Grey was successful in inducing the Maoris to sell a fair amount of their surplus land. During the last years of his rule and the four or five years after he went, some millions of acres were bought in the North Island. This, following on the purchase of the whole of the South Island, had opened the way for real progress. The huge estate thus gained by the Crown brought to the front new phases of the eternal land problem. The question had to be faced as to what were to be the terms under which this land was to be sold and leased to the settlers. Up to 1852 the settlers everywhere, except in Auckland, had to deal, not with the Crown, but with the New Zealand Company. But in 1852 the Company was wound up, and its species of overlordship finally extinguished. By an English Act of Parliament its debt to the Imperial Government was forgiven. The Colony was ordered to pay it £263,000 in satisfaction of its land lien. This was commuted in the end for £200,000 cash, very grudgingly paid out of the first loan raised by a New Zealand parliament. Thereafter, the Company, with its high aims, its blunders, its grievances, and its achievements, vanishes from the story of New Zealand. In the Church settlements of the South the Wakefield system came into full operation under favourable conditions. Three pounds an acre were at the outset charged for land. One pound went to the churches and their schools. This system of endowment Grey set himself to stop, when the Company's fall gave him the opportunity, and he did so at the cost of embittering his relations with the Southerners, which already were none too pleasant. For the rest, Canterbury continued within its original special area to sell land at £2 an acre. When Canterbury was made a province this area was enlarged by the inclusion of a tract in which land had been sold cheaply, and in which certain large estates had consequently been formed. Otherwise land has never been cheap in Canterbury. The Wakefield system has been adhered to there, has been tried under favourable conditions, and on the whole, at any rate up to the year 1871, could not be called a failure. As long as the value of land to speculators was little or nothing above the "sufficient price," things did not go so badly. The process of free selection at a uniform price of £2 an acre had amongst other merits the great advantage of entire simplicity. A great deal of good settlement went on under it, and ample funds were provided for the construction of roads, bridges, and other public works.