1. (See page 2.)

New ZealandA a Glebe for Exeter Hall.—The Church Missionary Body in New Zealand, in early days, brought great scandal on their cause by trafficking with the Natives for Land. Indeed, not only did they obtain large estates from their docile Flocks but they wanted a monopoly, and would fain have had no people get estates save themselves. One unctuous instance of this is recorded by Dr. Thompson in his admirable Work on New Zealand, where he relates that in 1835 they drew up a "Deed of Trust" of Lands belonging to the Northern Natives, and tried, but in vain, to get the Colonial Office to have them appointed Trustees for such Lands—Lands, which as they alleged, their Flocks wished them to preserve from the intrigues of those whom they, the missionary party, termed "designing men!" Indeed, any one who will wade through the mass of evidence relating both to the early irregular and the later regular colonisation of New Zealand, and keep an eye on the "sayings and doings" of the Church Missionary Body, will see that it cherished the hope, of regenerating the New Zealanders by "Tracts and Treacle," and of converting the North Island into a huge Glebe for Exeter Hall.

It must not, however, be supposed from this, that the Colonists are at all insensible to the many merits of the present Missionary Body. Excepting, always, firebrand-bigots of the "Hadfleld" stamp, who might well be deported from our shores to any great Christian College where the cardinal virtues of meekness and charity are taught, the present Missionary Body in New Zealand, especially the Wesleyan portion of it, is one which no Colonist could wisely wish to see enfeebled or suppressed. Missionaries, when they will only confine themselves to their proper sphere and not "meddle and muddle" in the Colony's political and public matters, are most useful Settlers. page 77 I do not imagine that any of them have now the slightest hankering after Land. But, in my view, even if they had there would be nothing blameable in it When an earnest. God-fearing man leads out his family from civilization to the wilderness in the hope of benefiting the Heathen he has aright to acquire some stake in the new Country; and could in no wise employ his leisure better than in adding the Hubandman to the Priest, and in seeking to make some provision for his Olive Branches by creating a little estate by tilling Land. In truth, a good hearty Missionary in each Native Villiage, with half-a-dozen children, who would show our Maori friends that it was not Loud Prayers in the Market Place, but Doing unto others that which they would have others Do unto them, which was the true essence of Christianity, and who would also show them a little "model farm," would be, of all men, the right Man in the right place.

2. (See Page 4.)

The Alsatia of the Pacific—"Kororareka, a noble harbour in the Bay of Islands, in the midst of a large native population and the missionary stations, and long the favourite rendezvous of the whalers and Sydney traders, had from the first been the chief seat of this irregular colonisation; and a more lawless little Pandemonium than this village-port of Kororareka had grown up to be by 1831 neither old nor new world had, probably, ever seen. The most reputable of its denizens were trading adventurers from a convict colony, while the bulk of the community consisted of runaway sailors, of "Lags," gaolbirds, and scoundrels of every mark and brand from Sydney and Van Dieman's Land. Its Visitors, too, were fit company for its Residents: convict skippers and ticket-of-leave mates of Sydney traders, with rude embruted crews of whalers and coasting traders, all rushing ashore for a spree, and running ferociously festive "mucks" till they fell. Every second house was a grog-shop, and the population might have been divided into those who sold rum and those who drank it.

Sterne's Uncle Toby relates that our army swore terribly in Flanders; but the common conversation of Kororareka displayed a boldness and originality of figure drawn from the whaler's forecastle and the chain-gang, a malicious heartiness of ribald damning, far beyond the powers of page 78 our army in Flanders. Convict training and antecedents, blasphemy and the debauchery of drunkenness, were all intensified, too, by debauchery in women. Bark Helens, aboriginal Messalinas, swarmed in Kororareka. Every resident kept a mistress, every visitor came for one. Native women were as common an article of barter between chiefs and whalers as native pigs; and to the daily fights and quarrels which arose in such a community through rum and whiskey were to be added those which arose through the passion of jealousy and the disputed possession of the slave girl. There was neither magistrate nor policeman at Kororareka, neither law nor order nor gospel; every ruffian, and there were many, did what seemed good to him; and in 1831, this New Zealand Village-Port was the veritable "Alsatia" of the Pacific, dashed with a convict Wapping. This lawless colonisation of the country, too, was spreading, and many of the little whaling stations in Cook's and Foveaux Straits, and on the east coast, were little other that budding Kororarekas promising a full bloom." Hursthouse's New Zealand, the "Britain of the South."

