CHAPMAN, J.--I agree with the judgments which have been read. It has been argued that the Treaty of Waitangi was an international treaty entered into with chiefs having the sovereignty. The contrary opinion was pronounced by the Supreme Court in _Wi Parata v. The Bishop of Wellington_ (3 N.Z. Jur. N.S. 72). The terms employed and the mode of execution of the treaty leave it at least an open question whether it was so regarded at the time. It professes to be made with certain federated chiefs and certain chiefs who are not federated, but it does not state over what territories they exercised authority, though the text of the treaty seems to suggest that it was contemplated that it should be made with several chiefs who might possibly be regarded, and were provisionally and hypothetically treated as sovereigns of their respective territories. Later it became a matter of general knowledge, derived, I presume, from maps prepared pursuant to section 21 of "The Native Land Act, 1873," that there are eighteen or twenty tribes in New Zealand. If that be so the numerous signatories of the Treaty of Waitangi can hardly be described as sovereign chiefs. I agree that if they had been explicitly so declared by Her Majesty's government, or had been so treated in a course of political transactions that would have been sufficient to make them so, and that their numbers and their individual unimportance would not have rendered this impossible, provided that in each case there was a sovereign to a territory. _Hemchand Devchand v. Azam Sakaral Chhotamlal_ (1906, A.C. 212). The whole current of authorities shows, however, that the question of the origin of the sovereignty is immaterial in connection with the rights of private persons professing to claim under the provisions of the treaty of cession. _Cook v. Sprigg_ (1899, A.C. 572). Such a treaty only becomes enforceable as part of the municipal law if and when it is made so by legislative authority. That has not been done. The sense in which the treaty has received legislative recognition I will refer to later.... From the earliest period of our history, the rights of the natives have been conserved by numerous legislative enactments. Section 10 of 9 and 10 Vict. cap. 103, called an Act to make further provision for the Government of the New Zealand Islands (Imperial, 1846), recognises the laws, customs, and usages of the natives which necessarily include their customs respecting the holding of land. Section 1 of 10 and 11 Vict. cap. 112, called an Act to promote colonisation in New Zealand and to authorise a loan to the New Zealand Company (Imperial, 1847), recognises the claims of the aboriginal inhabitants to the land. To the same effect is the whole body of colonial legislation. The expressions "land over which the Native title has not been extinguished" and "land over which the Native title has been extinguished" (familiar expressions in colonial legislation), are both pregnant with the same declaration.