Unfortunately the lapse of seventy-three years has robbed us of all who were actively concerned in its consummation, and equally unfortunately they have left few records behind them. There are grey-headed men and aged women alive to-day who were children at the time, but so far as I know there is only one with us now who was actually present at the signing of the treaty. Old Rahira te Hua, the daughter of one of the great Hongi's slaves, who has seen ninety-three summers pass, still carries in her weakening memory some misty recollections of that day fraught with such far-reaching consequences to both races. The opportunity for obtaining personal testimony of what happened is thus irretrievably gone. I have, therefore, had to rely for my information almost entirely upon official documents, supplemented by such fugitive memoranda as may have been left by the few concerned, who happen to have placed their opinions or impressions on record. The gathering together of this widely-scattered material, the moulding of it into a connected narrative, has had its pleasurable as well as its anxious moments, for the subject has not been without its perplexities, ambiguities, and contradictions. All of these I have sought to sift with justice and treat with perfect impartiality. Where I have met with conflicting statements it has been my endeavour to so present the position that the reader will be able to form his own conclusions, and where I have expressed my personal opinions they have only been such opinions as appeared to me to be justified by the facts of the case. Whatever impression the reading of this narrative may leave with those who peruse it, I for one cannot lay down my pen from its writing without affirming that two things appear to me to be established--that Britain has no reason to be ashamed of the manner in which she obtained the sovereignty of New Zealand, and in the light of subsequent events she has no reason to regret it. I have not attempted to arraign or to defend the various, real or alleged, breaches of the treaty committed by our Governors or Governments. That phase of the subject is necessarily so controversial in character, that to do it justice would require a volume of its own, the need for which has to some extent been obviated by the publication in 1888 of his _Aureretanga_, by Mr. G. W. Rusden, in which that vigorous writer deals exhaustively with at least the Maori side of the case. The Treaty of Waitangi, the first diplomatic arrangement of the kind entered into between Britain and a savage race, was a wise, politic, and humane measure, the justice of which has been vindicated with the lapse of time. In the expressive language of a native address to Lord Ranfurly, "This treaty has been rained upon by the rain, it has been exposed to the blast of the storm, but the words are still clear, they cannot be obliterated." Let us hope that no attempt will ever be made to violate either its letter or its spirit. THE AUTHOR.