New Zealand Company
The New Zealand Company, chartered in the United Kingdom, was a company that existed in the first half of the 1800s on a business model focused on the systematic colonisation of New Zealand. The company was formed to carry out the principles devised by Edward Gibbon Wakefield, who envisaged the creation of a new-model English society in the southern hemisphere. Under Wakefield’s model, the colony would attract capitalists who would then have a ready supply of labour—migrant labourers who could not initially afford to be property owners, but who would have the expectation of one day buying land with their savings.
New Zealand Company
In late September or early October 1840 MP and New Zealand Company secretary Charles Buller appealed to the Colonial Office for help for the company which he claimed was in "distress". Over the next month the two parties negotiated a three-part agreement that, once agreed, was hailed by the company as "all that we could desire". Colonial Secretary Lord John Russell agreed to offer a royal charter for 40 years, which would allow the company to buy, sell, settle and cultivate lands in New Zealand, with the Colonial Land and Emigration Commission, formed in January 1840, to have oversight of the company's colonisation activities. Russell also agreed to assess the total sum of money the company had spent on colonisation and then grant the company title to four acres for every pound it had expended. In return the company would relinquish its claim to 20 million acres. He also promised the company a discount—at a level to be decided later—for a purchase from the government of 50,000 acres. The company began providing figures to the Colonial Office of its total outgoings, which included ₤20,000 paid to the 1825 company and ₤40,000 paid to the New Zealand Colonisation Company of 1838 as well as ₤5250 paid for the "Tory". The company's spending on placards, printing and advertising, employee salaries, and food and transport for the emigrants were also included in the total, along with the costs of goods, including firearms, that had been used to buy land. A final calculation in May 1841 was that under the agreed formula the company was entitled to an initial 531,929 acres, with possibly another 400,000 to 500,000 acres to come. In May Russell agreed to allow the company a 20 percent discount on the cost of 50,000 acres it wished to buy in New Plymouth and Nelson.