Reserves for Hone Ropiha and Wi te Ahoaho.

The promise to Hone Ropiha and Wi te Ahoaho was the first which was made. It was that each should have one hundred acres in the seaward part of the block and two hundred acres inland in the forest. These reserves were intended as a provision for themselves and for all their relatives: an ample one, certainly, but made ample for the special reason that they had always been told that Government wanted nothing from them but what they could not use themselves. And these men individually deserved liberal treatment at the hands of Government, as it was almost exclusively owing to them that the purchase was effected. Wi te Ahoaho's hundred acres consist of the two sections at Waerengapoka— Native reserves from the foundation of the settlement, which had been occupied by Mr. Nairn. These sections Wi te Ahoaho and his brother never would have given up, and they would have been excepted from the sale had they not been promised as a reserve. Hone Ropiha's hundred acres was originally chosen by me to the eastward of Wi te Ahoaho's, adjoining it, and forming one block. He refused to take this, insisting on retaining his fifty-acre section at Purakau, saying if he got that he would give up his other fifty acres. This I would not agree to, as the Purakau is one of the best sections in the block; and the question was still at issue between us when you arrived at Taranaki in February, 1854, whereupon it was decided by you in favour of Hone Ropiha, who now holds the land. Hone and Wi te Ahoaho had then each to receive two hundred acres in land. Before these were selected by me they both expressed a wish to purchase one hundred acres of their respective reserves, to which I readily acceded, as I had been specially instructed by you to encourage as much as possible the purchase of land by Natives under the Government regulations. In consequence of this wish these two reserves of two hundred acres each were selected by me at a less distance inland than probably they otherwise would have been, as I felt sure that the purchased half of each reserve would in a very short time come into the market, and I could not see why the difference in value between the Government price of 10s. and that which commonly is obtained in New Plymouth should not as well be received by aboriginal natives, who circulate all the money that comes into their hands, and never look forward to hoarding a fortune and quitting the colony, as by European speculators, to whom they are at least not inferior as producers of food and cultivators of the soil which they inherited from their ancestors; and to a share in the benefits arising from the settlement and improvement of which I for one am of opinion that they have a right at least as good as that of any immigrant settler whatsoever. Hone Ropiha's two hundred acres were purposely selected within the boundaries disputed by Henare te Puni and party, because he has much influence over them, which I knew the offer of a good price for one hundred acres would induce him to exercise to its fullest extent; and, as that land could not at the time be offered for purchase by Europeans, I could not see any quicker mode of getting a small piece of it into the market than by allowing Hone Ropiha to become its purchaser. Wi te Ahoaho's two hundred acres were selected by me between the Araheke and Waiwhakaiho Streams, chiefly for the convenience of natural boundaries.

You will thus perceive that pre-emptive rights of selection were not given to these Natives; and I may here state that no such right was given by me in any instance, the only reserves not selected by me being Waerengapoka, and the latter being the only one taken in opposition to my wishes.