[further] Grantees have signed the conveyance, with these there has been no difficulty, their actual shares being an order of the Court.

There are as yet 85 Grantees who have not signed the conveyance … 9 have received advances.¹¹⁴

Gill recommended that the 150 underpaid grantees be given additional payments to make up the rate of five shillings per acre, that the overpaid amounts be written off and that he be authorised to negotiate (at between five shillings and seven shillings sixpence per acre, because mining was raising the value of the land) with the 85 grantees who had not yet signed a conveyance.¹²⁵

Dr Battersby’s evidence indicates that, while Native Minister John Bryce approved these arrangements, he also decided to write off all the remainder of the £15,000 debt that could not be recovered from the goldfields lease:

A schedule of payments made to owners, compiled from the Native Department ledgers for the MacCormack [sic] Inquiry, shows that moneys or moneysworth [raihana] paid to Maori before 1875 did not form part of the purchase of the block in 1882, and Maori owners were listed as non-sellers unless they had received a payment after 1875 at 5/- per acre; and this regardless of whether they had participated in the earlier advances.¹²⁶

While this write-off may appear generous, the situation had arisen from the Crown’s determination to acquire the freehold. Had it allowed the mining agreement to continue, the whole of the pre-1875 payments would have been recovered within another seven to 10 years, Maori would still have had the ownership of the land, and at last begun to receive revenues from the mining agreement. The 1882 arrangements meant that some Maori owners had received quite high payments – their pre-1875 payments plus the later purchase price – while others received only five shillings an acre. None received goldfields revenue from the land before 1882; after 1882, with the pre-1875 debt written off, the owners of reserves where gold was found received some revenue.

The more serious impact of the 1875 agreement on Maori was that the burden of debt had resulted in loss of control of the block. In addition, right-owners who had had not received raihana, advances or payments for the freehold were particularly penalised. Dr Battersby cites Gill’s account of a deputation of Ngati Koi who waited on him in 1882 saying that they had not received large money payments from Mackay and asking when they could expect the mining rights’ fees they expected from the 1875 arrangement. Gill had to tell them that the 1875 agreement had charged the £15,000 debt against mining revenue from the whole

124. Gill to Native Minister, 24 April 1882, nlp82/323, in ‘Statement of the Facts and Circumstances Affecting the Ohinemuri Block’ (doc a8(a), pp 1026–1237); ma13/54b, Archives NZ (doc o6, p 283)

125. Gill to Native Minister, 24 April 1882 (doc o6, p 283; doc a8, p 266)

126. Document o6, p 284. The lists referred to by Dr Battersby are appendices G to 1 following ‘Statement of the Facts and Circumstances Affecting the Ohinemuri Block’ (doc a8(a), pp 1026–1237).