New Zealand in 1839: or Four Letters to the Right Hon. Earl Durham on the Colonization of that Island.

John Dunmore Lang

First published by Smith, Elder and Co. in 1839

Digitised and made available online by the University of Auckland Libraries and Learning Services.

Epub © 2013 Early New Zealand Books Collection

ISBN 978-1-927279-24-3

[TITLE PAGES]

NEW ZEALAND
IN
1839:

OR
FOUR, LETTERS,
TO
THE RIGHT HON. EARL DURHAM,
GOVERNOR OF THE NEW ZEALAND LAND COMPANY, &c. &c. &c.
On the Colonization of that Island,
AND
ON THE PRESENT CONDITION AND PROSPECTS OF ITS NATIVE INHABITANTS.

BY
JOHN DUNMORE LANG , D.D.
PRINCIPAL OF THE AUSTRALIAN COLLEGE, AND SENIOR MINISTER OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND IN NEW SOUTH WALES.

LONDON:
SMITH, ELDER AND CO., 65, CORNHILL.
1839.

LONDON:

PRINTED BY STEWART AND MURRAY,

OLD BAILEY.

PREFATORY EPISTLE... London, 6th July, 1839.

PREFATORY EPISTLE.

TO THE RIGHT HON. EARL DURHAM, &c. &c. &c.

LONDON, 6TH JULY, 1839.

MY LORD,

I HAVE taken the liberty to address the following letters to your Lordship, without having previously solicited your Lordship's permission, under the assurance that, in consenting to become the Governor of the New Zealand Land Company, it was by no means your Lordship's intention merely to lend the countenance of your name to a small coterie of Metropolitan Speculators, associated for the sole purpose of making money by the transference or sale of shares in a joint-stock speculation. From the high rank which your Lordship holds in the aristocracy of England; from the higher character as an enlightened statesman and distinguished patriot which your Lordship unquestionably bears among the middle classes of this great nation; but especially from the profound, comprehensive, and truly British views of national policy, exhibited in your Lordship's admirable Report on the state of Canada, I felt assured that the only motive that could possibly have induced

your Lordship to patronise an Association for the Colonization of New Zealand was a sincere desire to promote the welfare and the moral advancement of your fellow-men, and at the same time to extend the power and to increase the resources of the British empire. In such circumstances I make no apology for addressing your Lordship, as I am sure your Lordship will not regard either as uninteresting or unimportant the suggestions even of a humble individual, as to the method of procedure in which the attainment of these noble objects may be most effectually secured.

To extend to the farthest regions of the habitable globe, and to perpetuate to the close of time, the noble language, the equitable laws, and the Protestant religion of this favoured land, is indeed an enterprise well worthy of the first of England's nobility: and I am confident, my Lord, there is no case in which the British patriot, the genuine philanthropist, the Christian man, has reason to feel more deeply interested in the progress of such an enterprise than the one with which your Lordship is at present associated, – the Colonization of New Zealand.

I have the honour to be,
My Lord,
Your Lordship's very humble and most obedient Servant,
JOHN DUNMORE LANG.

LETTER I. ON THE CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE OF THE PRESENT EUROPEAN POPULATION OF NEW ZEALAND, AS REGARDS THE ABORIGINES.

LETTER I.

ON THE CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE OF THE PRESENT EUROPEAN POPULATION OF NEW ZEALAND, AS REGARDS THE ABORIGINES.

London, June – 1839.

MY LORD,

HAVING been residing, as a minister of religion, in the colony of New South Wales for the last sixteen years, with the exception of the time I have occupied during that period in several voyages to England, my attention has been much directed for a series of years past to the condition and prospects of the native inhabitants of the numerous islands of the Southern Pacific, and especially of the large island, or rather group of islands, known under the general name of New Zealand. The commercial intercourse between that island and the Australian Colonies has, during the last few years, as your Lordship is doubtless well aware, been both frequent and intimate; and the Australian colonists have thus acquired much practical knowledge of its general resources and capabilities. I have only myself, I confess, been once at New Zealand, having touched at that island for a few days in the months of January and February last, on my fifth voyage from New South Wales to England by way of Cape Horn; but I have thus been enabled to ascertain by personal observation the accuracy of much of the information I had previously received re-

specting the island generally through the testimony of others; to correct the erroneous impressions relative to its soil and climate, and the character and condition of its aboriginal inhabitants, which had been made upon my own mind at a distance; and to deduce those inferences and conclusions, – in regard to what is really practicable, and what ought decidedly to be done forthwith by Her Majesty's Government, for the preservation of a numerous and most interesting race of Aborigines, as well as for the advancement of the maritime power of Britain, and the extension of her colonial empire – which I do myself the honour to submit to your Lordship in the following pages.

There has always been more or less communication between New Zealand and the colonies of New South Wales and Van Dieman's Land since the first establishment of these Colonies; potatoes and pork, obtained in barter from the natives for articles of European produce, being for a long time the only articles imported from that island into Sydney and Hobart Town. Of late, however, the splendid harbours of the island, and especially the Bay of Islands, situated on the east coast, near its northern extremity, have been the favourite resort of the numerous British, Colonial, American, and French whalers of the Southern Pacific; while European establishments have during the last few years been forming from time to time by the merchants of New South Wales and Van Dieman's Land, along the numerous bays and roadsteads to the southward, for the Right or Black Whale Fishery, as well as for the purchase of dressed flax and the other articles above-mentioned from the natives. The valuable timber of the island, and the facility of procuring it with the assistance of native labour, have also led to the recent formation of various establishments for the cutting of timber along the banks of its navigable streams; and the demand for European labour, which has thus been created in various

departments of industry, has already attracted a considerable number of European labourers, sawyers, and mechanics to the island, and induced them to make it the place of their permanent abode. The resort of the South Sea whalers to the Bay of Islands, the existence of a considerable European population in the neighbourhood of that Bay, and the artificial wants of the natives, have naturally led to the establishment of various reputable persons in the capacity of merchants or traders in that vicinity; as also to the settlement of a swarm of individuals from the two penal colonies, of a very different description, as retail dealers, grog-sellers, and panderers to the worst vices of the most abandoned of men. There is thus, in addition to the crews of the numerous whalers and colonial traders frequenting the coast, a considerable European population, not merely residing temporarily, but actually settled in New Zealand, chiefly towards the northern extremity of the land.

Of the character of this European population, now permanently settled in New Zealand, it is scarcely necessary to inform your Lordship. With a few honourable exceptions, it consists of the veriest refuse of civilized society – of runaway sailors, of runaway convicts, of convicts who have served out their term of bondage in one or other of the two penal colonies, of fraudulent debtors who have escaped from their creditors in Sydney or Hobart Town, and of needy adventurers from the two colonies, almost equally unprincipled. 1 In conjunction with the whalers that occasionally

visit the coast, the influence of these individuals on the natives is demoralizing in the extreme. Their usual articles of barter are either muskets and gunpowder, or tobacco and rum. Most of them live in open concubinage or adultery with native women, and the scenes of outrageous licentiousness and debauchery that are ever and anon occurring on their premises are often sufficiently revolting to excite the reprobation and disgust of the natives themselves.

I happened to be crossing the Bay of Islands in a boat, on the evening of Saturday the 2nd of February last, with a countryman of my own, who has long been settled in that vicinity, and I am happy to add, as the husband of a virtuous wife, and the father of a most interesting family, when the sound of music and dancing attracted my attention; the sound of a drum, of a French horn, and a fiddle being distinctly audible in the distance. "It is on board one of the two American whalers that arrived today," observed my intelligent friend; "they are both temperance ships, but I know well from past experience, they are both by this time full of native women for the

worst of purposes." In the village of Kororadika, adjoining the outer anchorage ground in the Bay of Islands, I observed three or four public-houses of the vilest character close to the native village in that part of the Bay; the unfortunate inhabitants of which are thus exposed, without hope of escape, to the worst possible influence and example: while at the mouth of the Kauakaua River, near the inner anchorage ground, I also observed a whole group of English public-houses of the most infamous description, close to another native Pa, or fortified village, which, during a late war in the island, contained upwards of fifteen hundred fighting men, besides women and children.

That scenes of outrageous violence, injustice and oppression should be perpetually recurring in a community composed of such materials, is naturally to be expected. The master of a French whaler lately shipped two or three English sailors at the Bay of Islands; but during his stay in that port the latter had run up a considerable account for ardent spirits in the house of one of the publicans at Kororadika, who, I was credibly informed, make it their business to entice sailors away from their ships for this very purpose. This account the French shipmaster refusing to pay, the publican forcibly seized and detained one of his whaleboats for payment; and when the English agent of the whaler went to demand the restitution of the boat in the name of the owners of the vessel, he was threatened with a personal assault in the most brutal and revolting terms, and had consequently to desist from his attempt. The Frenchman had, of course, to put to sea without his boat – a very serious loss indeed to a whaler. There happened however to be a French ship of war at the bay some time afterwards, the captain of which on being informed of the circumstance by the English agent, immediately obtained the requisite redress, by letting the

publican know, through one of his officers, that if he did not send the full price of the whaleboat by a certain hour, he would drag him, house and all, into the sea.

Mr. P*****, the author of a recent publication on New Zealand, and the brother of a wealthy emancipist auctioneer in the town of Sydney, endeavoured some time ago to set up an additional grog-shop in the village of Kororadika; but the publicans who had already obtained a monopoly of the business, conceiving he would injure their trade, actually threatened to hang him up upon the spot, and had even made preparations for the erection of the gibbet, when Mr. P. deemed it prudent to abandon his project. 2

In short, Lynch law is at present the only law among the numerous Europeans in New Zealand; there being no authority to appeal to in the island, and no redress procurable for the most atrocious injuries but by an appeal to physical force. A few weeks before the period of my visit to the island, a European had been tarred and feathered by some of his countrymen, for some misdemeanour, either real or imaginary; and another had been tied up to a tree and flogged, and afterwards compelled to sign a note acknowledging that he had not only received the flogging, but that he richly deserved it. The note was demanded under

the idea that it would secure the flagellators against all legal consequences.

It may doubtless be urged in reference to these observations, that there is a British Resident in New Zealand, with a salary of 500l. per annum from the Colonial Revenue of New South Wales, with liberty to draw for 200l. more for presents to the native chiefs. That salary, my Lord, or rather the principle on which it is allowed – -viz., for services performed out of the colony, and not for the colonists, – is universally regarded as a prodigious grievance in New South Wales; and I am sure your Lordship will allow it is a most unnecessary cause of offence to a really loyal and important colony. But from whatever source the salary of the office of British Resident in New Zealand should be derived in future, I cannot help remarking that the office itself has hitherto been totally useless; the Resident having no authority to enforce the observance of any law, no power to support his office by the punishment of offences, however atrocious, and no employment whatever that I could possibly ascertain, but that of standing sentinel upon the British ensign, which is hoisted close to his residence on one of the headlands of the Bay of Islands; and which I cannot help adding, is actually dishonoured by the prevalence of outrageous lawlessness, injustice, and oppression around the spot where it idly floats.

It may also be urged, as it has repeatedly been already in this country, that the government of New Zealand is in the hands of the native chiefs, and that it rests entirely with these chiefs to establish a system of equal laws both for natives and. Europeans. But it is worse than idle, – it is actually dishonest, – to use such language to Her Majesty's Government and the British public; and it can only be used (I mean by individuals at all acquainted with the real circumstances of the case) for the express purpose of deceiving either the Government or the public, if not both. If

New Zealand had, like many of the islands of the Pacific to the northward, been under the government of five or even ten powerful chiefs, having each supreme authority in his own territory, I should have been the last to recommend any interference with that authority on the part of any civilized nation. But the whole inhabited territory of the New Zealand group of islands, as is well known in New South Wales, is parcelled out among innumerable chiefs, each of whom is independent of every other. The authority of these chiefs, moreover, like that of the chiefs among the ancient Germans, according to the historian Tacitus, is recognised only in time of war; and they have no personal property in the soil distinct from that of every Rangatira or freeman of their respective tribes, insomuch that when any particular tract of land is sold by any particular native, the probability is that there will be a number of other natives claiming an equal right to it with the one who has sold it. Nay, so far from being able to establish and to support a regular government on European principles, the New Zealanders are actually unable to protect their own patrimonial territories from the grasp of European rapacity, even when practised by unaccredited individuals, acting without the sanction of any Government whatever. It is the obvious interest however of such individuals to speak with great deference of the New Zealand chiefs, – of their being the heads of an independent nation, and of their ability to form a government on European principles for their own territory: for so long as such ideas are entertained in England, they will be enabled to rob the natives of their land unquestioned and unobserved, under the pretext of having bought and paid for it; and to produce regular deeds of sale and purchase, on some future convenient opportunity, for lordships as extensive as those of the Percys and the Howards.

In short, the New Zealanders can only be regarded as

mere children, incapable of managing their own property, except through the agency of some liberal, enlightened, and Christian Government, acting as their trustee; and I beg to assure your Lordship, that unless some such Government interfere speedily on their behalf, by the establishment of a system of general guardianship for the protection of the natives on the one hand, and the enactment of equal laws, both for natives and Europeans on the other, there is no prospect for the New Zealand nation but that of gradual demoralization and speedy extinction. From the causes that are now in operation, chiefly through their intercourse with Europeans, the number of the natives, for a large extent of country around the Bay of Islands, as well as for a considerable distance to the northward and southward of that Bay, has been diminished at least one-half, during the last fifteen years; and it is the opinion of the most respectable Europeans on the spot, that if the present system is allowed to continue much longer, the period of their final extinction, in the northern division of the northern island, cannot be far distant.

This consummation, so strongly to be deprecated by every genuine philanthropist, is likely, my Lord, to be indefinitely accelerated by the prevalence of a system which has recently come into operation in New Zealand, and which is at present acted upon in that island to an extent of which your Lordship and the British public can have no conception; – a system, moreover, which it is alike the interest and the bounden duty of the British Government, as the great colonizing power of modern Europe, and the natural protector of the aborigines of every land to which the all-pervading commerce of Great Britain extends, to put a stop to immediately.

