No. 8.
Remarks on Maori Affairs.
[Notes on Maori Matters, 1860.]

It would appear that some four hundred years since a considerable body of barbarians, originally derived from the Malay race, found their way from the islands of Polynesia, where they had been temporary sojourners, to the shores of New Zealand—a country then probably void of inhabitants—established themselves there, and received accessions to their numbers by fresh immigration from the same source. They arrived here in canoes, the pilgrims occupying each canoe being associated by the ties of kindred, forming a number of families with a common name and common ancestry. On landing they took possession of the unoccupied soil, not in mass, nor in the name of one people or nation, nor individually, but in small aggregations of kindred families, clans, or tribes, some of which, either at the outset or in process of time, were subdivided again into hapus or septs.

The tribes not being united together under any common head or sovereign, but being socially and politically—as far as they had any polity—independent of, and often hostile to, one another, each tribe would have, de facto, in a rude way, within the limits of the territory occupied by them, the same sovereignty, substantially, which a civilized nation acquires, according to the law of nations, over an unoccupied country of which it has taken possession: that is to say, they would not admit the right of any other tribe or individual, as long as they were in possession, to interfere with their enjoyment of the land or to meddle with their internal economy; but they would regulate the domestic affairs of the tribe, and their relations with other tribes, according to the will of their own sovereign or quasi-sovereign power. That sovereign power, though vague and undefined, seems to have been vested in the whole body of the freemen of the tribe; for, although various classes of persons were recognized, and much stress laid, socially, on the dignity of birth, there does not seem to have been any distinct subordination of rights and duties or privileges of freemen, inter se. Slaves were the personal property of their captors: that is, their owners could give them away or take their lives without being subject to punishment or censure, and slaves had no kind of civil rights, although they often lived with their captors on a footing almost of apparent equality.

It would appear that, of the attributes of sovereignty, the administration of justice (as far as there was any beyond mere reprisals) and the right of declaring war, as well as the power of temporary alienation of land belonging to the tribes, were all vested in the tribe generally, and, although often exercised by chiefs or tohungas, were so exercised with the consent, either express or tacit, of the whole tribe. But the original tenure, by occupation, was one which could be maintained by a tribe only so long as they were strong enough to prevent another tribe from depriving them of it; for there was no tribunal, external or common to all the tribes, to which appeal could be made, nor does there seem to have been any compact or understanding, express or implied, that if one tribe should disturb another in its occupation the general body of the tribes should protect the occupier or punish the assailant. Therefore the right of occupation was always liable to be superseded by force, and acquisition of territory by conquest was recognized by all the tribes as rightful, possession (other than by sufferance) being the evidence of the right.

In speaking, therefore, of the right of a tribe to land, it seems plain that, for all purposes external to the tribe itself, it means its power of keeping possession; and the interest of the tribe in the land is neither more nor less than its aggregate possession, through families or individuals, of the lands which they were allowed to enjoy, and, by the whole tribe, of those lands, forests, fisheries, &c., which they all enjoyed in common, such possession not being merely by the sufferance of a conqueror, and having been acquired by occupation or conquest: There seems to have been no recognition of a power of alienation in perpetuum by one tribe, or individual of a tribe, to another tribe, or individual of another tribe; though land seems to have been lent or exchanged for a time by one tribe to another. And when a man of one tribe married a woman of another, he was generally allowed to enjoy the land in which she had an individual interest, within her tribe, during her lifetime. There does not appear to have been any mode of making or enforcing contracts, or obtaining justice as between different tribes. In short, as between tribes, or individuals of different tribes, might seems to have constituted the only right known to the Maori people.