3. (See page 4.)

French Race for New Zealand—" We so nearly lost New Zealand to French that Governor Hobson had but just arrived at the Bay of Islands when a French corvette came in to take possession. Finding the British flag planted in the North Island, the French commander determined to try for the South, and hoist the tricolor at Akaroa. His design, however, was betrayed; when Governor Hobson-who, whatever may have been his faults as a civil administrator, was an able and quick-witted naval officer—hurried off the English sloop to Akaroa. The sloop arrived first, but so little first that she was only saluting the British ensign as the corvette dashed in. The French commander then abandoned the design of seizing New Zealand as a French possession, and landed the nucleus of his pioneer colony at Akaroa—as a friendly French Settlement in British dominions. Akaroa remained a small French Community for many years; numbering at one time some 200 Settlers. Most of them were afterwards removed to the rising French colonies in the Pacific; but Akaroa, when I visited it a few years since, still displayed pleasing traces page 79 of its founders in gardens famous for peach, and plum, and pear If France had been a month or two earlier in the field she might have gained a colony worth a hundred Algerias; a colony which would have made her mistress of the Pacific; a colony standing so before the doors of Australia that every wool and gold ship would have had to pass almost within sight of fifty French-New Zealand ports—privateer ports amply large enough for the reception of the James Baines Lightning, Marco Polo, and dozens of sister galleons, and offering unrivalled natural facilities for the building and equipment of frigate and corvette." Hursthouse's New Zealand, the "Britain of the South,"

4.(See Page 6.)

The Crown's Pre-emptive Right.—I have no copy of the Treaty at hand, and forget, for the moment, whether this condition of selling only to the Crown was one actually embodied in the Treaty, or one which only grew out of it and became the great "land Law" of the Colony by some quick-following agreement and legislation. For a short period, in Governor Fitzroy's time, the Settlers, under certain restrictions, were allowed to purchase Land direct from the Natives; and under a very recent Act of the Colonial Legislature they may do so now. But this privilege has ever been but very slightly used, inasmuch as the private Settler in attempting to buy of Natives No. 1 has had no security, when once the purchase-money was paid down, that Natives No. 2 would not some day present themselves at his doors and demand, as the real owners of the soil, a second payment. Nine-tenths of the whole of the European lands in New Zealand have been acquired by the Settlers under the operation of the Crowns' "pre-emptive right;" and most assuredly, speaking from my own and many of my friends' personal experience of the "sharp practice," to use a mild term, of the Maori, I would rather give the Crown one pound per acre for a thousand acres of land to-morrow than any Native, or Tribe, or section of a Tribe, one shilling.

5. (See page 6.)

"Lard Sharks."—Twenty years ago this was a term rife in Am and New Zealand. Land-Sharks were mostly found among the speculative Capitalists of Australia, and the Masters of the Australian page 80 Whalers and Traders. Some Chief visiting Sydney, or some Native going on board a coasting vessel and wanting a gun, a bag of sugar, blankets, spirits, or tobacco would "sell," to use a term, some block of Land to the Land-Shark—other Natives would sell the same block, or other blocks to the same or other buyers, and in this way, by 1840, rather more Land had been "purchased" in New Zealand than New Zealand had Land to furnish.

6. (See page 7.)

