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ing to received notions, to be a sufficient price, but they considered the real worth of the land purchased from them to be the reserves set apart for their maintenance, and for schools, hospitals, and other useful establishments. In the instructions issued by the company to Colonel Wakefield, its principal agent, who was intrusted with the purchase of land for the company in New Zealand, the following principles were laid down relative to its acquisition from the Natives : " But in one respect you will not fail to establish a very important difference between the purchases of the company and those which have hitherto been made by every class of buyers. Wilderness land, it is true, is worth nothing to its Native owners, or worth nothing more than the trifle they can obtain for it. We are not therefore to make much account of the utter inadequacy of the purchase-money according to English notions of the value of land. The land is really of no value, and can become valuable only by means of a great outlay of capital in emigration and settlement. But at the same time it may be doubted whether the Native owners have ever been entirely aware of the consequences that would result from such cessions as have already been made of the whole of the lands of a tribe. Justice demands not merely that these consequences should be as far as possible explained to them, but that the superior intelligence of the buyers should also be exerted to guard them against the evils which, after all, they may not be capable of anticipating. The danger to which they are exposed, and, they cannot well foresee, is that of finding themselves entirely without landed property, and therefore without consideration in the midst of a society where, through emigration and settlement, land has become a valuable property. Absolutely they would suffer little or nothing from having parted with land which they do not use and cannot exchange, but relatively they would suffer a great deal, inasmuch as their social position would be very inferior to that of the race who had settled amongst them and given value to their now worthless property. If the advantage of the Natives alone were consulted it would be better perhaps that they should remain for ever uncivilised. This consideration appears never to have occurred to any of those who have hitherto purchased land from the Natives of New Zealand. It was first suggested by the New Zealand Association of 1837, and it has great weight with the present Company. In accordance with a plan of which the association of 1837 was desirous that a legislative enactment should extend to every purchase of land from the Natives, as well past as future, you will take care to mention in every contract for land that a proportion of the territory ceded, equal to ' one-tenth ' of the whole, will be reserved by the Company and held in trust by them for the future benefit of the chief families of the tribe, and you will readily explain that after English emigration and settlement a tenth of the land will be far more valuable than the whole was before." The same subject is again alluded to in a letter addressed by Mr. Somes, a director of the New Zealand company, to the Colonial Office in March, 1841. "The company has never pretended that any sum paid by it to the Natives on the execution of an agreement for the purchase of land was an adequate consideration for the property ceded. Such payments the company has always deemed unfit to be called by the name of purchase-money." The real consideration, which in every case the Company held out to the Natives in its acquisition of territory from them, was a precise engagement "to reserve for the benefit of the Native proprietors such a proportion of the lands ceded as would become far more valuable than the whole, whenever the remainder should be regularly colonised by an outlay of the company's capital and the settlement of emigrants from this country." The above extracts, relative to the principle of purchase to be observed in the acquisition of land from the Natives, contain abundant and clear evidence as to the views then held both by the Imperial Government and the New Zealand Company. The views held by the Imperial Government were that land in its original state was only worth a nominal price, but that the real advantage to be conferred on the Natives for the cession of any portion of their territory they desired to alienate was the enhancement in value of the then remaining lands by the introduction of capital and labour, as well as the reservation of an ample extent of land to meet all their real wants, inclusive of the necessary provision requisite to compensate them for the loss of the privileges they had previously enjoyed in hunting and fishing at will over their wilderness lands. The promotion of works of public utility, in opening up the country for settlement, and the advancement of the social and moral welfare of the Natives, was also considered a further requital for the surrender of land possessing scarcely any exchangeable value. The New Zealand Company held similar views respecting the value of land in its wild state. The money paid was not considered an adequate recompense for the cession of the land acquired. The real worth given was the reservation of a tenth of the land ceded as a perpetual possession for the Native owners. This was a property that could not be squandered away at the moment, but must continuously and immensely increase for the benefit of themselves and their children. A perusal of the facts already narrated will furnish ample evidence that the fundamental principles laid down were not adhered to in acquiring land in the Middle Island, neither in the reservation of sufficient land for Native purposes, nor in compensating the Native owners for the loss of a large share of their means of subsistence through depriving them of their hunting and fishing rights. It surely could not be considered that the enhancement in value of the few thousand acres reserved for the vendors of Kemp's Block by the introduction of capital and labour into the colony, or the small payment of £2,000 for the cession of over twenty million acres, was a sufficient recompense for so valuable a territory, even if measured by the amount of benefit the original owners had derived from it. The enhancement in value originally contemplated as a sufficient recompense and inducement for the cession by the Natives of some of their surplus land did not refer to the increased value of a few reserves of limited extent, but to the enhanced value through the settlement of the colony of other lands remaining in their possession. The Natives in the southern provinces of the Middle Island were unfortunately not in a position to be benefited by this increased