Wellington. 28th. June 1873. My dear Sir William, I have received your note and Memo. of suggestions in reference to my draft, Native Reserves Act; and I now venture to offer a few remarks upon those suggestions, taking them in the order in which they come in the Memorandum. 1. My reasons for leaving it to the Governor to fix the date at which the existing laws should be repealed within any District, was, that as it will be necessary to create machinery within each district for the purposes of the new law, it is not expedient that existing laws should be abolished, until the machinery for working the new one is ready. 2. The proposed alteration in section 6 is an improvement. 3. Section 13 appeara to be misunderstood. It may be that, in the case of some of the Trust estates, there is an outside power (if I may use the term), of altering or varying existing trusts; and I thought it better that a power should, for the future, be exercised by the Assembly only. The clause does not reserve, in the ordinary sense of such a reservation, a power of alteration to the Assembly, but declares that no alteration shall be made except by the Assembly. If, with this explanation, the clause is still considered objectionable, it can be struck out without injuring the Act.