G.—l

5

"The selected lands will be divided into 1,100 sections, each section comprising one town acre, and 100 country acres ; 110 sections will be reserved by the Company, who intend to distribute the same as private property amongst the chief families .of the tribe from which the lands shall have been originally purchased. The remainder, being 990 sections of 101 acres each, are now offered for sale in sections, at the price of £101 for each section or £1 per acre. " The Company will issue orders which will entitle the holder to select one town acre and a country section of 100 acres according to a priority of choice to be determined by lot. The lots for priority of choice will be drawn in London. " An officer of the Company will draw in the same manner for the 110 sections reserved and intended for the Native chiefs, and the choice of these reserved sections will be made by an officer of the Company in the settlement, according to the priority so determined." 5. The Origin of Reserves. It will be seen that in the terms of sale provision was made for the reservation of a portion of land, equal to one-tenth, for the benefit of the Native inhabitants. The principle of reserving lands for Natives was first laid down by the New Zealand Association of 1837, which sought a method to preserve the Native population from degradation. The policy of the Association was to make provision for the chiefs, and their families, whose territory had been ceded, by reserving, to be held in trust for their use and benefit, a certain proportion of the land with which they had parted( 1 ). In his evidence before the Select Committee on New Zealand, 1840( 2 ), Edward Gibbon Wakefield, in outlining the Company's Native policy, stated, — | The only mode in which the land could be acquired was by purchase from the Native possessors, and, although such purchases had already been made by the Church Missionary Society, many members of the Company were reluctant to negotiating with savages who were quite ignorant of the value of what they were parting with, and they only adopted this course because the conduct of the Government precluded them from taking the course which they had in their original plan prepared—that no individuals should be allowed to purchase land from the Natives of New Zealand, but that land should be acquired from them only by a responsible officer of the Government. " Being compelled, however, by circumstances either to abandon the persons whose private interests were so much at stake in the progress of the scheme, or to proceed by way of purchase from the Natives, they instructed their agents, whom they despatched to New Zealand, to pay but little attention to the subject of the first consideration-money for the land, because they regarded all the payments that had been made in New Zealand by missionaries and others only as little more than nominal;, and they laid down a plan of reserves of land for the Natives which they hoped would become in the long-run a very valuable consideration indeed. They determined to reserve a portion, equal to one-tenth of all the land which they should acquire, for the Native families. This matter was fully explained to the Natives before any purchases were made, and this was conceived to be the only true consideration for the land. " The object in reserving these lands was to preserve the Native race. They believed that it would be impossible to preserve the Native race, that the Native race in New Zealand would undergo the same fate which had attended other people in their situation, unless the chief families could be preserved in a state of civilization in the same relative superiority of position as they before enjoyed in savage life ; and with this view the Company was desirous of investing them with property. " Reserves for Natives are very common things ; they have been going on for three hundred years, and have never done any good yet. They were made by the old colonies in America, and they have been made since by the United States, who have been in the habit of reserving a large block of land, declaring it to be a Native district, and forbidding the whites to settle within that district. The effect of that has been to isolate the Natives from the whites, and preserve them in a state of barbarism. The Company, having paid great attention to this subject, came to the conclusion that if the inferior race of New Zealand can be preserved at all in contact with civilized men it can only be by creating in civilized society a class of Natives who would retain the same relative superiority of position which they had enjoyed in savage life. They determined, therefore, if possible, to make a Native aristocracy, a Native gentry, and for that purpose to reserve lands as valuable property." 6. Colonel Wakefield's Instructions. From the beginning the Company had declared its intention of dealing fairly, and even benevolently, with the Natives of New Zealand, and the instructions issued to Colonel Wakefield prior to his sailing breathe the spirit of justice and humanity. The objects of the expedition were divided into three distinct classes—firstly, the purchase of lands for the Company ; secondly, the acquisition of general information as to the country ; and, thirdly, preparations for the formation, of settlements under the auspices of the Company. Dealing with the purchase of lands, the directors in these instructions stated that — " The chief difficulty with which you may have to contend is that of convincing the Natives that the expedition under your orders has no object hostile to them. They are necessarily suspicious in consequence of the ill treatment which they have often received

(*) " British Colonization of New Zealand," by Wakefield and Ward, 1837. ( 2 ) House of Commons Report on New Zealand, 1840.