C—6

2

Again, if the agreement or lease was originally illegal, the approval of the Agent of the Government, or of the Minister for Public Works, cannot stamp such lease or agreement with legality. They are mere executive officers to carry out the law, not to make new laws to suit their own views. Any attempts to make such invalid leases or agreements legal can only produce a bad impression upon the public mind, as these attempts would possibly constitute a manifest evasion of that law which it was the duty of those authorities who allowed the evasion to have supported. To make such unlawful leases legal would also be to reward wrong-doers and law-breakers, by recognizing their illegal acts, and this would be done at the expense of the rest of Her Majesty's subjects, who had faithfully observed the law, and who deserved, in recognition of their conduct, to have been protected in the rights which the law secures to them, rather than to be deprived of those rights in order that privileges of great, possibly of enormous, value may be given to those of their fellow-subjects who had set the law at defiance. I pass over the statement of the Minister for Public Works that it will be necessary to reward these breakers of the law to prevent them from exercising their influence over the Natives to the detriment of the Government and their fellow-settlers, by preventing them from selling lands which the public necessity require should become the property of the community at large. Certainly people who could be guilty of such conduct ought to be punished instead of receiving large rewards. I think, also, that in each instance of the unlawful leases and agreements to which Mr. Mackay alludes, he should be directed forthwith to supply the Superintendent of this province with the name of the officer of the Native Department who broke the law by negotiating such unlawful lease or agreement, in order that inquiries may be made as to whose authority this was done by, and why such exclusive privileges were given to some of Her Majesty's subjects, and why—whilst the inhabitants of this country at large were, by carefully framed laws, shut out from dealings with the Natives regarding certain lands—other individuals, who were favoured, were allowed to carry on such dealings, and were even granted the assistance of those officers of the Government to aid them in these transactions, whose duty required them to prevent such dealings from being carried on. The more fair and legal any such transaction may have been, the more reason is there that a full inquiry should be madp into it, in order that the blamelessness of the parties concerned in it may be openly and fairly established beyond all. future question. Upon the whole, therefore, I think I am doing that which is, in every respect, for the public interest, in recommending that, whilst all legal and valid agreements and leases should be scrupulously observed, all those regarding which any doubt exists should be strictly investigated, and that only such a money compensation should be given to the respective claimants as a full and impartial inquiry may prove them to be entitled to. My observations apply equally also to all exchanges of land which the General Government propose to carry out without a full and open inquiry. Ido not think that the Government will be justified in taking lands from any of the blocks purchased with public money, and giving them in exchange, at the will of the Native Minister or any other person, to Europeans or Natives, until a full and open inquiry has been made into the circumstances of each case. Land is now so essential to the interests of this province, for the purpose of settling intending immigrants upon, or those of our population who have hitherto been unable to obtain land, that I earnestly request that the recommendations I have made may receive the approval and sanction of the General Government, and that I may be authorized at once to give effect to them. I would yet add another reason, of a general nature, in favour of the cause I recommend. The rights of property disposed of, under the arrangements made by the Minister of Public Works and Mr. Mackay, must be very great indeed. The parties interested in these are the public, the Native owners, the European claimants. Clearly such rights ought not to be dealt with secretly, in a private room, by one man. To expose him, under such circumstances, to the solicitations of private friends, or of the political supporters of the Government he serves, is a wrong to human nature, to independence of character, to public rights, to the interests of the Native owners, for there is no fair competition for their property and to the mass of Her Majesty's subjects, because their interests are not fairly protected. A consideration of this will, I hope, make you feel that this system should be instantly stopped, and that perhaps upon the whole the proper course would be that an open inquiry should at once be instituted into each past transaction. I have, &c, The Hon. the Colonial Secretary, Wellington. G. Grey. Referred to Mr. Mackay for remark. —Daniel Pollen, 28th May, 1875.

No. 2. Memorandum for the Hon. the Colonial Secretary. Sir George Grey's letter of the 19th May last purports to be a request for a modification of the arrangement made by the Hon. the Minister for Public Works with me on the 4th March, 1872, for the purchase of Native lands in the district of Hauraki.