G.—2b.

6

Zealand. It was first suggested by the New Zealand Association of 1837, and it has great weight with the present Company. In accordance with a plan by which the Association of 1837 was desirous that a Legislative enactment should extend to every purchaser of land from the Natives, as well past as future, you will take care to mention in every pukapuka or contract for land that a proportion of the territory ceded, equal to one-tenth of the whole, will be reserved by the Company, and held in trust by them for the future benefit of the chief families of the tribe. With the assistance of Ngati, who is perfectly aware of the value of land in England, and of such of the more intelligent Natives as have visited the neighbouring Colonies, you will readily explain that after English emigration and settlement, a tenth of the land will be far more valuable than the whole was before, and you must endeavour to point out, as is the fact, that the intention of the Company is not to make reserves for the Native owners in large blocks, as has been the common practice as to Indian reserves in North America, whereby settlement is impeded, and the savages are encouraged to continue savage, riving apart from the civilized community, but in the same way, in the same allotments, and to the same effect as if the reserved lands had been purchased from the Company on behalf of the Natives." " The Company intend to sell in England to persons intending to settle in New Zealand and others, a certain number of orders for equal quantities of land—say 100 acres each—which orders will entitle each holder thereof, or his agent, to select according to a priority of choice to be determined by lot from the whole territory laid open for settlement, the quantity of land named in the order including a certain portion of the site of the first town, and one-tenth of these land orders will be reserved for the chief families of the tribe by whom the land was originally sold, in the same way precisely as if the lots had been purchased on behalf of the Natives. The priority of choice for the Native allotments being determined by lot as in the case of actual purchasers, the selection will be made by an officer of the Company expressly charged with that duty, and made publicly responsible for its performance." " The intended reserves of land are regarded as far more important to the Natives than anything which they will have to receive in the shape of purchase- money at the same time we are desirous that the purchase money should not be less inadequate according to the English notion of the value of land than has been generally the case in the purchase of territory from the New Zealanders." As a further proof of the regard displayed by the New Zealand Company towards the Natives, Mr. Somes also points out in a letter to Lord Stanley, dated January 25th, 1843, appendix 12th report, p. 162 c, the measures adopted by the Company to provide for their future wants, and that " although the Company by way of a recompence for the moment and to comply with the exigencies of opinion, had paid down what according to received notions was a sufficient price, the real worth of the land they thought they gave only when they reserved as a perpetual possession for the Native a portion equal to one-tenth of the lands which they had purchased from him. This was a price which he could not squander away at the moment, but of which, as time passed on, the inalienable value must continually and immensely increase for his benefit and that of his children. Heir of a patrimony so large, the Native chief instead of contemplating European neighbours with jealous apprehension as a race destined to degrade and oust him, would learn to view with delight the presence, the industry, and the prosperity of those who in in labouring for themselves, could not but create an estate to be enjoyed by him without toil or risk." '• Nor was this design confined to barren speculation. In every settlement which We have formed, a portion, equal to one-tenth, of town as well as rural allotments, has always been reserved for the Natives; in the lottery by which the right of selection was determined, the Natives had their fair chance, and obtained their proportion of the best numbers; and in the plans of Wellington, Nelson, and New Plymouth, your Lordship may see the due number of sections, including some of the very best in each, marked out as Native reserves. Nor is this, even now, a valueless or contingent estate. At the most moderate average, according to the present rate of prices, the hundred acres of Native reserves in the town of Wellington alone would fetch no less than ._?20,000. And we beg to remind your Lordship that, in order to render the property available for the use of the Natives, the New Zealand Company offered more than a year ago, to advance the sum of __),000 on the security of the Wellington reserves, to be applied under the sanction of the Government, for the benefit of the Natives." Again, Mr. Somes, in a letter to Mr. Vernon Smith, dated March 19, 1841, concerning a petition addressed to the Queen from the Rev. W. Williams, a member of the Church Missionary Society, in NewZealand, praying the interposition of Her Majesty to protect the rights aud interests of the Natives in their lauds under process of colonization in the Northern Island, after refuting the charge as far as the Company was concerned goes on to say:—" The Company has never pretended that any sum paid by it to the Natives on the execution of an agreement for the purchase of land, was an adequate consideration for the property ceded. Such payments the Company has always deemed as unfit to be called by the name of purchase money." " The real consideration which in every case the Company held out to the Natives in its acquisition of territory from them was a precise engagement to reserve for the benefit of the Native proprietors such a proportion of the lands ceded as would become far more valuable than the whole, whenever the remainder should be regularly colonized by an outlay of the Company's capital, and the settlement of emigrants from this country." "Hitherto this principle of purchase has been carried into full effect with respect to only 110,000 acres of land; but the Native reserves, consisting of one-eleventh of the whole, divided into town, suburban, and country sections, which have been allotted to the Natives in the same manner as if they had been purchased from the Company at the rate of 20s. per acre, are estimated to be of the present market value of £40,000, a sum very far exceeding the whole consideration which has been given by other parties to the Natives of New Zealand during the last twenty years." With reference to certain lands in the occupation of the Natives in the Port Nicholson district in excess of the quantity they were entitled to, Mr. Somes in writing to Lord Stanley on the subject, under date December 21st, 1842 (Appendix, 12th Report of N. Z. Co., p. 130 c) remarks that "the Native reserves of which the Government is trustee for the aborigines afford abundant means for removing all existing embarrassments, and that too without alienating any considerable portion of that property which