Commissioner in 1873 with special responsibility for land buying he had no option but to follow the somewhat dubious practice of private land buyers then prevalent. It had become routine for speculators' agents to make advance payments to Maori landowners in the form of credit made available in stores, and this long before titles had been determined in the Native Land Court. Mackay admitted in later years that, after the passing of the Native Lands Act 1873, whenever he was negotiating for land he would make a point of getting the signature or mark of every available man, woman or child of the tribe who were regarded as the putative owners, in order to secure the title even before it had been determined in the Native Land Court. In a fit of forgetfulness he denounced this practice when giving evidence before the Royal Commission on Native Lands saying that 'this was the main upshot of the 1873 Act when the Native Land Court put in every ragtail and bobtail'.139 In his pamphlet Our Dealings with Maori Lands, Mackay observed that 'It is also a law of nations that a treaty shall be interpreted in favour of the weaker party'.140 There is little evidence that, in his dealings with the Hauraki people on land matters, he applied this ideal of trusteeship to benefit them.

(d) MacCormick's misgivings (1940) about trust reposed in Crown agents

   It was precisely this issue of Mackay's moral responsibility that Chief Judge C.E. MacCormick pondered many years later when he sought to explain 'the long acquiescence by the Natives' in the failure of successive governments to pay in full those revenues arising out of goldfields agreement they felt to be their due. 'Should not Hauraki Maori have been more vigilant?' MacCormick asked himself rhetorically—with the implied answer, No. At that crucial time, they were 'mainly illiterate and incapable of appreciating the legal effect and implications of deeds . . . and I think it quite probable that they relied very largely on the Government representatives, especially Mr James Mackay.'141 It is clear that Maori were not the easy dupes MacCormick, rather patronisingly, suggests they were. Perhaps they expected a trust to be honoured.

The Opening and Growth of Thames Background to the 1867 rush

The Thames gold rush, for which Mackay and his Ngati Maru ally, Hanauru Taipari had long planned, began in July 1867 with the discovery of gold beside the Karaka stream in Kauaeranga by Paratene Whakautu and Haniora Kewe. On the strength of a favourable assay of a sample of this gold brought to Auckland, Mackay and Daniel

139 AJHR, 1891, G-1, p. 39.

140 Mackay, Our Dealings with Maori Lands, p. 4.

141 AJHR, 1940, G-6A, p. 6.

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