On looking, into the internal economy of the tribe, we find that there were some rights pretty definitely ascertained, while others were very vague. As before noticed, the distinction between the classes of free men do not seem to have been well defined, nor do their distinctive functions. Much misconception and many fallacious reasonings on this subject, which seem to have been prevalent, may be fairly attributed to mistaken assumptions with respect to the rights, privileges, and powers of the persons called chiefs. The word "chief" has been used in a very vague and ambiguous manner Chieftainship seems, in truth, to have amounted to little more than a prestige accorded by a tribe to individuals, which gave to its possessors an influence and control over the tribe in proportion to the personal respect which they could command. Great stress was laid on birth, and the ariki, the lord page 12or head chief of a tribe, was the person of highest birth, and was estimated accordingly; the rangatiras following him according to the distinction of their descent. These were naturally looked to as leaders in war or in council; but, apart from the deference paid to their position, there does not seem, except in time of war, to have been any definite authority, privilege, or duty assigned to them, except that of a species of vaticination and oracular uttering of traditional lore by the ariki and the tohunga, accompanied, in the case of the ariki, with the painful isolation of the tapu. Not birth only, but personal superiority also, either physical or oratorical, seems to have been enough to induce a tribe to treat the possessor as a chief; but the low-born chief held his honour only for his life, and did not necessarily transmit chieftainship to his posterity. If the man of highest birth proved unequal to his work in time of war, men of lower birth acquired the influence and ascendancy of a chief, and were acknowledged as such. A chief of great influence, and confident of the power he had over his tribe, would often act for it almost without consulting the general body; and if a principal and influential chief was sure of the assent of the men of the highest birth and character, he might count upon that of the mass of the people. Chiefs were, then, simply the chief men of a tribe or hapu, and their functions in time of peace were few and unimportant. When war began they naturally became more important, and the chief had more power. An unpopular chief of great birth would not be a representative man, and tribes often repudiated the acts of such chiefs; and, conversely, when a man of no birth or position proposed or did an act for the tribe they would adopt and ratify it if it suited their views. In time of peace the relation of the principal or any other chief to the tribe was not in any way like that of a sovereign to his subjects or a feudal lord to his vassals; but in war-time the head chief—whether he was the hereditary head or a successful adventurer who had gained prestige—would necessarily have much of the authority of the imperator. The lord chief (ariki)—who combined the functions of priest and chief—seems generally to have been allowed by the tribe, on acquisition of territory by conquest, to take the first choice of land for usufructuary possession; and after him the rangatiras, according to their rank by birth; the tutuas, or general body of free men, getting what they could in the scramble for their own usufructuary occupation. As families increased and cultivations were exhausted, fresh appropriations of this kind would take place within the general territory of the tribe. The portions of land so adopted and appropriated—at all events after they had been cultivated by the possessors—became the property of the individual occupier as against all other persons of the tribe, whether chiefs or commoners. This usufructuary right, though not alienable to strangers or to other persons of the tribe, descended by inheritance, as of right, to the children or other kindred of the occupier; and, in case of a woman marrying into another tribe, her husband, as has before been remarked, often enjoyed her right for his life.

It has been recently stated that a kind of fiduciary interest in land was sometimes vested in a chief for the benefit of others, such as widows and orphans belonging to the tribe. But such a practice looks very much like the result of European suggestions, and is scarcely consistent with the older habits of the people. If any such custom was generally recognized by the Maoris, it probably amounted to no more than this: that some chief was intrusted with the duty of seeing that land, which had been appropriated with the consent of the tribe for the purpose of allowing certain persons to occupy it by the sufferance of the tribe, was used for that purpose, in which case the occupation of such persons would really be the occupation of the tribe, and no title or right would devolve by inheritance on the heirs or kindred of the persons so permitted to occupy.

No accumulation of personal properly by a man, beyond the produce of his cultivation and his own handiwork, ever took place, and there was no contract of sale; even barter was carried on by the clumsy mode of reciprocal presents.

Violations of any right of property, or of any right known to the Maoris, were punished or remedied either by reprisals or by an award of compensation, enforced either by appeals to superstitious fears, or persuasion, or force. There seems to have been no specific tribunal, but the general body of the tribe concurred in an award made by the tohungas, the priestly depositories of the oral traditions of the tribe, or by the ariki, and enforced by threats of punishment by evil spirits and the tyrannical, and embarrassing process of the tapu. The rangatiras, too, sometimes persuaded the offender to submission by oratorical appeals to the examples of bygone times.

What special authority, if any, the head chief possessed in a civil capacity, as distinguished from the rangatira, does not seem clear; and it is doubtful whether any privilege or right was awarded to him, except the concession in many cases of the first choice of land, and the deference paid to his position, supported by the tapu. There was a vague idea of power, influence, right, quasi-sovereignty or lordship, derived from the tribal acquisition of the land, called the "mana" of the land—the shadow as distinguished from the substance; but even if this mana was vested in the head chief or in other chiefs, which is improbable, it does not seem to have given them any beneficial rights or any power of disposal or control over the property in the land without, or contrary to, the assent, expressed or implied, of the body of the tribe. The customs about this and many other of the matters referred to were by no means uniformly the same in all tribes. When a chief gave slaves, whom he had taken, leave to hold land, he expected from them, and they brought to him, certain produce or work as tribute, in respect of the mana; but, though free men also used to make presents to the chiefs, these were merely complimentary, were not demandable of right, and were almost always returned.

