My dear Mr. McLean, If your arrangement with Te Hira relative to the lan offered for sale at Orakei has not been finally settled, permit me most respectfully but earnestly to suggest the desirableness of allowing the matter to stand over for the present, as the Natives more particularly concerned, are averse to this movement of Te Hira; much heart burning, therefore, and perhaps an open rupture, may be obviated by postponing the sale. The whole tribe I believe are positively averse to Te Hiras intermeddling in land matters, for the simple reason that he is a most abandoned and dishonourable character, and consequently cannot be trusted to transact any business of importance. Through his reckless imprudence we have been imbroiled in several most serious disturbances, and he is alike distrusted and despised by Natives and Europeans. His present object is to secure a sum of money merely to enable him to gratify his vicious propensities and on this ground alone - if there were no others - his friends "do well to be angry." You will probably wonder at all this, and ask the reason why the Natives themselves have not made a formal complaint to you. You are a Maori scholar, I need not therefore inform you that chiefs of consequence are seldom or never dictated to however repugnant their acts may be to their relatives and to the tribe generally, but, the ill feeling thus smothered, frequently expends its fury upon objects who have been in no way instrumental in furthering the designs of the offending party. The uniform kindness you have ever shown towards myself induces me to make thus free with you; at the same time you must not for a moment consider that I am presuming to dictate to you; being a comparative stranger in this neighbourhood a little information by an old hand may not be, it is hoped, unacceptable. In haste, Yours very faithfully, C.O. Davis. July 4, 1854.