LORD JOHN RUSSELL'S INTERPRETATION OF THE AGREEMENT.
Letter from Joseph Scenes, Esq., Governor of the New Zealand Company, to the Right Honourable Lord John Russell.
New Zealand House, Broad Street Buildings, 261h June 1844. lify Lord—On behalf of the Directors of the New Zealand Company, 1 have the honour to transmit to your Lordship the copy of a paper which was yesterday laid before the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the affairs of New Zealand.
Your Lordship will observe from this document, that a matter of the utmost importance to the Company has been determined by the Colonial Office in a sense fatal to our interests, and perhaps to our existence as a colonizing body, on the sole ground of your Lordship's presumed intentions, when Secretary of State for the Colonies, with respect to a part of the agreement with the Company in November 1840 which settled their position and prospects. As the fate of the Company is thus really made to depend on the view which the Committee of the House of Commons may take of your Lordship's intentions at the time, we trust that you will have the goodness to afford us the means of laying before the Committee a statement of what really were your intentions.
Being conscious of the irregularity of making such a request, we can only hope that your Lordship will excuse it on the ground of the deep injury which the Company has suffered from an inference drawn by the Colonial Office, of intentions entertained by your Lordship totally at variance with those on the supposition of which we have embarked the fortunes of the Company, and of the great body of settlers who have gone to New Zealand under our direction.
I have, &c. (Signed) JOSEPH SOMES, Governor.
Letter from the Right Honourable Lord John Russell to Joseph Somes, Esq., Governor of the New Zealand Company.
Che.ham Place, 29th June 1844.
Sir—I have received and taken into consideration your letter of the 26th instant. You state that you are desirous of being acquainted with my intentions, when, in November 1840, I made an agreement with the New Zealand Company which settled their position and prospects. The difficulty of answering such a question is very great : the considerations which at that time were present in full force to my mind have been naturally weakened by the number and the importance of the public transactions in Which I have been engaged since that period, no less than by the lapse of time.
• These blanks were subsequently filed ur. I would readily overlook any irregularity of form, were there not obstacles of substance, which I find it impossible to overcome, in the way of giving a satisfactory answer to your question.
In the first place, I do not think the word "intentions" very clearly expresses the main point of difference between the Secretary of State for the Colonies and the Company. It appears to me that the dispute has arisen rather on the sense and meaning of the agreement of 1840. By the fourth article of that agreement, it was stipulated, that "the Company shall be secured by a grant from the Crown to them, under the public seal of the colony, of as many acres of land as shall be equal to four times the number of pounds sterling which they shall be found to have expended in the manner and for the purposes abovementioned." &c. The other articles state the manner, the purposes, and the mode in which the amount in pounds sterling was to be ascertained; the expenditure already made by the Company being the foundation of the whole agreement. In making this agreement with the Company, I conceived that I was stipulating for the Crown to do that which the Crown would be well able to perform.
I understood, in the first place, that the Company had made large purchases of land, fully equal to satisfy any claim they could make good under the agreement. This is not merely a suggestion of memory, but it is shown in my despatch to. Governor Hobson, dated 22d April 1841. I there state, " By the terms of the contract between the Company and her Majesty's Government, enclosed in my despatch of the 10th of March, it was provided that im respect of their antecedent expenditure for colonization, a certain extent of land should be conceded to them.
"It was further agreed, that this land should be taken in that part of the colony of New Zealand at which their settlement bad been formed, and to which they had laid claim in virtue of contract made before your arrival in the colony."
This passage appears to me to indicate a belief on my part, that the contracts previously made by the Company would fully enable the Crown to satisfy its engagements.
But the case might arise that these contracts were incomplete; that the claims of the Company to land were either insufficient or totally unfounded. Would it, in that case, have been my interpretation of the agreement, that the Crown was released from its promise to the Company ? or ought the grant of land to be delayed until the Company shall have established their title before the Commissioner of Land Claims?
The only answer I can give to such a question is, that I believed the extent of land which it would be in the power of the Crown to grant, to be far greater than would be enough to satisfy its engagements. I did not suppose that any claim could be set up by the Natives to the millions of acres of land which are to be found in New Zealand neither occupied nor cultivated, nor, in any fair sense, owned by any individual. I believed, therefore, that in any case the Crown could fulfil its promise; and that when so many pounds had been proved to be expended by the Company in the purchase of land, conveyance of emigrants, the purchase of stores, erection of buildings, and other purposes named in the agreement, the Crown would be able to grant to the Company four acres of land. for each pound so expended. In conclusion, I may be permitted to express a hope that Governor Fitzroy will be impowered to settle these complicated affairs in such a manner as to quiet titles and promote emigration to a colony which may hereafter become a valuable possession of the British Crown. I have, Sic. (Signed) J. RUSSELL.
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