CESSION OF THE MURIHIKU BLOCK.

5

C~No. 9

Enclosure in No. 3. STATEMENT EEFEEEED TO. Date at which payment Interest aewould have been made cruinq by deaccording to original / a « plan. £ £ s. A. Ist June; 1852. First instalment ... 1,000 Paid October, 1853, 16 months, @10 f- cent. 133 6 8 Ist June, 1853. Second instalment 500 Paid November, 1853, 5 months, @10 cent. 20 16 8 Ist June, 1854. Third instalment 500 £2,000 Paid November, 1853 / rp ~ T . ~~ ~ Deduct Discount, 7 1 Total Interest £154 3 4 months @10 cent. ( 29 3 4 Excess of Interest over Discount £125 0 0

No. 4. MR. DOMETT, CIVIL SECRETARY, TO MR. MANTELL, COMMISSIONER OF CROWN LANDS. Civil Secretary's Office, Wellington, 7th November, 1853. Sir,— I am directed, by His Excellency the Governor, to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 17th of August, (but which did not reach Wellington till the 29th of September,) transmitting copy of a Deed of Cession of the Murihiku Block, together with maps of Reserves in the same; also, the receipt of your letter of the eighteenth of August, reporting upon and explaining the circumstances attending the conclusion of the agreement for the sale of that District and the payment of the purchase money to the Natives. With reference to the first eight paragraphs of the last letter, His Excellency desires me to remark that some misapprehension appears to exist on your part in relation to the presumed unwillingness, previous to a late date, of the Natives to sell the recently acquired block of land unless the transaction was concluded immediately upon tho preliminary negotiations which had then taken place. About six years ago, His Excellency remarks, some of the principal Chiefs of the district in question, agreed, while the Governor was there, to dispose of it to the Government upon certain terms, when it might be required. Those terms were nearly the tame as those to which they have since adhered, and on a recent visit (within the last twelve months, that is,) of the same chiefs to Wellington, they appeared to His Excellency to hold to their engagements in all respects. These chiefs were Topi, Kairoa, and other principal Chief's of the district. There then appeared to His Excellency no immediate necessity for hurrying the matter on ; more especially as the Government found it very difficult to procure the funds absolutely required to pay for large tracts of land imperatively demanded by the circumstances of the European population in other places where they were very numerous and the districts of land available for their wants were very limited in extent. The state of things however which, as appears from your letter has recently arisen, and which rendered the immediate acejuisition of the block of land, an object of paramount necessity, and the serious delay which you represent as likely to have occurred in the completion of the purchase, had you referred the matter for further instructions, clearly gave rise to a case in which Jyou were called upon to act upon your own discretion to the best of your judgment, and in which it became your duty as a good public servant to incur such an amount of responsibility as was needed to enable you to close the transaction and set it finally at rest. I am therefore to state that keeping the above circumstances in view, His Excellency considers that in the course you have adopted you have rendered a very great service to the public, and one ■which entitles you to his special commendation, as it shews that you possess not only the capacity to see what measures ought to be taken in such an emergency to promote the public interests, but sufficient resolution to carry those measures into execution with a single regard to the public good. His Excellency therefore approves of the payment to the Natives of the sum of Two thousand six hundred pounds (£2,600) for the lands recently acquired in accordance with your recommendation: Three hundred pounds (£300) of the last amount to be paid at Otago, and Three hundred pounds (£300) at the Bluff. From a statement furnished to the Governor by the Audit office, it appears that the Sub_ Treasurer at Otago had received from the sale of public lands the sum of Eight hundred and sixty.