Webster's request for a waiver was duly denied. In other cases, however, the Protectorate does not appear to have been particularly active even when native title was known to be complicated. When Whitaker applied to purchase some 700 acres from Ngati Paoa at Waiheke, George Clarke informed the Colonial Secretary:
I do not think it would be safe to purchase any part of Waiheke from the chief Ruinga apart from the chiefs of Ngati Maru and Patukirikiri. The Ngati Maru tribe is living at Hauraki and the Patukirikiri at or near Coromandel Harbour.65
But only the most cursory intervention then followed. Clarke reported a week later, that he had seen Te Ruinga who had assured him that the land was his (Te Ruinga's) and that he, therefore, saw no objection to the sale.66 Monin argues that Clarke's assessment was probably correct, in this instance, since Ruinga's rights were largely unchallenged at Te Patti (the area in question) but that his 'apparent failure in the case of the de Witte purchase at Putiki a week later was quite another matter' since Patukirikiri were known to also have rights there. He points out that the purchase from one tribe (from Ngati Paoa by de Witte, and from Patukirikiri by Chisholm) while ignoring the claims of other right-holders was to cause protracted dispute at Waiheke.67
It may be noted briefly here that the waiving of pre-emption also resulted in the alienation by Ngati Whatua, Ngati Tai, and Ngati Tamaoho of much of the most valuable land on the Tamaki isthmus, particularly between Remuera and the Manukau Harbour foreshore and south at Papakura.68 Some 60 pre-emptive purchases were made in lands across the isthmus (Remuera, Three Kings, One Tree Hill, and Onehunga). Ngati Paoa, however, participated in only one major transaction of this sort: the joint sale with Ngati Whatua of 300acres at Kawarahi, near Mt Smart, to Joseph Newman.69 Stone comments that it had been supposed that Maori would receive better prices for their land from private settlers than from the Government, but, despite the recent auction of Auckland land at high resale value, payments were made at rates not much greater than those obtaining at 1839–1840. Thus, the payment for Kawarahi comprised only £10 in cash, six trousers, six waistcoats, four coats, and one bag of wheat.70
Large-scale transactions occurred with regard to the gulf islands. Purchases made under waiver certificates which ultimately resulted in either a grant or compensatory payment have been set out in Table 1.
65 See Clarke memo., 9November 1844. Attached to Whitaker to Colonial Secretary, 7 November 1844.In Whitaker case file, OLC 1 1132 (repro 1672).
66See Clarke memo., 18 November 1844.In ibid.
67Monin, 'Islands lying between Slipper Island,' p. 53.
68R.C.J. Stone, 'Historical Report of the Auckland Metropolitan Area,' report prepared for CCJWP, 1992, p. 18.
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