112

TARANAKI GOVERNMENT GAZETTE.

2nd. “To every Officer Volunteer or Militiaman after six months active service in which he shall have been actually engaged against the Queen’s enemies and for every subsequent six months of such active service any sum not exceeding Five Pounds (£5).”

Provided that no Officer Volunteer or Militiaman shall be entitled to such Certificate who has already received any land in payment or consideration of his services.”

Your Committee first took measures for giving publicity to their appointment by your Honor with full powers to determine claims under the Volunteer Land Acts, and gave ample time for sending in such claims from every part of the Colony; four months being allowed for residents in the Province, and the time extended to five months for non-residents. Forms of application were also printed and furnished to claimants.

Meanwhile the opinion of the Attorney-General was obtained on several points which were not defined with sufficient clearness in the Act of 1865.

It became first necessary to decide what should be understood to constitute active service in which the applicants had been actually engaged against the Queen’s enemies, and, taking the opinion of the Attorney-General as a guide, your Committee decided that Scrip should be awarded to all Militia and Volunteers for the time during which military duty was performed with a loaded rifle at the place or post at which the claimants were stationed during the period in which the Militia and Volunteers were on actual duty in the Province.

The other points were raised principally on the exclusion clause of the Act of 1865 providing that no person who has already received land “in payment or consideration of his services is entitled to a remission certificate. It was eventually decided:

1st. That Naval and Military Settlers under the Land Regulations of the Province had received land as an inducement to settle and not for services, and that they were therefore entitled to remission certificates under the Volunteer Land Acts for Volunteer and Militia service.

2nd. That Military Settlers under the Orders in Council of 1863 are clearly not entitled to remission Certificates for the period during which they were performing service for their land as Military Settlers either in their own persons or in the persons of others, as in the case of substitutes; but it is a doubtful question whether they are entitled to certificates for service prior to such period, though for subsequent service they are entitled. The same rule would apply to the Volunteer Militia who received land at Tikorangi and Patea.

While recommending that claimants should receive the benefit of the doubt, your Committee yet deem it advisable that the final settlement of this doubtful point should be referred to the Provincial Council, and it would be further desirable that the opinion of that body should be taken as to whether the benefit of the Acts of 1865 and 1867 should be extended to non-residents in the Province.

An Ordinance of the Provincial Council will be necessary before your Honor will be empowered to issue the remission Certificates.

Your Committee beg to record their sense of the valuable service rendered them by Major Stapp, without whose assistance it would have been impossible for them to have arrived at any certain decision on the validity of many of the claims sent in.

Classified rolls of Claimants in the several categories together with the periods of service certified by your Committee, and notes as to previous award of land, non residence, and other matters which may serve to guide your Honor and the Provincial Council in the award of Scrip, are appended hereto.

By granting Certificates to the full extent allowed in the several rolls, and at the maximum rate fixed by the Act of 1865, Scrip to the extent of about £10,500 will have to be issued, viz.: £8,000 to Volunteers and Militia who have never received land for service, and £2,500 to such as have already received Land either as Volunteer Militia at Tikorangi or Patea, and as Military Settlers, but in each category exclusive of the period for which they received land.

C. D. WHITCOMBE,
CHAS. BROWN,
THOMAS HEMPTON.