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They will remain quiescent. They do not wish to fight, but if they are attacked they will fight to the last man." In another minute of the same date Sir William Fox referred to the amalgamation of the two Departments of Native Secretary and Land Purchase Commissioner by the union, in the person of Mr. McLean, of the two offices of Native Secretary and Chief Land Purchase Commissioner. " A prominent result," said Sir William Fox, " of this union of the political function of the Government with its commercial function as land-purchaser has been the creation in the Native mind of a suspicion that all the acts of the Government originate in a desire to get possession of their land. They have learned to look upon the Government as a gigantic landbroker, and every attempt made by it either to improve their social condition or to control them by the necessary restriction of law is supposed to have for its ultimate object the acquisition of territory. This feeling to a great extent lies at the foundation of the unsatisfactory relations at present existing between the Natives and the Government." 27. In his memorandum of the 20th June, 1863, Mr. James Fulloon stated what he understood to be the course proposed to be adopted by the Natives in the event of war taking place. " Shortly after the cessation of hostilities at Taranaki in 1861 the Waikatos," he said, " organized a plan of operations, in the event of a misunderstanding arising with the Government, as they fully believed at the time that the Government was going to press them for the part that they had taken in the Taranaki war, and also against the King movement." Mr. Fulloon then gives the details of the plan, which included attacks on the settlers in the Drury and Papakura districts, and on the settlers at Patumahoe and Waiuku. That was the first plan. It was altered afterwards to an attack on Auckland. The city was to be set on fire by some Natives at different points, and while the citizens were extinguishing the conflagration an assault was to be made on the city both by sea and land. The attack was not to have been confined to Auckland alone, and was to have taken place simultaneously all over the Island. It was intended to have been a general war against the pakeha, commencing on the Ist September, 1861, and was only averted by the news that Sir George Grey was coming to New Zealand as Governor. : ' By what I have been able to ascertain," said Mr. Fulloon, " the plan Waikato intends to follow out now is the one that I have first described." " Nothing but the firm opposition of Wi Tamihana and others to this design," said Sir John Gorst, " prevented its execution in May or the beginning of June, when the bulk of the troops were engaged at Taranaki, and Auckland lay comparatively defenceless." 28. The other events preceding the war are thus summarized by Mr. Reeves (" The Long White Cloud," p. 205) : " For eighteen months Grey and his Premier laboured for peace. They tried to conciliate the Kingite chiefs, who would not, for a long time, meet the Governor. They withdrew Governor Browne's manifesto. They offered the Natives local self-government. ... In the Waikato relations with the King's tribes were drifting from bad to worse. Grey had been called in too late. His mana was no longer the influence it had been ten years before. His diplomatic advances and offers of local government were met with sheer sulkiness. The semi-comic incident of Sir John Gorst's newspaper skirmish at Te Awamutu did no good. . . . The Government pushed on a military road from Auckland to the Waikato frontier —a doubtful piece of policy, as it irritated the Natives, and the Waikato country, as experience afterwards showed, could best be invaded with the help of river-steamers. About the same time as the Gorst incident in the Upper Waikato, the Government tried to build a police-station and barracks on a plot of ground belonging to a friendly Native lower down the river. The King Natives, however, forbade the erection, and when the work went on a party of them paddled down, seized the materials, and threw them into the stream. It was now clear that war was coming. The utmost anxiety prevailed in Auckland, which was only forty miles from the frontier, and exposed to attack from both sea and land. . . . The choice of the Government lay between attacking and being attacked. They learned, beyond a doubt, that the Waikatos were planning a march on Auckland, and in a letter written by Thompson about this time he stated this, and said that in the event of an assault the unarmed people would not be spared. By the middle of the year 1863, however, a strong force was concentrated on the