The Maori's Titles to Land. Eating the Owners.—The history of the negotiations carried on during the last twenty years by the Crown Authorities with the New Zealand Natives for the purchase of portions of their wild territories would afford some very remarkable, and some very amusing, illustrations of the "comprehensive views" our Maori friends are capable of taking when the question arising is one relating to their, so called, "rights and titles" to Land. Two or three may be given. In his evidence before our New Zealand House of Commons Committee on "Native Matters," Mr. MacLean, the Chief for twenty years of the Native Land Purchasing Department, a gentleman who in his admirable knowledge of Maori character, language, and customs, is almost a Maori himself, tells us this,—" The principal difficulties which have to be contended with in acquiring laud from the Native arise out of the necessity of insisting on proof of such merely asserted claims, and of excluding those who fail to substantiate them from participation in the money paid for the land. I know of instances in which the most frivolous pretences have been used to justify such demands. I have found Natives, after attempting to substantiate an asserted claim to land, and failing to do so for want of a good title, evince great disappointment at their defeat On one occasion a Native actually came to me and, with the greatest coolness, ashed whether (since he had failed in his first attempt) he could not bring forward a claim to an island in the South Seas from which his ancestors had come 600 years ago. The idea was absurd. I asked Mm whether he really meant what he said, He replied that he did, I told him he might as well have preferred a claim to a portion of the moon, His reply was that he was descended from Hawea o te Mamma. Finding, however, that it was useless to page 81 prefer a fictitious claim, he gave the question up. I allude to this circumstance to show that too much attention to merely asserted claims may entail considerable inconvenience, danger, and expense to the country. I do not wish to throw doubts upon any just claims of theirs, and am fully aware that every acre of land in this island, not acquired by the Grown, is their property."

Another illustration is afforded by that excellent Missionary, the Rev. Mr. Taylor, where, in his work on New Zealand he relates this anecdote:—" A gentleman entering my house, knocked his head against a beam and cut his eyebrow, so that blood flowed. The natives present deplored the accident, and said that according to their law, the house would have been forfeited to him; and that as they were of his party, it would have been their duty to have seen it given up to him; as every one present was affected by his blood being shed. In the same way, even if a canoe should be dashed on shore in a storm, and the owner's life endangered, he thereby acquires a title to the spot he is thrown on."

A third illustration of the peculiar fashion by which the Maori claims and acquires his "Title" is afforded by the modus operandi followed by that Band of Ngatiawa Weasels, mentioned in this pamphlet at page 82. I have conversed with a very intelligent old Native who was one of these emigrants to the Chathams. He described the Moriori as being rather smaller and darker than the New Zealanders but still delicate eating; while eels were found in great profusion. Taking the land and eating the owner, is certainly a mode of acquiring a right to the soil far more complete than any practised in Westminster Hall.

7. (See page 13.)

Settler's Blackened Homesteads and Loss of Peoperty,—It has been said that twenty-three Homesteads were blazing in one day in New Plymouth; about 300, altogether, have been burned or destroyed there, and I believe that the loss of property in this little Settlement, where the entire white population does not exceed a few hundreds, has been estimated at considerably over a quarter of a million sterling. I do not, however, at all wish to urge this as any special grievance page 82 against the Maori—in the field he has no refinements as to combatants and non-combatants—his "way of war" is to burn and slay all be can.

8. (See page 14.)

