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introducing immigrants, anil in other ways for the benefit of the settlement in general; and that by there being so much land abstracted from the saleable land, there would be so much the less payable to those several funds This is the substantial way of stating the objection, though in the protest it is made to refer only to Mr. Duppa's case, where the claimant, having been a purchaser from the Company of lands in the settlement of Wellington, was allowed compensation out of their lands at Nelson. There were subordinate objections made in the protest, such as—First, that the award made ir* favour of the claimant was, that he should have his land in one continuous block, whereas by the Company's terms of sale the lands were to be offered for selection in certain small lots, which selections were to be determined by a lottery. Seco?idly, that the upset price of the lands in that settlement was 30s. per acre; and they allege that Mr. Duppa received the land so awarded at much below the real value of the land, as well as so much below the minimum price fixed by the Company. In order to the clear understanding of the case, it must be presumed that the New Zealand Company were entitled to certain lands in the several settlements of Wellington, Nelson, and New Plymouth, which they advertised for sale on certain terms; that both the Company and the settlers at these several*settlements contemplated that these terms would be carried out in perpetuum, whereas it appears, from Mr. Fox's evidence, (taken December 20, 1854,) the whole of the original scheme of the Nelson settlement had, before the year 1848, been superseded, so far as the distribution of the lands was concerned, and that with the concurrence of the Nelson land purchasers ; and that the whole of their claims on the New Zealand Company had then been fully settled. The Nelson settlers had received compensation from the Company by reason of their several claims upon the Company in not fulfilling their engagements, in additional portions of land being transferred to them, for" which they then paid no additional price, so that they had themselves destroyed the scheme of making all the Nelson land saleable at a certain price, out of which were to arise the funds for keeping up immigration and other public purposes. What they object to in Mr. Duppa's case, they saw no objection to in their own: and as to the price at which he was to receive his compensation lands, it made no difference to them, seeing that the scheme was then abandoned. Nor could they complain that particular lands had been set apart for him, inasmuch as they had rejected those lands when they might have taken them, either by way of purchase or as compensation lands ; though in their protest they object to their having been allotted to Mr. Duppa in one continuous block, whilst others had to select in smaller portions, and that by means of a lottery : this would obviously be a disadvantage to purchasers in general as in taking a large quantity in one block the probability is that much of it would be had, and it may have been an object with the arbitrators to prevent his selecting, by making him take the bad with the good. lam much led to this conclusion by the statement of the Hon. Mr. Dillon, who says, that in cases of arbitration others had to take out the " Compensation in land at the following prices :—Rural Land, at from ss. to 20s. per acre,'' &c. He also says :—" The value of uncultivated land at some distance from the most settled parts is necessarily arbitrary; —it in fact, possesses in itself no value." Mr Fox, in his evidence, says ■. —"That the land selected by Mr. Duppa in compensation, agreeably to the terms of the submission, consisted partly of land which had been open for selection to the land purchasers at Nelson ever since 1848, and had been actually rejected by them, as well at the selection of rural lands, as in the subsequent compensation arrangements, and that the residue consisted of rugged mountain land, fitted only for pastoral purposes." Having then considered how far the Nelson settlers had a right to object to this grant, I would observe, that if Mr. Duppa did not come within the express terms of the Nelson scheme, he virtually did more than most, if not any of them, in furthering the principal object of that scheme ; that is, in securing to the settlement a large body of immigrants: for the Attorney-General, in his letter to the Colonial Secretary, dated March 16th, 1853, says, the peculiarity of Mr. Duppa's case was, " that it was a reward for services rendered, as well as compensation for losses sustained. The services rendered to the Nelson settlement, at a highly critical moment in its history, was most valuable. By a very liberal and opportune expenditure in the employment of labourers, at a time when that class was just about to help themselves by pillage, Mr. Duppa assisted largely in upholding order, if not in preventing social convulsion. Such a service deserved a most liberal recompence." Again ; —" The losses sustained by Mr. Duppa appear to have been singularly large. They were, moreover, caused in a more direct manner by the Company than the losses of other c'aimants for compensation : these persons alleged injuries and grievances of various kinds, incident to an enterprise in which they and the Company had embarked, as it were, together, and had, as it were, made common cause ; whereas a considerable portion of Mr. Duppa's claim rested on damages sustained by the unjustifiable, and, in some respects, wilful negligence, of the Company's servants at the commencement of his operations." The Attorney-General, in that letter, expresses his opinion on the case thus :—"I am satisfied that Mr. Fox, the Company's agent, had full power and authority to make such an arrangement; that it was a binding one on the Company, and, as a matter of course, a binding one on the Government, in virtue of the tenth and eleventh Vict., c. 12."