6 February 1840. The treaty granted governance rights to the British Crown, while under its so-called pre-emption clause, Māori were prohibited from selling land to anyone but the Government and its agents. Lieutenant-Governor Hobson immediately froze all land sales and declared all existing purchases invalid pending investigation. The treaty put the New Zealand Company in a very difficult position. It did not have enough land to satisfy the arriving settlers and it could no longer legally sell the land it claimed it owned. Under instructions from the Colonial Office, Hobson was to set up a system in which much of the revenue raised from the sale of land to settlers would be used to cover the costs of administration and development, but a portion of the funds would also be used to send emigrants to New Zealand. That plan, says historian Patricia Burns, was further proof of the "pervasive influence of the Wakefield theory". In April the Rev. Henry Williams was sent south by Hobson to seek further signatures to the treaty in the Port Nicholson area. He was forced to wait for 10 days before local chiefs would approach him and blamed their reluctance to sign the treaty on pressure by William Wakefield. On 29 April, however, Williams was able to report that Port Nicholson chiefs had "unanimously" signed the treaty. William Wakefield was already strongly critical of both the treaty and Williams and repeatedly attacked the missionary in the company's newspaper for his "hypocrisy and unblushing rapaciousness". Williams, in turn, was critical of the company's dealings, noting that the deeds of purchase for land it had claimed to have bought from the 38 deg. to the 42 degrees parallel of latitude were drawn up in English, which was not understood by Māori who had signed it, and that the company's representatives, including Barrett, had an equally poor grasp of Māori. Williams found that company representatives had met Māori chiefs at Port Nicholson, Kapiti and Taranaki, where neither party understanding the other and had not visited other places where the company claimed to have purchased land. Hobson, meanwhile, was becoming alarmed at the news of the company's growing assumption of power. He learned of their bid to imprison a Captain Pearson of the barque Integrity and that on 2 March they had raised the flag of the United Tribes of New Zealand at Port Nicholson, proclaiming government by "colonial