To sum up then: There was no general government or general intertribal polity among the Maori tribes of New Zealand. They had no common head, no common tribunal, no common interests. The government of tribes—if their customs can be called by such a name—corresponded with no known type among civilized peoples. There were some features of monarchy, more of aristocracy, and many of republicanism; but the combination was not definite nor capable of assimilation to any known constitution of civilized society; nor was the government merely patriarchal. Their notions of property of any kind were the vaguest; nothing approaching to regular commerce existed. The origin of the interest of tribes and individuals in land was communistic, and the enjoyment f it in some degree communistic—the one acquired by force, the other at the mercy of xternal force. There was no practice of alienation of land by individuals at all, except indeed page 13the indirect alienation for a life of the usufruct of a portion of land belonging to a woman who married into another tribe, and no "out-and-out" alienation even by a tribe; but slaves and others were allowed to hold lands by the sufferance of conquerors who retained in themselves the mana of the land, while the usufruct was in the occupier. The customs and practices, the acknowledged rights and duties, were by no means uniform or definitely settled; they differed or were modified by circumstances at different times in different tribes; and the absence of other customs; such as the ordinary modes of alienation of property in civilized communities, before Europeans came to the country, are to be accounted for by the consideration that the circumstances of the people made the customs they possessed convenient, advantageous, or necessary, according to their narrow views and limited knowledge, while they had never theretofore felt the want, the importance, or the convenience of those which they lacked.

The character of the people it is not very easy to delineate both justly and completely, composed as it is of elements so diverse. Brutal and savage to excess during the excitement of war, they were yet capable of actions which would not have disgraced the chivalry of Europe. Grossly immoral with respect to the intercourse of the sexes before marriage, they yet treated the marriage-tie with much respect, and its violation with severity. Quick in apprehension, and of lively wit, they could yet hardly master the first elements of arithmetic. They were both generous and treacherous, good-natured and vindictive. They were very superstitious, and yet had but little imagination. They had little of no fear of death, and yet they seemed to need physical excitement to stimulate their courage to action. Their arts were few and rude. They were not nomadic, but much attached to the soil which they or their fathers had occupied or conquered; and all their differences, according to their own proverb, were about women and land.

From the first discovery of New Zealand by Tasman, some two hundred years after the settlement of the Maori immigrants, down to the later visits of Captain Cook, a century after, the amount and nature of the intercourse between the New Zealanders and strangers does not seem to have been such as to cause much modification of their habits, although the first ideas of external commerce must have been suggested to their minds, and the probability of their deriving substantial benefits from the repeated visits and the settling of pakehas in the country may have occurred to them.

The introduction of fresh varieties of animal and vegetable food, superior to the ordinary provisions to which they had been accustomed, was probably the first great step towards material civilization; and the increasing acquaintance of the Maoris with white men, proving that the latter were not only not necessarily hostile to them, but were able and willing to teach them many useful and pleasant arts and to give them command of many previously undreamed of comforts and luxuries and mechanical and warlike contrivances, induced them at first to tolerate, and then to encourage, the regular intercourse, and afterwards the permanent settlement, of whalers and others who visited the coasts. They seem to have evinced no jealousy or predisposition against an amalgamation of races, or the formation of temporary or permanent connections between the pakehas and the women of their own race and tribes, but, on the contrary, to have encouraged such unions. As Europeans began to settle in the country, and naturally desired to acquire land for occupation and cultivation, the Maoris discovered that they might now use their land in a way to which they had hitherto been unaccustomed, by exchanging parts of it for the now much-coveted blankets, axes, tobacco, and, above all, firearms and gunpowder of the stranger. Thus a new kind of transaction, not formerly recognized by the general customs of the Maori race, sprang up, and alienation of land was introduced de facto.

