( 184 )
YEARLY LEASES Continued.
COUNTRY.-Upset price £10. per annum.
Name of Parish. No. of Lot Quantities.
A. R. P.
Parish of 32 130 0 0
Pakuranga, 33 130 0 0
34 97 0 0
37 100 0 0
39 148 0 0
40 158 0 0
41 139 0 0
44 90 0 0
45 105 0 0
47 141 0 0
48 113 0 0
49 85 0 0
50 79 1 24
51 97 1 5
52 204 2 17
Parish of 1 63 0 0
Manurewa. 5 77 2 23
6 66 0 11
7 76 0 11
8 15 3 12
12 148 0 0
16 67 0 0
17 80 0 0
18 133 3 38
19 112 2 16
20 112 1 33
21 86 0 0
38 160 0 0
39 80 0 0
39 80 0 0
41 133 0 0
44 210 0 0
45 97 0 0

Given under my Hand, and issued
under the Public Seal of the
Colony, at Government House,
(L. S.) Auckland, this fifteenth day of
December, in the year of Our
Lord One thousand eight hun-
dred and forty-six.

GEORGE GREY,
Lieut. Governor and Commander-in-Chief.
By His Excellency's command,
ANDREW SINCLAIR,
Colonial Secretary.
GOD SAVE THE QUEEN!

Colonial Secretary's Office,
Auckland, 21st December, 1846.
HIS Excellency the Lieutenant-Governor
has been pleased to direct
that the following Despatch received from the
Secretary of State, in answer to a Memorial
from the former Inhabitants of Russell, pray-
ing to be compensated for losses sustained by
the destruction of that place, should be pub-
lished for the information of the Memorialists.

By His Excellency's command,
ANDREW SINCLAIR,
Colonial Secretary.

Downing Street,
10th June, 1846.

SIR,-I have received your Predecessor's
Despatch, marked "Separate," of the 30th of
October last, accompanied by a Memorial from
above forty persons, formerly resident at Russell,
in New Zealand, soliciting compensation for the
losses sustained by them in consequence of the
destruction of that Town by the Natives, in
March of last year.

This claim raises, or involves, a general prin-
ciple of great practical extent, and of very wide
and general application. It is the principle that
British subjects who have settled themselves in
the immediate vicinity of uncivilized Tribes of
men, and who may subsequently become the
victims of their hostility, are entitled to throw on
the British Treasury the losses consequent on
any such attacks, if they can shew, either that
there was not a sufficient military force at hand
for their protection, or, that a sufficiently vigo-
rous and skilful use was not made of that force,
or, that the British Government or its Officers
were guilty of any such error or oversight in
their transactions with the Tribes in question, as
may possibly have provoked or increased their
hostility to the Settlers. It is alleged in the
Memorial that such has been the invariable rule
or practice in all such cases.

To this general assertion it is impossible to
subscribe. The Memorialists have quoted no
solitary instance of the kind they mention, and I
am not aware of the existence of any. Neither
the ancient British Settlers in North America,
nor those who in recent times have settled in
Western or in Southern Africa, ever received
from the Government compensation for the
losses they incurred by the devastation and plan-
der of their Settlements by the Savages in their
immediate vicinity. They emigrated not in the
service of their country, but with a view to ad-
vantages, real or imaginary, and included, or
ought to have included, the danger of barbarous
invasion as one of the most serious risks of that
speculation.

In the present case the Claimants cannot even
allege that their Settlement in New Zealand was
encouraged, or approved, or even known by their
own Government. They resorted thither before
the Treaty of Waitangi, and before the Govern-
ment was reluctantly compelled by the unautho-
rized Emigration of British subjects to that
Country, to negociate for a Sovereignty which
they had deprecated as an undesirable, if not
injurious acquisition. When at length that
Sovereignty was assumed, the Government gave
the utmost possible publicity to the fact, that, it
was impossible to withdraw from the British
Army a Garrison adequate to the protection and
defence of the Settlers.

If errors, either Civil or Military, were sub-
sequently committed in the administration of the
Government of the Colony, I cannot admit that
to those errors alone, or chiefly, are to be attri-
buted the attacks of Heki and his followers on
the Town of Russell, and, even if I could make
that assertion, I could not assent to the in-
ference that the British Treasury are bound to
pay both for the expense of the warfare, and for
the losses of the Settlers. The Government and
their local Officers, Civil and Military, were all
placed in a situation in which it is scarcely prob-
able that any degree of foresight, skill, or cou-
rage could have averted all risk of such evils.
They were drawn into that situation by the
precipitancy of others, not by any ill policy of
their own. Besides, it is a new and startling
doctrine that the Queen's subjects are indivi-