The announcement that the New Zealand Company has been abruptly
brought to a pause in its operations, will create wider and deeper conster- nation than even the massacre at Wairau. The Company is unable to maintain the struggle with the difficulties put in its way by the Govern- ment. It is three years last month since the New Zealand Company gave a dinner to Lord John Russell, in commemoration of the com- pact with Government, that was to place at the disposal of the Com- pany broad tracts of land, which it was to colonize. After having established important and promising settlements, and having expended
half a million of money in the process, the Company finds itself at the end of the three years as far off as ever from obtaining fulfilment of the Government part of the contract—Government has not con- veyed to the Company the title to a single acre of land, nor per- formed towards the colonizing body any of the duties of a Govern- ment. Its only acts have been to quarter protégés upon the set- tlements established by private enterprise, as Secretaries, Protectors of Aborigines, Commissioners of Land Claims, Customhouse-officers, and the like; and to rob the chief settlement of many thousands a year of revenue, abstracted without return. Had the officials merely let New Zealand alone, to shift for itself in utter neglect, the settlers would have shifted for themselves, successfully : but the Colonial Office imposed the restraints and the burdens without the protection and aid of a Govern- ment.
The Company held a general meeting yesterday, at their house in Broad Street Buildings ; and the following report was submitted to the shareholders.
"TENTH REPORT OF THE DIRECTORS OF THE NEW ZEALAND COMPANY.
" When the advertisement calling this meeting was issued, your Directors an- ticipated that it would be their duty to submit to you today a statement of the condition of the Company's affairs, and to recommend to you, in consequence, the adoption of certain proceedings. They have now to inform you, that it is not in their power to fulfil any part of that intention, and to acquaint you briefly with the grounds of their present reserve.
" When they call your attention to the fact, that this Company has been en- gaged for five years in forming settlements, whose population now exceeds 10,000 souls, at a cost of above 500,0001., (besides a much larger outlay by the settlers themselves,) but that its title to land is yet unsecured by the grant of a single acre from the Crowns—and when you reflect on the consequences, as respects safety of property, and even life, of recent events in New Zealand,—you will not require any further reference to the causes of this calamitous state of things in order to understand that the Company is at this moment deprived of all means of usefulness as an instrument of colonization, and in great danger of becoming a total wreck as respects even the property of the shareholders and the settlers.
"Under these circumstances, your Directors have been compelled to suspend entirely the proceedings of the Company as a colonizing body ; and they have made representations to her Majesty's Government of the actual state of your affairs, in the hope that some arrangement may be made by which the con- fidence of the public in the Company's powers of usefulness may be restored, both here and in New Zealand. It is this confidence, your Directors feel per- fectly satisfied, which is alone wanting to enable the Company to carry out the objects of their incorporation on a continually increasing scale. With this confidence, the most sanguine of the views of the founders of the Company may be realized; but without it, you must of necessity retire from an enterprise, the further pursuit of which, unless the cause of its present failure be removed, can only result in more extensive disappointment and ruin.
" Your Directors anxiously trust that the representations which they have made to the Secretary of State for the Colonies on this subject, may be favour- ably received; and they suggest to you the propriety of adjourning this meet- ing fur a fortnight, without asking further explanations of them, or adopting any other -resolution, until it shall be in their power to lay before you the final result of their correspondence with his Lordship."
This report was adopted unanimously ; and the meeting was adjourned to the 29th instant.
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