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 Land Commission
The Treaty of Waitangi, which transferred sovereignty over New Zealand to the British Crown, was first signed on 6 February 1840. Three months later New South Wales Governor George Gipps introduced to the NSW Legislative Council the New Zealand Land Claims Bill to establish a New Zealand Land Commission, which would investigate the validity of all purchases of land in New Zealand from Māori. The legislation was passed on 4 August 1840 and in late September Gipps appointed three commissioners—a lawyer, Francis Fisher, and two New South Wales military officers, retired colonel Edward Godfrey and Captain Mathew Richmond, who was a former British Resident of the Ionian Islands. Neither Godfrey nor Richmond, who carried out the bulk of the commission's work, had any legal training. They were instructed not to investigate any derivative claim—sales in which land had not been bought directly from Maori—nor any sales by non-British nationals. In September 1840 the Governor also exempted all New Zealand Company purchases from the inquiry, after receiving a deputation from settlers in Wellington who were worried they would lose their homes if the New Zealand Company's purchases were found to be deficient.