have committed himself to the purchase, and I am clearly of opinion that he would not have been justified in doing so. The information, indeed, which you now supply converts into a certainty the doubts which I expressed in my Despatch of November 27th, 1860, and upon other occasions as to the prudence of the policy pursued by Governor Browne and his Ministers, with an evident want of sufficient knowledge of the case, as well as of foresight of the consequences, though with fair and upright intentions, while it lessens the serious difficulty of abandoning a publicly declared determination in the face of armed opposition.

I have said so much as to the propriety and prudence of the Waitara purchase. But I must add on the other hand, that my view of the justice of exerting military force against W. King and his allies remains unchanged. That chief’s conduct from first to last, still seems to me to have been inconsistent with any degree of submission to the Queen’s sovereignty over New Zealand. In February, 1859, before the Waitara question arose, he had given notice to the Governor that he would allow no land to be sold within a district extending forty miles north of the European boundary at Taranaki—an interdict of a rebellious character to which the reasons now or formerly alleged against the Waitara sale can, of course, have no application. In the same way at the public meeting where Teira offered the land and during the many months which elapsed before the survey, he gave no reasons for his opposition, he offered no explanations of it, either such as were provided for him by others at the time, or such as might have been drawn from the statements which you have now conveyed to me. In short, he never assumed any attitude towards the Governor, but one of defiance, and, to use the language of Chief Justice Arney, in the Legislative Council, never made “any intelligible claim of right to the land or any other declaration than a declaration of war.”

No one can doubt that had he entered into any peaceable and loyal explanations, they would have been attended to, or that, if the Government survey had been allowed to proceed, the pahs and cultivations would not have been interfered with, nor anything done by Government officers inconsistent with the notice given by Governor Browne some months before—“that, if any man could prove his claim to any piece of land within the boundary described, such claim would be respected.” I dissent, therefore, from the view of the matter conveyed by the language which, in your despatch of the 24th April, you place in the mouth of the natives, viz., “That the people of the Waitara, without having been guilty of any crime, were driven at the point of the sword from villages, houses, and homes, which they had occupied for years,” the truth being that W. King and his followers brought these consequences upon themselves by their own conduct, and that the latter, far from being evicted (as it were) for the purpose of taking possession of the purchased land, themselves, in the consciousness of hostility, abandoned their pahs, which were only destroyed after hostile acts had been committed by W. King’s party, and military operations had actually commenced.

Again, with respect to the assertion which you attribute to the natives, that they fought in the late war simply “for their hearths and homes,” and not at all for the maintenance of “tribal right,” or the mana of the Maori king, or to prohibit the sale of land to the Crown, even by owners desirous to sell, I can only say that the great body of the evidence before me, including that of the ardent and able defenders of W. King, to whom the allegations now made seem to have been unknown, makes it impossible for me to accept them as worthy of credit. I hold, therefore, that no injustice—and it is with the question of justice only that I am now dealing—was either intended or done to W. King and his followers by the employment of military force to carry into effect the survey of the Waitara land, for the purposes of ascertaining how much or how little of it was owned by Teira and the others who joined with him in the sale to the Crown. I also believe that, in the then state of mind of a portion of the New Zealand natives, especially those of Taranaki, collision between them and Government was not to be avoided without great difficulty, rare forbearance, and even tolerance of conduct, which, under ordinary circumstance, would be incompatible with the dignity of the Crown.

These convictions, however, do not prevent me from deeply regretting the evils of the late war, and especially so, if any of the natives are under the impression that it arose out of an act of injustice committed against them by the Government. I heartily share your anxiety to remove, so far as lies in our power, any such belief for the future; and it was with that hope that I at once signified to you my approval of the course you have taken in relinquishing the completion of the Waitara purchase, without further investigation, even though that course goes beyond what I believe strict justice to require, and is exposed to the dangers pointed out by your responsible advisers. Those dangers are, of course, increased by the unfortunate chance by which the massacre of Lieut. Tragett and his men took place before the announcement of the decision which you had already formed. I am, far, however, from blaming you for the delay caused by the discussions between your Ministers and yourself upon so difficult a question, although it would have been better if the re-occupation of the Tataraimaka block and the abandonment of the Waitara, had been affected at one and the same time; and I entirely concur in your opinion that the subsequent outrage committed by the natives to the South, unconnected, apparently, with W. King and the Ngatiawa, is not a sufficient reason for not doing what you had decided ought to be done at the Waitara.