Monday, August 20, 1849.

Present:
The Governor-in-Chief and nine members.

Absent:
His Excellency Major-General Pitt, K.H.

The Council met pursuant to adjournment.

The Minutes of the last meeting were read and confirmed.

Mr. Merriman presented a Memorial from a numerous Body of the Inhabitants of Auckland, in the Province of New Ulster, respecting the necessity of permitting the Natives to lease their Waste Lands, and also for a repeal of the Native Land Purchase Ordinance. Petition read and received and ordered to be printed.

To His Excellency the Governor-in-Chief, and the Hon. the Members of the General Legislative Council of New Zealand now assembled.

The Memorial of the undersigned Inhabitants of Auckland, in the Province of New Ulster, Sheweth,

That by a number of unfortunate measures this colony has been seriously retarded in its progress, that the utmost distrust and discontent are widely spread among the European settlers; that the resources of the colony are completely locked up; and that the settlers have been driven from one extremity of the country to another over good land not yet occupied in turning their attention to some independent pursuit, while the extensive and extremely fertile sites of towns, besides the extraordinary advantages held out by the Government, threaten if they do not positively endanger the very existence of the colony for years to come. Your Memorialists would therefore desire most earnestly to press these facts upon the attention of your Excellency and Honourable Council in the hope of their leading to the adoption of such measures of an active and beneficial character as might at once infuse fresh confidence into the community and freely open out the resources of this colony to the enterprise of the settlers.

That while this is the case obtained for the majority of colonists, what little progress it is at the enormous rate which it has necessarily become depopulated unless some vigorous effort be made to arrest the evil. We know of no measure of greater power to meet the emergency except that of permitting the Natives again to sell their lands to Europeans under such regulations as the Government may deem necessary for the protection of both the Native owners and the European purchasers.

When this Colony laboured under great depression at a former period during Captain Fitzroy’s administration, he hesitated not to resort to this measure, which at once infused fresh vigor and confidence; and the result proved eminently successful and beneficial to both races. We are now threatened with evils still more alarming, and the necessity is therefore the greater for adopting vigorous measures of relief by which alone the slightest check can be given to the pervading feeling of depression and disappointment which now threatens to demoralize this Province.

Should your Excellency and Honourable Council, while admitting the deep injury which the Colony is likely to sustain, feel indisposed to adopt the measure now recommended without previous instructions from the Home Government, the delay thus occasioned would render the measure wholly inadequate to the immediate emergency.

Your Memorialists would desire to suggest another step of less importance, but still of great use at the present crisis. We refer to the abolition of “The Native Land Purchase Ordinance,” passed in November, 1846. This Ordinance has been of vast injury to this Province, and has been a main cause of eating up its resources, and of producing the many evils under which it now struggles. Independent of the reasons for the abolition of this Ordinance afforded by the beneficial results of such a change, there are already objections to its continuance sufficiently strong of themselves, to warrant its abolition, and to which we would now, respectfully, request the attention of your Excellency and Honorable Council.

The Ordinance referred to prevents any one treating with the Natives for the sale, use, or occupation of their lands, or for the purchase of timber, right of mining, or erection of pasture; and it confers the power of inflicting a penalty of £100 upon any one who shall do either of those acts, or be found pasturing sheep or cattle, or shall have cut timber or taken any mineral from the land.

We object to this Ordinance, and respectfully solicit its abolition for the following reasons:

1. Because it violates the Treaty of Waitangi, which guarantees to the aborigines all their rights of property and possession; the right of pre-emption alone excepted. As the minor right of leasing, or otherwise renting the land, is not thereby destroyed, the ordinance referred to violates that Treaty and destroys the value of the property of the natives; inasmuch as they could readily lease their lands to Europeans and thereby obtain in many instances a greater sum of yearly rent than the Government are in the habit of giving for an absolute purchase. The Ordinance is therefore highly liable to the charge of being the cause of great pecuniary loss of deep injury and injustice to the Natives as well as to Europeans.

2. This Ordinance is further in direct opposition to the instructions under the sign manual, accompanying the Royal Charter, constituting Her Majesty’s colony, which expressly secures to those natives who may be possessed of individual property the same power of free and unlimited disposal thereof as other British subjects.

3. This Ordinance is eminently deficient in that essential requisite which should distinguish every law, viz., its capability of being applied to all persons without favor or partiality. This Ordinance, however, cannot be so applied without altogether destroying the colony. In the Southern Province, particularly in the valley of the Wairarapa, the law is openly set at defiance; and the settlers there lease lands from the natives as they choose. The natives, on the other hand, derive a large revenue therefrom (between £600 and £1000 a year, it is believed) to their great benefit and that of the settlers. This law is necessarily also daily set at defiance in the loading of every timber vessel and in the settlers taking firewood to prevent their cattle from starvation, are compelled to treat with the Natives for the use of their lands for grazing purposes. The want of proper pasturage has not only caused great direct loss to the holders of stock by deaths from starvation by necessitating sales for want of food; but by preventing the breeding of young stock the same has likewise generated most powerfully in preventing the population of cattle upon a large scale from Sydney, and the large stockholders of this colony from effecting settlements in this country.

4. But for the existence of this Ordinance, the Natives, by this time, would themselves have been large stockholders, and this colony might now have been in a condition to supply other countries with provisions instead of being unable, as we still are, to provide fat cattle for our own consumption. It is quite impolitic, and at an enormous expense that even the troops can be supplied with meat in proper condition, and the supplies for the general community are wholly inadequate.

5. This Ordinance exerts the most baneful influence