About the character of the earliest land sales probably but little trustworthy evidence is attainable. Whether individuals of a tribe practically arrogated to themselves the right of disposing of the portion of land which they occupied with the consent of their tribe, and which, if not alienated, would have descended to their kindred, I am not aware; but it seems probable that the common men did not do so. Chiefs, or persons calling themselves chiefs, seem to have engaged in such transactions; but whether they claimed or assumed a right to sell the portions which they individually occupied, or more than they occupied for their own benefit, without the consent of the tribe, or acted in the name or in the interest of the whole tribe, with its express assent, or an applied assent, on which they counted in respect of their personal influence, does not seem very clear. In many cases it is likely that they assumed to act for the tribe or hapu, and gave up to the persons entitled to occupy the lands portions of the goods received for it. Indeed, it is probable that there was very little principle or system in these transactions. Sometimes the Maori would try to cheat the pakeha by pretending to sell land to which he had no title; sometimes, and perhaps more often, the European would try to cheat the Maori by giving him comparatively worthless articles for large tracts of land; sometimes there was a common intention of each to take advantage of the other; and often, no doubt, unprincipled Europeans obtained, for ulterior fraudulent purposes, what they knew to be sham titles, with the signatures, or rather marks, of chiefs, sometimes filling in the boundaries of the land supposed to be sold according to their fancy after the so-called execution of the conveyance. It is believed that the principal disposers of land in those days were persons who had no titles, or only defective ones; and persons with only an ostensible but no real title were the most forward to enter into negotiations with the Europeans.

The alienation of 'land to strangers being a thing quite new to the Maoris, it is probable that many of the tribes or chiefs who parted with it really believed that they were giving the purchasers only a temporary usufructuary interest, either a life interest or some other estate, such as lawyers call a particular estate, leaving the reversion of the fee, as it were, and the mana or ultimate quasi seignorial right over the land in the tribe. But whatever right one party may have intended to grant and the other to acquire, undisturbed possession by the party purchasing gave a sort of title by acquiescence; and if the purchaser alienated to others in his lifetime, or on his death devised the land to another, and the second purchaser or devisee took possession, and his possession was not at once disturbed when it came to the knowledge of the Natives formerly interested, that would seem strong evidence that the person in possession had a right to the land recognized by such Natives. The enclosing of land by a purchaser, too, seems to have been always taken as such an assertion of a right to it that Maori proprietors formerly interested in it were deemed, by acquiescing in it, to have acknowledged that all their title was gone.

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The practice of disposing of the possession and enjoyment of land is not of the whole property and title to it, became thus established, not according to any fixed specific principle, but simply according to the dictates of convenience on the part of the seller, regard being had to the probability of the alienee not being disturbed in the possession. The more regular sales, however, were probably conducted in such a way as to recognize the communistic principle, the chiefs who personally engaged in the transaction acting for themselves and the tribe, or for persons of the tribe who claimed a share of the produce of any given sale.

While these rude beginnings of commerce were taking place, a mightier instrument of civilization was in the course of introduction, the one best fitted to throw down the strongholds of barbarism and superstition, to establish the intercourse of widely differing races upon a safe basis, to prepare the way for their amalgamation and ultimate fusion, and for securing the highest blessings of modern civilization. Through the labours of devoted missionaries belonging to various Christian bodies the Maoris, in an almost incredibly short space of time, learned the folly and wickedness of many of their old superstitions and the habits connected with them, and accepted with avidity the promises made to them by their now spiritual advisers and guides of better things for the present life as well as for the future.

Although it may be true that many of the new professors of Christianity among the Natives were merely professors, and that with others their new religion was only a newly-adopted superstition, there were, doubtless, many who became as sincere believers and acted as sincerely on their belief as the majority of professing Christians in civilized countries; and, whatever may have been the amount of sincere faith among the new converts, the doctrines and practices of Christianity had, at all events, made very large numbers ashamed of some of their former customs (cannibalism among the number), had given them new notions of morality and justice, and suggested to them the blessings and advantages of peace. The introduction of Christianity paved the way for the abolition of slavery. The missionaries often made the manumission of slaves a condition precedent to baptism, and the converts gave conclusive evidence of their sincerity by voluntarily depriving themselves of one of the principal evidences of rank and personal distinction among their people. The old cumbrous and superstitious practices of the tapu, which had been the chief means of holding their rude society together, were necessarily modified, where not entirely superseded, on the introduction of Christianity. The spiritual prestige, and consequently a great portion of the influence, of the arikis and tohungas was necessarily destroyed, and as yet nothing else in the shape of internal government was substituted for it.

