While imperial reformers hoped to bring indigenous people within the protective embrace of British law, this was more easily desired than achieved. Chapter 2 considers various proposals put forward by colonial commentators during the 1830s on how to make indigenous people genuinely amenable to British law, and thereby remake them as subjects of the Crown in more than name. These proposals varied according to imperial perceptions about the nature of existing indigenous legal system, and according to whether or not treaty-making was the path to Crown sovereignty. Some colonial commentators argued for a process of legal transition, whereby indigenous people’s own laws and traditions would be accommodated into a hybrid code of laws and they would themselves be enlisted as active political agents in a negotiated system of protective governance. Others felt that protective governance would be best served by subjecting indigenous people to British law as soon and as fully as possible. Such arguments mirrored a tension felt around the Empire between the practical toleration of indigenous laws and the desirability of bringing indigenous people to a more uniform acceptance of British law.