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No. 34. Downing Street, 21st July, 1862. Sir, I have to acknowledge your despatch, No. 133, dated September 25th, 1851, transmitting a copy of the New Zealand Company's Land Claimants' Ordinance, and your despatch, No. 6, of the 6th January, 1852, in which you inform me that you had ceased to carry out the provisions of that Ordinance on finding that they conflicted with those of the Imperial Act 14th and 15th Victoria, c. 86, for " regulating the affairs of certain settlements established by the New Zealand Company." 2. I fully appreciate both the usefulness of the objects which the Legislature proposed to effect by this Ordinance, and also the difficulties under which it was considered and passed. It is to be regretted that you did not receive any instructions of the views of Her Majesty's late Government as to these questions for. so long a period as that stated in your despatch of the 6th January. But subsequent correspondence will have shown you, that this delay was in no respect occasioned by neglect; it originated in the great complication and difficulty of the questions raised by the sudden surrender of the Charter of the New Zealand Company, and the necessity of repeated references to the law advisers of the Crown, in order to ascertain the rights of the various parties affected by it, as well as of a long correspondence with the Company itself. It was felt that imperfect instru<?Kons would only mislead you. 3. And I think it is farther to be regretted that you did not wait until such instructions arrived, or that if you felt compelled to undertake Legislative measures, you did not do so with more recourse to legal advice than appears to have been the case. For the embarrassment occasioned by the Ordinance, and which has caused Her Majesty's Government to be thus late in acknowledging and deciding on it, has been mainly owing to the circumstance that it conflicts with the provisions of the Act 10 and 11 Vict., cap. 112, under which contracts of the New Zealand Company and certain liabilities of that Company, are recognized as devolving on the Crown ; which contracts and liabilities could not, therefore, be affected by any provincial legislation. However much they might feel dispose Ito give effect to your Ordinance, it was impossible to give Her Majesty's confirmation where, being in conflict with an Act of Parliament, it must be a nullity. 4. But the power which Her Majesty's Government now possesses, under the late Constitutional Act, together with those given by 14th and 15th Vict., cap. 86, seems, as will be presently explained, sufficient if not to enable Her Majesty formally to confirm the Ordinance. at least to allow it to be put practically in operation ; and although the compensation which it awards is certainly somewhat large, and appears moreover, to be given without reference to the merits of particular cases, on which you have at different times addressed my predecessor and myself, yet lam too sensible of the great importance of setting these questions, as far as possible, at rest, to wish to throw any obstacle in the way of the settlement thus proposed by yourself, and enacted after very full consideration by the Legislature of New Zealand. 6 5. The leading provisions of the Ordinance forwarded in your despatch No. 133, appear to be these : It authorizes the Governor to appoint a Commissioner for deciding all claims upon Government arising under contracts with the New Zealand Company. It empowers the authorities to satisfy these claims in conformity with the Commissioner's award, by the L I SU n v wn Grants an d of Land Scrip It declares that by such issue the Government shall be exonerated from all farther liability in respect to the contract which the land granted, or scrip issued, may have been intended to satisfy, and it extends the ordinary regulations for the disposal of Crown Land (including, of course, those which prescribe the minimum upset price of £1) to all the settlements of the New Zealand Company. 6. In a legal point of view this Ordinance appears open to two objections First, as I have already indicated, it materially interferes with, and in some cases assumes to extinguish, obligations which are imposed upon the Crown by the Imperial Act 10 and 11 Vict, cap. iiz, sec. iy ; those, namely, of performing all subsisting contracts of the New Zealand reg f r u to ° f ? 1 A ir 1 lands ' 11 is true all persons who voluntarily subnPf f Colonial Ordinance, will have waived their right to a strict performthis statuary obligation, but the Ordinance not only deais with the claims of such Persons, but, in cases where a claim may have been wrongly admitted by the Crown ComVT satlsfied . a f°rdingly by the Government, it assumes to exonerate the Crown ■ t i s la ii y o satisfy the rightful claimant, who may never have -referred his claim