The unexpected and truly splendid results of the land-selling and immigration system in New South Wales, very speedily called into existence a class of persons in that Co-

lony who were known by the name of Land Sharks, and who made it their business to attend all Government sales of land, for the purpose of jobbing in the article, and especially of extorting money from newly-arrived immigrants, or other bona fide intending purchasers of land, by pretending that they were desirous of purchasing the very lands which the latter had selected, and threatening to bid them up to an exorbitant price for their selections, unless they were paid a certain amount of hush-money. Now as persons of this class have not only been enabled to ascertain the real value of waste land in the colonies of New South Wales, Van Dieman's Land, and Southern Australia, through the working of the admirable system now in operation for the disposal of such land in these Colonies, but have been somewhat cramped and counteracted of late in their nefarious operations by the judicious regulations of the Local Governments in these settlements; they have turned their eyes all at once to New Zealand, where there is no minimum price of land established under the sanction of any Government, and where extensive tracts of the first quality can at present be purchased from the ignorant and deluded natives for the merest trifle. In this way, tracts of eligible land, of sufficient extent to constitute whole earldoms in England, have already been acquired in New Zealand, by the merest adventurers, – by men who had arrived in that island without a shilling in their pockets, but who had had influence enough to obtain credit for a few English muskets, a few barrels of gunpowder, a few bundles of slops, or a few kegs of rum or tobacco in Sydney or Hobart Town. And thus, my Lord, after being despoiled of their pigs and potatoes, and their other articles of native produce, in pretended barter for the veriest trifles, the poor natives, who, your Lordship and the British public have been told again and again, are capable of establishing a regular Government of their own, are, at length

wheedled out of their land, – their only remaining possession, – and reduced at once to a state of hopeless poverty and moral degradation. One of the most extensive purchasers of land in New Zealand, at the period of my visit to the Bay of Islands, in January last, was a person of the name of White, who had formerly been a Wesleyan missionary at Hokianga, on the west coast, but had been dismissed from his society for immorality. This reputable individual is now a merchant of the highest caste, and one of the largest proprietors of land, (purchased, of course, in the way I have mentioned,) at the Hokianga and Kaiparra rivers in New Zealand.

It is absolutely distressing, my Lord, to observe the effects which this system of unprincipled rapacity is already producing upon the truly unfortunate natives of New Zealand, in conjunction with the other sources of demoralization to which I have already alluded. The more intelligent of the natives perceive and acknowledge their unfortunate condition in these respects themselves; but they are spellbound, as it were, and cannot resist the temptation to which the offer of articles of European produce and manufacture infallibly exposes them. Like mere children, they will give all they are worth to-day for the trinket or gewgaw, which they will sell for the veriest trifle to-morrow. Pomare, 3 an intelligent native chief, who speaks tolerably

good English, but who has already alienated the greater part of his valuable land in the neighbourhood of the Bay of Islands, observed to one of my fellow-voyagers, "Englishmen give us blankets, powder, and iron-pots, for our land; but we soon blow away the powder, the iron-pots get broken, and the blankets wear out; but the land never blows away, or wears out." The master of the vessel, in which I have just returned to England, had resided for a considerable time at the Bay of Islands, about eight or ten years ago, as the master of an English whaler, and was consequently well known to the natives in that part of

the island. On going ashore at the village of Kororadika, the day after we had cast anchor, he called at the house of a native chief, of the name of Riva, with whom he had formerly been well acquainted, and asked him, how he had not come on board his ship, to welcome him, as he used to do, when he heard of his arrival in the Bay. "I was ashamed to go," replied the noble-minded, but unfortunate chief, "because I had no present to offer you. Formerly, when I went to see my friends, I always carried them a present of pigs, or potatoes; but I am a poor man now. I have sold all my land, and I have nothing to give my friends." Riva is as fine a looking man as I have ever seen; tall, muscular, and athletic; with an expression of kindliness on his open countenance, which it is impossible to mistake, notwithstanding the tattooing with which it is disfigured. But his poverty, my Lord, is not the worst feature in his present circumstances. Having no land to reside on, as he formerly had, at some distance from the Bay, he is compelled to take up his permanent residence in the village of Kororadika, among the lawless crews of the English, French, and American whalers that frequent the port; his daughter, one of the handsomest native women I have seen, being actually living, at the time I visited the island, in open concubinage with a civilised brute, who commands an English whaler out of London, and who, I was credibly informed, has a wife and children in this city.

But one of the most fruitful sources of extensive misery and depopulation in the islands of New Zealand is, the wars to which the demoralizing intercourse of the natives with worthless Europeans has incidentally given rise. About eighteen months ago, the ship, Roslyn Castle, in which I have just returned to England from New South Wales, belonged to an emancipist mercantile house, which has since become bankrupt in that Colony, of the name

of Long and Wright, and was employed as a whaler, out of the port of Sydney, on the coast of New Zealand. Touching for supplies at the Bay of Islands, either the master, or one of the officers, secreted on board, and carried off to sea a native woman of some note, belonging to the Pa, or fortified native village, at the mouth of the Kauakaua river. The natives of that village, not being aware of the fact, accused the natives of Kororadika, about two miles distant, of having killed and eaten the woman, in consequence of some old feud; and, although the latter repelled the accusation with an indignant denial, a war between the two villages was the result, each party being enabled to assemble, from the tribes in the neighbourhood, in alliance with one or other, about fifteen hundred fighting men. The war continued between four and five months; and, during its continuance, not fewer than eighty of the unfortunate natives were killed.

But injuries of this kind, on the part of worthless Europeans, are of perpetual occurrence on the coast of New Zealand, and will certainly continue to be perpetrated upon the helpless natives till a Christian and energetic Government is established in the island, under the auspices of Great Britain. During my stay at the Bay of Islands, I saw a native woman, who had been brought down to the Bay, by a French Whaler, from the South Cape, about eight hundred miles distant, and who had in all likelihood been got on board the whaler in some clandestine manner. But if there were a regular and energetic Government established in the island, such outrages, with all the disastrous consequences to which they lead, would either be altogether prevented, or would easily be effectually punished, by whomsoever committed. If such a Government, for instance, had seized and detained the French whaler, till he had found security for defraying the full expense of re-conveying the native woman to her own tribe and vicinage, the

probability is that no whaler of any nation would have dared thereafter to perpetrate such an outrage upon the defenceless natives, on any part of the coast.

A person of the name of Harwood, the master of a colonial schooner, called The Lord Rodney, belonging to the mercantile house of Cooper and Holt, in Sydney, was lying with his vessel some time ago in Port Nicholson, at the eastern entrance of Cook's Straits, when a large tribe of natives in that neighbourhood, amounting to about 800 souls, and pretending that they were afraid of an attack from another tribe in the vicinity, offered to charter his vessel to convey them all to Chatham Island, a large and fertile island to the eastward of New Zealand, situated on the 44th parallel of south latitude, and famous for its excellent potatoes. Harwood accepted their offer on the part of his owners, agreeing to receive payment in pigs and potatoes, and accordingly conveyed the whole tribe, with all their moveable property, at two trips, to Chatham Island: although he could not but know that the real object of the New Zealanders was a predatory and murderous expedition against the peaceful and defenceless natives of that island; whose property and provisions they accordingly seized on their arrival, reserving themselves as a stand-by, in the event of a scarcity of food. Shortly thereafter, a Scotchman, of the name of Roberton, who had been in the patriot service under Lord Cochrane, on the coast of South America, and who was then the master of a Colonial trader from Van Dieman's Land, touched at Chatham Island, and induced several of the New Zealanders from Port Nicholson to go on board his vessel, to assist in working her back to Van Dieman's Land, as he was short handed; promising to restore them to their countrymen on that island within a certain time. The New Zealanders were urgent on this point, and told Captain Roberton, that if their countrymen were not brought back to them by the

time appointed, they would massacre the whole crew of the first vessel that should touch at the island. On his arrival in Van Dieman's Land, the New Zealanders went on shore, and Captain Roberton states, that when he was again ready for sea, he applied to the police of that colony, and even to the governor himself, informing them of the conditions on which he had taken the New Zealanders on board his vessel at Chatham Island, and of the threat which their countrymen had held out in the event of their not being taken back to the island at the time appointed; requesting the interference of the Government to enable him to get the New Zealanders on board his vessel. But the authorities of Van Dieman's Land having informed Capt. R. that, as the New Zealanders had arrived in the colony as free persons, they could not compel them to go on board any vessel against their will, Capt. R. was obliged to put to sea again without them.

In the mean time, the day appointed for the return of the New Zealanders to Chatham Island arrived; but as they were not forthcoming, their countrymen prepared to carry into effect their murderous threat on the first vessel that should touch at the island. The first European vessel that happened to touch at Chatham Island, in these circumstances, was the Jean Bart, a French whaler, the master of which, a respectable young man from Havre de Grace, had shortly before committed suicide, in a fit of temporary insanity, at the Bay of Islands. Watching their opportunity, therefore, the New Zealanders rose upon the crew of this unfortunate vessel, when off their guard, murdered every one of them, amounting to forty persons in all, and afterwards set fire to the vessel.

The tidings of this massacre were brought to the Bay of Islands by an American whaler, which had touched at Chatham Island shortly after it took place; and as the French corvette L'Heroine, Captain Cecille, was then at

anchor in the Bay, Capt. C. immediately set sail for Chatham Island, to punish the murderers. This, it seems, he did effectually, by exterminating the whole of the New Zealanders on the island, leaving the miserable remnant of the Aborigines in quiet possession of their native isle. The whole of this frightful tragedy was enacted towards the close of the past year.

But although all the wars of the New Zealanders are by no means the result of the intervention of Europeans, it is remarkable with what tact and ingenuity the Europeans, resident on the island, uniformly improve them to their own personal advantage, whatever be their issue. Towards the close of the year 1838, about a hundred fighting men of one of the tribes in the neighbourhood of the Bay of Islands, went on a predatory excursion to Barrier Island, at the mouth of the River Thames, about 120 miles to the southward, on the east coast. Barrier Island is about forty miles long, very fertile, but thinly inhabited. The interlopers from the Bay of Islands having therefore billeted themselves on the peaceful and unoffending natives of that island, the latter sent private information of the circumstance to the chiefs on the banks of the River Thames, on the mainland, with whom they were on terms of friendship, and who accordingly assembled in great force to give battle to the interlopers. The latter, it seems, although fewer in number, were better acquainted with the use of fire-arms than their countrymen to the southward, and there were accordingly upwards of twenty of the chiefs of the Thames River natives shot in the fight that ensued, besides many natives of inferior standing. The fight had evidently been very sanguinary, for the Bay of Islands natives, who had in the mean time nearly exterminated the natives of Barrier Island, were themselves reduced to thirty men, and were glad to embrace the opportunity of a small coasting vessel, bound to the Bay of Islands with pork and potatoes,

to return to that neighbourhood. The little vessel arrived in the Bay on the 2nd of February last, having landed the thirty natives on the coast, to walk overland to the Bay.

In these circumstances, it became a matter of question, as well as of considerable interest, among the land-jobbers at the Bay of Islands, to whom Barrier Island belonged. One of them informed me himself, that he was intending to proceed to the River Thames by the first opportunity, to purchase it from the natives; that is, to purchase a beautiful island, forty miles in length, and containing one or more good harbours for large ships, from the miserable remnant of its native inhabitants, immediately after a bloody war, in which the latter had been all but exterminated. But Pomare, the chief I have already mentioned, had, in the mean time, laid claim to the island, and had offered to sell it to another European at the Bay, as being his by right of conquest; the natives from the Bay of Islands, who had been concerned in effecting the work of extermination on Barrier Island, being of his tribe and district.

It will thus, I trust, be evident to your Lordship, that the influence exerted on the unfortunate natives of New Zealand by the Europeans at present residing on that island, as well as by the numerous whalers and colonial traders that occasionally visit its coasts, is demoralizing in the extreme, and must infallibly issue in their speedy extinction. European vice and European disease are thinning their ranks with lamentable and incredible rapidity, insomuch that the natives themselves perceive and acknowledge it. "Give me a double-barrelled gun, to keep me in mind of you when you are gone," said the chief Pomare to the captain of the vessel in which I have just returned to England, while taking his leave of him, on the eve of our sailing: "but of what use would it be to us?" added Pomare, "for we are all dying, and we shall be all dead

by-and-bye." This process, my Lord, will be accelerated tenfold, if the nefarious arts that are now so extensively in operation among the European inhabitants of the island, for the purpose of robbing the natives of their valuable land, are allowed to be continued. For when a native disposes of a portion of his land to a European, the probability is, that the portion he retains becomes of no use to him in his own estimation, and he is therefore virtually compelled to sell it also; for in all probability, and perhaps for the express purpose of realizing such a result, the European puts cattle on his purchase; these, of course, trespass on the native's land, as there are no fences in the country, and destroy his corn and potatoes; and the unfortunate New Zealander either disposes of his remaining land in disgust, for the merest trifle, and migrates to the interior, or sets himself down, with his family, close to some European anchorage ground, to live on roots and shell-fish, and to obtain a miserable livelihood by maintaining a precarious and disgraceful intercourse with worthless Europeans.

It is thus, my Lord, that one of the finest Aboriginal races on the surface of the globe is fast disappearing from the face of the earth. It is impossible, however, that Her Majesty's liberal and enlightened, and shall I not be permitted to add, Christian, Government, can long remain an indifferent spectator of such a consummation. The state of things I have endeavoured to describe has in no respect been brought about by the New Zealanders themselves. It has been the natural result of the extension of British commerce, and the planting of two British penal colonies on the adjacent coast of New Holland and Van Dieman's Land. It has been the corollary, so to speak, of the land-selling and immigration system of New South Wales. In such circumstances, I conceive, my Lord, Her Majesty's

Government must interfere, as well for the vindication of its own high character in the civilized world, as for the sake of injured and outraged humanity, by placing itself, as it were, "between the living and the dead, that the plague may be stayed."

I have the honour to be,
My Lord, &c. &c.

1 Of the character and practices of a considerable portion of the European population in New Zealand, the following may perhaps serve as a specimen. There is an individual at present at the Bay of Islands, who is known among the Europeans of that vicinity, by the respectable sobriquet of the Ratcatcher. He had been a dealer in slop-clothing and a notorious gambler in New South Wales; but having been obliged, when his affairs had become desperate in Sydney, to leave that Colony altogether, he embarked for the usual refuge of the destitute, New Zealand, and commenced his old practices as a general dealer and gambler at the Bay of Islands. On one occasion, when he had gambled away all his property at the Bay, but a single box of spermaceti candles, he took a boat at Kororadika, and embarking with the box, rowed over to Paihia, one of the stations of the Church Missionary Society on the opposite shore, where he offered the candles to the Missionaries at sixpence a pound; telling them he could procure them 60l. worth at the same price, from a vessel which had just arrived in the port, provided he could only advance the ready money for them. The Missionaries of course advanced the money, which the Ratcatcher of course pocketed and applied to his own purposes; thereby teaching the Missionaries not to deal in future with disreputable persons, and especially not to attempt to purchase articles of property from such persons at one-fourth of their market price.

2 Mr. P. had some time before been the supercargo of a small vessel, belonging to Mr. Gilbert Mair, of the Bay of Islands, bound to Cloudy Bay, on the middle island of the New Zealand group, for oil. Without attending minutely, however, either to the interests or instructions of his employer, Mr. P. thought proper to put in somewhere on the coast to trade for flax on his own account with the natives; but interfering with some of their women during his stay, the natives in revenge burnt the house or store in which his goods were deposited, thereby entailing a loss upon his employer of 275l. With the exception of the article of morals, therefore, Mr. P. must be tolerably good authority respecting New Zealand, as he has seen a good deal both of the country and of its inhabitants.

