A mission upon a more extensive scale and one fraught with more important issues was entrusted to the Rev. Henry Williams. To this virile Missionary was allotted the task of bearding the lion in his den, for the Lieutenant-Governor had every reason to believe that the officers of the New Zealand Company would use whatever influence they possessed to prevent the consummation of a policy which in its ultimate effects they surmised would be so prejudicial to their own. For this assumption events proved there was only too much justification. The Government had, however, put its hand to the plough; and in Mr. Williams, Colonel Wakefield found a match both in determination and diplomacy. A small schooner, the _Ariel_, owned and sailed by Captain Clayton, was chartered for the journey, and late in March they set off, calling at Tauranga and Poverty Bay _en route_, leaving copies of the treaty for local circulation as they went. The _Ariel_ reached Port Nicholson late in April, her coming being by no means a welcome circumstance to the principal agent of the Company. The first meeting between Colonel Wakefield and the Missionary took place on the Saturday after arrival, at the house of Mr. Hunter, and was more animated than friendly. The former had either not yet received--or chose to ignore--the private instructions of his superiors in England, to afford Captain Hobson all the aid and assistance in his power towards the attainment of British sovereignty.[121] For ten days the Colonel doggedly held on his course of opposition, during which time there was a frequent clash of wordy weapons, the soldier seeking to vindicate the independence of his settlement on the ground that they had acquired their rights from the chiefs prior to the intervention of the Crown; the missionary maintaining that no such rights could be acquired by British subjects without the consent of the Sovereign. Whether or not the constitutional nature of this argument appealed to the Colonel, it is impossible to say. In all probability it did not, but there are ample reasons for concluding that the governing influence in his conduct was a desire to obtain possession of a block of forty acres of land in what was then the most valuable portion of the infant settlement of Wellington, and to which Mr. Williams had acquired an undoubted title. Wakefield's subsequent actions at least indicate that his surrender did not carry with it his conversion to the treaty, which he still strove to persuade himself could not affect the purchases of the Company. But whatever the considerations that influenced him, just as the Missionary was preparing to depart in disgust, he at length[122] consented to withdraw his objections to the chiefs considering the treaty, and retracting what Mr. Williams has been pleased to designate as his "insolent" remarks.