This modest little dissertation on the Royal genealogy appeared to satisfy him on that point, for he immediately adverted to the native wars, and more particularly to their own hostilities with the Rotorua tribes. Major Bunbury assured him that one of the principal objects of his mission was to persuade all the tribes at present at war to accept the mediation of the Governor, and to induce them to abide by his decision. "If then your nation is so fond of peace, why have you introduced into this country firearms and gunpowder?" was his pertinent rejoinder. To this Major Bunbury replied that the effects of this traffic had been much deplored by Her Majesty's Government, who were most anxious to mitigate its consequences by substituting justice and a regular form of government in their country for the anarchy which had prevailed, but this could only be done by the surrender of the sovereign rights to the Queen as asked for in the treaty. His next enquiry was whether the Queen governed all the white nations? "Not all," replied Major Bunbury, "but she is the Queen of the most powerful white nation." The Major then went on to explain that Britain had acknowledged the Maoris as an independent nation, but that arrangement had proved abortive in consequence of the native wars and their want of cohesion. To themselves alone therefore were to be attributed the evils from which they suffered. As a corrective for these political troubles the Government had not leagued themselves with other white nations to force an unwelcome authority upon them, but they had come direct to the Maoris themselves, and asked them as a spontaneous gift to vest in Britain the power to avert the evils which were assuredly accumulating round them; evils due to the increasing influx of the _Pakeha_, and who must otherwise remain subject to no law and amenable to no control. "On being told," continues Major Bunbury's report, "that I was a chief of a body of soldiers, and that I had served under the monarchs already named, he enquired should his tribe, agreeable to my request, abstain from making war upon the natives at Rotorua, would the Governor send a portion of my force to protect them? I told them Your Excellency desired rather to mediate between them, and only in cases of extreme emergency would you be prevailed upon to act in any other manner. If, however, your arbitration was applied for I had no doubt the custom of their country would be complied with, by your insisting on a compensation being made to the party injured, by the party offending."