overrun with graziers. Gipps was commemorated during this period of growth through the naming of Gippsland in 1840. This acceleration of invasion of Aboriginal lands led to even more frontier conflict and massacres during the early 1840s. After feeling the wrath of the squatters around the Myall Creek affair, Gipps was no longer willing or able to make a meaningful intervention into the violence. Well connected colonists and squatters such as Angus McMillan, Patrick Leslie and Arthur Hodgson were in large part a law unto themselves in how they took up land and how they dealt with the Aboriginal residents. New Zealand In 1839, two groups of British colonists had been attempting to acquire large amounts of land in New Zealand by duping the resident Māori people. The New Zealand Company, led by Edward Gibbon Wakefield, and a consortium of Sydney speculators led by William Wentworth, had each laid claim to around 8 million hectares which amounted to nearly two thirds of the entire New Zealand land mass. The British government wished to prevent this transaction and declared sovereignty over New Zealand, altering Gipps' jurisdiction as governor by Letters Patent to include both the territory of New South Wales and New Zealand. In 1840, Gipps proclaimed all previous and future land purchases in New Zealand invalid unless they were approved by the Crown. The Treaty of Waitangi was completed soon after, which induced the Māori to cede their lands without reservation to the Queen of England. Gipps openly accused Wentworth of a massive fraud in his attempts to acquire huge tracts of New Zealand land from the Māori. This heightened the fierce enmity between the squatters and Gipps, with Wentworth, a leading member of the "squattocracy", swearing "eternal vengeance" against Gipps for his interference. Most of the administration in New Zealand was carried out by Lieutenant-Governor William Hobson, while Gipps retained control only of matters to do with the Imperial Prerogative. This arrangement ended in May 1841, when New Zealand became a Crown Colony in its own right. He advanced to the regimental rank of lieutenant colonel on 23 November 1841. Elected representation In 1842, the British government passed the Constitution Act for New South Wales. This act allowed, for the first time, elected representatives to outnumber those nominated by the Crown in the Legislative Council of New South Wales. The following year, Gipps implemented the changes with him nominating