3 Pomare is a Tahitian, and not a New Zealand name. It was adopted by the father of the present chief, in compliment to the late king of Tahiti, with whom he had had some intercourse, though in what way I am not acquainted, and has descended to his son. Names, indeed, are given somewhat arbitrarily by the South Sea Islanders generally. The New Zealanders, for example, observing that the sailors on board the whaling vessels that touched at their ports, uniformly carried an iron pot with them, to cook their provisions when they went on shore, conceived the words, Go ashore, which they were accustomed to hear when preparations were making for landing, was the proper name for an iron pot, and they have accordingly been generally adopted as such in the New Zealand language. A small party of the passengers of the Roslyn Castle, consisting of John Smith, Esq. Surgeon, R. N., M. Lacoste, a French gentleman from Bourdeaux, who had previously been residing for some time in Sydney, in a mercantile capacity, and myself, were one day carried, by my countryman, Mr. Mair, of the Bay of Islands, up the Kauakaua river in his boat to see an interesting semi-civilised, semi-christianized, native village. One of the natives immediately perceived that M. Lacoste was not an Englishman, and asked Mr. Mair "if he was not a Marion" to which Mr. Mair replied in the affirmative. Marion was the captain of a French frigate, who was killed in a scuffle with the natives in a small bay, at the entrance of the Bay of Islands, more than thirty years ago; and his name has ever since been the synonyme for "Frenchman" in New Zealand. The bay in which Captain Marion was killed, is called by the English, Man-o'-war Bay, which some French hydrographer, mistaking for a New Zealand word, has transformed into Port de Manawa. Captain M.'s death was the result of accident, arising from misapprehension on the part of his own people, not of evil intention on that of the New Zealanders. He had sent a boat's crew ashore to haul the seine for fish in the Bay; but as the spot where they began to fish unfortunately happened to be a burial-place of the natives, and was, consequently, tabu or sacred, the latter endeavoured to make the French sailors desist, and go somewhere else. The Frenchmen, however, not comprehending their meaning, persisted in throwing the seine. A scuffle consequently ensued, in which the Captain, who had in the mean time gone ashore to support his boat's crew, was unfortunately killed.

LETTER II. ON THE CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE OF THE MISSIONS HITHERTO ESTABLISHED IN NEW ZEALAND, AS REGARDS THE ABORIGINES.

LETTER II.

ON THE CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE OF THE MISSIONS HITHERTO ESTABLISHED IN NEW ZEALAND, AS REGARDS THE ABORIGINES.

London, June, 1839.

MY LORD,

IF I am not greatly in error, the opposition exhibited to the New Zealand Colonization Bill, during the last session of Parliament, originated chiefly among the friends and supporters of Christian Missions, and especially among the friends and supporters of the Church of England Society's Mission to the Aborigines of that Island. I confess, my Lord, there was something generous, philanthropic, and Christian in the very aspect of this opposition; and no wonder therefore that it should have been completely successful in preventing the passing of the Bill. It professed to treat with profound respect the rights and interests of one of the noblest races of Aborigines on the face of the globe. It professed to sympathise with the feeble efforts of that race to rise to a higher level in the scale of humanity, and to occupy a prominent place in the catalogue of civilized nations. And more than all this, it professed to deprecate the serious obstacles which a community of European colonists might in all likelihood throw in the way of the general reception of the Christian religion by the natives of New Zealand. I am sorry, however, to be called on, from a sacred regard to the interests of truth, as well as to

the cause of humanity and the Christian religion; I am sorry, my Lord, to be obliged to state, that the anticipations of unmingled benefit to the Aborigines of that island, which were thus founded on the prospect of their being left entirely, for the future, to the charities of the Church Mission in New Zealand, were alike unwarranted by the past history, and by the present condition, of that mission.

Your Lordship is doubtless aware that, for upwards of half a century past, the missionary or apostolic spirit has been at an exceedingly low ebb in both of the Protestant established churches of this great empire; and that whatever may be asserted to the contrary, the maxim that is almost universally acted on by the clergy of both establishments is, that after a young man has spent a certain number of years in preparing for the Christian ministry, at an English or Scotch University, his time and talents are too precious to be thrown away in promoting the great object of that ministry, either in the colonies or among the heathen. Men, who are utterly unable to offer a single reason why they should not have gone forth themselves to these high places of the field of Christian warfare, in obedience to the divine command, contrive to satisfy their own consciences in staying at home, by subscribing a guinea a-year for missions to the heathen, and by telling the Christian public at their annual meetings, that their "hearts bleed," forsooth, "for the heathen." My Lord, in the course of five voyages round the globe, and a residence of many years in the uttermost parts of the earth, where it has been my lot to come in contact with many missionaries, who ought never to have been honoured with so sacred a character, I have learned to estimate, at its proper value, this fashionable species of clerical hypocrisy.

From the cause I have assigned, it has come to pass that, instead of sending forth to those interesting and important stations beyond seas, that demanded the Pauls

and Silases of our national establishments, men of superior talents, and education, and piety, and zeal, – we have been sending forth, with only a few solitary exceptions, the lame, the halt, and the blind of these establishments; or in other words, we have been endeavouring to serve God in the colonies and among the heathen "with what has cost us nought." Hence it is, my Lord, that instead of telling, as we might otherwise have done, (that is, if we had only followed the apostolic example) of whole territories won from heathen darkness and superstition to the light and liberty of the Gospel, we can tell only, at least for the most part, of disappointment and disaster. The history and present aspect of the Church of England's mission to New Zealand affords a melancholy comment on these observations.

The Church of England's Mission to New Zealand was formed at the instance of the late Rev. Samuel Marsden, Principal Episcopal Chaplain of New South Wales, in the year 1812, but was not properly in operation till the year 1814. It was originally established, and for a long time systematically conducted, on the principle of first civilizing and then christianizing, the natives; and for this purpose, a large number of artizans, of various handicrafts, were engaged, some in England, and some in New South Wales, as lay-missionaries, to teach the natives the various processes of civilized life. Reversing the apostolic plan, the missionary carpenter, the missionary boat-builder, the missionary blacksmith, the missionary plowman, the missionary rope-spinner, &c. were all set to work at their various occupations, and the natives were expected forthwith to imitate their example. In fact, the mission settlement in New Zealand was for a long time a complete lumber yard, or factory, in which all sorts of labour were going on but the proper labour of a missionary – the very clergyman, for there was only one on the island, being in no respect dif-

ferent from a common agricultural labourer, except that he mounted a pulpit and read prayers in a surplice every Sunday. That clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Butler, told me himself, in the year 1824 – the year he left the New Zealand mission and returned to England, – that, during the previous season, he had ploughed and sown eleven acres of ground for wheat, at the mission settlement, on the Kidikidi River, with his own hands; having previously, with the assistance of his son Samuel, who was afterwards drowned in New Zealand, grubbed up the whole of the ground, which had been originally overgrown with tall fern. Fortunately, indeed, a laborious occupation of this kind was more congenial to the taste and habits of Mr. B. than labour of a more intellectual or missionary character; for previous to his ordination for foreign parts, and his appointment to the offices of Superintendent of the Church of England's mission in New Zealand, and justice of peace in that Island, under the government of New South Wales, he had merely been the out-of-door clerk or foreman of a large London establishment, for forwarding goods by common carriers and canal boats.

If such occupations had been indispensably necessary for the support of the mission, it would not only have been allowable but praiseworthy to have pursued them. But they were alike unnecessary and unwarranted; and the result, as might have been expected, was, that they had just as little influence in civilizing, as it may be supposed they had in christianizing, the natives. The native ware or house, and the native canoe, both of which occasionally display considerable taste and ingenuity, were quite sufficient for all the purposes of the New Zealander in his unchristianized state; he was sufficiently acquainted with agriculture to enable him to procure in abundance all the necessaries of life; and of all the missionary artisans who were sent out by the Church Missionary Society to effect

his civilization, the missionary blacksmith, who could mend his broken musket, and thereby enable him to commit murder upon his fellow-man, was in reality the only one whose talents commanded his unfeigned respect. Indeed, as a general maxim, I would say that it is by no means particularly desirable that the New Zealanders should acquire a knowledge of European arts till they have embraced the religion of Europeans, when they will acquire them as a matter of course. Pomare, the chief I have already mentioned, offered, in the month of February last, to dispose of all his right and title to Barrier Island, at the mouth of the River Thames, for a small English schooner, of the value of £200. But what was the object of the savage in desiring to get possession of the schooner? Why, it was simply that he might be able to carry all his fighting-men, in one body, to some part of the coast where the natives are still unacquainted with the use of fire-arms, and where he could consequently plunder and murder them at discretion, after the example of the old buccaneers of America.

Whether most of the individuals who were employed to work the preposterous system I have described, were originally bad men, or whether the system itself, (which utterly failed of accomplishing its primary object, the civilization of the New Zealanders) was calculated to make them so, I cannot determine: 4 it is undeniable, however, that utter

inefficiency and moral delinquency were for a long time the characteristic features of the New Zealand mission. I have a manuscript account, which I drew up myself, from unquestionable authority, so early as the year 1824, of every missionary that had set foot on New Zealand up till that period, as well as of every important transaction which had occurred till then in connection with the New Zealand mission; and I am confident, my Lord, it would be impossible to find a parallel, in the history of any protestant mission since the Reformation, to the amount of inefficiency and moral worthlessness which that record presents. Indeed, Divine Providence appears to have frowned upon the New Zealand mission all along, and blighting and blasting from Heaven seem to have rested upon it even until now. The first head of it was dismissed for adultery; the second for drunkenness; and the third (so lately as the year 1836,) for a crime still more enor-

mous than either: 5 and although I have reason to believe it is now purged from such enormities, and am happy to add that it has several excellent and christian men zealously engaged in its most interesting field, there is still a most

flagrant abuse tolerated and practised by the great majority of its members, of sufficient magnitude to neutralize the efforts even of a whole college of apostles.

The Church Missionary Society's establishment in New Zealand comprises about thirty missionaries; the principal stations being Waimate at the Kidi-kidi river; Paihia and Tippunah, at the Bay of Islands; the Bay of Plenty, on the east coast to the southward; and the vicinity of the North Cape. There is also a station forming at the River Thames, or rather on the Munakau river, right across the island, on the west coast. The population of the portion of the northern island comprehended within these limits is probably from forty to fifty thousand souls; of whom from ten to twelve thousand are thus brought within the reach of Christian influence; having the ordinances of religion dispensed among them either regularly or occasionally, and many of their number being taught to read and write their native tongue. Indeed the eagerness which the natives evince for the attainment of these most important arts of civilization, and the facility with which they acquire them, their desire for books when taught to read, and their willingness to place themselves under the regular dispensation of the ordinances of religion – all of which dispositions are undoubtedly evinced by the New Zealanders, independently altogether of the operation of Christian principle – are the most favourable traits in their national character, and doubtless the most deeply interesting. In short, humanly speaking, there are probably fewer obstacles to overcome in the way of missionary enterprise among the New Zealanders than among any other heathen people on the face of the earth. With the universal idea of a God or Great Spirit, they have no disposition to idolatry; and even the customs and superstitions which have been handed down to them from the remotest

antiquity, seem to exert but a slight influence on their minds, and are readily abandoned for those of Europeans.

Why is it then, that the Christian religion, as exhibited in the teaching of the missionaries of the Church Missionary Society, has hitherto taken so slight a hold – for such is unquestionably the fact – on the hearts and affections of the New Zealanders; for while the baptised natives do not exceed two hundred and fifty altogether, there are frequent instances of apostacy even among them? Why, my Lord, although, the ministers of the Gospel are in no respect responsible for the success of their ministry, provided they discharge the duties of their office honestly and conscientiously, it is nevertheless undeniable, that if they do not engage in their work with a single eye to the glory of God, and the extension of the Kingdom of Christ, but endeavour to "serve God and Mammon," their efforts will undoubtedly issue in disappointment, and their failure be chargeable entirely upon themselves. Now I apprehend, my Lord, that this is exactly the case of the New Zealand mission, and the true source of that want of success which has hitherto been experienced by the missionaries, and is so generally complained of in the island. For instead of confining themselves with the disinterestedness that became their office to the conscientious discharge of their important duties, as the professed disciples of "Him who, though rich, for our sakes became poor, that we through his poverty might be rich," the missionaries of the Church Missionary Society in New Zealand, utterly incredible as it may appear in England, have actually been the principals in the grand conspiracy of the European inhabitants of the island to rob and plunder the natives of their land!

Of the extent of land belonging to the Society as a corporate body, at their principal stations of Waimate,

Paihia and Tippunah, I had no means of obtaining a correct account. I have reason to believe, however, it is by no means extensive. But the missionaries themselves, like the ancient Gehazi, have made ample amends for the moderation of – their Master Elisha – the Society in England, in the extent of land of which they have become the purchasers, forsooth, from the natives on their own private account. For I was credibly informed on the island that there is scarcely one of them who has not managed in this way to secure for himself or his children in perpetuity a large extent of valuable territory.

Mr. Shepherd, for example, a lay missionary from New South Wales, and the son of a respectable emancipist, residing at Kissing Point on the Parramatta River in that colony, bought a large tract of eligible land from the natives, having a frontage of from four to five miles on one of the navigable rivers in the Bay of Islands – for two check shirts and an iron pot, or go-ashore, as it is called by the natives! I was credibly informed, moreover, in New Zealand, that Captain Blenkinsop, the master of a South Sea whaler, who was afterwards unfortunately drowned by the upsetting of a whale-boat in Encounter Bay, in the province of South Australia, along with Sir John Jeffcott, the first judge of that colony, had, in entire ignorance of Mr. Shepherd's previous purchase, purchased the very same tract from some other person, who, it seems pretended to be its proprietor. During his absence on the south coast of New Holland, Captain Blenkinsop's agent at the Bay of Islands, erected a house on the land, agreeably to the instructions of his principal, who intended to settle in New Zealand on his return; but no sooner was the house finished, than Mr. Shepherd gave Captain B.'s agent notice to quit, and produced his own deeds. On the agent's remonstrating with Mr. Shepherd for allowing him, in such circumstances, to go on with the building of

the house, Mr. S. coolly replied, that the erection of the house rendered the land the more valuable to himself. I refrain from making any remarks on this transaction; but Mr. Shepherd, your Lordship will observe, is a native of Botany Bay, who has exported, in his own person, a portion of the surplus Christianity, forsooth, of his native land, for the moral advancement of the aborigines of New Zealand. I have reason to believe also that Mr. Shepherd has another estate, procured in a similar way, towards the North Cape, where he is at present stationed as a missionary.

