Auckland Provincial Government Gazette.

267

As you are aware, a sum of £250,000 was appropriated by the General Government for making land purchases from the natives in this province, with a view to securing a large landed estate and a future land revenue for the people of Auckland. The Provincial authorities have in no way been consulted regarding the expenditure of this sum, or the purchases of land they would desire to have made from it; and they are left in entire ignorance of the mode in which, and the persons by whom, the land is purchased, of the remuneration given to the land purchasers, and of the prices paid for the tracts of land acquired. The province, has, however, had handed over to it a landed estate thus acquired of 123,936 acres. Out of this about 108,000 acres have been inspected on the ground for the purpose of determining the character of the land of which the Provincial Government has become possessed. The result shows that only 2,699 acres of really good agricultural land has been handed over to the province; that there are 8,674 acres of second class land, and 96,180 acres of land of no agricultural value whatever. Considerable portions of the land so handed over are so embarrassed, by having been leased by natives to Europeans for long terms of years, for the purpose of cutting timber and other similar objects, that the value of the blocks acquired has (if the leases are lawful and valid) from this circumstance alone, without reference to the generally very inferior character of the soil, been greatly impaired.

I have felt it to be my duty, in considering what steps should be taken for the future of the Province, to attempt to ascertain its financial position in reference to the General Government of the colony. We have here the extraordinary spectacle exhibited of a province excessively rich in all natural resources, many of which are of an unexceptionally valuable character—blessed with the most favourable climate, abounding in harbours, and inhabited by a most industrious people, who yield an unusually large revenue, still making little or no progress compared with the career which Nature seems to have destined it to run. And the cause of this apparent anomaly is not very difficult to discover. Auckland alone of all the colonies and Provinces in this portion of all the world is deprived of a land fund. The bounty and the foresight of former Governments of Great Britain have provided a large landed estate for the benefit of its subjects, European and Native, inhabiting the Islands of New Zealand. Of its share in the vast land fund which has arisen from this great property, the Province of Auckland has been, and still is, deprived. I make no statement here regarding the legality or illegality of this transaction; I state a fact which has impoverished, nay ruined, multitudes of industrious families, and left energetic men, who ought years since to have been in a position of wealth and comfort, still struggling with difficulties against which they can hardly contend, and harassed by seeing their wives and children sunk into a condition of society which their birth, education, and tastes render repugnant, almost insupportable to them.

The claim of the people of Auckland upon this land fund is a subsisting and living right. No shortcomings or wrongful acts of one set of representatives can lastingly deprive a people of rights secured to them by law; such rights still subsist and live. Another set of representatives can rectify the wrongful acts or shortcomings of those who proceeded them, and can give reparation for wrongs suffered; and I still believe that, either in the adjustment of the payment of the interest on the public debt, or by some similar means, a method must be found for making some reparation to the people of Auckland for the wrong inflicted on them in regard to the land fund, and in recognition of their rights to participate for the future in the benefits of that land fund, although these may now be small.

You will, I think, see from the papers that will be laid before you that there is no hope, under the system at present adopted, that any land fund of importance will ever accrue to this Province from the vote of £250,000 appropriated for the purpose of acquiring lands from the Natives in the Northern Island. I feel sure that to rely upon this proceeding as a mode of extricating this Province from its difficulties, and securing it a future land fund, would be an unwise proceeding upon the part of its inhabitants. As in the case of the loans, to which I have already alluded, this is a proceeding which I think we should not recognise. We are in it treated as children, having no rights, or who are incapable of exercising them. It is one which to us is humiliating, and I believe it is in principle and practice unthrifty and unwise; I should prefer rather than adopt it, quietly but with firmness, to rest upon our actual rights, and to request that these may be distinctly recognised, ascertained and compensated.

If the large debt we owe is charged upon and paid from the land fund, the colony must virtually give up to its creditors the control of its landed estate. It can thenceforth establish no special settlements nor encourage the location of settlers under systems peculiarly suited to provinces or localities. Industrious but poor families can no longer be located under regulations affording them just advantages. In many respects the progress of settlement must be again restricted, and it is to be feared that in another form the interests of the humbler classes, upon whose prosperity our material progress chiefly depends, will be sacrificed, whilst those who have most benefitted by the large expenditure which has taken place will still escape from the payment of their fair share of those liabilities to which they ought in justice to contribute.

If we now turn again to the state of the finances of the province, we shall find that from a people already so depressed by the deprivation of that land fund which had been provided for them a great revenue is raised, amounting in the whole to more than £309,086 a year, of which about £249,000 is actual ordinary revenue raised from Customs duties and from Stamps. The whole of this great revenue, with the exception of £15,033 Provincial revenue, and £10,500 from the goldfields, is, in the first instance, taken from them and carried to a distant part of the country. There is then, as I have already shewn, returned to them from so vast an amount, a sum which does not nearly reach £18,000 in one year. It may be said that if I estimate the revenue taken from the Province at £250,000 a year, that the cost of the courts of justice, and establishments of the General Government, is paid by the people of this province from fines and fees, and other similar sources of what I treat as extraordinary revenue, and that after they have paid for the support of these establishments and their own provincial expenses, the sum taken from them is about £250,000 a year. I ask you to consider what this means: It is this, that a sum exceeding £3 per head per annum is levied upon the entire population of this province—upon each man, woman and child, and is carried from it to be in great part spent elsewhere.