Do cember. Some of the few who went to the

Gold Diggings from this place have returned, and others are expected to follow, convinced by experience that more is to be obtained in New Zealand by steady industry than by digging for gold in Australia.

We have received Nelson papers to the 27th nit., having in a former number published one of the Memorials on the Land and Pastoral Regulations, we now reprint the other from the Nelson Examiner of the 13th ult.

Auckland papers to the 20th March have been received by the Shepherdess. A report of the discovery of Gold at the lien and Chickens group of islands, which had been generally circulated, had been fully investigated ; the Governor Wynyard steamer was sent oil’ and a portion of the earth where the gold was said to be found had been carefully examined by a competent authority—Mr. Bccgcr, from Kawau.and the result was that not the slightest trace of gold was discoverable. The ceremony of laying the foundation stone of an Odd Fellows Hall in Queen Street took place on Thursday, the 18th ult.; the. stone being laid by the Mayor of Auckland, and a dejeuner was afterwards given on the occasion. . The Katherine Slewart Forbes had arrived at Auckland, having called at the Cape on the passage out She brings intelligence of the death of Major Wilmot of the Royal Artillery, who formerly served in New Zealand during the Native disturbances, and who was in command at Fort Peddie on the Cape Frontier. Ho was shot on New Year’s day while leading his men on an attack on the enemy in the jungle of Fish river, where it was said Sandilli had taken shelter.

We understand that William Johnstone, Esq., late of the city of Dublin, solicitor, was, on the Ist instant, admitted'to practice as a solicitor and attorney of the Supreme Court of New Zealand’, having taken the declaration presented by the rules of Court. Mr. Johnstone purposes residing at Otago.