Mon. 16, 1872 Dear Mr. Fox, Maclean is, I hear, in Dunedin. Therefore I write to you about a matter in Native affairs that requires a little caution. You know Marah Brown son of old Kawiti He is a great rogue and savage and has nsequently been a good deal petted. A piece of land has been adjuged by Maning not to be his, which he as far as I can make out, impudently claimed - He is blustering horribly, but has applied in a proper manner for a rehearing. I have sent up the paper with mine and Maning's recommendation that it may not be granted. I enclose herein private letters from Maning for your perusal. Old Maning wants is to be let alone. This I suppose you and I and Maclean too would be glad to do, for surely no better man can be found. But I add a suggestion that the passage of the matter through its stages be procrastinated as much as possible. If you acknowledge his letter and say you are considering it, and then just before the time expires make the order, I shall of course be suspended in the meantime, and if in the order you limit a long period say 12 months the excitement will have died away and everything will be square long before then. The price of land is very low in all this part. People have got it thoroughly into their heads that farming wont pay, and land has become useless. When I remember how many have spent all they possessed and more too in farming, and failed after all, I cannot but think that there is some truth in the popular belief. A little protection would square all this, and land would again be cultivated. Would it not be well in the mea time for Government to buy land. There are great quantities that have passed the Court and that the Natives are wishing to sell. All you have to do is to offer a price, in most cases less than in the old days of Land Purchase. 45,000 acres in the North was sold the other day to a Jew for -/6 an acre. Fort Britomart is fast disappearing into the sea. As they have built a seawall the stuff they throw down, rapidly disappears under the action of the Easterly winds. After I left Wellington we had no rain for 4 months, and every thing became like a turnpike Road. Latterly gales and showers have set us on our legs again. Things are very dull and "nothing is doing" folk are leaving this place though not in great numbers. I wish you would give me a journey to England. I should like to see the old place once again. You have been on the coast I see; I hope Mrs. Fox enjoyed herself to whom present my kind regards, Very sincerely yours, F. D. Fenton