Maori Massacres of Former Days.—Instance No. 1. In 1820 Hongi, New Zealand's Napoleon, as he has been called, brought over to England by the Missionaries as a shining specimen of their Converts, was presented at Court, and received from George the Fourth congenial presents of powder and guns. On getting back to New Zealand he found that one of his people had been knocked on the head in some quarrel with a neighbour Tribe whose Chief was one Hinaki. Poor Hinaki sued for peace, and offered every reparation—but he was the Lamb in the fable—the Wolf meant to eat him: there were the new weapons, too, to flesh. In the first battle between them Hinaki was shots when the "converted" Hongi scooped out the eye of the dying man, swallowed it, and then stabbed him in the neck and drank his blood. About 1,000 Natives were slaughtered in this one fight, and about 300 cooked and eaten. On Hongi's triumphant return to the Bay Islands he had twenty captives in his own canoe, whom he had picked out for slaves; but his daughter, who had lost her husband in the fight, with dishevelled locks rushed down to the water's edge as the canoe touched the shore, and seizing the sword presented to her father by George the Fourth's own hand, jumped on board, and smote off several of the poor captives' heads. Twenty more of the wretched Prisoners were killed and eaten; yet the frantic woman, not thinking that the shade of her husband was sufficiently appeased even with this sacrifice, went into the bush with a musket, and there shot herself. The ball, however, only passing through her arm instead of her head, she was still alive when found; but, determined to accompany her husband to the Reinga, she afterwards strangled herself.

Hongi had no sooner finished one expedition than he prepared for another. He quickly assembled a thousand men, and proceeded with them to Mercury Bay, to make war upon the tribes of that district; ordering another army of two thousand more to be raised, and to follow him. Success again attended his arms; and, flushed with page 83 victory, be next attacked Kaipara, where he made a great slaughter. In 1822, he again visited the Thames and the Waikato, and ascended the Waipa, where he took several large Pahs; thence he nearly penetrated as for as the Wanganui—in this expedition he slew fifteen hundred of his enemies.

In 1823, he attacked Rotorua, conveying his canoes by water, as far as possible, and then dragging them by a road he had cut through the forest, to the lake. Here again he was victorious, and slew many He continued every year his hostile raids, first to one part and then to another, always with success. His name spread terror wherever he went. In fact, he became the Napoleon of New Zealand, declaring, when remonstrated with by the missionaries, that he should not desist until he had subjected the entire island to his control, and that as England had but one King, so, likewise, should there only be one in New Zealand.

Instance No. 2. In 1825, a Cook's Strait Native, one Pehi, was killed and eaten by Te Tamai, a Middle Island chief. In revenge of this, .Pehi's Tribe bribed the brutal master of one of the Sydney Traders, with a load of flax, to carry them down to Te Tamai's strong' hold, where they landed and stormed the Pah with such terrible slaughter that 500 baskets of human flesh are said to have been carried back to the Schooner, Te Tamai was taken prisoner, carried away to Cook's Straits, and delivered up to Pehi's widow. At first, and for about a fortnight, she behaved so kindly to him that a stranger might have taken them for man and wife rather than for doomed captive and mortal foe. She dressed him in her finest mats, and decked his head with her choicest feathers—then, one day, had him tied to a tree, and while in this position, took a spear, stabbed him in the jugular, placed her mouth to the orifice, and drank his blood warm ..has it gushed forth.

Instance No. 3, Some while previous to 1833, a fishing canoe of the Waikatoes was driven ashore at the Waitara, in the beautiful Taranaki Country, when most of the wrecked crew were cruelly murdered and eaten by the Ngatiawa Tribe then dwelling there. In revenge of this, the late Te Whero Whero, alias Te Potatau, a great chief of the Waikato, and the Native who was chosen for the first Maori King by the present Rebels (a potentate, too, with whom I once had the honor of page 84 smoking a pipe), made a fell swoop on the Ngatiawa—stormed their fortress at Pukerangiora, pitched over the cliff, tomahawked, and slew some eleven hundred men, women, and children; picked out about two hundred for slaves, and then marched back with many baskets of flesh, leaving Pukerangiora such a shambles that the air, for miles around, was tainted with the odour of putridity. A party of the fugitive Tribe, escaping from this massacre, formed that Band of Ngatiawa Weasels, alluded to at page 82, who afterwards got over to the Chatham Isles and ate up the poor Moriori.

