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good as to explain more fully to the Committee than by the mere proposition which you have laid before the Committee the grounds on which you think that Auckland ought to be exempted ? I think that it should be exempted on the grounds, as I have before stated, of the New Zealand Company having had no beneficial connection with Auckland. To shew how entirely foreign from the settlements of the New Zealand Company has been that founded by the Government at Auckland, I would call attention to the following circumstances: —When Auckland was first founded by Governor Hobson, he was at a loss for workmen to erect a public building : he obtained a few workmen from the New Zealand Company's settlement of Wellington ; complaints were immediately made, first by the colonists at Wellington, a public meeting being held for the purpose of remonstrating, and secondly strong representations were preferred to the Secretary of State by the New Zealand Company and an application was made that the commissioners of colonial land and emigration might be directed to send out to Wellington at the public expense a number of workmen, corresponding in calling and number to those carried off by Governor Hobson, an arrangement which was acceded to by the Secretary of State to be carried out at the expense of a fund arising from the sale of land at Auckland. Another point is, in the year 1843 the Company obtained, by agreement with the Secretary of State the right to a large quantity of land in the town and district of Auckland, and in the exercise of that right they became conditional owners of a considerable portion of the best land in the town, suburbs, and country, at the same time taking upon themselves an obligation in honour to carry out to the best of their ability the colonising views which they expressed when the agreement was made. The Company always evaded this debt of honour, and never took one step toward carrying out at Auckland their colonising views, but held the best lands of the district in utter barrenness for several years, to the great and manifest injury of the settlement, and it was firmly believed that the directors, from the commencement nevar intended any other course, but acted throughout with a determination to throw obstacles in the way of the progress of the government settlements, in order to enhance the comparative importance of their own, a conclusion fully justified by their conduct in the transaction, and confirmed by their published documents. A third circumstance is, when the territory of New Zealand was divided by the Governor-in-Chief into two Provinces, the Company's small settlement of New Plymouth was included in the Northern Province with the government settlements, an arrangement strongly objected to by the Directors as " seriously prejudicial to the Company, and likely to entail considerable inconvenience on their settlers" and the Secretary of State for the Calonies, Earl Grey yielded to the request of the Directors, and gave his consent to such an alteration of the boundary line that even this slight connection should no longer exist between the Company's settlements and those founded by the Government. The fourth reason will stand thus,—in March 1851, the Directors of the New Zealand Company stated to Earl Grey " That the bulk of the expenditure incurred in this country (England) on behalf of New Zealand, had been the direct and unavoidable consequence of the impolicy which fixed the seat of local government on a desert spot, remote alike from the European population and from the commerce ot the island." A statement in every particular the very opposite of the truth, one of a series of hostile, disparaging and calumnious attacks made by the Directors of the New Zealand Company on the settlement of Auckland, commencing with its foundation and continued even after the Company itself had terminated its existence. The next reason is this, the New Zealand Company's principal agent Mr. Fox, speaks of " The Company's debt as one with which the Northern colonists have nothing to do" and the settlers of the Southern colonies admit the right of the Government Settlements to exemption from this charge. These reasons appear to me to be conclusive that the New Zealand Company never had or professed to have any claim upon what now constitutes the Province of Auckland, and that they always endeavoured to keep their settlements as clear as possible from any connexion whatever with it. 52. You spoke just now of some admission by the settlers in the South that Auckland was not rightly liable for any portion of the Company's claim on the colony. Will you give the Committee some evidence of that fact « The admission was made at a Public Meeting held at Wellington, I think in the year 1848, but I am not sure as to the date. 4. Are you able to furnish some documentary evidence of the fact? I will endeavour to do so j that I think will be sufficient to shew that the New Zealand Company could have no moral claim on the ground of benefit conferred. Then with respect to the other branch of the question, that is that Auckland should be compelled to pay its quota for land, or the right of sale then surrendered by the Company that land or right of selection did not comprise any portion of the present Province of Auckland. The Colonisation Act 10 and 11 Victoria, specially confined the New Zealand Company's operations to the Province of New Munster, no part of which now constitutes any part of the Province of Auckland. The land or right of selection to land given up by the Company comprised land the proceeds from the