Extensive acquisitions of such lands have undoubtedly been already obtained, and it is probable before your arrival a great addition will have been made to them. The embarrassments occasioned by such claims will demand your earliest and most careful attention. I shall in the sequel explain the relation in which the proposed colony will stand to the Government of New South Wales. From that relation I propose to derive the resources necessary for encountering the difficulty I have mentioned. The Governor of that country will, with the advice of the Legislative Council, be instructed to appoint a Legislative Commission to investigate and ascertain what are the lands held by British subjects under grants from the natives; how far such grants were lawfully acquired and ought to be respected; and what may have been the price or other valuable consideration given for them. The Commissioners will make their report to the Governor, and it will then be decided by him how far the claimants, or any of them, may be entitled to confirmatory grants from the Crown, and on what conditions such confirmations ought to be made. [Illustration: CAPTAIN HOBSON, R.N.] The propriety of immediately subjecting to a small annual tax all uncleared lands within the British settlements in New Zealand will also engage the attention of the Governor and Council of New South Wales. The forfeiture of all lands in respect of which the tax shall remain for a certain period in arrear would probably before long restore to the demesne of the Crown so much of the waste land as may be held unprofitably to themselves, and the public, by the actual claimants. Having by these measures obviated the dangers of the acquisition of large tracts of country by mere land-jobbers, it will be your duty to obtain by fair and equal contracts with the natives the cession to the Crown of such waste lands as may be progressively required for the occupation of settlers resorting to New Zealand. All such contracts should be made by yourself, through the intervention of an officer expressly appointed to watch over the interests of the aborigines as their protector. The resales of the first purchases that may be made will provide the funds necessary for future acquisitions; and beyond the original investment of a comparatively small sum of money no other resource would be necessary for this purpose. I thus assume that the price to be paid to the natives by the local Government will bear an exceedingly small proportion to the price for which the same lands will be resold by the Government to the settlers, nor is there any real injustice in this inequality. To the natives or their chiefs much of the land in the country is of no actual use, and in their hands it possesses scarcely any exchangeable value. Much of it must long remain useless, even in the hands of the British Government also, but its value in exchange will be first