Mr. Fairbairn, who was merely a journeyman coach-maker, and by no means of apostolic character either, in the village of Parramatta, in New South Wales, when he was engaged as a lay-missionary for New Zealand by. the late Rev. Samuel Marsden, has purchased, forsooth, from the natives, a tract of land, to the northward of the River Thames, having a frontage of from thirty-five to forty miles on the east coast of the island towards the Pacific Ocean. I could not learn how far back from the sea Mr. Fairbairn goes, or what the valuable consideration had been for this princely estate.

The Rev. Mr. Williams, formerly a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, but now the ordained head of the New Zealand Mission, has a large tract of land, in conjunction with Mr. Fairbairn, adjoining the society's settlement at Paihia, in the Bay of Islands, and stretching along the left bank of the Kauakaua River.

Messrs. Clark and Davis, who were originally sent out as missionary agriculturists on the civilizing system, have selected their domains on a somewhat similar scale with those of the Shepherd and Fairbairn estates, towards the Hokianga River, on the west coast; while those of Messrs. Kemp and King are situated towards the North Cape.

I was unfortunately unable, my Lord, to ascertain

exactly the real extent of the land possessed or claimed, on the ground of alleged purchases from the natives, by the Church Missionaries and their sons in New Zealand, either in English acres or square miles 6 (the latter is the usual mode of computation in the island); but your Lordship will be able to form some idea on the subject, when I state, on the authority of several intelligent persons residing on the spot, and unconnected with the society, that if the valuable live timber growing on the land so claimed, or possessed, were to be cut down and disposed of, it would be worth, at the present market price in New South Wales, not less than half a million sterling.

In short the largest seignories in New Zealand, are the property of the Church Missionaries and their sons; and the poor ignorant and deluded natives have thus, my Lord, been "scattered and peeled" by the very men who ought to have been their natural protectors, and to have remonstrated and protested to the British Government again and again, against any attempt, on the part of British subjects, to obtain possession of any part of their land, without the

express consent and authority of the British Government. It is peculiarly aggravating, for instance, to reflect that the patrimony of poor Riva, of Kororadika, the native chief I have already mentioned, is now the private property of certain of the missionaries and their children; and that much of Pomare's land has also fallen into the same hands.

Yes, my Lord, it is mortifying in the extreme, to any man of the least pretensions to Christian philanthropy, to reflect, that instead of endeavouring to protect the New Zealanders – the interesting and confiding people of their charge – from the aggressions of unprincipled European adventurers, the missionaries of the Church Missionary Society have themselves been the foremost and the most successful in despoiling them of their land. In short, the case of these missionaries is, in this respect, the most monstrous that has occurred in the whole history of missions since the Reformation – the most disgraceful to Protestant Christianity. There has doubtless been no express agreement between the Church Missionary Society and its missionaries in New Zealand, that the latter should not be permitted to purchase land for themselves from the natives. But the thing is universally understood, my Lord, and daily acted on in every other instance with which I am acquainted, that the missionary shall not be permitted to acquire property for himself individually; and that although the Society he belongs to may procure, either by gift or purchase, a site for its missionary buildings and operations, the missionaries themselves shall not be permitted to abuse their influence and opportunities by becoming landholders or cattleholders among the heathen. This abuse, however, has prevailed, my Lord, among the missionaries of the Church Missionary Society to an incredible extent – to such an extent as even to bring scandal on the cause of Christian Missions altogether, and to constitute one of the grossest breaches of trust, on the part of its own office-

bearers, that the evangelical portion of the Christian Church has witnessed for a century past.

I should be sorry, my Lord, to insinuate that the committee of the Church Missionary Society is at all acquainted with these transactions. That committee, I have every reason to believe, consists of honourable and Christian men, whose conduct, in regard to the missionary Y***, affords a guarantee to the Christian public, that they will act with the same faithfulness in every instance. But your Lordship knows very well, it is a long way to New Zealand, and the missionaries are not bound to tell the whole truth to the Society respecting their private affairs. Having sacrificed their worldly prospects in England or New South Wales, to dwell in the midst of cannibals in a heathen land, they may doubtless conceive, and perhaps delude one another as well as themselves individually in conceiving, that they had an undoubted right to drive a good bargain for themselves individually, as they have certainly done in right earnest, with the ignorant natives. For whatever may have been the case in the days of the Divine Author of the Christian religion, it is certainly not always the case now that "the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light."

Besides, it is extremely hazardous for any man who has the least regard for his own reputation in this country to say a single word to the discredit of missionaries to the heathen, either individually or collectively; for the man who does so, whatever be his standing or profession, is instantly set down as an enemy of missions altogether, and his testimony is forthwith got rid of accordingly. In fact the task of telling the plain truth respecting missionaries to the heathen, if that truth is in any way disparaging, is as invidious in regard to its bearings on the truth-teller in the eye of the religious public, as that of the parliamentary impeachment of a Minister of State. It is thus, however,

that the grossest abuses are perpetuated, and that Christianity is wounded, as it always is the most deeply, in the house of its friends.

The subject of the landed property of the Missionaries of the Church Missionary Society in New Zealand, has of late been brought frequently before the Colonial public of New South Wales; and I have been told myself by the relatives of some of the Missionaries in that colony, in reference to the statements on the subject published from time to time in the colonial press, that "as they have families to provide for, they are fully warranted to avail themselves of their opportunities of doing the best for them they can." My Lord, I have a family to provide for in that Colony also: but having been early stationed, in the good providence of God, in a country in which almost every man I saw whether clergyman or layman, was a proprietor of sheep and cattle – intent chiefly on improving his stock or in increasing the quantity of his wool – I deemed it my bounden duty as a minister of the gospel, "whose own hands must be clean in bearing the vessels of the Lord," never to become the owner of a single head of either.

For every acre of land belonging to the Church Missionary Society, as a corporate body, in New Zealand, I am confident, my Lord, that the full price has been paid. And as that price was, at the suggestion of the late Rev. Samuel Marsden, the Society's agent in New South Wales, principally paid in cattle, sheep, and horses from that colony; and as Mr. Marsden himself was long famous for one of the best breeds of horned cattle in New South Wales, – the Marsden breed, – there can be no doubt whatever that the whole transaction, as far as the Society and Mr. Marsden were concerned, was characterized by honesty and fair dealing. 7 But as the natives had no idea either of

flocks and herds, or of rearing sheep and cattle for food, they soon grew tired of the few sheep and the bull calf or heifer that had fallen to their lot individually, and had furnished them with amusement for a time, and they then sold them to the missionaries! Old Riva, for instance, had been in New South Wales many years ago, and had carried up with him a present of four large live hogs to the Governor, who gave him a fine horse in return, which he brought back with him to New Zealand. But Riva having probably been the first of his family who had ever seen a horse, and having no imaginable use for one himself – his style and equipage as a New Zealand chief being quite complete without any such appendage – soon sold the animal to the missionaries! Whether it was in this way that Mr. Kemp or Mr. King (for I forget which of these individuals it was; but the one of them at all events was a missionary blacksmith or musket-mender, and the other a missionary shoemaker), laid the foundation of his sheep stock in New Zealand, I am not aware; but it is certainly worth mentioning, as an instance of the extraordinary capabilities of the country, that he lately forwarded to Sydney from his estate in New Zealand, towards the northern extremity of the

island, his first investment of New Zealand wool, amounting to ten bales, (containing probably 250lbs. each,) which, from its superior quality, as well as from the superior style in which it had been got up, in consequence of the abundance of fresh water in the island, was sold by public auction in Sydney, for exportation to London, at 1s. 10 1/2d. per lb., or about £234 17s. 6d. altogether.

In such circumstances as those I have thus detailed, your Lordship will not be astonished that the New Zealand Mission should hitherto have made so slight an impression for good, as it has confessedly done on the interesting natives of that island, notwithstanding the enormous expense at which it has hitherto been conducted. 8 Indeed, if that mission had been extensively attended with the divine blessing, like various other Protestant Missions in the South Seas, all our inferences and deductions from the precepts and declarations of the Divine Author of Christianity would have been at fault. "Love not the world, neither the things of the world," is the injunction of Christ to every professed Christian man, but especially to each and every Missionary. Indeed, disinterestedness is so much a sine qua non in a Christian Missionary, that the idea of a Missionary of an opposite character implies a contradiction in terms. The exhibition of that God-like attribute on the part of the individual who professes to be seeking his welfare, is intelligible even to the most untutored savage; and it never fails, eventually, to produce its effect. It is humiliating, however, to reflect, that instead of exhibiting that Christian virtue to the natives of New Zealand, so many of the Missionaries of the Church Mission in that island should have actually been making common cause with the veriest spoilers of the natives in the land; and that the natives should have had such good reason to say of them,

as they have done again and again, that "their only reason for corning to New Zealand was that it was a better country than their own."

At all events your Lordship will perceive from the preceding pages, how peculiarly out of place were the reasonings and declamations of the friends and supporters of the Church Mission in New Zealand in opposition to the bill for the colonization of that island on the principles of the South Australian Colony, during the last Session of Parliament. So far from protecting the natives from the aggressions of unprincipled European adventurers, under the system at present in operation in that island, the Missionaries have actually set the example of such aggression in their own persons. So far from doing every thing in their power to establish an effectual bulwark for the preservation of the natives from political and moral degradation, the Missionaries have virtually been doing their utmost to accelerate the process of degradation, by despoiling them of their land, under the specious pretext of iniquitous bargains, of which any man professing the Christian religion, but especially a Missionary, ought to have been ashamed.

The Wesleyan Methodists have also had a mission towards the northern extremity of the northern island of New Zealand, which they are now extending along the coast to the southward, for a number of years past; and I am happy to add that, from all I could learn on the subject, from the most respectable European inhabitants of the island, it is in a highly prosperous state; their principal settlement being at the Hokianga River on the west coast. Your Lordship may perhaps imagine that the greater success of that mission may arise from the fact that the Wesleyans, as a religious denomination, are much more likely to obtain suitable persons for carrying on such a mission, from among their own members, than the Church

of England. This is doubtless the case to a certain extent; but the greater success of the Wesleyan Mission, as compared with the Church Mission in New Zealand, must, I conceive, be ascribed in no small degree to the fact, that the Wesleyan Missionaries are strictly prohibited, by the fundamental laws and constitution of their society, from acquiring property of any kind, whether in land or in agricultural stock, at their missionary stations. The advantages of such a regulation, even as regards the Missionaries themselves, are incalculable, as it removes them at once from all temptation, so long as they remain in connection with their Society. Its advantages, as regards the success of their mission and the reception of the Gospel by the heathen, are self-evident.

There has also been a French Roman Catholic Mission recently formed on the Hokianga River, of which the native population is still very considerable. It is conducted by M. Pompallier, Bishop of Maronee in partibus, a French ecclesiastic of superior education, polished manners, and acknowledged zeal; and as five Roman Catholic Priests have recently been ordained at Lyons to act under his orders in different parts of the island, and are now probably on their way for that purpose to New South Wales, it is evident not only that the Church of England's Mission in New Zealand will have a formidable rival in the Romish New Zealand Mission, but that the friends of Protestant Christianity in the Southern Hemisphere generally, have good reason to strengthen their posts, and to stand upon their guard. The New Zealanders, as I have already observed, are by no means predisposed to idolatry; and their universal idea of a Great, Pervading, Invisible Spirit, who cannot be represented by any image, nor confined within any temple made with hands, refers us at once for their origin and mythology, in common with those of their evident congeners, the Indians of America,

to those times of remotest antiquity, when the primitive and heaven-taught theology of mankind had not yet been degraded into what Mr. Gibbon calls "the elegant mythology of the Greeks." At the same time there is something in the Romish religion so universally congenial to the feelings and affections of unregenerate humanity, that I would not attempt to conceal my own serious apprehensions of M. Pompallier's success; for, considering the paralyzing influence which that religion uniformly exerts on its votaries, I have no hesitation in acknowledging that I should regard the success of a Romish Mission in New Zealand in no other light than as a serious calamity to the Southern Hemisphere. Yes, my Lord, it is not merely the prevalence of the French race, but the paralysing influence of the Romish religion that has left Lower Canada in all the darkness and inertness of the middle ages, in the midst of a whole continent of enlightened and energetic freemen. Your Lordship will doubtless recollect that in the reign of Louis XIII., the single Protestant town of Rochelle possessed a commercial navy nearly equal to that of all France besides; and if Protestantism had not then and shortly thereafter been well-nigh extirpated from that kingdom by the strong hand of tyranny, guided by the fiendish spirit of intolerance, there is reason to doubt whether Great Britain, our own beloved country, would have stood so conspicuous among the nations as she now does, or maintained so long the empire of the seas. It is on the prevalence of Protestant Christianity, under the glorious flag of England, in the Southern Hemisphere, that the hopes of millions and millions more in that hemisphere undoubtedly depend.

One of the means of conversion to the Roman Catholic faith which M. Pompallier employs, in his intercourse with the New Zealanders at Hokianga, is the distribution of little brass trinkets in the form of crucifixes, and "brazen

images" of the Virgin Mary, bearing the Latin inscription Mater Dolorosa. These the New Zealanders suspend to their ears, as they are in the habit of doing with anything else, and especially anything foreign, which they conceive ornamental. I have seen the buckle of an English saddle-girth suspended in the same way, the tooth of a shark, the wing of a bird enclosing a native herb which affords an agreeable perfume, and an ornament of greenstone. Occasionally, however, the New Zealanders suspend the crucifixes and the brazen images of the Romish goddess to the necks of their dogs!

Of the European population on the Hokianga River, a considerable proportion consists of Irish Roman Catholics, who have originally been convicts in New South Wales and Van Dieman's Land, and who are now employed as labourers, sawyers, &c. on the different establishments for cutting timber for exportation on that river. And as most of these depraved individuals are living in concubinage with native women, some of them even with the daughters of native chiefs, they doubtless afford a ready access to the natives to the Romish missionary, and a powerful means of influence on the native mind. In short the accommodating spirit of the Romish system, which allows the veriest reprobates, on the one hand, to consider themselves religious characters, on their merely complying with the prescribed observances of their church, and which easily engrafts itself on the other, upon any system of heathenism whatever, must afford it a prodigious advantage in such circumstances as these.

