G.—2.

There Avere altogether 518 awards of the Court, in twelve divisions, covering a little under 80,000 acres. Details are fully given in the Appendix, together Avith ' the Avay in which they have been as yet disposed of. Now it was of the essence of the laAv, that whatever land was awarded by the Court should be surveyed and Crown-granted. The Amending Settlements Act of 1865 expressly required that " every award should be accompanied with such plans and particulars as should be prescribed by regulation." Accordingly regulations Avere made in June 1866 by Order in Council, requiring that every award should haA'e a plan of the land indorsed on or annexed to it; and this condition Avas repeated in a second Order of Council to the same effect the ensuing year. But the framers of the regulations unfortunately made them mutually exclusive : two things were required to be done which. Avere contradictory; namely, (a) the award was to define a parcel of land already selected and surveyed, yet (b) the selection was not to be made until a certain time after the award. The Court was called upon to do an impossibility, and naturally did not do it. AAvards for more than 60,000 acres were not signed for three years after the judgments, and when they were signed, the words Avhich (as the Order in Council enjoined) Avere inserted in the printed form to describe the land, were struck out. In point of formal validity, therefore, there is no doubt that the awards of the Court were not made in accordance with the law, and that they are thereby reduced from the rank of a statutory " determination " to that of mere promises or engagements binding in good faith upon the Crown. There are so many intricate questions to be determined before these awards can be settled, that we cannot pretend to describe them all. We give a feAV of the prominent ones, to shoAV the tangle into which the matter has got. I. Among the aAvards north of Waitara, there were the following, made to 251 claimants : — Acres. Division I. Claim A. Waipingao to Titoki ... 3,158 Division 11. Claim B. Titoki to Urenui ... ... 6,150 Division 111. Claim C. Urenui to Rau-o-te-Huia ... 3,150 DiAdsion V. Claim E. Titirangi to Waitara ... 1,185 11,813 In October 1866, the claimants interested in these awards entered into agreements Avith the Government to accept certain lands in satisfaction of their claims; and in November 1867, a Gazette notice A\ ras issued bv Sir E. Stafford announcine: the arrangements. Notwithstanding this, the Court issued the awards to the claimants in 1869, three years after the arrangements had been entered into. The 1,185 acres between Titirangi and Waitara Avere subdivided and the titles individualized, but nothing has been done for the allocation of the remainder, amounting to 13,358 acres. Many of the claimants have since participated in tbe sale of various blocks to tho CroAvn, Avhere their allocations ought to have been made; and it is uncertain AAdiether by that participation they forfeited their awards. The question AA ras raised by the Hon. Mr. Sheehan in 1879, and Ave examined into it ourselves, whether the selling Natives understood that their awards Avere to merge in the sale, and Avhether they had. been asked to surrender their awards so far as these Avere exercisable over the ceded land. Mr. Parris himself believed at the time of the cessions that the aAvards of sellers merged in the sale; but the question Avas never asked of the Natives, and many of them did not participate in any sale. It will be a difficult thing to determine what is fair, and no general rule can possibly be applied to all alike. In addition to the above, there is an award of 2,000 acres (in Division VI. Waitara to Manganui) made for the Pukerangiora tribe by the Court, Avhich has yet to be allocated as Avell as the others : and this makes 15,358 acres of compensation aAvards of the Court still to be allocated north of Waitara. 11. South of Stoney River.—The awards of the Court yet to be satisfied in this part of the district are as follows : —

1866. Appendix B, Nos. 4, 5, 6, 7.

New Zealand Settlements Act Amendment and Continuance Act, 1865, section 12. Orders in Council, 16th June 1866, 3rd September 1867.

Appendix B, No. 1.

Parris, Evidence, Q. 793, 800, 803.

Minnte, Hon. Mr. Sheehan, 14th April 1879: P.P. 1879, '0.-4. Parris, Evidence, Q. 771 to 778.

XXXVI