France.[43] That which England, it is contended, instructs her officer to procure, if possible, she admits she does not possess, and she thereby admits the right of France either to obtain sovereign jurisdiction in New Zealand, by the means which Captain Hobson is instructed to employ, or if France should prefer that course, to sustain the independent sovereignty of the natives. The argument appears conclusive. It becomes very important, therefore, if it is of great importance to England, to prevent the establishment of a French power in the midst of the English colonies of Australasia that your Lordship should be made aware of the acts of the British Crown which lead to a conclusion directly at variance from that which may be drawn from the said minute and instructions." The Company's nominal[44] advocate on this occasion was their Deputy-Governor, Mr. Somes, who apparently possessed a faculty for stating strongly a weak case; and in the course of this letter to Lord Palmerston he taxed his ability to show that the right of sovereignty in New Zealand had vested in Britain since the discovery of the Islands by Captain Cook; that it had been confirmed by numerous diplomatic acts in all the years since then, and could not now be abandoned on the mere whim of a Minister. During the course of his trenchant review of the position Mr. Somes declared that the sovereignty of England in New Zealand had been over and over again asserted and exercised. Whether it could be subsequently abandoned by such documents as the Treasury Minute and instructions was a question in constitutional and international law on which his Lordship was of course far more competent to judge than they could pretend to be. But that there was recently a British sovereignty either to maintain or to abandon the Company had no sort of doubt. He pointed out that in the year 1769, Captain Cook, acting under a commission from the Crown of England, took possession of the Islands of New Zealand, in the name of His Majesty, George III. This act was performed in the most formal manner, and was published to the world. "We are not aware," he wrote, "that it was ever questioned by any foreign power. It constituted sovereignty by possession. The Law of Nations, we believe, recognises no other mode of assuming dominion in a country, of which the inhabitants are so barbarous as to be ignorant of the meaning of the word sovereignty, and therefore incapable of ceding sovereign rights. This was the case with the New Zealanders, from whom it would have been impossible for Captain Cook to have obtained, except in mockery of truth, a British sovereignty by cession. Sovereignty by possession is that which the British Crown maintains in a large portion of its foreign dependencies. In this year, 1787, a Royal Commission was granted to Captain Philip appointing him in pursuance of the British sovereignty in possession, which had previously been established by Captain Cook,