E.—No. 2a

alleged against the Waitara sale can, of course, have no application. In the same way, at the public meeting where Teu-a offered the land, and dining the many months which elapsed before the survey, he gave no reasons for his opposition, he afforded 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, or 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 laud within the boundary described, such claim would be respected." I dissent, therefore ,fiom 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 pas, 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 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 purpose 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 the Government was not to be avoided without great difficulty, rare forbeai'ance, and even tolerance of conduct which, under ordinaiy circumstances, 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 Lieutenant 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 reoccupation of the Tataraimaka Block and the abandonment of the Waitara had been effected 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 Ngatiawas, is not a sufficient reason for not doing what you had decided ought to be done at the Waitara. In conclusion, I have only to express my earnest hope that the decisive success gained by Gfi.eral Cameron and the Troops, together with a firm attitude on your part, supported by your Ministers, will make it impossible for the Natives to mistake the nature of a policy dictated by the desire to root out a belief in wrong done, and a suspicion of wrong intended against them, which might form an obstacle in the way of their reconcilment with their European fellow-subjects, and with their Sovereign. I have, &c, Newcastle. Governor Sir George Grey, K.C'.B.

NEW ZEALAND. No. 83. ~~

No. 2. copy of DESPATCH from his grace the duke of Newcastle, k.g., to governor sir GEORGE GREY, K.C.B. Downing Street, 20th August, 1863. Sir,—I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your Despatches No. 50 and 55 of the 14th and 25th of May last, informing me of some particulars which had only just come to your know-

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FURTHER PAPERS RELATIVE TO THE WAITARA.