The introduction of firearms naturally tended to make the Maoris even more quarrelsome than formerly for a time, and their wars for a time more sanguinary than before; but, as the spirit of Christianity was developed, and individual movable property was acquired by industry and by commerce in land and its fruits, and in other products of labour, the importance of peace became more manifest. Large quantities of land came into the possession—the undisturbed possession—of Europeans. Many Englishmen, some of them men of character, some of no character at all, were settling on the shores of New Zealand.

Meanwhile the Maoris, who had much communication with the English settlers, began to desire to put themselves under the protection of the British Crown, while unprincipled land-purchasers were naturally opposed to such a course (and some honest ones also), and the missionaries, probably jealous lest their good work should be interfered with by a concourse of English adventurers, were generally hostile to colonization, and apparently desirous of keeping up a marked distinction between the races. Ministers of the English Crown, having before them the reports of sad results of the extension of English dominion in other quarters of the world, and fearful lest they might become accessories to the extermination of the Maori race by establishing an English colony among them, and failing to perceive that English subjects Would settle in the country in numbers without the leave of the Government, and would merely be likely to do much more mischief to the aboriginal inhabitants than if their settling was recognized and regulated by the Government, not only abandoned the claim to the sovereignty of New Zealand, which had on several occasions been asserted by the British Crown, but recognized the independence of certain tribes by providing them with a common flag—a proceeding which appears scarcely dignified unless they were prepared to guarantee the independence of such tribes, as an aggregate body or nation, against other powers. Notwithstanding the reclamations of English settlers and the expressed wishes of many of the Natives, the English Government could not for a long time be induced to take any steps towards adopting New Zealand as a colony, or giving their protégés the benefits of civil institutions, which might counteract the mischiefs attending the uncontrolled intercourse between them and English subjects, many of questionable character, and might aid in developing and rendering permanent the good work of the missionaries, and in educing the civil and social advantages for which that work was the best preparative. The so-called confederation of a few northern tribes or chiefs, apparently arranged by a British Resident who was the agent of the British Government in the business of the flag, never acquired any consistency or constitution which could support the suggestion that any delegation of sovereign authority, or of interest of any kind, had been deliberately ceded by the component tribes to the aggregate body; or that the component tribes by reason thereof became less independent of each other than they were before; and, whatever may have been the intention of the British functionary, there is no pretence for saying that any national union or confederation was in fact effected by the ceremony of the flag. The enterprises of private associations of Englishmen—and whether they were conducted on defensible principles or not it boots not now to inquire—and the fear lest they should assume rights and privileges inconsistent with the prerogatives of the British Crown and public law, and probably the apprehension that New Zealand might be colonized by some other European Power if England were to refrain much longer, at last forced the Ministers of the British Crown, though with expressed reluctance and in a persuasive rather than imperative manner, to establish the Queen's authority in the Northern Island upon the principle of cession, in the Middle and Southern Islands by occupation, and thus to create a British colony throughout the territory so acquired.

The candid inquirer having now arrived at as definite ideas as he could reach with regard to the page 15origin, customs, polity, and rights of the aboriginal race, and the modifications thereof, and the new practices introduced up to the time of the establishment of the colony, would stop for a while to consider the leading features which ought to characterize the policy of a wise, farsighted, just, and humane sovereign in establishing a colony among such a people. And surely, if extermination of the aboriginals was to be guarded against and their interests kept steadily in view, the fusion of the two races into one people, with one language, one religion, one government, one body of laws, with common rights, privileges, and duties, ought to be the great object of such a policy. The cumulative experience of other colonies and dominions of the British Crown seems to have established beyond doubt that coloured races, kept separate and distinct from the British race in the same territory, always deteriorate and diminish. But, inasmuch as an attempt to force European and English habits, laws, observances, and duties immediately and suddenly upon such a people as the Maoris must necessarily defeat its own object, provision must be made for a transition period during which the indispensable preparatory processes for the ultimate fusion of races, and for the complete development of British government and British institutions throughout the whole colony and population, must be prosecuted with vigour and discretion.

