REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER.

5

D—No. 10

A considerable proportion of this consisted of ready money or cattle: the residue comprised merchandise of different kinds. It will be remembered by all who are interested in the subject, that the rule of the Original Land Claims Ordinances 'of 1840 and 1841, repeated in the Act of 1856, was to estimate the value of goods given in barter for land, at three times the selling price of such goods in Sydney. This was by no means an extravagant allowance; on the contrary it barely represented the real value. The first Commissioners' Instructions informed them that this multiplication by 3 was to include commission, freight, risk, presents, passage money, charter of vessels, and every other kind of expense. If the amount of these charges, and especially the rhk in those days, be taken into consideration, it will probably be allowed that trade was worth at least three times in New Zealand what it was worth in Sydney: perhaps in the early years of the irregular settlement of Europeans in the North it may have been worth a great deal more. It is an essential point, of course, whether the Commissioners adopted a moderate scale as the standard of estimating Sydney prices; and it may safely be said that the scale they adopted was very fair. In the case of the Preemptive Claims, no such multiplication was made: and the payments when given in goods are estimated at the actual value of those goods in the New Zealand market. On the whole, I have myself no doubt whatever that the sum of £95,215 above stated fairly represents the amount of money or moneys worth which passed into the hands of the natives in the purchase of land, exclusive of sums which cannot now be ascertained.

In addition to the payments given to the natives, it must be remembered that the Claimants incurred great expenses in proving their claims before the various Commissioners. The amount which the Original Claimants paid to Commissioners Godfrey, Richmond, and Spain, including the fees on the issue of Grants, was £4,832 15s. Id.; the amount paid by the Preemptive Claimants, including the assessment of ss. an acre under Sir George Grey's " Minute " of August 1847, was £2,520 Bs. 5d.; and the amount paid by all classes of Claimants under the operation of the Land Claims Acts of 1856-8, was £5,786 4s. 2d.: together amounting to the sum of £13,179 7s. Bd., to which must be added the value of the surveys effected at their cost, as will be referred to in the next section.

Taking the amount of payments to natives, and the amount of fees and payments to the Commissioners, the total under these two heads reaches no less a sum than £108,394 9s. Bd. Averaging it over the whole area of the claims as surveyed, the rate per acre contrasts favourably with the payments made by the Crown in the acquisition of its territory, and shows that in fact the claimants paid more for extinguishing native title than the Government did.

6.— Tlie Area Surveyed in Each Case.

The extent of land which has hitherto been surveyed in all the claims, including a few cases still only estimated, is 474,146 acres. Some surveys have yet to come in, but they will not very' materially add to these figures. The acreage surveyed in Old Land Claims is 376,719 acres: in Pre-emptive Claims 97,427 acres. There is no doubt that the grant of liberal survey allowance had a very beneficial effect. If the Government had attempted to survey the claims themselves, the claimants would have had no interest in the whole exterior boundaries being got, and would only have felt called upon to point out as much as was actually to be granted to them. The residue would, practically, have reverted to the natives, and must at some time or other have been purchased again by the Government: and a large extent of territory must have remained, as it was before the passing of the Land Claims Acts, a terra incognita. But when the Claimants were told they would receive an allowance in acreage to the extent of 15 per cent, on the area surveyed, it became their interest to exert all their influence with the native sellers to give up the whole boundaries originally sold. The result has been not only to produce a large surplus of land which, under the operation of the existing Acts, goes to the Crown; but to connect the claims together, and lay them down on a map. Under the arrangements which I directed to be adopted by the surveyors engaged in the survey of the claims, I was enabled, as the original boundaries of a great number of the Claims were conterminous, to compile a plan of the whole country about the Bay of Islands and Mongonui, showing the Government purchases there as well as the Land Claims; and a connected map now exists of all that part of the Province of Auckland which lies between the Waikato River and the North Cape.

One ground on which it was decided to grant so liberal an allowance for surveys probably was, that the then Surveyor-General, in his evidence before the Land Claims Committee in 1856, had said he should require for a Government survey of the Claims a staff of eighteen Surveyors at a cost of £8,000 a-year. I think that this was too high an estimate; but it is