Hobart Town 19/March/64 My dear McLean, I enclose you a letter from Steward asking you to be kind enough to give him your opinion and advice about the land he has let to Rhodes and of which Rhodes desires to have a longer lease. If you get emigrants and military settlers, Hawkes bay ought to go a head and I suppose Rhodes thinks so and wants to secure a long lease while he has a chance of doing so. However I am sure you will give Steward the best advise he can get. I hear Cameron is going into winter quarters and if so we shall not hear much more for some time. The proposal to give each man 100 acres, if he gives up his land and his arms seems to me a liberal and a proper offer but more should be given to the Chiefs and provisions should be made to secure some part of it against alienation or the Maoris would soon be landless. The papers do not say that these terms have been actually offered but even if they are accepted Cameron will have to settle the Ngatiawas and the Ngatiruinius and that will occupy another summer. You must have managed wonderfully well to keep Mr. Renata and your natives quiet and the Hawkes Bay people owe you a deep debt of gratitude. I always had the fullest confidence in your management and recent events have proved that I am not wrong. Sewell has perpetrated a pamphlet addressed to Lord Lyttelton in which he thinks Magna Charta has been repealed etc. etc. and I am sorry to see that the peace mongers in England have addressed Sir G. Grey. They will add to his difficulties instead of strengthen his hands but they are a benighted race. I know you will be glad to hear that my brother has been make Bishop of Ely, the of the Sees. He will not, however, have a seat in the Lords till some bishop dies. I suppose the next mail from New Zealand will bring me your answer to my last letter but the Post between us takes nearly a month. Believe me always my dear McLean, yours very sincerely, T. G. B.