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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Rare Volume

Mr. Secretary Cardwell and the Right of Petition

Mr. Secretary Cardwell and the Right of Petition.

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There is a community of British subjects—"our own flesh and blood"—"fellow-Christians with ourselves"—living in Her Majesty's Province of Auckland, in the northern part of New Zealand, who have for years been treated by the Queen's Colonial Minister as if they had no claim on the protection of the Sovereign to whom they owe allegiance. Between the year 1853 and the present date no less than eight petitions have been presented to the Throne, and six to each House of Parliament from that province, praying for relief from the tyranny to which they have been subjected under a form of government inconsistent with the rights and free customs of British colonists. But a deaf ear has been turned to all their petitions. Had their blood circulated under a negro skin, or ad they been Maori flesh and blood, even of the most compound quality, they would not have wanted advocates, Philanthropists would have rejoiced to labour in their behalf, and their wrongs would long since have commanded the attention of the Government and of the Parliament. Had they suffered the wrongs of which they complain at the banda of persons invested with authority under the Government of a foreign nation the Foreign-office would at once have been put in motion, and the public voice would have been loud in demanding redress. But being neither negroes nor Maories, they have been left to be "evil entreated through tyrants" and these tyrants not being foreigners, but their own countrymen, they have pleaded for redress in vain.

That these are not mere fanciful or theoretical complaints let the following farts, which are selected from a host of others of a similar character, testify:—

In Sir George Grey's former a [ministration of New Zealand it suited his "policy" to dispossess about a hundred of the pioneers of British settlement in the Auckland Province of certain lands which they had purchased from the native owners under the authority of his predecessor in the Government, who had also pledged the national faith by a proclamation under the seal of the colony to confirm the titles thus acquired by a grant from the Crown, Amongst the persona who were thus dispossessed of their property were three widows For two of these no redress could be obtained, either through the local Legislature or by appeal to the Secretary of State; but the third was a Maori woman who had been married to a white man, one of the interpreters in the service of the Government, Her case was peculiar. Had she lived with the white man as his concubine her land would have been held sacred, under the provisions of the Treaty of Waitangi, But being a page 4 lawful wife her land became the property of her husband and it consequently fared no better than other land which had passed from the native owners into the possession of British colonists, and had been seized and sold by the Government, Her case, however was brought under the notice of the Aboriginal Protection Society, and, though she did not obtain restitution, she received compensation in some other form through the representations of that society.

If it should seem to anyone an incredible thing that a British Governor, acting as the representative of our gracious Queen, should rob a poor widow with five young daughters of her land, all doubt upon the subject can be set at rest by an examination of the published proceedings of the Legislature of New Zealand, and by the Government Gazette of that colony. The Government Gazette of the 10th August, 1847, contains a notification that the title to 9 acres, 3 roods, and 25 poles of land claimed by the widow Forbes had been investigated and found valid by the Commissioner, and that a grant in confirmation of the same was in preparation. But she soon after received a printed letter informing her that a grant had been made out in her favour, the blank being filled up with 1 acre, 1 rood, and 35 poles, instead of 9 acres, 3 roods, and 25 poles, as reported by the Commissioner appointed by Sir George Grey to investigate such titles; and she was further informed that unless the fees upon the grant were paid within one month "the claim would be disallowed, the grant cancelled, and the Surveyor-General directed to take possession of the property." The rest of the land was divided into allotments, and sold by the Colonial Treasurer by public auction. In her memorial to the Legislative Council this widow stated that in order to pay for this plot of land which she was authorised by Governor Fitzroy to purchase from the native owners as a provision for herself and her seven children she had sold her watch and her trinkets, and she stated before a Committee of the Legislature that she had offered all the resistance in her power to the surveyors who were sent to subdivide her land by pulling up their marks.

