Enclosure 2 in No. 81.
Report of the Petitions Committee on the Petition of John Topi Patuki, Chief of the Ngaitahu and Ngatimamoe.

The prayer of the petitioner is to the effect "that the House will refrain from passing a Bill relative to the Dunedin Princes Street Reserve or its rents, or any other law of similar principle and tendency."

The case of the Princes Street Reserve as viewed by the Provincial authorities of Otago, is clearly laid down in the Report of the Chairman of the Select Committee upon the Dunedin and Port Chalmers Reserves, in the Session of 1865 (vide Appendix to the Journals, F. No. 2), and the petition of the petitioner gives a detail of the case as reviewed from his point of view, and consequently it is not necessary that those details should be reiterated in this Report.

The Committee have not had time or opportunity for examining witnesses as to all the allegations contained in this petition, but they have examined Mr. John Jones, who appears, in the year 1844, when the Otago Block was sold by the Natives of the Middle Island to the New Zealand Company, to have acted as friend to both parties.

That gentleman confirms the statements contained in the first four clauses of the petition. He declares that he has no knowledge of any such arrangement as that specified in the eleventh clause of the petition. He states that the reserve subsequently made by the Governor, when Mr. Mantell was Commissioner of Crown Lands in Otago, contains an area more than four times the area of the two reserves specified in clause 3 of the petition, and which were originally reserved by the Natives, and agreed to by the New Zealand Company's Agents in 1844. He also, on being questioned by the Committee, suggested a plan by which the matter in dispute might be amicably, satisfactorily, and justly disposed of.

The Committee are of opinion that the object of the petitioner will be obtained if a clause is inserted in the Bill now before the House to the effect that nothing contained in the Bill is to be held to affect or prejudice the claim and title of the petitioner and his tribe.

At the same time I am directed to report that the course suggested in the close of the deposition of Mr. John Jones appears to the Committee to be the best way of settling this complicated affair.