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A compendium of official documents relative to native affairs in the South Island, Volume One.

No. 37. — His Honor the Superintendent, Otago, to the Hon. the Postmaster-General

No. 37.
His Honor the Superintendent, Otago, to the Hon. the Postmaster-General.

Superintendent's Office, Dunedin, 13th April, 1865.

Sir,—

The subject which has been brought under my notice by your letter of this date has on several previous occasions occupied my attention.

I am not prepared to say whether His Excellency the Governor has or has not the legal right to grant the reserve in question to the Maoris, but there are strong grounds for believing, were equity consulted, that no such act would be effected. I will briefly state the grounds upon which I base this opinion:—

1.On the original survey plans of the town of Dunedin, signed by Mr. Kettle, Chief Surveyor, in 1846, the reserve in question is shown as divided into sections.
2.That, through instructions from the Chief Agent of the New Zealand Company, the sections forming the reserve in question, together with the other sections possessing frontages to the harbour, were reserved from sale.
3.That some of the early settlers, who had intended to make choice of some of the sections so reserved, felt aggrieved that their rights of selection had been thus restricted.
4.That the piece of reserved land now sought to be allotted to the Natives is said to have been provisionally reserved by Mr. Mantell for their use during the time he held the office of Commissioner of Crown Lands for this Province, and that His Excellency Sir George Grey confirmed the Commissioner's act.
5.That such reserve, if made, was made without the knowledge or sanction of the local authorities.
6.That a similar misappropriation of a public reserve in the town of Dunedin was attempted in the year 1853, but the attempt having come to the knowledge of the members of the Provincial Council before the Governor's sanction could be obtained to the steps taken, the evil was averted.

The evidence with regard to this particular case will be found in the Appendix to the Votes and Proceedings of the first Session of the Provincial Council of Otago, 1853-54, and relates to the Octagonal Reserve now partly occupied by the Cargill Monument.

7.That the precise time at which it became known to the Provincial Government that a grant of the reserve in question to the Natives was proposed to be made probably cannot now be settled with certainty, but there can be no doubt that had the Government or the Provincial Council of that day believed that such a grant was ever likely to take practical effect, such an alienation of public property would have been strenuously opposed.
8.That the withdrawal of the land in question frem sale, making it a public reserve and afterwards withdrawing that reserve and granting it, without the knowledge and consent of the local authorities, to private persons, whether Natives or Europeans, would be an act, if carried into effect, liable to be stigmatized as unjust to the original land purchasers in Otago, and to the general public also.

I should have communicated with the General Government on this subject before now, but since my interview with Mr Clarke in May, 1864, I have been, hitherto without success, endeavouring to discover some documentary evidence relative to the original reserve of the water frontage to Dunedin Harbour, which I have reason to believe is in existence, and which would possibly be of importance as indicating the objects contemplated by such reserve.

I am about to institute further researches for these records amongst the papers of the late Captain Cargill, which have been kindly placed at my disposal by Mr E. B. Cargill, of Dunedin, and I am not without hopes that I may yet discover them. Whether my efforts in that direction may prove successful or otherwise, I believe the facts to remain much the same as I have stated them, and have therefore the honor to request that the Commissioner of Crown Lands may be instructed to pay over to the Provincial Treasurer all sums of money now in his hands which have been derived from the property in the character of rants.

I have further, in the name and on behalf of the Province, to record my protest against any act whereby the reserves in question may be transferred to the trustees, or otherwise used for Native purposes.

I have, &c.,

J. Hyde Harris, Superintendent.

The Hon. the Postmaster-General.