Again it will be asked what motive could have induced Sir George Grey to act the part of Ahab towards this poor widow's little plot of land. The true motives of Governors as well as of other men are only known to the Searcher of Hearts, Nevertheless, it may be stated that at this time the colonising doctrines of Mr. Gibbon Wakefield were very generally credited in England, and that there was in the colony a very general impression that, backed by the vast Parliamentary influence of the New Zealand Company, that gentleman had power sufficient to make or unmake a Governor. It was also stated in the Provincial Council that the only explanation of "a transaction so atrocious" was Sir G. Grey's wish to convince the New Zealand Company that he was entirely devoted page 5 to their service. The Blue-books show that the powerful influence of this company was exerted to prevent the recognition of the titles of the first pioneers of British settlement in the north, and to prevent them from being left in possession of their lands even after their titles had been duly investigated and found valid. The company represented that to maintain those rights was an injury to their own settlers; and in one of his despatches Sir George Grey stated—" I feel, further, a great reluctance to be in any way concerned in inflicting upon the southern settlements the injury which I see is likely to overtake them "—that is, by fulfilling the contract entered into by his predecessor to confirm by a Crown grant the purchases he ad sanctioned.

These transactions are, indeed, of an old date, but they and transactions of a like nature are at the bottom of all the troubles which have afflicted New Zealand. But the same repudiation of the right of British colonists to the protection of their Sovereign has continued to the present day; while the claims of the Maories, even of those who had been engaged in the rebellion, but "whose guilt was of a less heinous character," have been fully admitted.

In a despatch to Sir George Grey, dated April 26th, 1864, Mr. Cardwell instructed him that no natives, not concerned in the rebellion, should be deprived of their land, unless "it is absolutely required for some purpose of defence or communication, or on similar grounds of necessity;" in which case he was to "retain to his own hands ample power of doing substantial justice to every class of [Maori] claimants for restitution or compensation." But he refused to interfere in behalf of colonists who had been dispossessed of their lands, even after those lands had been proved before a Legislative Commission to have been "acquired on equitable conditions"—on proof of which the faith of the Crown was pledged by a proclamation published in the name of Her Majesty to confirm the titles of the owners by "a grant to be made in Her Majesty's name and on her behalf."

The following correspondence has taken place between a Committee of Auckland Colonists now in London and the Colonial Secretary of State Some of these colonists are intimately acquainted with the transactions of the Government in New Zealand, and are qualified, by a residence of from twenty to more than thirty years in that country, to elucidate the questions which have made New Zealand "a puzzle" to the British public.

But in seeking for inquiry they labour under this disadvantage, that it is the prevailing idea in England that the colonists, being in possession of what is called self-government, have no need of the intervention of the Imperial Government and Legislature. Whereas, in fact, what they have most reason to complain of in the New Zealand Constitution Act is that, by page 6 its complicated provisions, self-government in any definite and intelligible meaning of the words is rendered impossible.

Let it be supposed, in illustration, that there existed in different parts of the British Islands six distinct municipalities, at distances from each other varying from 150 to 600 miles, each of which possessed the power or levying rates and taxes for local objects, and the other powers of self-government usually granted to municipalities; and let it be further supposed that the people constituting these municipalities had power to elect representatives who had authority to subject all the six municipalities to an equal rate of taxation (in addition to what each had power to levy for local objects) to be expended upon any purpose which the majority of these representatives might choose to designate general objects. Would such a preposterous institution be considered consistent with the self-government of any of the municipalities, or would it be tolerated for a single day? But such is the institution which has existed in New Zealand for thirteen years—where it is not only equally preposterous, but where it also enables the representatives of a majority to subject the minority to the dangers and losses of war, from which those who constitute that majority are themselves exempt.

The London Committee of the Auckland colonists are anxious to prove before a Committee of the British Parliament that their complaints are well grounded, and that the oppressions which they and their fellow-colonists in the Province of Auckland have suffered, and from which they have, almost to a man, petitioned to be delivered, are also the causes why so many precious lives have been sacrificed and so much British treasure wasted in New Zealand. In seeking redress for themselves they are also seeking to relieve the mother country from the recurrence of similar evils, and the national honour from being tarnished by an abuse of the functions of government disgraceful to a civilised community, They believe that a full investigation of the present system of colonial administration, as exemplified in New Zealand, might be the means of saving the British Empire from disruption, and of restoring the status of British colonists to what it was at no distant date, when the words "I am a British subject" were as sure a protection from oppression in all parts of the world as were the Civis Romanus sum in the best days of the old Roman Empire.