Wiremu Kingi's Claim to Waitara.

• 13. As regards the remaining question whether the particular claim of William King to interfere with the sales in the New Plymouth District was such as it would, on any ground, have been right or politic to admit, the Governor's despatch has exhausted whatever still remained to be said. His Excellency's Ministers feel that it cannot be necessary for them to do more than to state; summarily, their own views. They think that any such recognition would have been unjust to the Native proprietors, and, seeing that W. Kingi's pretensions and intrigue have for years convulsed the district, to the European settlers also; that it would have been an abandonment of the principles laid down and acted upon by successive Governments for the settlement of the Ngatiawa claims at Taranaki, and a violation of the express promise made to the assembled Natives at New Plymouth by the present Governor in March, 1859; that, far from putting an end to it, it would have aggravated the feud which has already occasioned so much bloodshed amongst the Natives, and has so frequently disturbed and imperilled the settlement of New Plymouth; that it would have rendered the intervention of the British Government to establish peace in the district more difficult, but would by no means have obviated the ultimate necessity for such intervention: in fine, that it would have been, under the peculiar circumstances of the case, the dereliction of a plain duty, and an act of weakness unattended by any advantage beyond the postponement of a difficulty which must have soon recurred in some aggravated form.