| 1. | The right of the inhabitants of the Province of Otago to the lands reserved for public purposes has this peculiarity, that it is a purchased right. |
| 2. | All the lands within the settlement sold hitherto have been sold under the Terms of Purchase arranged between the New Zealand Company and the Otago Association, and on the cessation of the Company adopted by the Imperial Government and acted on in concert with the Association. |
| 3. | By Article 12 of the said Terms of Purchase it is expressly stipulated, that in laying out the chief town of the settlement, named Dunedin, due provision was to be made for public purposes, as fortifications, public buildings, sites for places of public worship and instruction, baths, wharves, quays, cemetcries, squares, a park, and other places for health and recreation; for all which instructions have already been given to the Company's Principal Agent. |
| 4. | The whole clause was framed in this general way to avoid stereotyping any specific part of said lands for a specific purpose, in consequence of some difficulties having been experienced in the older settlements from that course having been pursued—land having been set apart for a gaol and other land for a garden, when it was subsequently found that their destination should have been reversed. |
| 5. | Most of the sales of land in this settlement were accordingly made after, in pursuance of that article, the reserved lands to which a conveyance has been requested were set apart, reserved, and destined for the above public purposes generally. |
| 6. | The community in this way acquired an undoubted right to them independently of "The Public Reserves Act, 1854," which also confers a right. |
| 7. | And what the Superintendent in his despatch of 15th September, No. 50, requested was, that they might be conveyed in a manner corresponding to the stipulation in the Terms of Purchase, and its object and intention as above expressed. |
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