for public purposes, and the balance of the city divided into quarter-acre sections. The suburban land was to be divided into ten-acre blocks. Prices were fixed, quarter-acre sections £25, of which one-sixth, or £4 3s. 4d., was to be paid to the New Zealand Company; suburban ten-acre blocks at £150, the New Zealand Company again getting a sixth share. These prices applied to town and suburban land in the capital; the prices in subordinate towns was lower. Rural land was to be sold to settlers at £3 per acre, and no order to be issued for less than fifty acres. All applications received within the first six months were to rank equally, after that priority was to be given in order of application.
There were also some regulations giving exclusive rights of pasturage over unoccupied lands to “land purchasers,” which, as will be seen, were the cause of some trouble later on, and the pamphlet concluded with a reprint of a very cordial correspondence between Lord Lyttelton and Earl Grey regarding the proposed settlement.
In the meantime money was required in London for preliminary expenses, obtaining the charter (the Association was not yet incorporated), and other things, and in the colony for surveying the land and preparing for the arrival of the first settlers. This money could be obtained only from the New Zealand Company, and on the personal guarantee of individual members of the Association. By this method, in May, 1848, an advance of £25,000 was arranged, of which £5,000 was retained for preliminary expenses in London, and £20,000 sent out for starting the necessary work in New Zealand. No doubt, the influence of the members of the committee was of great value to the Association, both with the Home Government and with the New Zealand Company on the one hand, and with intending settlers on the other; but for the practical conduct of its business, the large and unweildy committee must have been a serious
