I have thus attempted to touch on all the topics on which it seems to me necessary to address you on your departure from this country. Many questions have been unavoidably passed over in silence, and others have been adverted to in a brief and cursory manner, because I am fully impressed with the conviction that in such an undertaking as that in which you are about to engage much must be left to your own discretion, and many questions must occur which no foresight could anticipate or properly resolve beforehand. Reposing the utmost confidence in your judgment, experience, and zeal for Her Majesty's service, and aware how powerful a coadjutor and how able a guide you will have in Sir George Gipps, I willingly leave for consultation between you many subjects on which I feel my own incompetency, at this distance from the scene of action, to form an opinion.[42] The publication of this document brought down upon the head of the Minister a storm of criticism from the committee of the New Zealand Company, who attacked with especial bitterness that portion of the instructions wherein Lord Normanby made it especially clear that Britain claimed no right of sovereignty in or over New Zealand. In the previous year, when the Company was promoting its Bill in the House of Commons, and when the organisation was less mercenary in its nature, the promoters had taken a modified view of this question of sovereignty, and were prepared to concede something to the natives which, as a Company, they were now eager to deny. [Illustration: THE MISSION CHURCH AT KORORAREKA. Where Captain Hobson read his Proclamations.]