From the preceding statement it will doubtless be evident to your Lordship, that whether the New Zealanders remain in their unconverted and heathen state, or adopt such a mere nominal profession of Christianity as they are likely to arrive at under the influence of land-jobbing missionaries, the prospect for that unfortunate people is gloomy

in the extreme. In either case they will infallibly disappear from the land of their forefathers, like the snow from their native mountains on the return of spring. The idea of the New Zealanders being able to form a government for themselves, or even to protect themselves from the aggressions of unprincipled and rapacious Europeans, is pre-eminently absurd. Every succeeding year will witness the formation of additional trading establishments from New South Wales and Van Dieman's Land, and of additional points of intercourse between the unfortunate natives and the numerous whalers of the Southern Pacific, along a coast line of upwards of two thousand miles; and the process of demoralization and extermination will be rapid beyond conception. In short, as the present unfortunate and critical condition of that most interesting people is unquestionably the result of the extension of British Commerce and British Colonization in the Southern Hemisphere, I cannot conceive how Her Majesty's Government can possibly refrain from interfering on their behalf any longer. And as to the sort of interference which is necessary on the part of the British Government, I am decidedly of opinion that the establishment of a British Colony, founded and conducted on Christian principles, in their native isle, affords the only prospect of preserving the New Zealanders from the ruin and extermination with which they are at present threatened, as well from their professed friends as from their undoubted foes.

I have the honour to be,
MY LORD, &c.

4 Bad as some of the earlier missionaries were, I consider the system under which they were acting to have been much worse. Some of them maintained that they were hired as mechanics, and had nothing to do with missionary labour properly so called. Others maintained they were engaged as missionaries, and had nothing to do with mechanical or agricultural employment; and some, as, for instance, the missionary rope-spinner, whose ineffectual attempts to adapt English machinery to the manufacture of the native flax only excited the ridicule of the natives, found that their particular qualifications were of no use whatever in the island. For some time, the missionary settlement, with its workshops, its bell to ring the people in and out, &c., was an exact copy of the Lumber Yard in Sydney, and some of the natives who had been in New South Wales were quick-sighted enough to perceive the resemblance, and to act accordingly. For when the stout missionary ploughman, who was the only ordained missionary on the island at the time I allude to, arrayed himself in his canonicals, and read prayers on Sunday, the natives shrewdly observed that he was the only Rangatira, or gentleman, among them, and that the rest were only cookees or slaves.

The Society's missionary rope-spinner was originally a reputable mechanic in one of the dockyards in England, where he had probably attracted notice by keeping a Sabbath school for the other workmen's children. His wife, a superior woman, having died shortly after his arrival in New South Wales, he married a native of that colony, who unfortunately died also, in New Zealand, a few years thereafter. He is now settled on his own account at the Kaiparra River on the west coast, where, I was credibly informed at the Bay of Islands, both himself and his son are actually living in a state of concubinage with two native women under the same roof!

5 As Mr. Y***, the individual I allude to, has addressed a printed circular to the friends of the Church Missionary Society in England, appealing from certain resolutions of the Committee of that Society in refusing him an investigation into his case; and as his former friends, Sir Edward Parry and General Gordon, have apparently taken up his case as that of an injured and oppressed man, I beg to state, in vindication of the Committee, that the general opinion respecting Mr. Y. both in New South Wales and in New Zealand, is that he was verily guilty in the matters laid to his charge; and that opinion, I am sorry to add, is grounded on facts and circumstances which can leave no doubt whatever on the subject, on the mind of any unprejudiced person. Cases of clerical delinquency ought decidedly to be investigated in the place of their occurrence, in the place where evidence can be had either for or against the charge; for bad as human nature is, even in New South Wales, the tendencies in such cases uniformly are rather to acquit than to convict the accused. Mr. Y.'s case was investigated by competent persons in New South Wales, by persons unquestionably predisposed and anxious to acquit him, if they could. What does the man mean by calling for an investigation here, where no evidence can possibly be procured?

Mr. Y. has undoubtedly obtained a certificate of character from Mr. White, an ex-Wesleyan missionary from New Zealand, which he has embodied in his circular; but it ought to be known to all concerned, that Mr. White was himself dismissed from the Wesleyan Society, and is, therefore, altogether incompetent to give a certificate of character to any man, much less to a minister of religion. Besides, Mr. White had previously and spontaneously accused Mr. Y. (in a written paper to which he affixed his signature in New South Wales, in the year 1836, and which I have reason to believe is still in existence) of the very things of which he has since declared that individual innocent. But whatever opinion Mr. White may have formed of his friend and brother, the Pastor Corydon of New Zealand, I am decidedly of opinion that the Committee of the Church Missionary Society were perfectly in the right in getting rid of him at once and for ever, and in refusing all further investigation into his vile case.

6 It is extremely difficult to get at the real extent of European estates in New Zealand. There is a laudable obscurity on the subject in particular cases, which might almost be supposed designed to hold out a premium for the future gentlemen of the long robe in that island. Mr. John Wright, for example, a respectable settler and merchant at the Bay of Islands, has a property in that neighbourhood, of which three of the boundary lines are well defined: viz. "by the salt water in front and by the lands of neighbouring proprietors on the right and left;" but the fourth boundary line being "as far back as the said John Wright shall think proper," it will doubtless be a matter of some difficulty for the future doctors of the civil law in New Zealand to decide where that boundary shall be. It is perhaps best in such cases to go back to the saltwater on the other side, as the earlier American Colonists wished to do, when King James the First forgot to define their boundary to the westward. They were quite willing – honest men! – to take the Pacific or Great Ocean for their western boundary, wherever it might be.

7 There are few large proprietors in New South Wales who have dealt so extensively in sheep and cattle as the late Rev. Mr. Marsden, long generally known in England as the apostle of New Zealand. Mr. Marsden always prided himself, to use the mercantile phrase, on keeping a good article. He was one of the first importers of Spanish sheep and English cattle into the colony; his breeds uniformly bore a high character among colonial graziers, and his prices, as I have been informed, were correspondingly high. But he was never unwilling to allow a liberal credit to respectable free emigrants arriving in the colony with limited means; and many families, who are now wealthy in New South Wales, have in this way been indebted to Mr. Marsden for the groundwork of their colonial fortunes. As a Magistrate of the territory, which he was for about thirty years, Mr. M. was a strict disciplinarian, and was nothing loth to prescribe the requisite number of lashes to the delinquents of his congregation at Parramatta, whenever they required it.

8 Its present cost, I believe, is £15,000 per annum. It has been as high as £17,000.

LETTER III. ON THE PROSPECT WHICH NEW ZEALAND AFFORDS FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A BRITISH COLONY.

LETTER III.

ON THE PROSPECT WHICH NEW ZEALAND AFFORDS FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A BRITISH COLONY.

London, June, – 1839.

MY LORD,

It is one of the beautiful arrangements of that beneficent providence which governs the world, that the interest and the duty, both of individuals and of nations, are generally conjoined; insomuch that in discharging the one, the other is materially advanced. It is the bounden duty of the British Government, for example, to interfere at the present moment for the protection and preservation of the natives of New Zealand by the establishment of a British Colony, founded and conducted on equitable and christian principles, on their coasts. In what way such an undertaking would promote British interests in the tenderest point, and prove highly conducive to the national welfare, I shall now demonstrate.

The group of islands known under the general name of New Zealand is situated a little to the westward of the 180th degree of E. or W. longitude, and between the 34th and 48th parallels of S. latitude; extending from north to south upwards of eight hundred geographical miles, with an average breadth of upwards of one hundred miles, and containing an extent of surface equal to that of the British Islands. The coast line, following the various

indentations of the land, extends considerably upwards of three thousand miles, and probably comprises a greater number of eligible harbours, bays, and roadsteads, than is to be found along an equal extent of coast in any other part of the world. In the winter season – from May to September inclusive – these bays are the resort of the Black or Right Whale; and at a moderate distance from the land, the Sperm Whale is found, occasionally in vast herds, in the surrounding ocean. Indeed, it is a fact worthy of special notice, as indicative of the superior eligibility of New Zealand as a whaling station, that the whale caught on the New Zealand ground yields a third more oil than an animal of the same size and species caught in any other part of the world. I am indebted for this fact to a whaling captain of great experience in the South Sea fisheries, and of undoubted veracity.

It cannot be denied, however, that this branch of trade, so peculiarly important to a maritime nation, as a grand nursery for seamen, is fast passing out of the hands of Great Britain and her colonies. Of the whalers at present on the coast of New Zealand, about one hundred are American, thirty British, and thirty French. The French vessels, most of which belong to a company of naturalized Swiss merchants at Havre de Grace, are beyond all comparison the finest and the best equipped in the trade; their crews are also the most orderly and the best conducted. They are consequently the most persevering and the most successful; the Swiss Company having actually realized not less than thirty-five per cent, on their capital invested, according to the information I received from a gentleman at the Bay of Islands, who had abundant means of ascertaining the fact.

Everything that enlightened policy could dictate has in the meantime been done by the French Government to extend and to render popular this important branch of the

national industry. A bounty, amounting to about 4l. per ton, is allowed in France on all whale-oil procured by French whalers; and every encouragement is judiciously held out to those citizens of the United States, who are at all acquainted with the whale fishery, to settle in the kingdom. A considerable number of the French whaling vessels have hitherto been commanded by naturalized Americans; one of whom, so early as the year 1834, was made a chevalier of the legion of honour by Louis Philippe, as a reward for his eminent services in that capacity, and as an inducement to his enterprising countrymen to become citizens of France. Nay, the attentions of their truly paternal Government follow the French whalers even to the distant Pacific; where a frigate and two other French ships of war have recently been cruising for their protection, as well as to conciliate the natives of the different islands they visit. In short, Great Britain has seldom had a more formidable rival on her own element and in her own peculiar walk, than she now has in the Southern Pacific under the flag of the citizen king.

Whether the French have any ulterior views – I mean in regard to the formation of a permanent settlement either in New Zealand or in some of the other islands of the Pacific, – I cannot tell: the general impression, however, both in New South Wales and in New Zealand, is, that they have; and that impression seems by no means unwarranted from various circumstances which it is unnecessary to particularize. Wishing, from my heart, the peace and prosperity of the French nation, and the extension of its commerce tenfold, I should nevertheless, for the reason I have already stated, consider the formation of a French Colony in the South Seas a real calamity to the Southern Hemisphere, as presenting a serious obstacle to the progress and improvement of the human race.

Whalers of all nations will unquestionably exert a

demoralizing influence on the uncivilized and heathen tribes with which they come in contact; but I am sorry to be obliged to add, on the authority of an intelligent countryman of my own in New Zealand, whose means of information are very extensive, that of the three nations engaged most extensively in the Southern Fisheries – the British, the French, and the Americans – the influence of our own sailors on the New Zealanders is the most demoralizing: they are the most intemperate, the most disorderly, and the most abandoned. And as the trade is gradually becoming less and less profitable than it has hitherto been to the British and Colonial merchant, from this very circumstance, the probability is that, if vigorous measures are not speedily taken to prevent it, it will ere long be in great measure, if not wholly, engrossed by foreigners.

The French whalers are employed chiefly, though not exclusively, in the pursuit of the black whale; the British and American whalers being partly engaged in the black and partly in the sperm whale fishery. Of the extent to which both branches of the trade are pursued by the Americans, some idea may be formed from the following account of the number of barrels of sperm and black whale oil, which had arrived in the United States, during the following years, copied from the New York Express of January, 1839: –

Years. | Brls. Sperm. | Brls. Black.
1834 | 129,824 | 122,292
1835 | 175,130 | 125,100
1836 | 131,921 | 133,050
1837 | 182,567 | 215,120
1838 | 129,400 | 228,710

In short, there is reason to fear that unless the requisite preventive measures are speedily taken, this most important branch of maritime industry will ere long be wrested entirely out of the hands of Great Britain and her colonies by the Americans and the French.

It appears to me, however, that if a British Colony were established on right principles in New Zealand, it might not only be made conducive in the highest degree to the protection of the natives from the demoralizing influence of whalers of all nations, but would lead to the restoration to Great Britain and her colonies of their proper share in this branch of industry. For if a few hundred families of the herring and whale fishing population of the northern parts of England, of the north and west of Scotland, and of the Orkney and Shetland Isles, were to be settled as colonists in New Zealand, and British capital employed, even to a very moderate amount, through a whaling company in London, to afford them employment in the Southern Fisheries, they would very soon get the whole of the black whale fishery of the island into their hands, and be able eventually to compete successfully with the Americans in the sperm whale fishery also, by being always in the immediate vicinity of the whaling ground. Of the population I allude to, thousands have of late years been reduced to penury from the failure of the Northern Fisheries. As colonists in New Zealand, however, they would immediately find a splendid field for their industry and no fear of want.

As an illustration of the extent to which the black whale fishery on the coasts of New Zealand is at present carried on from the colony of New South Wales, I am enabled to state, from information obtained incidentally on my voyage home, that during the past year a single mercantile house in Sydney imported into that colony, from New Zealand, not less than seventy-one tons of whalebone, an article which generally sells for 145l. per ton in the London market. Whalebone is procured exclusively from the black whale, of which it constitutes a sort of fringe along the jaws, the animal having no teeth, like the spermaceti whale. Now as each whale affords about five hundred weight of bone, there must have been not fewer than 284

whales killed by the parties belonging to the mercantile house I refer to, to yield the quantity of bone procured by that one house. Still, however, the black whale fishery on the coasts of New Zealand has been by no means a gainful speculation generally for the New South Wales merchants; the field of operation being not only very distant, and the outfit proportionally expensive, but the merchant being obliged to depend for the issue of his stores and the general success of his speculation on whatever runaway sailors he can pick up in the port of Sydney, as the European natives of New South Wales have generally no disposition to go to sea. In short, New Zealand and not New South Wales is the proper place for the establishment of a colonial population to engage vigorously in the whale fishery of the Southern Pacific; and if a British colonial population of virtuous habits, and predisposed and accustomed to that particular branch of industry, were settled along the coasts of that island, they would infallibly and at no distant period engross the whole of the trade. 9

Besides, a virtuous European community of the kind I have mentioned, settled on the coasts of New Zealand, with their ministers and schoolmasters and missionaries to the heathen, would infallibly exert a powerful moral influence on the surrounding natives; of whom many would speedily join them in their perilous employment – manning their boats and sharing their spoils. The New Zealanders are decidedly a maritime people. They are fond of the sea, and make excellent sailors, and they only require virtuous and industrious Europeans to reside among them to render their services in this way most advantageous to themselves and to the British empire. 10

If a few hundred families of the class I have mentioned were settled in suitable localities along the coasts of New Zealand – as for instance, at the Bay of Islands, the River Thames, Port Nicholson, and Queen Charlotte's Sound in Cook's Straits, Dusky Bay, &c. – having small patches of ground for cultivation attached to their houses, they would soon realize a degree of comfort and independence which they could never hope to attain in the mother country. All

the bays and roadsteads of the island abound with excellent fish of various kinds, and I have been informed by an intelligent person who knows the country well, that there is a bank somewhere to the northward of the East Cape, on which the natives procure the largest and finest cod in the world. Even the shell-fish of the island afford an agreeable article of food to the New Zealanders. Cockles are very abundant and of excellent quality, and the muscles, which constitute a regular New Zealand dish, are much better flavoured than ours; the shell is considerably broader and of more delicate texture.

