NEW ZEALAND COMPANY'S DEBT—AUCKLAND.

COMMITTEE'S REPORT. The Select Committee of the House of Representatives, appointed on the 29tli day of June, 1854, to enquire whether or not, in justice, the Province of Auckland ought to be at once relieved from bearing any portion of the New Zealand Company's Debt (to consist of Messrs. Fitzgerald, Macandrew, Wortley, Mackay, Porter, and Mr. E. G. Wakefield, the mover) have agreed to the following Report : — Your Committee would observe of the subject which they were appointed to investigate, that it is neither of a comprehensive nor a complicated character, but may be understood by reference to a few simple facts, which are involved in no obscurity, and about which moreover there is really no dispute. Accordingly, your Committee have been satisfied to examine only three witnesses, two of them being the persons at Auckland deemed most competent to lay the case before the Committee, and the other being examined only for the purpose of ascertaining the real facts with regard to an alleged abandonment by the New Zealand Company of highly valuable property in the Province of Auckland. The essential facts of the case appear to be as follows :— The New Zealand Company's right or claim to receive compensation for its losses, in land or from land revenue in New Zealand, has rested throughout, and the ultimate charge given to the Company by Parliament rests altogether, on the assumption of certain colonizing operations performed, and intended to be performed by the Company, of certain property and property rights acquired by or assured to them, and on the surrender to the Crown of all their private property, and their property rights. Every relation of the Company to New Zealand, whether of colonizing operations, property, property rights, or surrender to the Crown, was absolutely confined to a certain portion of New Zealand. The abortive attempt on the part of the Home Government to make the Company acquire land and colonize in another portion of New Zealand appears to be one of that description of exceptions which are said to prove the rule. Between the Company and that portion of New Zealand there never were any relations, except a continual jealousy, repugnance, and hostility. The two portions of the Colony were separated by a line about which there can be neither mistake nor doubt. All the Company's relations to New Zealand were on the south side of the line. Excepting as to jealousy, repugnance, and hostility, the Company never had any relations with the land or the people on the north side of the line, any more than if that portion of New Zealand had been a distinct Colony, or a part of New South Wales, with which the Company was at variance. If the Company's colonizing operations, such as acquisitions of land from the natives, sending out of emigrants, making of surveys, employment of labourers, supplying provisions in the early days of settlement, and measures of defence against the Government, conferred any benefit upon any part of the Colony—if any part of the Colony has derived any advantage from the surrender of the Company's property, rights, and relations with New Zealand —that benefit and that advantage have accrued exclusively to the South. The North has had no part in them. No portion of the actual Province of Auckland lies to the south of the line of demarcation which has always been the most northern limit of the Company's operations. And these are the principal facts upon which the Province of Auckland rests its denial that it can be justly held chargeable with any part of the Company's debt. Although your Committee have not sought to take evidence in the form of mere opinion, because they thought that the facts of the case are the grounds on which their decision ought to be made, yet they have learned incidentally that the injustice of charging the Province of Auckland with a share of the Company's debt has been publicly recognised by many whose opinions deserve weight, and, in particular, by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Speaker of the Legislative Council, the absent Governor of the Colony, the Officer now administering the Government, and Her Majesty's present Secretary of State for the Colonies : whilst, on the other hand, your Committee have been unable to learn that such injustice has ever been denied by any one whose opinion would have authoritative weight with the House. It appears to your Committee that, according to the direction of the House to them by the terms of their appointment, the question referred to them is one of justice only, excluding considerations of legality, of technical right, of convenience, of expediency, and of policy. Your Committee, accordingly, have limited themselves to the single consideration before them. Viewing the question in the light in which, as aforesaid, it has come to them from the House, your Committee are of opinion that, in justice, the Province of Auckland ought to be at once relieved from bearing any portion of the Company's debt. E. G. Wakefield, Chairman. House of Representatives, Auckland, July 20, 1854.