One set of facts could not be gainsaid. The missionaries had acquired extensive estates, and they had paid sums that by no rule of proportion could be deemed the page break page 45equivalents of the so-called purchases. Of a comparatively small number of missionaries no fewer than eight six actual and two past missionaries—possessed an amount of land exceeding the maximum fixed by colonial ordinance at 2,560 acres, while the others were doubtless provided for on a smaller scale. There was nothing in itself unjust in such purchases. The Government of the mother-colony of New South Wales recognised that men who had made-such heavy sacrifices for love of their kind, and who were so situated that they could not provide for their families, should have their families provided for by the State, and such provision was made in the form easiest to the Government that had fallen heir to the fee-simple of an entire continent by making grants of land to the children of chaplains. Unlike the early (and some later) politicians of the Colony, who made a fortune in New Zealand and then returned to England to spend it, the missionaries had resolved to dwell with their families in the land whither they had been sent and among the people they had converted to a new life. It is perhaps little to say that the missionaries did not ask, as Grey's despatch cynically implied they did, to be put in possession of the lands they claimed—least of all, by the '' effusion of blood and treasure.'' They were already in possession of them, and the Maoris never contested the missionary claims. The influence of the missionaries was so great that the natives would probably have given up to them still more extensive tracts of land.