LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE GERMAN CLAIMS IN FIJI.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " EPECTATOR.1
Sia,—The Spectator is usually so carefully accurate in its relation of facts, and is always so judicially impartial in its mode of dealing with them, that I am induced to correct an erroneous statement relative to myself in an article which has just caught my eye, entitled "The Vacillation in Fiji," in your issue of January 24th, and in which you have been misled by a not unnatural reliance on the accuracy of assertions contained in the recent German White-book on Fiji.
In commenting on the German claims in Fiji, you say :—" In 1874 England accepted the cession of the Fiji Islands, taking over with them the liability of the previous Government for a number of German land-claims." (This, by the way, is not strictly correct.) "In order to set some bounds to these claims, Sir Hercules Robinson at once issued. a proclamation barring legal proceedings on all debts and contracts previous to 1871.
Apparently, if this proclamation had been left in force, the German Government would not have been alarmed for the interests of their subjects. But in 1875 Sir Arthur Gordon put out an amended proclamation by which the date of the limitation was advanced from January 1st, 1871, to October 10th, 1874."
Now, the assertion made by the German Government, and which you have repeated, is absolutely groundless. It is, no doubt, made by the German Government in good faith, in too great reliance on the inaccurate and partial statements of interested parties.
The proclamation of Sir H. Robinson, to which reference has been made, has not been restricted in its operation, and its provisions are still in full force and vigour. But this proclamation was not, as you suppose, issued in order "to set some bounds" to German (and other) land-claims, for those claims were dealt with by the Deed of Cession itself; and I may add that as a very large portion of them are founded on contracts anterior to 1871, any such limitation applied to land-claims would have produced results nearly as disastrous to German claimants as any alteration, at a later period, of the limit to 1874, had such alteration ever taken place,—which it has not.
On the establishment by Sir H. Robinson of Courts of Justice in Fiji, it was necessary to fix a date beyond which their jurisdiction should not retrospectively extend. It would have been manifestly absurd and unjust to allow civil snits to be brought, or criminal prosecutions instituted, with regard to matters which had occurred some thirty or forty years before, when the islands were first visited by white men. Yet, to make the jurisdiction of the Courts purely prospective would also have involved injustice. The 1st of January, 1871, was, therefore, chosen as the date beyond which jurisdiction should not retrospectively extend; but in November,1874, Sir H. Robinson, at thg instance of certain merchants in Sydney largely interested in Fiji, extended the period of limitation to January 1st, 1869, and those provisions were incorporated in the Supreme Court Ordinance passed by me in 1875, and are still operative.
The charge, now first brought, some ten years after date, that I had altered the limits of Sir H. Robinson's proclamation, is probably due to some confusion between the proclamation in question and another notification issued by Sir H. Robinson on the same day prohibiting all dealing with land whatsoever, judicially or otherwise, until the Queen's decision respecting existing claims—i.e., claims existing on October 10th, 1874—was known, such claims having been expressly reserved by the Deed of Cession for her Majesty's arbitrament.
. On the institution of the Lands Commission, I felt that the extremely rigorous and inconvenient prohibitions of this notification need no longer be enforced ; and it was accordingly excluded from the list of ordinances and proclamations of Sir H. Robinson, confirmed by the first enactment passed by the new Colonial Legislature, established by the Royal Charter of the Colony in 1875. On the other hand, it was manifestly impossible to permit two separate inquiries into claims to land to be concurrently carried on,—the one by the Commissioners appointed for the purpose, and the other by the operation of suits brought in the ordinary Courts of law. An ordinance was accordingly passed, prohibiting the Court from investigating any original title, or then existing claim, to land for which a Crown grant had not issued; but leaving to the Courts the fullest power of dealing with all interest whatsoever, transfers, mortgages, or other claims subsequently acquired as between parties, subject only to the decision of the Commissioner with regard to the original title.
It will thus be seen that the proclamation of Sir H. Robinson limiting the retrospective jurisdiction of the Courts has never been at all restricted in its operation ; and that another proclamation of Sir H. Robinson which really did relate to land transactions was modified by me only to relax its stringency. There has been no alteration of date affecting the inquiry into claims to land—it being mentioned in the Deed of Cession itself that all claims to land originating. before October 10th, 1874, the date of cession, were to form the subject of investigation, and that date being adopted alike by Sir H. Robinson and in my own ordinance.
I think these facts are not uninstructive as illustrating the unscrupulous nature of some of the complaints addressed to the German Government, and the credulity with which they have, without due investigation, been accepted.—I am, Sir, &c., Nuwera Eliya, Ceylon, March 16th. ARTHUR GORDON.
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