Government take steps to ascertain the extent of the loss and to recoup the petitioners. The Government continued to stall on the matter and eventually solved the problem to its own satisfaction by purchasing the freehold of the lands in most contention.
In the 1880s the Crown began to withdraw from its previous mining arrangements, but was unwilling to meet Maori demands that complete authority over gold field blocks—especially where mining had all but ceased—should be returned to them. Instead the Crown acted as though its jurisdiction continued even though Maori owners had not consented to any new arrangements. At the same time, Government passed a series of statutes strengthening its prerogative over and power to control precious sub-surface resources, thus distancing Maori further from control of both minerals and the land in which they lay. The Reserves and Endowments in Mining Districts Act 1882 extended the operation of mining legislation to all public reserves and endowments. While 'reserves for the use, support, or education' of Maori were excluded, the Governor-in-Council was empowered to bring any such land under the Act's jurisdiction. Under the Mining Act (no. 2) 1887 the Governor was given the power to 'alter and vary' the terms of the contract and conditions under which Maori had ceded their lands for mining. The Mining Act 1891 enabled the Governor to bring any Native Reserve (except for those specifically reserved from mining cessions) into its ambit. In 1892 the Native Land Court was empowered to declare lands open to mining on application of the Governor if the majority of owners consented. The distinction between the ordinary reserve and the mining reserve was swept away by the Mining Act Amendment Act 1896 which declared any lands for residences, cultivations, or burial sites that had been reserved from the cession of the gold field to be now available for mining purposes 'in like manner in all respects as if they had been ceded.' That trend towards making Maori-owned land available to mining whatever the wishes of the owners continued into the twentieth century. Of particular note here was the Mining Act 1910 which dropped the requirement for majority consent before the Native Land Court could bring Maori land within the compass of the Government's mining jurisdiction.
Maori protest
Maori protested the trend of this legislation towards the diminution of both their rights to withhold lands from the Crown's jurisdiction and of their revenues by the introduction of laws without any consultation on the issue, or notice of that intention. In the debates on the Mining Act Amendment Act 1892, for example, Taipua roundly criticised the Government's disregard of Maori interest, arguing that the rights of the minority owners were being ignored, and remnants of control over their gold field lands utterly destroyed: `What the Natives complained of was this: that each succeeding Parliament endeavoured to make the laws worse than those passed by the previous Parliament.' Hauraki Maori petitioned repeatedly about the reduction of their revenues as a result of changes in the mining legislation while Heke, in the debates on the Mining Act Amendment Act 1896, challenged the Crown's strengthening assertion of its right to precious sub-surface resources. He denied that Maori had given up 'their properties and to the gold and silver and other minerals' when they had handed over sovereignty to the Crown in 1840. Rather,
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