New Plymouth 8 Dec. 1856 My dear Sir, I thank you much for your letters dated 24 Nov. and 5 Decr. and regret more that I should have occasioned you any trouble whatever in your departmental arrangements. Your question as to whether I prefer Taranaki at £200 or Whangaroa at £300, is readily answered. The former decidedly. To accept the latter, good and desirable as it is, was to leap into a difficulty that would have embarrassed me for years. This it was together with the falling spirits of my wife that caused me to prefer remaining here at £200 to a removal involving to me a considerable sacrifice of property for £300/ I am quite aware that I am unenvied here and likely to be a butt for a few evil spirits but thank goodness the stiletto rule will soon be at an end. Now that I am to be fixed for a time to the old ground I should like to sell the land at Remuera if £300, cash could be got for it. I think too well of Auckland to throw away so judicious a selection for less and if the times are no better there as regards money transactions than they are here I should not offer it for sale. I think you told me that it was under grass, if the fencing is completed and it is not too far for a paddock for your horse, pray make use of it. The enclosed extract is sent in order that you may (if you approve of the view I take) assist in preventing an injustice to Native policemen at which C.B. is at the bottom. In the first place to make a on the face of it, particularly when the duties performed by the natives are of a higher and infinitely more important nature to the public and colony at large than the ordinary duties usually performed by European constabulary. Look at the Sergeant of Police John Dunn he gets £120! with a horse to ride and never puts his hand to paper - no headwork of any hind whatever - why then should the Supt. have suggested cutting down the pay of Native police? simply because he would glory in sweeping them away altogether. After a good deal of vexatious opposition from Europeans in the neighbourhood of the Kawau pa, I succeeded in getting Hone Utuhia's house removed to a section of his fronting Courtenay St. I want to see Native residents dotted about the Town and so do away with the system of pigging together without reference to sex, or age in their pas. Believe me, Faithfully yours, H. Halse. To:- McLean Esq.