The Governor resolved to get to the bottom of the Waitara imbroglio. Visiting Taranaki, he called for a map of the Waitara district he remembered to have seen during his first term of office—for he forgot nothing. The Minister accompanying him denied that any such map existed. At last it was happily recovered. When he had found the map and seen the boundaries of the land occupied by the Ngatiawa, his mind was at once made up. He determined that the land bought from Teira (Taylor) should be given back to Wiremu Kingi, the head of the tribe, and all possible reparation made. (Here we are following his own account of the matter—not perhaps to be implicitly trusted, but still to be carefully heeded.) He then, he says, or Mr. Rees says for him, summoned a meeting of the Cabinet; he means, the Executive Council. He expressed his conviction that a great wrong had been done. The natives were wholly in the right. And he urged that steps should be publicly taken to acknowledge the justice of their cause. The Ministry should issue a proclamation declaring that the land-purchase should be rescinded and amends made. The Premier of the hour was Alfred Domett, Browning's "Waring" and Grey's personal friend and guest, with whom in after-years he was in regular correspondence; and surely the author of Ranolf and Amohia should have been a philo-Maori? The Native Minister was Sir Francis Dillon Bell, who had reluctantly found the incriminatory map. The two agreed upon a plan. On April 4 the land taken at Waitara should be abandoned or restored. But either Grey or the Ministry (and apparently it was both) seemed not to have magnanimity enough to make an absolute surrender. Like Danton on his way to the guillotine, they must show no weakness at a critical moment. They must duly evacuate the Waitara on April page break page 1434, 1863, but on the very same day they must take possession of Tataraimaka, which they claimed. The action was equivocal on the face of it. The best-laid schemes "gang aft agley," and an ill-laid scheme was almost certain to go awry. Ever anxious to show strength and assert superiority, Grey instructed General Cameron to march into the Tataraimaka and take possession of the district before the Waitara was abandoned. It was unfortunate, and it was a fresh fatality. Were the Maoris to be blamed for mistaking the intentions of the Governor?