Wallingford March 28th./62 My dear McLean, I had no letter from you by the mail and have not much to write you about. So we have got rid of Barabbas, what a licking the beggar got, we shall see if he carries out his threat of subsiding into private like. I doubt it, we shall have the beggar hammering at us viciously next Council meeting depend upon it. I have made another trip to Manawatu and have stocked that country now for the winter, it is very hard work to me now to do that kind of work. But I still do it and have rather astonished the people in there by taking 4,000 sheep in with a loss of only 3 sheep. I suppose you know that country, it is very very pretty, and is as green now as our country is in Spring time. It is small however and the loss by dogs is said to be very great. Is old Herewanu with you still I send a letter for him which I wrote to the dictation of old Hohepa and to which I have added a little of my own. My Maori isn't first rate but I suppose they can make it out. There is a great row going on in there between the two parties of Natives and I shd. not be a bit astonished to hear that they were fighting over it. They Herewanu's people tried very hard to get me into the scrape by getting my sheep on to the disputed ground if the old man is still with you, explain to him please that it would be very bad for me as a "Representative" to get mixed up in a quarrel and that that was my chief reason for refusing. If he has gone home I should be obliged if you wd. write him a line to that effect and if you were to caution them against actually fighting it wd. be as well. I fear the old fellow wd. get sadly the worst of a row, as the opposition are mush stronger in men than he is. What about the Plains - could you not venture now to advertize that they will be let by auction on a certain day - 6 weeks or at the outside 2 months ought to be enough - we are losing a large sum remember all this time in the shape of rental and the sooner it is occupied the better. You wont draw many people from elsewhere to rent lands, so that I dont think it is much an object to give a long time with that view. I should say 6 weeks wd. be quite enough - I have been thinking over our talk re the East Coast lands and I am still of opinion that our conclusion to leave the question in abeyance pending the meeting of the Assembly is the wisest course open to us. Will you in the meantime see about the Memorial for annexation get up a strongly worded paper that will touch the House when it is read and then send it round by some one to get as many hundred signatures to is as possible. The most affecting kind of Petition is one with the deed drawn in Parchment and the names appended by the yard in single file - 1000 names reach pretty well the length of the House of Representatives and the effect is extremely imposing. Remember you will have to present this Petition yourself, so take some pains in getting it up and above all let whoever is sent (on Prov. Acct.) to get the signatures see that each man signs and not that all the names are written by one person. It is worth a little trouble to get this well done and I would advise you to lose no time in starting it. Have you ever induced Wilson to prepare that compilation of Prov. Acts it realy is very disgraceful that such a mere piece of routine is allowed to stand over so long. Some of the Canterbury fellows who asked me to send them our acts when printed, were writing me the other day and seem very much amusded at the time we take to think of these kind of things. Stir old Wilson up and get him to rattle the job off. We Manawatu people want a grant in aid of our Road for Porangahau district to Manawatu £70 we are going to ask for. To this sum they are well entitiled the road has been opened at an expense to individual settlers of near Seventy Pounds and they are unwilling to subscribe another £30 - the road wants I think about £100 spent on it to make it a fair road for Stock driving and packing and the amount of £70 from the Govt. can be fairly asked for as grant in aid. By the bye I hope you will keep Fitzgerald at that Manawatu main road until it is done. If it were all marked out the Natives in there wd. contract for it, but they have never yet been properly asked. If it be left till next Spring we shall be another year before we get it open. When I hear Fitzgerald is going in to finish his job I will give him some information about a part of the road which I have seen, which will be useful to him, and save some 5 miles road making. He is an awfully lazy little beggar depend on it. So I hear the N. Lands Court Judge has left with his work only half finished. It is too bad to manage things so badly the effect probably will be that out Natives will drop the Court in disgust and very little wonder too - I shall write old Russell pretty strongly about it - I fear Fenton wants method - he certainly wants firmness of purposes as I know by the ease with which I got important alterations made in the Lands Bill. It is too bad though not to have given the principle a fair chance. I hear from the Natives that they are awfully disgusted at the Court not determining the cases. What do you think of old Paterson's speech - I expect Stafford has damned this colleague a good many times since the old Scotchman opened his heart to the Dunedin electors. It is late and I have written you a long letter, Always very truly yours, J.D. Ormond.