In vain did Mr. Hope endeavour by moving amendments to induce the Committee to adopt a view of the Treaty of Waitangi more favourable to the natives, but through the divisions of several days the Company held its majority, and on July 23 the Committee agreed to the draft report proposed by Lord Howick, and which was based on the resolutions previously approved. When this report was laid before the House of Commons it was found that the Committee had traversed the policy adhered to by the Melbourne and the Peel Governments in its interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi, and that they had taken the responsibility of declaring that: The evidence laid before your Committee has led them to the conclusion that the step thus taken (the promotion of the Treaty of Waitangi), though a natural consequence of previous errors of policy, was a wrong one. It would have been much better if no formal treaty whatever had been made, since it is clear that the natives were incapable of comprehending the real force and meaning of such a transaction, and it therefore amounted to little more than a legal fiction, though it has already in practice proved to be a very inconvenient one, and is likely to be still more so hereafter. The sovereignty over the Northern Island might have been at once assumed without this mere nominal treaty, on the ground of prior discovery, and on that of the absolute necessity of establishing the authority of the British Crown for the protection of the natives themselves, when so large a number of British subjects had irregularly settled themselves in these Islands, as to make it indispensable to provide some means of maintaining good order amongst them. This was the course actually pursued with respect to the Middle and Southern Islands, to which the Treaty of Waitangi does not even nominally extend, and there is every reason to presume that, owing to the strong desire the natives are admitted to have entertained for the security to be derived from the protection of the British Government and for the advantages of a safe and well-regulated intercourse with a civilised people, there would have been no greater difficulty in obtaining their acquiescence in the assumption of sovereignty than in gaining their consent to the conclusion of the treaty, while the treaty has been attended with the double disadvantage: first, that its terms are ambiguous, and in the sense in which they have been understood highly inconvenient; and next, that it has created a doubt which could not otherwise have existed, which, though not in the opinion of your Committee well founded, has been felt and has practically been attended with very injurious results, whether those tribes which were not parties to it are even now subject to the authority of the Crown.