Your Committee have observed that the terms of the treaty are ambiguous, and in the sense in which they have been understood, have been highly inconvenient; in this we refer principally to the stipulations it contains with respect to the right of property in land. The information that has been laid before us shows that these stipulations, and the subsequent proceedings of the Governor, founded upon them, have firmly established in the minds of the natives notions which they had but then very recently been taught to entertain, of their having a proprietary title of great value to land not actually occupied, and there is every reason to believe that, if a decided course had at that time been adopted, it would not have then been difficult to have made the natives understand that, while they were to be secured in the undisturbed enjoyment of the land they actually occupied, and of whatever further quantity they might really want for their own use, all the unoccupied territory of the Islands was to vest in the Crown by virtue of the sovereignty that had been assumed. The findings of the Committee were thus so radically opposed to the established views of Lord Stanley upon the construction to be placed upon the treaty, that the Minister refused to countenance them in any way, or to ask the House of Commons to become a party to a policy which, had it been enforced, would inevitably have led Britain into one of her little wars, as inglorious as it would have been unjust.[177]