Lord John Russell to Governor Hobson.

* * * The aborigines of New Zealand will, I am convinced, be the objects of your constant solicitude, as certainly there is no subject connected with New Zealand, which the Queen, and every class of Her Majesty's subjects in this kingdom, regard with more settled and earnest anxiety. At the same time you will look rather to the permanent welfare of the tribes now to be connected with us than to their supposed claim to the maintainence of their own laws and customs. When those laws and customs lead one tribe to fight with, drive away, and almost exterminate another, the Queen's sovereignty must be vindicated, and the benefits of a rule extending its protection to the whole community must be made known by the practical exercise of authority Yet, amongst the many barbarous tribes with which our extended Colonial Empire brings us into contact in different parts of the globe, there are none whose claims on the protection of the British Crown rests on grounds stronger than those of the New Zealanders. They are not mere wanderers over an extended surface, in search of a precarious subsistence, nor tribes of hunters or of herdsmen, but a people among whom the arts of Government have made some progress; who have established by their own customs a division and appropriation of the soil; who are not without some measure of agricultural skill and a certain subordination of ranks, with usages having the character and authority of law. In addition to this they have been formally recognised by Great Britain as an independent state, and even in assuming the dominion of the page iii country this principle was acknowledged, for it is on the deliberate act and [unclear: ession] of the chiefs, on behalf of the people at large, that our title rests. Nor should it ever be forgotten that large bodies of the New Zealanders have been instructed by the zeal of our Missionaries in the christian faith. It is, however impossible to cast the eye over the map of the globe, and to discover so much as a single spot where civilized men brought into contact with tribes differing from themselves widely in physical structure, and greatly inferior to themselves in military prowess and social arts, have abstained from oppressions and other evil practices; in many the process of extermination has proceeded with appalling rapidity. Even in the absence of positive injustice, the mere contiguity and intercourse of the two races would appear to induce many moral and physical evils fatal to the health and life of the feebler party. And it hast be confessed, that after every explanation which can be found of the rapid disappearance of the aboriginal tribes in the neigbourhood of European settlements, there remains much which is obscure, and of which no well ascertained facts afford the complete solution. Be the causes, however, of this so frequent calamity what they may, it is our duty to leave no rational experiment for the prevention of it unattempted. Indeed, the dread of exposing any part of the human race to a clanger so formidable, has been shown by the Marquis of Normanby in his original instructions to you, to have been the motive which dissuaded the occupation of New Zealand by the British Government, until the irresistable course of events had rendered the establishment of a legitimate authority there indispensable. * * * * * *

To rescue the natives of New Zealand from the calamities of which the approach of civilized man to barbarous tribes has hitherto been the almost universal herald, is a duty too sacred and important to be neglected, whatever may be the discouragements under which it may be undertaken.