To establish a colony in New Zealand on the understanding and with the view that the two races should be prevented from fusing themselves—by guaranteeing to the Natives the maintenance of their own old barbarous customs, which would effectually prevent the development of commerce and civilization among them—would deprive them of many of the advantages to be derived from the colonization enjoyed by the Europeans, would arrest them in that upward career—physical, intellectual, and moral —on which they had already entered, and would surely have been contrary to humanity, justice, and wisdom. To deal with them as if they were, and were to remain, an independent people, on an equal footing with the English Crown, and only to be bound by treaties of alliance for mutual convenience in the joint occupation of one geographical territory, would be simply ridiculous. They were not, and could not be in any such sense as to make such an arrangement rational or possible, an independent people. They had no common bond of union. Each tribe had such independence only as it could keep by its own tomahawks or muskets; and all that could have been meant by the recognition of the independence of the flag-tribes was that England did not claim a right of sovereignty over them, but abandoned all such claim as it had formerly assumed.

But now the time had come when it was manifest to settlers and Maoris and Ministers that this independence must cease; that the Maoris wanted the protection of British laws and British power against British settlers, and British settlers wanted justice and British government among themselves and against Maoris; and a wise, humane, and just policy suggested that the British Crown should make some such proposition as this to the Maori people of New Zealand: "Englishmen are settling in great numbers among you; they are purchasing land from you; they often cheat you. As they increase more and more in numbers you will be more and more exposed to their dishonesty, and more and more at their mercy. You know what you have already gained, and may guess how much more you may yet gain, by the commerce and the arts that have been introduced by Englishmen among you; you begin to feel a want of protection for the pursuits of peace, and to be aware of the folly of constant wars. If, then, you will give up all pretence of independent sovereignty, and become subjects of the British Crown on the same footing and terms as its other subjects, you shall have substantially all the rights and privileges of British subjects—that is, protection for life, limb, liberty, property, and character; and more especially your beneficial interest in the land to which you are so attached: your lawful possession of it shall not be interfered with against your will, either by Europeans or by Maoris not having any superior right to it. In fact, the land which you (each tribe or individual) formerly held, subject to the chance of its being taken from you by a stronger tribe, you shall now hold under the protection of the British Crown. Your interest in it will now become permanent and fixed; but you shall be at liberty to dispose of what you do not want—that is, when all persons beneficially interested in land are willing to dispose of it they shall not be prevented from doing so by the interference of others. You are really giving up nothing except rights of sovereignty, which you did not formerly possess, either aggregately or separately, in any definite form. You are only promising obedience to the laws which are to be the guarantees of all your rights, and are to give you wholesome and elevating substitutes for your old vague, barbarous, and unsatisfactory usages."

In carrying out these principles and performing these promises in their true spirit, it would be necessary to have respect to the feelings and prejudices of the people, and not to introduce even the most important and advantageous institutions in a way to create antagonism and to excite apprehension. Thus, although the individualization of property, both movable and immovable, would be a necessary step in civilization, and necessary to give the Maoris all the rights of British subjects, yet it might not be desirable, in the first instance, to give a private member of a tribe a right to alienate his own beneficial interest in the land which he occupied out of the tribe without their consent, because the tribe might, till a later stage in the process of amalgamating the races, feel vexed and jealous at seeing Europeans sitting down on land interspersed among the occupations of the tribe. By degrees, however, the Maoris would practically learn that this was a real good instead of a disadvantage.

One of the most important features—perhaps the most important—of a wise policy would be to educate the then rising and the succeeding generations with a special view to the fusion of races, teaching them, as the first and greatest preliminary, the language of the civilized people. The translation of the Holy Scriptures into the Maori tongue was an indispensable step towards the first christianizing of the Natives; but the use of the Maori tongue at all in the education of Maori children, after the establishment of the colony, would be contrary to good sense and a wise policy: it would be tending rather to shut than to open the gates of knowledge and civilization to the rising generations, and to postpone the great and noble work of making from the two races one Christian, civilized, English-speaking people, partaking in common of the benefits of British rule, British institutions, British commerce, arts, and literature. In this matter a British Government ought to act paternally, using the best means of persuasion and other incentives, if need were, to insure the general or universal education of Maori children in the English language.

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In the department of justice the administration of the criminal law should be introduced at once when and where there was power of carrying it out without resistance, and where it was understood. Homicide, malicious injuries, and knowing violations of such rights of property as should have become fully intelligible to the Natives, ought at once to be put down by the Criminal Courts, the administration of justice itself being rendered a means of education, and affording a strong practical proof of the sincerity and truthfulness of the British authorities in their original professions. During the transition state the less formidable violations of the rights of property might be dealt with with some reference to the Maori doctrines of compensation. As regarded civil suits among themselves, it would be some time before the Maoris would find their way on such matters into English tribunals, but when they had done so justice would require that, during the transition state, Maori customs should be taken into consideration in determining the rights or duties of Maoris as among themselves, till at length the time should have come when, by the increasing amalgamation of the races, the Maoris would be affected with knowledge of the British laws, and must be taken to have acted and contracted with respect to them.

