he requested their assistance in effecting the negotiation with which he had been entrusted. The Missionaries at this time, the Committee pointed out, had not read Captain Hobson's instructions, for they had not then been published, but they fully understood the claims of the natives upon the soil of New Zealand, and the point upon which they had to satisfy themselves was whether the proposed treaty was designed to admit and confirm those claims in the full and unqualified sense in which they were made. The Missionaries knew that the Maoris claimed the _entire_ soil of New Zealand.[189] They knew that the entire country was divided amongst the several tribes, that the boundaries of every property were accurately defined, and the proprietorship so vested in each tribe that all the members of the tribe had a beneficial interest therein. They therefore knew that at the time the Treaty of Waitangi was signed there was no land in New Zealand without an owner, and which would under the principles of public law, be automatically transferred to the Crown. "In the view, therefore, of both the Missionaries and the natives," they said, "the sovereignty and the land were two entirely distinct things, and to preserve the latter intact, while they surrendered the former, was the great solicitude of the natives. From Captain Hobson the Missionaries received the most satisfactory explanation of the terms of the treaty. It dwelt explicitly on both the sovereignty and the land, and the interpretation which the Missionaries were authorised to give of it was that, while the _entire_ sovereignty should be transferred to the British Crown, the _entire_ land should be secured to the natives. Most certainly the Missionaries received the fullest assurance that, in surrendering the sovereignty, the natives would not by that act surrender their original claims upon any part of the soil. In this sense the chiefs themselves understood the treaty, as it was propounded to them. They clearly comprehended its two main features as explained in their own figurative style, that 'the shadow of the land,' by which they meant 'the sovereignty,' would pass to the Queen of England, but that the 'substance,' meaning the land itself, would remain with them."