I trust, therefore, it will appear evident to your Lordship that if New Zealand is to be colonized at all, its peculiar adaptation for the establishment of a whale fishery, or rather for being the head quarters of the South Sea fisheries, ought to be regarded as a subject of primary consideration; as the prosecution of that branch of industry by a maritime population emigrating from the mother country, would not only prove an immediate and inexhaustible source of wealth to the colony, but would afford the best means of counteracting the demoralizing influence of the whalers of all nations that now visit the coast, and of promoting in the highest degree the civilization and Christianization of the natives.

The climate of New Zealand is decidedly one of the finest in the world – like that of Italy and the South of France towards the north, and like that of England and the South of Scotland towards the south; the winter, however, being milder than that of Great Britain. I was particularly struck with the glow of health exhibited on the cheeks of the children of Europeans at the Bay of Islands, compared with the pale faces of children of the same age at Sydney, in much the same latitude. It was quite remarkable. At all events the climate of New Zealand is undeniably superior to that of New South

Wales and Van Dieman's Land in one most important particular, viz., in being free from droughts and hot winds; its insular character, its chain of lofty mountains running from north to south along the whole extent of the islands, and its distance from any large continent, ensuring it a constant and copious supply of rain. Indeed this most favourable circumstance renders New Zealand decidedly more eligible for the settlement of industrious families of the humbler classes, intending to earn their subsistence by the cultivation of the soil, than either of these two great pastoral colonies; for there has never yet been a crop lost in New Zealand from want of rain, which, I am sorry to say, is not the case in New South Wales.

Whether New Zealand will ever come into extensive competition with the Australian Colonies, as a pastoral country, may admit of question. I have already mentioned that ten bales of wool of superior quality had recently been forwarded to Sydney, where it sold at a high price, from a missionary estate in the northern division of the northern island. There has also been a quantity of equally superior quality sent up to Sydney lately from the island of Manna, in Cook's Straits; and it cannot be denied that the abundance of water in New Zealand, which is often rather scarce in New South Wales, affords superior facilities for getting up the wool for the foreign market. On the other hand, the dryness of the Australian climate is unquestionably favourable both for the constitution of the sheep and the growth and texture of the wool.

At all events, it is to the rearing of sheep and cattle, and the growth of fine wool, that persons of moderate capital emigrating to New Zealand must principally direct their attention. It would be absurd to act otherwise. To combine with these pursuits the cultivation of the soil, or the production of grain to a much greater extent than it is pursued in New South Wales, would doubtless be advisable;

but to neglect those peculiar means of advancement which have raised the Australian colonies to their present condition of unexampled prosperity and importance, especially in a country in which a vast extent of unoccupied pasture land proclaims its peculiar adaptation for the rearing of sheep and cattle, would be irrational in the extreme. Besides, agricultural stock of all kinds could be imported into New Zealand, both from New South Wales and from Van Dieman's Land, at a lesser expense even than into Southern Australia; the westerly winds that prevail in these regions for so large a portion of the year rendering a voyage to the eastward of much easier accomplishment than one to the westward.

The northern parts of the northern island are certainly less adapted for sheep and cattle than the open pastoral country in the vicinity of Cook's Straits. Towards the north the country is more covered with timber and more moist; and the improvable land, instead of being coated over with good pasture, in its natural state, as is the case generally in New South Wales, is for the most part overgrown with fern. The fern, however, never grows on bad land in New Zealand, and the quality of the soil is generally indicated by the size and strength of the fern; inferior land producing only a stunted and puny vegetation. When sown with English grasses, the New Zealand fern-land produces excellent pasture. The English clover in particular grows luxuriantly.

The localities in which an agricultural population could be settled in the first instance with greatest facility, and with the best prospect of success, are, the banks of the River Thames on the east coast, and those of the Hokianga, Kaiparra, and Manukau rivers on the west. On these rivers, which are all navigable for vessels of considerable burden, and especially for steam-boats, there is a vast extent of alluvial land of the first quality, which would

produce in the greatest abundance all the roots, fruits, vegetables, and grains of Europe, including wheat, maize, and potatoes, tobacco, the olive, and the vine. The potatoes of New Zealand are proverbially excellent, I mean in New South Wales; they are cultivated most successfully by the natives, without manure of any kind; they come to maturity in fourteen weeks, and two crops of them are obtained in the year. Wheat yields at the rate of forty bushels per acre, and I have seen maize grown by the natives with very indifferent culture near the Bay of Islands, equal to any in New South Wales. In short, all the necessaries of life and many of its luxuries could be raised with very moderate industry by an agricultural population in all the localities I have enumerated.

Of these localities the River Thames would certainly be the fittest for the capital of a British Colony, both for the extent of eligible land in that part of the island, and for the superior facilities which it presents for communication, both with its east and west coasts. A canal of not more than three quarters of a mile in length, across a neck of low land between two navigable rivers flowing in opposite directions, would establish a water communication in that part of the island from sea to sea; the natives of the east coast having formerly been in the habit of ascending the Thames in their large war canoes, dragging them across the neck or isthmus, and then launching them on the Manukau River, which is navigable for sixty miles from the west coast. That river, moreover, is, of all the three western rivers I have mentioned, the most practicable at all times for large vessels, and there is much superior land on its banks. The Hokianga river is in like manner right across from the Bay of Islands; the distance overland from Waimate, at the head of the Kidi-kidi river, which empties itself into that bay, being only twenty-five or thirty miles. About four miles from Waimate is the Lake Maipere, twelve

miles in length by eight in breadth, having much arable land of superior quality on its banks. The Hokianga is navigable for large vessels for eighty miles from its mouth, and for boats twenty or thirty miles farther. The mouth of the Kaiparra river, which is somewhat of a similar character, is about sixty miles to the southward; but the head of it is about the same distance from the Bay of Islands as the Hokianga. In short, the whole of this part of New Zealand is admirably fitted by nature for the settlement of a British colony, or rather for becoming the cradle of a great agricultural, maritime, and commercial nation; and if large bodies of free emigrants, with their ministers and schoolmasters, and missionaries to the heathen, were settled under a regular Government in each of the important localities I have enumerated, I have no doubt that their influence on the natives would be salutary in the highest degree, and that both New Zealanders and Europeans would coalesce into one christian and virtuous people in a comparatively short period of time. There are not a few instances already of Europeans forming connections with native women, which have afterwards been rendered reputable and permanent by marriage; and the offspring of such marriages will undoubtedly constitute a very fine race of men. In a native village on the banks of the Kauakaua river, I saw a daughter of the Chevalier Dillon, the discoverer of the reliques of La Perouse, by a native female. She was apparently about eleven or twelve years of age, and in point of form and feature had a most interesting appearance. She was barefooted and bareheaded, however, like the other natives of the village, and her only garment was a New Zealand mat.

On the banks of all the New Zealand rivers I have enumerated, there are splendid forests of native timber, and there is already a considerable trade carried on in the island, in the cutting of that timber for exportation. At the time I was in the Bay of Islands in January and February last,

there were not fewer than four large vessels loading timber at Hokianga – one for London, one for Launceston, in Van Dieman's Land, one for Adelaide, in Southern Australia, and one for Port Phillip, in New South Wales. It is singular indeed, that all these three colonies should thus have to send for timber to New Zealand. Such, however, is the fact.

Besides the pine, there are several species of hard wood in New Zealand that are capable of being turned to account. Of the pine there are five or six varieties that are used for various purposes; but the most valuable is the koudi pine – a species of wood resembling the timber of the Baltic, to which it is preferred by competent judges, and admirably adapted, from its strength and straightness, for spars for ships. From the koudi pine, when growing, there exudes a gum, which may be gathered in considerable quantities on the ground around the tree. This gum has recently been sold in some quantity, and at the rate of 18l. per ton, to the Americans, who manufacture it into varnish, which I believe is sold in the United States under the name of copal varnish.

Of the natural productions of New Zealand the most remarkable is the phormium tenax, or New Zealand flax. This valuable plant resembles in appearance the common flag. It affects moist situations, but is by no means fastidious as to the quality of the soil in other respects. Whether it would improve by cultivation I do not know, but it is found in sufficient quantity in its wild state to afford constant and remunerating employment to a large European population. At present it is prepared exclusively by the native women, who merely scrape off the exterior parts of the leaf with muscle shells, and then form the filaments which remain, and which constitute the flax of commerce, into bundles. When intending to use it themselves for the manufacture of their native mats they twist it into yarn,

with their fingers, and then steep the bundles or hanks of yarn for some time in running water to render it soft and pliant. They have no knowledge of the loom, but they display considerable ingenuity in the manufacture of their mats, which are all knit, or woven like net-work, with the hand, without implements of any kind. 11 The natives, however, generally prefer English blankets to their own mats; chiefly, I believe, because they are foreign, and imply that they have cost the wearer something besides mere manual labour, but partly also because they find them warmer in winter. They have an exceedingly mean appearance, however, when compared with the native mat, which often suggests the idea of an ancient Greek or Roman. The borders of the native mats, which are often really elegant, are chiefly manufactured by the natives of the East Cape and its vicinity; and it is worthy of remark that the arabesque tracery they sometimes exhibit is exactly the same as the celebrated traveller, Baron Humboldt, found on the walls of the temple of the Sun, at Mitla, in Mexico, and as is still observable on the ancient Etruscan vases, that are occasionally dug up in the environs of Rome. 12

The New Zealand flax is manufactured in Sydney into whaling gear, for which, I believe, it is peculiarly well adapted. It makes excellent standing rigging for vessels,

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and has recently been manufactured into canvass for ships' sails. It could be produced in New Zealand to any extent.

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It is evident, therefore, that that island will eventually be the Baltic of the Southern Hemisphere, supplying the great desiderata of commerce – timber, and flax – and affording support and employment to a numerous and industrious

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European population. Iron ore of superior quality abounds in the island, and coal is said to have been found at the surface in Cook's Straits. There are indications of copper in the mountains of the interior; and on White's Island, on

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the east coast, which is still under volcanic agency, sulphur can be procured in great quantity. Limestone abounds in the interior, and excellent marble.

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In one word, whether we regard the situation, the soil, the climate, or the natural productions and inhabitants of the country, I am confident, my Lord, there never has been a more favourable locality for the settlement of a

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British colony than the New Zealand group of islands at this moment affords.

It may be supposed, indeed, that in a country of which the natives have so long been represented in Europe as

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ferocious cannibals, Europeans would run considerable risk in attempting to form a permanent settlement. But the circumstance of there being at present a very considerable European population living in perfect security in various

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parts of the island, is a sufficient answer to such an objection. Cannibalism has entirely disappeared in the neighbourhood of all the European settlements; and in their native wars,

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the New Zealanders uniformly respect the Europeans who are settled among them, unless the latter, which, indeed is seldom the case, take part with one or other of the hostile tribes.

I have the honour to be,
MY LORD, &c. &c.

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9 The black whale occasionally visits the bays of New South Wales, but in comparatively small numbers. They, are more numerous along the coasts of Van Dieman's Land. On the south coast of New Holland, however, towards the western extremity of the land, they are still more numerous; and the Americans, who seem in reference to their trading abilities to have inherited all the eyes of Argus, are evidently fully alive to the fact; there being at present not fewer than sixty American whalers on that part of the coast of the Australian continent. The splendid harbour of King George's Sound, near Cape Leeuwin, in the colony of Swan River, would also form an excellent whaling station of the kind I have proposed for New Zealand; I mean for the settlement of such a population as the mother country could easily spare, for the pursuit of the black whale fishery along the southern shores of New Holland. I happened to touch at King George's Sound on my way to New South Wales, in the month of November, 1837, and can speak from personal observation of the capabilities of the place as a whaling station. I am confident, therefore, that if one or two hundred families of the herring and whale fishing population of the North of England or Scotland were settled in that locality, with a suitable establishment of whale boats, whaling gear, &c, and one or two small vessels to carry the boats' crews supplies when out in the whaling season along the coast, and to bring back their oil to the Sound, under the direction of some intelligent and active person as the agent of a company at home, the laggard colony of Swan River would be greatly benefited, and the emigrants would be not less benefited themselves, while I am sure the company would reap a handsome return for their outlaid capital.

10 I was much gratified at hearing the New Zealand coxswain of an English boat, in which two of my fellow-passengers per the Roslyn Castle and myself were rowed across the Bay of Islands on a beautiful moonlight night, by four of his countrymen, calling out to them in good English, and scarcely with a foreign accent, "Pull away, my lads," "Stand to it, my boys." The New Zealanders, in reply, struck up their native boat-song in a sort of recitative, of which the chorus, like that of the Canadian boat song, is "Tohi, Tohi," or Row, brothers, row.

11 I examined the work-basket of a native woman, a slave from the southern regions of the island, whom I saw at work on a mat for her master near the Wai Tangi or Cataract River. It contained a considerable variety of various coloured yarns, and was not unlike the repertory of an English lady, when engaged in working a vase stand or other article of party coloured worsted manufacture. The Wai Tangi, or "noisy water," empties itself into the Bay of Islands. It has obtained its most appropriate native name from a large waterfall at the head of the navigation – the finest for a water-mill I have ever seen in the Southern Hemisphere. I have no doubt it will be used for that purpose ere long, and as the Bay of Islands is the common reservoir of a number of navigable streams, a grist-mill in that locality might grind corn for a very considerable extent of agricultural country easily accessible by water.

12 I have endeavoured, in a work published in London, in the year 1834, entitled "View of the origin and migrations of the Polynesian Nation; demonstrating their ancient discovery and progressive settlement of the continent of America;" to prove from this and a great variety of similar coincidences – in manners and customs; in architectural remains; in language; and in the whole frame-work of society – that America was originally peopled from the South Sea Islands, across the broadest part of the Pacific, and that both the Indo-Americans and Polynesians derived their origin and civilization, such as it is or rather was, from the same source and people as the ancient Egyptians and Etruscans; viz. from the earliest of the postdiluvian nations. Of the correctness of this hypothesis I have found a thousand confirmatory proofs, in addition to the chain of evidence contained in the work I refer to, from subsequent investigation. An abstract of that work was published in the Royal Geographical Society's Journal for the year 1834 or 1835; but no opinion was pronounced on my hypothesis as to the original discovery and settlement of America, although the evidence bearing upon that point was acknowledged to be remarkable in a high degree. The portion of the periodical press of the day, however, by which the work was noticed, generally ridiculed the idea without condescending to examine it; but I am happy to state that a much more competent witness on such a subject than most of the writers for the London periodicals, I mean Mr. Williams, the well-known and justly celebrated missionary who has recently returned after his visit to England to the South Sea Islands, has not only declared himself strongly in favour of my hypothesis, but, what is much more unaccountable, has actually given it as his own, without any acknowledgment whatever. I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Williams frequently, and of attending the public meetings to which he detailed his most interesting missionary notices of the South Sea Islands, during his late residence in Sydney, on his return to these islands; but having no leisure for the perusal of his work before my own departure from New South Wales, I took the opportunity of reading it on my voyage to England, and was more than astonished to find it contained an unacknowledged abridgment of a work of 250 pages of my own, containing an elaborate argument on the origin of the South Sea Islanders, and a chain of evidence establishing the fact of their having been the first discoverers and inhabitants of America.

