in New Zealand issued proclamations that all land previously purchased from Māori would have to be confirmed by government title, and that any future direct purchases from Māori were null and void. Gipps introduced his New Zealand Land Claims Bill to the New South Wales Legislative Council in May 1840, instituting a process to appoint commissioners who would investigate all lands acquired from Māori and the conditions under which the transactions had taken place. The Bill also stipulated that Māori owned only the land which they "occupied", by living on or cultivating it; all other land was deemed "waste" land and owned by the Crown. The subsequent Act, passed on 4 August, prohibited the grant of any land purchase greater than four square miles (2560 acres). The New Zealand Company had already claimed to have bought two million acres (8,000 km2), part of which it had sold directly to settlers, and when news of the government move reached Wellington in August it sparked panic, prompting hundreds of settlers to prepare to abandon their land and sail to Valparaíso, Chile.<ref>[http://www.enzb.auckland.ac.nz/document/1842_-_Petre%2C_H._W._An_Account_of_the_Settlements_of_the_New_Zealand_Company_%5B5th_ed.%5D%5BCapper_1971%5D/Chapter_III._Difficulties_Overcome_by_the_Colonists?action=null An Account of the Settlements of the New Zealand Company by The Hon H W Petre] (Smith, Elder and Co, 1842), Chapter 3.</ref> In a bid to restore certainty to the settlers over their land claims a three-man deputation was sent to Sydney to meet Gipps; in early December the deputation returned with news that Gipps would procure for the Wellington settlers a confirmation of their titles to 110,000 acres of land, as well as their town, subject to several conditions including that the 110,000 acres were taken in one continuous block, native reserves were guaranteed and that reserves were made for public purposes. In late September or early October 1840, MP and New Zealand Company Secretary Charles Buller appealed to the Colonial Office for help for the company which he claimed was in "distress". Over the next month, the two parties negotiated a three-part agreement that, once agreed, was hailed by the company as "all that we could desire". Colonial Secretary Lord John Russell agreed to offer a royal charter for 40 years, which would allow the company to buy, sell, settle and cultivate lands in New Zealand, with the Colonial Land and Emigration Commission, formed in January 1840, to have oversight of the company's colonisation activities. Russell also agreed to assess the total sum of money the company had