assisted or comforted’ rebels, ‘counselled advised induced enticed persuaded or conspired with any other person’, ‘concerned in any outrage against person or property’, or refused to give arms’.¹¹

On the other hand, under the provisions of the Confiscated Lands Act, which has been discussed, land could be granted to:

such person or persons of the Native race as he [the Governor] shall think deserving and who appear to him and have acted in the preservation of peace and order and in suppressing the rebellion or by warrant under his hand to set apart out of the lands so reserved as last aforesaid such portion or portions thereof as he should think fit for the benefit of any such person or persons of the Native race as last mentioned.¹²

Indeed, at the second reading of the Confiscated Lands Bill, in September 1867, J. C. Richmond declared that the Bill’s object was ‘to enlarge the powers of the Government in dealing with confiscated lands’. This was because no provision under the New Zealand Settlements Act had been made for the ‘return confiscated lands to their former proprietors’ Richmond continued, saying that ‘[t]here was also need of powers to make reserves and gifts to persons who had done great services during the war’. Richmond downplayed criticisms voiced by Graham that the Bill was being passed so that Arawa could be awarded land at Tauranga, arguing that the Bill’s purpose was to ‘plant the amiable rebel Natives on their own land again. The Bill was one for giving not taking’.¹³ The main point about this debate is that eligibility for compensation was based on the Crown’s highly subjective – and no less political – evaluation of Maori ‘friendliness’ and ‘loyalty’.

2.1 Allocating the reserves

Before being appointed Commissioner of Tauranga Lands in 1868, it was unclear to H. T. Clarke exactly who had the ultimate authority to award land in the District. In April 1866, he was obliged to ask Colonel Russell, then Native Minister, ‘[a]m I to act on any instructions I may receive from the Government Agent in this

¹¹ New Zealand Statutes, 1863, pp. 20-1.

12 New Zealand Statutes, 1867.

13 New Zealand Parliamentary Debates (NZPD), 26 September 1867, pp. 1102-3.