The portion of Mr. Williams' work in which this abridgment of my treatise is contained, occupies about ten or twelve pages, and extends from page 503 to page 514 of his book. It commences with a deduction of the Asiatic origin of the Polynesians, from the same facts and circumstances as those previously enumerated in my treatise: viz, their physical conformation; their general character; their Malay features; the affinity of the institutions of caste and tabu to similar institutions in the East; the similarity of customs in regard to the treatment of women, particularly their being forbidden to eat certain articles of food, or to eat in the presence of men; their inhuman conduct to the sick; their immolation of widows at the funerals of their husbands, and a great number of games and other usages. In regard to the affinity of language, on which I had entered at considerable length and laid much stress, Mr. Williams observes, "Of this I will furnish a few examples;" and he accordingly gives the following

| EXAMPLES: |
English. | Rarotonga. | Malay.
The eye. | Mata. | Mata.
Food. | Manga. | Mangan
Dead. | Mate. | Mate.
A bird. | Manu. | Manu.
Fish. | Ika. | Ika.
Water. | Vai. | Vai.

But every one of these examples, with various others, which Mr. Williams has not quoted, had been given long before in my book, in the very order too in which Mr. W. quotes them, as will be abundantly evident to the reader from the following extract from pages 21 and 22 of my treatise above-mentioned: –

"The following is a specimen of the affinity subsisting between the Polynesian dialects, and those of the Indian Archipelago: –

English. | Polynesian. | Malay.
The eye. | Mata (universally). | Mata (universally).
To eat. | Maa (strong guttural). | Macan (Javanese, Mangan).
To kill. | Matte. | Matte.
A bird. | Manu. | Manu (Prince's Island, Manuck.)
Fish. | Ika. | Ika (Javanese, Iwa).
| [Here are two words, which Mr. W. has not given. ] |
Water. | Wai or Vai. | Vai (Amboynese)."

Mr. Williams then proceeds to notice and refute three objections to the theory of the Asiatic origin of the South Sea Islanders; and they are precisely the same objections as I had previously noticed and refuted in precisely the same way: viz.

1. – The great distance of some of the islands from the Asiatic Continent. In meeting this objection, Mr. Williams points out, as I had already done, the intermediate islands that would render the ocean voyage either to the Sandwich Islands or New Zealand comparatively short, and refers, as I had also done, to the frequent drifting of canoes, full of natives, far from their native isles.

2. – The prevalence of the easterly or trade winds. This objection I had met by references to the testimony of La Perouse and Captain Hunter, R. N., afterwards Governor of New South Wales, in regard to the frequency of westerly gales in low latitudes in the Pacific Ocean, and also to my own experience and observation in intertropical regions. Mr. Williams meets it by detailing a voyage of his own of 1600 miles, due east, with a fair wind all the way, from the Samoa or Navigators' Islands to Tahiti.

3. – Inability of the Malays to perform long voyages. This objection I had answered by certain long quotations from Marsden's History of Sumatra and Captain King's Survey of the North and West Coasts of Australia; shewing the early and high civilization of the Malays and their ancient maritime character. Now it is singular enough that Mr. Williams should have stumbled upon these very quotations also, when pursuing the same line of argument. It is unnecessary, however, to give them a third time.

"Thus, I think," continues Mr. Williams, "every difficulty is removed, and that we need not have recourse to the theory, advocated by some writers, and countenanced, to a certain extent, by Mr. Ellis, that the Polynesian Islanders came from South America. I would far rather say, provided their physical conformation, the structure of their language, and other circumstances, established the identity of the Polynesians and the Aborigines of America, that the latter reached that continent through the isles of the Pacific. This, however, is a topic upon which, although interesting, I cannot enter; but so convinced am I of the practicability of performing a voyage from Sumatra to Tahiti in one of the large native canoes, that if an object of sufficient magnitude could be accomplished by it, I should feel no hesitation in undertaking the task." – Narrative of Missionary Enterprise, &c. page 512.

Having read my book, as he evidently must have done to have borrowed so much of it, Mr. Williams could not be ignorant that I had pursued the singularly interesting argument, which he merely glances at in the passage in Italics, and fully established the theory of the Polynesian origin of the Indo-Americans, which he mentions with so much approbation in that passage – or rather gives indirectly as his own. Regarding the discovery of the complete identity of the Indo-Chinese, Malayan, Polynesian, and Indo-American nations, and of the mode in which the American Continent was originally reached in some remote age (by a few solitary individuals of that large portion of the great family of man), as one of the most interesting literary discoveries of the present age, I cannot allow it to be appropriated in this manner, even by Mr. Williams. Having already gained a species of immortality in the nobler field of missionary enterprise, Mr. W. had no need to array himself in borrowed plumes, by appropriating the labours of others in the inferior field of literary and antiquarian research; for which indeed his own previous education, his active habits, and his more important employments necessarily unfitted him. Of the correctness of my hypothesis, and of its entire accordance with the facts on which it rests, Mr. Williams is doubtless one of the most competent judges living, and I am happy to possess his valuable testimony and opinion on the subject; but it is no disparagement to Mr. W. to say, that he could neither have elaborated nor established that hypothesis himself.

In my work on the Origin and Migrations of the Polynesian nation, I had confined myself entirely to the Polynesians, properly so called, and had not attempted in any way to enquire into the origin and migrations of the other race that inhabits some of the Western Islands of the Pacific, as well as the continent of New Holland, I mean the Papuan, or Oceanic, negroes. I shall take the liberty to quote the following passage on the subject from pages 157-159 of my treatise: –

"I have purposely refrained from saying any thing, in the course of the preceding pages, of the latter of these numerous tribes of men, although it is well known that they not only constitute the Aborigines of New Holland, Van Dieman's Land, and New Guinea, but are found in considerable numbers, mixed occasionally with the lighter-coloured Polynesians, in several of the groups of islands to the westward, as in New Caledonia, the Mallicolo Islands, the New Hebrides, &c; as well as in several of the islands of the Indian Archipelago, as in Sumatra, Borneo, Celebes, &c; in the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal; and even in the interior of Continental India, as at Mongheir. I have preserved this silence, partly from unwillingness to involve in additional perplexity a subject already sufficiently extensive, by the introduction of a new and foreign element, but more especially from the limited nature of our acquaintance with the languages, and from our entire ignorance of the origin, of the Papuan race. I am not without hopes, however, that the literary apparatus that has recently been set up and put in active operation on the eastern shores of New Holland, will in due time serve to clear away a portion at least of the 'clouds and darkness' that still 'rest upon' this mysterious chapter of the history of man."

Now it is singular enough that even this passage of my work should have been reproduced, in an abridged form, by Mr. Williams; the following being Mr. W.'s introductory remarks to a similar view, which he gives, of the diffusion of the Papuan or Oceanic Negro race.

"I fear that my remarks upon the origin of the Polynesian negroes will not be equally satisfactory with those that relate to the other race. This, indeed, is a dark and mysterious chapter in the history of man."

In short, having the highest respect and esteem for Mr. Williams, as a devoted and truly apostolic missionary, I cannot but express the sincere regret I have felt at observing, in the instance above detailed, that he has not yet learned to its full extent, or in all its more evident bearings, the christian principle of giving every one his own.

To enable the reader who may not have leisure for such investigations to form some idea of the sort of evidence on which the hypothesis of the Polynesian origin of the Indo-Americans is based, I shall mention a few particulars in which the identity of the two races is evident and unquestionable; premising that while the celebrated Baron Humboldt distinctly states it as his opinion, that the whole aboriginal inhabitants of America, with the single exception of the Esquimaux, must have had the same common origin, Dr. Robertson, the historian, observes, that in their manners and customs, and in the whole character and aspect of the species of civilization to which certain of their nations had attained on the European discovery of the American Continent, the Indo-Americans were altogether unlike any portion of the human race previously known.

1. – In reference to language; the late distinguished oriental scholar, Dr. Leyden, regards it as a remarkable peculiarity of the Indo-Chinese nations, distinguishing them from all the other great families of nations to the westward, whether in Asia or in Europe, that these nations universally have a reverential or court language, distinct from the language of common life. But the same peculiarity is observable among the comparatively civilized portions of the Polynesian nation; and we know that it also distinguished the ancient Mexicans, for Dr. Robertson informs us, "they had not only reverential nouns but reverential verbs."

The whole aspect and character of the languages of the Warows of Guiana, of the Othomies, an ancient and singular Indian nation, of Mexico, and of the Araucanians of Chili, are decidedly Polynesian. The names also of certain of the ancient Mexican princes are unquestionably of the same origin. For example, the name of the unfortunate Guatimozin, the last of these princes, when divested of its reverential affix zin (Indo-Chinese siang) signifying prince or lord, is a pure New Zealand name, signifying Prince Ka Tima. The same Polynesian prefix, Ka, is also discernible, through the Spanish orthography, in hundreds of proper names in South America.

2. – In regard to manners and customs; the New Zealanders cultivate the ground in common, and lay up the general produce for future use in a common store-house, which is pronounced Taboo, or sacred, and which no private individual can enter thereafter for the purpose of removing any of its contents under pain of death. But the ancient Mexicans not only cultivated their land in precisely the same way, but laid up the produce also in common store-houses, which, Dr. Robertson informs us, were called Tambo. It is evidently the Polynesian word, with a slight dialectic difference, or perhaps rather as it would be written by a Spaniard.

There is nothing more arbitrary than the customs of different nations in regard to their treatment of the dead. On this subject, Diogenes Laertius, or some other ancient Greek author (for I have left my reference to the passage in New South Wales), humorously observes: "Different nations have very different customs in regard to the dead; the Greeks bury them, the Romans burn them, the Egyptians embalm them, the Scythians eat them." But there is a remarkable coincidence in the customs of the Indo-Chinese, Polynesian, and Indo-American nations on this point, viz. in their keeping the dead above-ground. The Rev. Mr. West, Chaplain of the Red River Colony in North Americas informs us that the Indians of that vicinity do not bury their dead, but place them in a shell or wrapper of buffalo skin elevated on a stage ten feet from the ground. Now this is precisely the general mode of disposing of the dead in New Zealand, as I have observed myself in repeated instances. In a short pedestrian tour which I made near the Bay of Islands, I happened to be separated a little way from the party I was with, when seeing something remarkable among the bushes at a little distance, I went up to it, and observed with a sudden and involuntary shudder, two coffins, the one painted black, and the other the natural colour of the wood, elevated on stages about six or seven feet from the ground. I afterwards ascertained that the corpse in the black coffin was that of a New Zealand woman, who had lived in concubinage with an English sawyer, probably a runaway convict. In conformity to European practice the body was deposited in an English coffin, not in a New Zealand box; but in conformity to the New Zealand practice, it was not interred, but elevated on a stage. Travellers inform us that in certain parts of South America, the remains of the dead are collected from all quarters at certain seasons, and deposited with great mourning (Abel-Mizraim, Genesis 1. 10, 11.) in their last place of sepulture. The same practice obtains also in New Zealand; and as it happened to be the periodical season for mourning for the dead when I was in the island, I went to two of their burying places to observe their customs on the occasion. In one of them I saw five women, who I was told had come from a great distance to mourn over a chief. They were seated on the ground, silently gazing at the remains of the chief, which had been taken out of his elevated coffin for the occasion; their cheeks and necks being covered with blood from the wounds they had been inflicting upon themselves with sharp muscle-shells as an expression of grief. The body of the chief, who had been dead many months, was lying on a sort of mattrass, together with the remains of two of his children, ornamented with birds' feathers, in an inner enclosure, into which no New Zealander, but his principal widow, was allowed to enter; his gun and several other articles that had belonged to him being neatly arranged in various places within the enclosure. The widow was sitting sorrowfully on the ground, close to the corpse, the whole of which was covered from the view, with the exception of the upper part of the face and head. The mouth, neck, and breast being covered with an English cotton handkerchief, I requested the mourner, through a European who was with me, who spoke the New Zealand language, to remove it that I might see in what stage of decay that part of the corpse was; but the poor widow delicately observing, that that part of the body was not fit to be seen, I of course did not press my request. In the other cemetery I visited I found seven young men kneeling over the remains of another chief, cutting their arms with sharp shells, and ever and anon uttering the most frightful ululations. These "cuttings for the dead," together with the practice of tattooing, which obtains universally in the South Sea Islands, and which Mr. West observed even among the Indians of the Red River Colony, appear to have been in practice among the ancient Egyptians, and the other earlier post-diluvian nations; for in the books of Moses they are prohibited, as heathen practices, to the ancient Jews: "Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, NOR PRINT ANY MARKS UPON YOU: I am the Lord." Levit. xix. 28.

3. – In regard to architectural remains; the ancient tumuli, the ancient fortifications, and the ancient religious edifices of the Polynesians and Indo-Americans, are not only of precisely the same type and character, but that type and character are unquestionably the type and character of the pyramidal and colossal architecture of the remotest antiquity. My idea in regard to that peculiar type and character of the earlier post-diluvian architecture, is that it was the type and character of the public architecture of the ante-diluvian world, in which, from the longevity of man, time must have been of no consequence, and strength and duration every thing, and in which, moreover, tyranny would doubtless be of the most oppressive description; for the earlier post-diluvian nations would preserve that type and character in their public architecture in all parts of the world, as it can easily be shewn they did, notwithstanding the great change that had in the mean time taken place in the circumstances of the human race, on the same principle that, in climates altogether different, the Brazilian houses of Rio Janeiro and Pernambuco are built on the model of those of Lisbon and Oporto, while the English and American houses of Sydney and Philadelphia are built on the model of those of London and Edinburgh. It is singular indeed that we should have to look for the solution of that quaestio vexata, the uses of the pyramids of Egypt, to the South Sea Islands, and the table lands of the American Continent; but such is nevertheless the fact; for in these localities we find the very people of the pyramids still practising their ancient and infernal superstitions in offering human sacrifices on the summits of these pyramids to their deities of blood. The Spanish soldier historian, Bernal Diaz, informs us that the Spaniards who were taken alive by the Indians, when a party of the small army of Cortez was cut off during the siege of Mexico, on one of the causeways across the lake, were offered in sacrifice with cruel torture to the gods of Mexico on a pyramid in the ancient city, in sight of their agonized companions on the main land. It was evidently to this primitive and universal superstition that the ancient Jews were so addicted, that certain even of their reforming kings were unable to remove the high places or pyramids out of the land. It will be evident at all events to the intelligent reader, that while the study of the history and condition of the Polynesian and Indo-American nations is calculated to throw a flood of light upon the primitive condition of man, and to afford the most remarkable confirmation of the Mosaic history, the hypothesis of the Polynesian origin of the Aborigines of America is not based upon mere vague and fanciful generalities, like those upon which writers in almost all the languages of Europe for the last three centuries have hitherto endeavoured to assign, sometimes a Jewish, at others an Idumean, sometimes a Welsh, at others a Norwegian, sometimes a Kamtschatkan, and at others a Zenghis-khan-migration origin to the Aborigines of America. These hypotheses are all like "the baseless fabric of a vision;" they have no evidence of identity to stand upon. But the hypothesis I have endeavoured to establish exhibits innumerable evidences of such identity; and while it explains every thing peculiar and otherwise utterly unaccountable in the condition of the Indo-Americans, it goes to prove, in direct opposition to the speculations of infidel philosophy, and in particular to those of Dr. Von Martius, of Munich, a recent traveller in the Brazils, who regards the Aborigines of America as a distinct race of the genus Man, having no connection whatever with the rest of the family, "that God originally made of one blood all the nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth."

