Auckland Provincial Government Gazette.

V.

Superintendent’s Office,
Auckland, 27th May, 1876.

229

My Lord,—

I have the honour to express my thanks to Your Excellency for your letter of the 24th instant, and especially for your assurance that, in such legal action as I may take, as Superintendent of this Province, for the protection of the interests of its inhabitants, no technical objection shall be allowed to intervene to prevent me from so doing.

I now further beg Your Excellency’s permission to have a like privilege afforded to me, as Superintendent of this Province, in legal steps I propose to take in the Supreme Court for the purpose of endeavouring to obtain redress for the inhabitants of the Province of Auckland for a wrong inflicted on them in the case of a tract of 80,000 acres of land in the Waikato District, which the Government, under the sanction of the Queen’s name, have attempted to give to Mr. Russell, in violation of the law and the rights of those of Her Majesty’s subjects, European and Native, whose interests the law confides to my care.

The lands I allude to formed part of a large District which had been taken by British troops from the Native owners who had carried on an insurrection against the Government, and had for a long time endangered the safety of the inhabitants of various settlements in the Province of Auckland.

Portions of these lands which belonged to the Natives engaged in the war were subsequently declared confiscated by the Crown. This was done partly to defray the expenses of the war, and to give an example to the Natives of the losses which would result to them, if they engaged in hostile undertakings for the future, but also in great part to secure the safety of the settlements lying near the Waikato river, by the introduction of a sufficient number of settlers able to protect themselves, and to preserve the peace of the country, into districts which, had they remained in the hands of powerful and disaffected natives, would have been a source of constant danger.

Great Britain, having accomplished this, handed over these lands to the General Assembly of New Zealand, the Governor forming an independent and constituent part of that Assembly.

Laws were made by the Assembly, and a code of regulations was lawfully established on the 11th of May, 1871, for guidance in the disposal of these lands, which secured equal rights in them to all the Queen’s subjects, and which apparently afforded an absolute guarantee that nothing wrong could be done in regard to them. The regulations provided that all lands disposed of under them should be divided into town land, suburban land, rural land, mineral land; should be sold by public auction; should only be so sold after survey of the lands; should only be so sold after notice of the intended sale had been given to the public in the New Zealand Government Gazette of not less than one month, nor more than three months of the day appointed for the sale, and the locality of such lands, of their acreage, of the terms and upset price at which they were to be offered for sale.

The law also required that all lands should be openly offered for sale in the Land Office of the Province in which they were situated, or in such other place as the Government should, by public notice, direct; that one fourth of the purchase money should be paid at the time of the sale, and the remaining three-fourths within three months after such sale.

The custom of the Land Office also required that immediately after the sale a public notice should be published by the Government giving the date of the sale, the number, locality, and area of each lot sold, the name of each purchaser, the price per acre paid for each lot.

The fullest publicity was thus to be given to each part of the transaction, and the most effectual guarantees appeared to be interposed to prevent any wrong dealings with these lands.

Nevertheless Mr. Russell, was, by an arrangement, privately concluded, I believe, with Sir J. Vogel in April, 1873, put into the possession of the block of 80,000 acres of land I allude to, on the understanding that he was to pay a very small sum per acre, and to make a road; but of the details of this transaction I am not certain. I use the word “privately” advisedly, because when any of these lands were parted with to one or more of the Queen’s subjects, this fact was publicly announced in the Gazette. The name of the purchaser was stated, the date of the purchase, and the price given; whilst in the instance I am referring to, the agreement was privately made between two persons, the Minister, who was the giver, and the receiver of the boon. The fact of these lands having been parted with was then not notified, and no announcement, official or otherwise, as far as I, as Superintendent of this Province, can learn, was made of this transaction, whilst in carrying it out, every rule laid down by the law and regulations was broken, and I believe that to the present day no money has been paid for the land.

The Government, with the large sums at its disposal for public works, could have rendered that land a fitting and profitable home for at least four hundred families, on a system of deferred payments, could then have located them there, and thus have placed them in a position which would have ensured their prosperity and future well-being. Four hundred male defenders have thus been lost to a district where it is almost certain that their absence will soon be greatly felt and deplored, for there is in its vicinity a large native population in so unsettled a state that, although an expensive police force is maintained there by the Colony, they dare not even attempt to apprehend a native who is at large, and who the other natives admit to have committed an atrocious and unprovoked murder upon a young European within a few miles of the capital of this Province.

Four hundred producing families and a like number of consumers are also lost to the district, together with the trade and commerce which they would have created.

I would now beg Your Excellency to consider what is the result of a design, if it is quietly carried out and successful, of giving to a favoured individual, unlawfully, a block of 80,000 acres of land. It means this, in the first place, that a large number of families in the vicinity, who labour hard for years, must by their labour, their industry, their devotion to their duty, gradually, by the general improvement they by these means effect in the district, and the general value they give to property in it, greatly enhance the value of every acre of the 80,000 acres unlawfully taken from the public.

Again, the taxation in this Colony, which in part goes to public improvements throughout it, such as railroads, roads, bridges, telegraphs, &c., is raised by duties imposed on all the prime necessaries of life, and is in fact a revenue raised almost equally on rich and poor, in proportion to the number of the population. Thus the gradually increasing and ultimately almost necessarily larger population in the vicinity of this unlawfully acquired block of 80,000 acres of land, as well as the population of New Zealand generally, are year by year taxed to give a great value to the vast property of those who in my belief originally injured them, by taking from them