afiit ADVENTURE IN NEW ZEALAND, Chap. XII, 
New Zealand on the ground that it had been ceded 
by chiefs whom he recognized as having been an in**^ 
dependent power before he obtained that cession. 
The Land Bill, on the contrary, asserted the right 
of the Crown to define and restrict the privileges 
exercised by these chiefs during a long period of their 
independence previous to the cession ; to decide whether 
they had possessed during that independence the right 
of granting away their lands ; and to enforce the 
nullity of all titles so granted. In short, the question 
at stake between the opponents or friends of the mea- 
sure was, whether any legislation of the present British 
Government could affect what the native chiefs had 
done before they ceded their independence. If so, it 
was argued, the whole process of cession became a 
mere vain form, as the British Government might 
now invalidate their former independence with as 
much right as their former unfettered possession of 
their lands, and right to do as they liked with their 
own. 
Then individual opponents had put forward the 
great injustice which they should endure, in the case 
of the enforcement of the measure. Among the fore- 
most and most earnest of these was Mr. Busby, the 
late British Resident, or " man-of-war without guns,'' 
at the Bay of Islands. 
Mr. Busby, whether accredited to the missionaries, 
or to the thirteen chiefs to whose letter his appoint- 
ment was the answer, had not failed to consider the 
thirteen chiefs or some of their relations as fully jus- 
tified in selling to him a large tract of land, as they 
had to his coadjutors the missionaries ; and he had 
laid out a township, which he called " Victoria " on a 
part of it which was likely to increase rapidly in value. 
