13 Montague Place
Russell Sq
August 13 1884

To the Right Honorable
The Earl of Derby

Salutations,

Your letter of the 9th instant is to hand and has been translated to us by Mr Spencer and we have heard your words denying us an audience of the Queen which we asked for and also an audience of the Prince of Wales wherein we desired to present to them our love and reverence and also to give utterance to the thoughts of your Maori race towards the Queen. The land we have come from is many miles away, a distant land and it is not that we have come without cause, but we and our people thought that we should be welcomed by the Queen. We the chiefs of a race loyal to the Queen and acknowledging the Queen’s supremacy and should access to her presence and to testify our honor and goodwill towards her. And we now ask you to kindly reconsider your words for it is not that we ask merely for ourselves but for our whole race, for they will be very sad at our not seeing the Queen and not giving utterance to the feelings of our race who have sent us here. For since the completion of the treaty of Waitangi, the Maori race have looked up to the Queen as our great mother, and it was with feelings of this sort that our ancestors wrote their names to that treaty, and it is as if we were cast away as a race who had nothing to do with the Queen therefore we beseech you to plead with the Queen for us that we may not return, without an audience, to our race, with heavy hearts and with no words to give our race.

And we now await your reply,

From,
Te Wheoro etc