Though the institution of slavery still existed to some extent, the law ought to make no distinction, as to its protection, between freeman and slave. The murder or violent ill-treatment of a slave should be made the subject of criminal punishment; but there would be no just reason for granting to slaves, in occupation of lands by the sufferance of their captors or owners, any rights to such lands in derogation of the rights of those who suffered them to occupy. In the transition state, besides protecting the lives and persons of slaves, there would be little necessity for interfering between them and their former owners; and it might be expected that, on intertribal wars ceasing and Christianity developing itself, slavery would gradually disappear altogether, there never having been any custom of external traffic in slaves between the Maori tribes and strangers.

While the Native population were thus from the beginning put in possession of the broad rights and privileges of British subjects, and made amenable to the criminal law, and such other laws as they should gradually come to understand, they would be acquiring the intelligence necessary for enabling them to exercise privileges granted to, and duties imposed upon, certain sections of British subjects, such as the right of taking part in the election of legislators and the duty of assisting as jurymen in the administration of the law. As long as any reference to Maori customs was admissible in the administration of justice, or to define rights and interests for the purpose of the acquisition of land held by Maoris, it would be necessary to have some tribunal with a Maori element in it which should insure the best information and judgment upon the customs and understood rights of the people.

In order to protect the Maoris themselves against the rapacity and dishonesty of European speculators, as well as to establish a system of land titles uniform, simple, and practical, the British Government would insist that all its European subjects should take their title to land through the Crown, and also that those Maoris who should buy lands after the settlement of the colony should do the same, facilities being further given to the Maoris to define their own land and get Crown titles for them. To carry out this system a right of pre-emption, or rather of exclusive original purchase, should be given to the Crown. In the exercise of this right the Crown would give to the Maoris such sums as they should be willing to take and as should be reasonable under all the circumstances, reserving for itself the right to sell the same land again to any purchasers, either European or Maori, with the additional advantage of a title to it by Crown grant, at such advanced price as would leave a revenue to the Crown to be devoted to the purposes of good government and the promotion of the common interests of both races. Of this, as of other branches of the revenue, a due proportion ought to be devoted to the special purposes of Maori civilization. Improved cultivation of lands, improved dwellings, improved personal habits, ought to be encouraged by precept and example, by pecuniary and other assistance.

The character and feelings of the people ought to be thought of, especially during the transition state. They ought to be protected against temptations to fall into bad habits of Europeans, such as intoxication, and to relapse into habits of quarrelsomeness and violence, such as would be fostered by the acquirement of arms and ammunition. They ought to be made gradually to attain to such confidence in the law and in the honesty of the Government as to consider the acquisition of means of defence or attack against or upon their European neighbours as unimportant and unnecessary. The higher families and chiefs—those who had formerly enjoyed the greatest estimation and respect—ought to be treated with marked distinction and consideration, and in every legitimate way conciliated, so that they might feel their real loss of influence as little as possible, might not lose their self-respect, and might be heartily inclined to use all the influence still left to them in the promotion of the objects of the Government. The chiefs themselves would not appreciate this tribute to their hereditary and personal importance more than the mass of the common men of their tribes would do.

Tribes having common occupation of lands and individuals (if necessary, with the consent of their tribes) ought to be encouraged to sell as much land as they did not require for their own usufructuary purposes; but they ought not to be encouraged to denude themselves entirely of all interest in land, inasmuch as persons formerly possessed of land, after selling the whole of it and expending the purchase-money, might be discontented, might lose their self-respect, become turbulent and troublesome, and finally have recourse to lawless practices, and establish a dangerous class in the community.

Firmness, combined with conciliation; action, legislative and administrative, founded on fixed principle, and never at variance with such principle, though tender and sensitive to the prejudices and circumstances of the people; a treatment during the transition period such as a wise, just, humane, and experienced parent would adopt towards children who had been left theretofore without parental care and subject to evil influences—would be the leading characteristics of a policy which should redound equally to the true well-being of the Maori and to the lasting honour of the British people.