9. (See page 14)

Cessation of Tribal Wars and Massacres after the commencement of regular Colonisation in 1840.—In a pamphlet put forth the other day by the so-called Aborigines Protection Society—but whose better style and title would be the "Aborigines Destruction Society"—and which I believe has been widely circulated among Members of the Legislature in the hope of getting a crushing Verdict there against the Colonists in some Debate on New Zealand Affairs-it is virtually asserted, among other fictions, that the Security of Life and Property enjoyed by the Natives in New Zealand has been no greater since England's Colonisation of the Country than it was before. Now, undoubtedly, cases of murder, and even two or three of those graver squabbles among the Tribes, leading to little battles, did occur after 1840—but to any man who has lived in New Zealand, and known it for the last twenty years, the Sun at high noon is not more patent to him than that the Security of life and Property which has been enjoyed by the Natives in New Zealand since the regular colonisation of the Country commenced is as much greater than that enjoyed before as the Security now enjoyed in England is greater than that enjoyed in the days of Norman William and the Scandanavian Vikings.

10. (See page 23.)

Society——Whatever may have been the defects of that Wakefield System of Colonisation on which New Zealand was settled the System did at least do this—it drew over a much higher class of emigrants to the Colony than any which had ever left the Mother Country since page 85 the Puritan towns of Massachusetts and the Cavalier Settlements of Virginia were founded; and selected its free and assisted-passage emigrants so carefully that almost every mechanic and labourer carried to New Zealand has been a "picked" man. Petres, Staffords, Pierpoints, Molesworths, Cliffords, Dillons, Tancreds, Tollemaefies, Congreves, Welds, Wortleys, Vavasours, Cholmondeleys, scions of many an old English family, have settled in New Zealand. Retired professional men turned agriculturists, 'vieux moustache' of the Line or Indian service, grown cunning in wool; enterprising younger sons who have had the good sense to abandon Regent Street and the life of the clubs; quiet rural families, with broods of sons and daughters, most of them living on and creating their little estates; with a considerable sprinkling of black coats, scarlet coats, government officials, and the mercantile classes, constitute half the present pioneering population of the country. No stranger, I think, would now visit the Colony without being agreeably surprised at the high, if homely, tone of society, and forcibly struck with the steady, industrious character of all orders of the young community. Indeed, for friendliness of feeling, pleasantness of intercourse, intellectual and moral endowments, I should say that the social circles of New Zealand would be found quite equal to those which the emigrant family might have left in England, Crime, too, we must recollect, is all but non-existent; while the republican licence so offensive to the Englishman in Yankee Land, and that "convict taint" which still reveals itself through a large portion of Australia are alike unknown. Hursthouse's New Zealand, the "Britain of the South"

11. (See page 32).

Colonies relieving the Mother Country from the "Strain of surplus Population."—America, herein, no substitute for Colonies.—It has been shallowly urged by the Goldwin Smith School, that the vast benefits Colonies confer on the Mother Country in relieving her from that fearful "strain of surplus people," which some millions more of accumulated Population must have subjected her to, would have been just as fully and effec- page 86 tually conferred on her if she had had no Colonies—inasmuch as, in that case, she would have been relieved of the "strain of surplus people" by the United States. But, a familiarity with Emigrants and Emigration shows us that the vast majority of those who in the last forty years have moved from the Mother Country to her Colonies have been those who have chosen British Colonies for their new homes either because they had a fear or horror of democratic institutions, or because they had a dread or dislike of sinking their nationality, and changing their old imperial flag—they have been Emigrants, in fact, who, had there been no British Colonies to go to would, for the most part, have stayed at-home.

Again, any argument based on the asumption that it would have been equally beneficial to the Mother Country whether her surplus hordes had found homes in her own Colonies or in the United States, is radically false, and for this reason:—it is mainly the blood and vigour which America has drawn off from Great Britain, during the last half century, which has enabled America to swell into the rude aggressive power she is:—if all British Emigrants who have left our shores in the last half century had spread themselves over our own Emigration Fields in Canada, in Africa, in Australasia, instead of going, for the larger part, to the United states, Jonathan would not now have been thinking of sending in to Mr. Bull a certain heavy bill, headed "Damages per Alabama,"—a bill which may yet have to be discharged in blood.

