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

No. 47. — Memorandum by Native Secretary on Native Reserves at Port Chalmers and Dunedin

No. 47.
Memorandum by Native Secretary on Native Reserves at Port Chalmers and Dunedin.

I Have carefully read the latest documents herewith upon this question. It still to my mind remains a very simple one.

It is urged—

1.That the Dunedin Native Reserve was originally laid off in town sections. Of this there seems no doubt.
2.That it, with much more of the water frontage, was afterwards, but before any selection by purchasers had taken place, reserved from selection. Of this there is no doubt.page 133
3.That the object of this reservation was to keep the water frontage open for public use. It appears that in consenting to the reservation the New Zealand Company had this object in view. On the period and extent of adherence to this intention I shall have to refer again.
4.The facts of the selection as Native Reserves, by direction of His Excellency the Governor, of the site at Dunedin and that at Port Chalmers, of the purchase for Government of a frontage section at the latter place, in order to add it to the Native Reserve there, and of the approval of these reserves by the Governor, are not questioned.
5.So that, after all, the question narrows itself to one of the Governor's power at that time so to dispose of these lands; of his intention there is no doubt asserted or maintainable.
6.In communicating to the Principal Agent of the New Zealand Company the amended terms of purchase for the Otago Association Block, and the information that the New Zealand Company had consented to increase the number of properties to be sold and settled by the Otago Association to 2,400, Mr. Harrington, on the part of the Company, distinctly admits the right of the local Government to make in the Otago Block reserves for the Natives in addition to those lands, which, as they were merely excluded from the purchase, were scarcely to be considered Native Reserves under the New Zealand Company's scheme. There can, I submit, be no doubt that the local Government possessed a power, thus recognized by the Company which alone would be the territorial loser by its exercise.
7.At the time when I recommended these reserves, the Company was defunct. The Otago Association, having failed to dispose of more than a small fraction of the lands intrusted to its agency, had also deceased; and although, to the extent of honoring such few land orders as the Colonial Land and Immigration Commissioners could dispose of, and maintaining the old prices of the surveyed sections until the General Assembly should otherwise direct, the home Government desired the terms to be adhered to "so far as conveniently might be," and the lands administered in "general conformity" with them, there was really no loss to the community in the prospective abandonment of terms of purchase which had never been strictly adhered to, and of terms of pasturage which had never been enforced. By 15th December, 1852, the legal control over the land had devolved upon Her Majesty, whose representative, on 3rd June, 1853, approved of these reserves.
8.But it is said that these sections at Dunedin were reserved as water frontages to be kept open as a wharf. I refer to the letter of Mr. Gillies in the correspondence relative to the Manse site, which adjoins the Dunedin Native Reserve, and includes all of it which in the early days of the settlement was supposed to have any value. From this I learn that that, as well as other valuable portions of the more westerly water frontage, were from the earliest days of the settlement appropriated to other purposes.
I have formerly recorded the manner in which all the best sites of this so-called Wharf Reserve were parcelled out. So it remained until the proclamation of the Constitution, when by regulations* under one of the first Acts, No. 9, of the Provincial Council, it, was sought to prevent any one landing anything anywhere except on the jetty, and the occupant of the smithy marked on one of the annexed tracings was charged before the bench, in my presence, with having landed coals at his own door. Since this time the local authorities have, I believe, filled in the harbour along all this disputed frontage. It has therefore gone through three stages—
(1.)Water frontage occupied by private individuals.
(2.)Water frontage which it was illegal to use.
(3.)An irregular frontage to reclaimed land.
9.It is said that from the arrival of the settlers to the present time, it (meaning, I suppose, the Native Reserve,) has partly been used as a site for public buildings. From December, 1848, to January, 1855, I remember no building upon it but a wretched shanty used by a blacksmith who had squatted there. No public buildings were erected there until after His Excellency had approved of it as a Native Reserve.
10.In making my recommendation of these reserves, I was merely discharging my duty to the Government of which I was an officer, by advising it to remedy the wants of a people whom it was bound to protect. I am charged with not having obtained the concurrence and sanction of the Provincial Government. That would scarcely have been a part of my duty, even had that institution existed at the time.
11.It only remains for me, with a regret equal to that which he expresses, to remove a misconception into which the Hon. the Postmaster-General appears to have fallen. There is sot to my knowledge any documentary evidence of his having used the plea that the land was too valuable for the Natives.

He did, however, advance that plea towards the close of the conference, to which I adverted when I had, as I thought, successfully refuted every other which he had used; but so far from concurring in it, Mr. Cutten, the Commissioner of Crown Lands, immediately protested against it. For me, my surprise at such an argument from such a source deprived me for the moment of the power of replying.

While I willingly acquit my hon. colleague of having the least desire now to advance such a plea, I cannot believe with him that it is one which would find no advocates in Dunedin, or indeed any other town in New Zealand.

On the contrary, the unexpected increase in the value of these reserves is undoubtedly and naturally the cause of the opposition to their appropriation to Native purposes; no one can suppose that there would be so strong a feeling against it were they of as trifling value now as at the time when that appropriation was made.

12.I would remind my colleagues that the reserves in dispute are two:—1. At Dunedin, 3 acres; 2. At Port Chalmers, 1 acre 3 roods 24 perches.
19th June, 1865.

Walter Mantell.

P.S.—I have, since writing the foregoing, received the minute of same date of the Hon. the Postmaster-General. I do not at present offer any remark upon it.

Walter Mantell.

* As the Otago Gazette of the period cannot be found, I give this from memory only.