Whereas by the fifteenth section of “The Public Trust Office Act, 1872,” it is enacted (inter alia) that the Governor may by Order in Council place in the Public Trust Office any property held in trust for the benefit of private persons by the Crown or by the Governor, or by officers or trustees appointed by the Governor in virtue of any Act in that behalf, and from and after the date of any such Order in Council the property to which it relates shall become vested in the Public Trustee, subject to the trusts attaching thereto and to the provisions of the now-reciting Act for the custody, disposal, or management thereof; and every such Order in Council shall define the nature and extent of the powers intended thereby to be vested in the Public Trustee in respect to the property to which such order relates: And whereas, in settlement of the claims of twenty-six chiefs of the Ngatitoa Tribe to two hundred acres each of the lands at Waipounamu ceded to the Crown by two deeds dated the tenth day of August, one thousand eight hundred and fifty-three, and the thirteenth day of December, one thousand eight hundred and fifty-four, a sum of five thousand two hundred pounds was appropriated by the General Assembly for the benefit of the parties entitled thereto: And whereas, in order to ascertain which of the said twenty-six chiefs were then surviving, and who were the representatives then living of each of the chiefs as might have died, and the proportionate share which each of such representatives was entitled to of the portion of the chief deceased from whom be claimed, a Commission was appointed on the twelfth day of October, one thousand eight hundred and eighty: And whereas the Commission thereby appointed did report on the twenty-ninth day of January, one thousand eight hundred and eighty-one, that the persons named in the fifth column of the Schedule at foot hereof, either as original claimants or as the successors to the whole or part of the share of an original claimant, were at that date entitled to the share of principal and accrued interest set opposite their names in the said Schedule: And whereas it is desired to make such an Order in Council as hereinafter appears for the purpose of placing the said moneys in the Public Trust Office, and defining the nature or extent of the powers intended to be thereby vested in the Public Trustee in respect of the same:

Now, therefore, I, Arthur Hamilton Gordon, the Governor of the Colony of New Zealand, by and with the advice and consent of the Executive Council of the said colony, do hereby place the said sum of five thousand two hundred pounds in the Public Trust Office, to be held by the Public Trustee upon the trusts, and with, under, and subject to the powers and provisions hereinafter set forth, that is to say,—

Schedule of Claimants and their Successors entitled to participate in the Sum of £5,200 voted by Parliament in December, 1879, in lieu of Land promised to the Twenty-six Natives in connection with the Sale of the Wahipounamu Block, in August, 1853.