The Goldwin Smith School assert, too, that in the matter of creating or extending our Over-sea Trade the United States would have done for us all which Colonies have done for us—or, in other words, that we should have had as large an Over-sea Trade without Colonies as with them. But, for the very same reasons why and wherefore the United States could not have relieved the Mother Country from her Strain of People," they could not have created for and supplied her with her Colonial Trade.

Again, not only is it politically better for our Emigrants to be spread over the world as British subjects in British communities, than that they should be concentrated in America, as Citizens of a Foreign page 87 Power, but it is economically and industrially better—if we had had no Colonists in Australasia where would our wool and gold have come from?

12. (See page 36.)

Heké Burning Kororareka.—" Honé Heké, a distinguished missionary chief of the Bay of Islands, had long driven a thriving trade amid the lawless colonisers of Kororareka—bartering his pigs, potatoes, peaches, slave-girls, and native produce, with whalers and traders for powder, guns, blankets, knicknacks and tobacco. The hoisting of the British flag at Kororareka, the introduction of some; law, the imposition of customs duties, had sadly crippled this thriving trade, and driven to other shores many of the fishing freebooters who had long revelled on the beach. With the ships, went Heké's income. His mark to this Waitangi Treaty had created him a British subject-but it had created Customs, stopped the pig trade, and made beauty a drug. The British flag-staff symbolised the Customs, He cut it down. Smitten on the one cheek. Governor Fitzroy turned the other. By stroke of pen he abolished Customs throughout New Zealand; when Heké, at the entreaty of his spiritual advisers, sent a note of apology. But whalers did not instantly come back—they had not heard of Customs' sudden death. Heké was impatient; he cut the flag-staff down a second time. Missionary authorities remonstrated and set it up once, this time as they tell us, "sheathed with iron"—but not with majesty. Heke cut it down a third time; then burnt down the town and drove the inhabitants to Auckland. Heké, almost an elder of the church, a chief, as a missionary author tells us, "distinguished for his knowledge of the Scriptures," actually burning down his Queen's towns! slaying and harrying Her Majesty's white subjects Well might the missionary officials of the Privy Council exclaim, "et tu brute!" They offered £100 for his head. Hoké at once replied by offering 1000 acres of land for the governor's head—a high price, but Heke was always a liberal savage. Soldiers were brought over from Sydney; natives, old tribe foes of Heké, delighted to cross tomahawks with him once more, were enlisted as allies, and war burst out. Having long coddled our convert we had now to thrash him."—Hursthouse's New Zealand, the "Britain of the South."

13 (See page 38.)

14. (See Note page 68.)

Selling Half New Zealand to France.—Among the various schemes and crotchets of Mr. Fitzgerald and the Gentlemen of the New Zealand "Peace Party," for the settlement of the Northern Troubles, I almost wonder we have not seen one for the sale of the North Island to France. Looking at the order that would be taken with our Maori friends under the Tricolor, this, probably, would be a scheme somewhat distasteful to Mr. Buxton and Exeter Hall——but it would be one by no means repugnant, I should say, to the advanced views of Professor Gold win Smith, and it might prove to be one very acceptable to France.

Compared to the North Island of New Zealand, the cherished Settlements of France in the neighbouring Northern Polynesia are mere tropical rocks. France, as has been shown at page 88, originally ran a neck and neck race with us for the whole of New Zealand; and would now, perhaps, count Mr. Gladstone down, say, ten or twenty millions for half New Zealand.

The North Island Colonists might object to being sold to France—but the matter of what particular Cat such small Mice were killed by would be quite beneath "la haute politique" of the Shepherd Princes of the South.