"Lord Stanley," wrote Mr. Hope, "is not prepared, as Her Majesty's Secretary of State, to join with the New Zealand Company in setting aside the Treaty of Waitangi, after obtaining the advantages guaranteed by it, even though it might be made with 'naked savages,' or though it might be treated by lawyers as 'a praiseworthy device for amusing and pacifying savages for the moment.' Lord Stanley entertains a different view of the respect due to the obligations contracted by the Crown of England, and his final answer to the demands of the New Zealand Company must be that, so long as he has the honour of serving the Crown, he will not admit that any person, or any Government acting in the name of Her Majesty, can contract a legal, moral, or honorary obligation to despoil others of their lawful and equitable rights." Foiled in their efforts to induce the Colonial Minister to award them the full measure of their enormous claim without question or enquiry, the Company then preferred a claim for compensation against the State on the grounds that the policy of the Colonial Office and the proceedings of the Government in New Zealand had brought them to the verge of financial ruin. Still powerful in the House of Commons they were able to exert considerable influence there, and in April 1844 a Select Committee was set up, with Lord Howick, now one of the Company's warmest friends, as Chairman, and an order of reference which authorised them "to enquire into the State of the Colony of New Zealand, and into the proceedings of the New Zealand Company." The Committee sat until July, taking voluminous evidence from many persons who had some previous knowledge of the country, and when they met to formulate their report it was found that they were sharply divided on material points. A section of the Committee, led by Messrs. Cardwell and Hope, Lord Stanley's Under-Secretary, endeavoured to so frame the report as to make amongst others the following acknowledgments: That from the time of the discovery by Captain Cook to the beginning of the year 1840, the independence of New Zealand had never been questioned by this country, and in 1832 was recognised by the British Government in a very peculiar and formal manner. That the urgent applications made by private individuals from time to time to the Colonial Office for the adoption of these islands as a British colony, were reluctantly acceded to by the British Government in 1839, with a view to preventing the evils arising and apprehended from irregular and unauthorised settlement.