Some of the twenty thousand people who came to Waitangi to greet Her Majesty the Queen. the royal visitors. In the speeches that followed, one theme was uppermost: the great significance to the people of New Zealand of this day, the sixth of February. One hundred and twenty-three years ago, the most important event in New Zealand's history had taken place at Waitangi; and, as each of the Maori chiefs made his sign on the Treaty, Captain Hobson, the first Governor of New Zealand, spoke these words to him: ‘He iwi tahi tatou’ (‘We are now one people’). The great audience assembled there, and in particular the Maori people, were very much aware of the momentous nature of that agreement, and Sir Turi Carroll, the President of the New Zealand Maori Council, in formally welcoming the Queen on behalf of the Maori people of New Zealand, expressed this in his speech: ‘Your Majesty's presence once again underlines for us the deep significance of the compact that was freely agreed to on this very spot by the representative of Queen Victoria, your illustrious great-great-grandmother, and by the ancestors of so many of us gathered here today … ‘We gladly offer today, on this anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, to renew the spirit of that compact and, above all, to reaffirm our loyalty to the Crown. ‘I am voicing the wishes and sentiments of your Maori people in urging that it should ever be remembered that the Treaty has always been the basis of the relationship between Maori and pakeha,’ Sir Turi said. Sir Turi asked the Queen fully to ‘understand and sympathize with the desire of the Maori people to press for the embodiment of the Treaty in the country's Statutes', and said also that ‘We can conceive of no better manner in which this day can be commemorated, than for its historic significance to be marked by its declaration as a national holiday.’ The Prime Minister, Mr Holyoake, spoke of the honour the country felt that the Queen had consented to meet her people on the spot continued on page 28