LETTER IV. ON THE PRINCIPLES ON WHICH A BRITISH COLONY IN NEW ZEALAND OUGHT TO BE ESTABLISHED AND CONDUCTED.

LETTER IV.

ON THE PRINCIPLES ON WHICH A BRITISH COLONY IN NEW ZEALAND OUGHT TO BE ESTABLISHED AND CONDUCTED.

London, June – 1839.

MY LORD,

IN recommending the establishment of a British Colony in New Zealand, I beg to assure your Lordship, that I have had no intercourse or connection of any kind, with the parties concerned in introducing a Bill into the Imperial Parliament for the accomplishment of that object during the past year. Whatever may have been the motives or the character of certain of these parties, (and I understand both were sufficiently decried at the time,) I am in no way responsible for either; my first and principal object in these letters being the protection of the interesting but unfortunate natives of New Zealand, their rescue from that system of wholesale plunder and progressive extermination, to which they are at present exposed, and their ultimate elevation to the rank and character of christian and civilized men.

If the system of non-interference, on the part of European Governments, with the natives of New Zealand, were likely to secure the attainment of these important objects, and to promote the general advancement of that most interesting race of Aborigines, I should be the first to decry

all such interference, and to advocate the propriety of leaving them entirely alone. But I trust, my Lord, it will be abundantly evident to your Lordship and the public from the preceding details, that the continuance of that system will only render the New Zealanders an easy prey to the shoals of unprincipled European adventurers, who are ever and anon landing on the island from the Australian Penal Colonies, or from the whalers and trading vessels that occasionally visit their coasts; and that every year longer that the system in question is allowed to subsist, the number of these adventurers will only be the more increased, and the case of the New Zealanders the more hopeless. Under the system at present in operation it is actually the interest of such adventurers to demoralize the New Zealanders, and to engage them in exterminating wars with each other, by selling them rum, gunpowder and firearms, that they may the more easily obtain possession of their valuable land.

It will also be evident to your Lordship and the public from the preceding details, that the case of the New Zealanders cannot be entrusted, with any degree of safety to that interesting people, even to missionaries; and more especially to the agents of the Church Missionary Society. Even if these missionaries were inclined, they have no longer the power to protect the natives from the aggressions of unprincipled Europeans; but their own flagrant example, as purchasers of land from the natives, has deprived them of all moral power for the protection of the New Zealanders, and shewn but too plainly that they had but little inclination to exert such a power, if ever they possessed it.

The grounds on which the Bill for the Colonization of New Zealand was successfully opposed in the last session of Parliament, were, that the establishment of a British Colony in that island would necessarily be effected on infidel and not on christian principles; that the rights of

the natives would consequently be sacrificed and themselves speedily exterminated; and that these natives, being a sovereign and independent people, advancing rapidly in civilization and christianization, the British Government had no right to interfere with them in the manner proposed. In direct opposition, however, to such ideas, I am confident, my Lord, that a British Colony could, with the utmost facility, be both established and conducted in New Zealand on christian and philanthropic principles, and that such a colony would not only afford the requisite protection to the natives, and the requisite security for the maintenance of their rights, but would forma most desirable point d'appui and centre of action for missionary labour among the Aborigines.

In regard to the alleged independence of the New Zealanders, and their paramount sovereignty in their own islands, the fact undoubtedly is, that these islands are at present divided into innumerable independent and sovereign chieftainships, in each of which the whole of the land belongs in common to the whole freemen of the tribe: as is uniformly the case also among; the Indians of North America: but it is also the melancholy fact that through the rapid extension of British commerce and colonization in the Southern Hemisphere, during the last twenty years, these independent and sovereign chieftainships are now almost universally undergoing a rapid process of annihilation, while their territories are virtually seized and appropriated on the most impudent pretences by lawless adventurers from the British Penal Colonies, and from every whaler or trading vessel that touches on their coasts. It is therefore for Her Majesty's Government to determine whether so preposterous a system of downright plunder and oppression is to be allowed to subsist under the sanction of Great Britain, and in the immediate neighbourhood of a series of British Colonies, or to be put an end to at once by the assumption of

the sovereignty of the islands, on the part of Her Majesty, and the establishment of a British Colony on their shores.

It is quite unnecessary, I apprehend, my Lord, to consult Puffendorff or Grotius as to the right of Her Majesty's Government to colonize New Zealand, and to assume the sovereignty of the island. The necessity of the case demands such a measure on the part of the British Government; humanity calls loudly for it; every independent chief in New Zealand will most assuredly hail it as a blessing to himself and his country; and however insignificant it may appear, among the occurrences of the moment, posterity will undoubtedly regard its accomplishment as one of the most important events of Her Majesty's reign.

It may not be improper, however, to discuss the question of right in the first instance, as far at least as that question is capable of discussion. It is acknowledged, therefore, as a maxim or first principle of the law of nations, that the discovery of any waste or uninhabited country by a civilized nation confers on the nation making such discovery a right to colonize that country in preference to all other civilized nations – a right, in short, to take possession of its territory, and to exercise sovereignty over it. Thus the small but beautiful island, called Norfolk Island, to the northward of New Zealand, having been discovered by Captain Cook, and having been found altogether waste and uninhabited, Great Britain not only acquired by that discovery a right to colonize the said island in preference to all other civilized nations, but the island itself became thenceforth British property, a part and parcel of the British empire.

It is acknowledged also as a maxim or first principle of the law of nations, that if the new country so discovered is inhabited, and under a Government of any kind, the mere discovery of it by a civilized nation, (while it still gives

such a nation a right to colonize it, if it is susceptible of colonization, in preference to all other civilized nations,) confers on that nation no right of sovereignty over it – no light of property to a single inch of its territory. In the celebrated case of the Cherokee nation against the State of Georgia, tried before the Supreme Court of the United States in the year 1832, the late eminent Chief Justice Marshall, in his admirable summing up of the argument on both sides, laid down this equitable principle as having been the principle on which the British Government had uniformly acted towards the Indians in the colonization of America, previous to the war of American independence; and proved incontestably that as the American Governments had merely inherited British rights by the event of that war, they could have no right of property whatever upon the territory of a free and independent Indian nation.

In fact this equitable principle appears to have regulated the transactions of the more respectable civilized nations with semi-barbarous tribes from the remotest times. Whether we believe the story, handed down to us from antiquity, of the bullock's hide cut into a thong of great length for the purpose of measuring off the piece of land which had been previously purchased by Queen Dido, from the natives of Northern Africa, for the erection of the city of Carthage, or not, the very fact that such a story was told and credited by the ancients, sufficiently apprises us of the principles on which the merchant-princes of Tyre and Sidon were known to regulate their intercourse with uncivilized men; for instead of seizing it by force of arms, and thereby exciting a war that would in all probability have laid waste the country and ruined their own commerce, the Phoenicians evidently purchased from the native chief of the district, at a certain fixed price, the piece of land they had selected in his territory as the site of their trading factory of Carthage.

To apply these principles to the case of the proposed colonization of New Zealand by the British Government,

it cannot be denied that that island was originally discovered – not by the British but by the Dutch. In the year 1642, Abel Jansen Tasman, a Dutch navigator, who had been commissioned by His Excellency, Anthony Van Dieman, Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies, to ascertain the extent and character of the newly-discovered continent of New Holland, sailed for that purpose from Batavia, in command of the yacht Heemskirk and the pinnace Zeehaen, and discovered the island of Van Dieman's Land, which he considered the southern extremity of that continent, and also the island of New Zealand. On Van Dieman's Land Tasman effected a landing in various places, and had some intercourse with the natives. On New Zealand, however, he never landed, having merely seen that island from his ship's deck.

By this discovery the Dutch unquestionably acquired a right to colonize both of these countries in preference to all other nations; but having made no use of that right for the long period of 145 years, and the British Government having in the meantime followed up the discoveries of Tasman by discovering and surveying the whole eastern coast of New Holland and the islands of New Zealand, that Government undoubtedly succeeded to the right to colonize in both cases, which the Dutch had originally possessed, but had thus virtually renounced. Van Dieman's Land, the discovery of Tasman, was therefore included as a portion of the colony of New South Wales, on the east coast of New Holland, and was taken possession of accordingly by the British Government, in virtue of the subsequent discoveries of Captain Cook in the year 1787. If therefore the Dutch title was held to have merged or been extinguished in reference to Van Dieman's Land, on which Tasman had actually landed, a fortiori it must have been held to have merged also or been extinguished in reference to New Zealand, an island which that navigator had merely seen, and on which Captain Cook, who surveyed and described it mi-

nutely a hundred and thirty years thereafter, was the first European who had ever landed. The Royal Commission of 1787, appointing Captain Phillip to be Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief in and over the territory of New South Wales and its dependencies, accordingly included all the discoveries of Captain Cook in the Southern Pacific; the said territory and its dependencies being described in that commission as extending "from Cape York (the extremity of the coast to the northward), in the latitude of 11 deg. 37' South, to the South Cape, (the southern extremity of the coast,) in the latitude of 43 deg. 30' South; and inland to the westward as far as 135 deg. of East longitude, comprehending all the islands adjacent in the Pacific Ocean, within the latitudes of the above-mentioned capes."

If it should be urged, however, that this description could not be supposed to include islands so far to the eastward of New Holland as New Zealand, I beg to reply, my Lord, that it was not only supposed to do so, but that it really did include such islands; the island, called Norfolk Island, situated to the northward of New Zealand, on the same meridian, being actually colonized by Captain Phillip, in virtue of his commission above quoted, as a part of the territory of New South Wales and its dependencies. Nay, shortly after the commencement of the present century, the British Government had it seriously under their consideration to appoint a Lieutenant-Governor of New Zealand, as a subordinate penal settlement and dependency of New South Wales, on a representation, pointing out the propriety of such an appointment, by Lieutenant-Colonel Foveaux, of the New South Wales corps. Happily, indeed, for New Zealand, that recommendation was not acted on; but so lately as the close of the government of the late Major-General Macquarie, in the year 1820, that island was still regarded, not theoretically but practically, as a dependency of New South Wales, and within the limits of the

government of that Colony; for when the Rev. Mr. Butler was about to proceed to New Zealand, as Superintendent of the Church Mission in that island, he was actually created a Justice of Peace for the territory of New South Wales and its dependencies, by Governor Macquarie, and authorised to exercise his functions in that capacity in New Zealand.

At all events, it must be obvious to your Lordship and the public, that the British Government have not allowed their right to colonize New Zealand in preference to all other civilized nations, acquired by the discoveries of Cook in the years 1770 and 1775, to fall into abeyance and become extinguished, like that of the Dutch, acquired in the year 1642, by the original discovery of Tasman. And as it is solely the expenditure of eight millions of British money during the last fifty years in the colonies of New South Wales and Van Dieman's Land, or rather the extraordinary facilities for extending colonization in the Southern Hemisphere which that expenditure has created, that renders the colonization of New Zealand at all practicable at the present moment, it would clearly be an act of the grossest injustice to Great Britain – independently altogether of the right she acquired to colonize that island through the discoveries of Captain Cook – for any other civilized nation to attempt to appropriate the fruits of that enormous expenditure, by forming a settlement on its coast.

But the right to colonize, my Lord, most certainly gives Her Majesty no right whatever to occupy a single inch of the territory of New Zealand, except on such terms as its native inhabitants shall accede to: in other words, it merely gives Her Majesty the right of pre-emption from the natives. That important right, however, neither Her Majesty, nor any of her royal predecessors has yet renounced in any way; and as it is a right clearly available, not merely against all European foreigners, but against all Her

Majesty's own subjects, it follows unquestionably that whoever has purchased land from the natives in New Zealand, has done so at his own risk – has done so in defiance of Her Majesty's right of pre-emption; nay, has done so in the face of his late Majesty, King George III.'s virtual protest against all such purchases in his commission to his first Captain General of New South Wales.

A few years ago, when a few adventurers from Van Dieman's Land crossed over to the South coast of New Holland, and discovered a splendid country, which is now rapidly settling, in the neighbourhood of Port Phillip, they negociated for the purchase of vast tracts of land for a mere trifle from the black natives. The deeds were drawn up in due form; the natives having appended their respective marks with all the customary formalities of English law: and certain lawyers in Van Dieman's Land, who, it was alleged, were concerned in the speculation, pronounced them valid. But the Imperial Government, insisting on his late Majesty's right of pre-emption, or, in other words, of treating exclusively with the natives for their land, very properly disallowed the whole transaction, and the native deeds were consequently held null and void.

Now, I conceive, my Lord, that the case of all purchases of land from the natives of New Zealand is a case precisely similar; and the interests of humanity, as well as of Her Majesty's Government generally, demand that her Majesty shall not suffer the Royal prerogative to be invaded by individual and unwarranted speculation in that island, any more than it was allowed to be invaded in a similar manner on the South coast of New Holland. By maintaining the Royal prerogative in the case of New Zealand, as it was maintained at Port Phillip, Her Majesty will reserve to herself the salutary and important right of revising every alleged purchase of land in that island – will retain the power of confirming honest men in their posses-

sions, and of obliging persons of a different description to restore to the natives, or to the Government on their behalf, the land they have acquired dishonestly – and will thus establish a precedent of most beneficial operation for the Aborigines of every uncivilized country in the South Seas having relations with British subjects in all time coming.

In regard to the assumption of the sovereignty of New Zealand, on the part of Her Majesty, considered as distinct from the right to colonize the island on the terms I have mentioned, I am aware of no other principle on which such a measure could be justified than that of sheer necessity; a principle which, your Lordship is aware, however, is superior to law, or rather which creates a law for itself. It is absolutely necessary, on the one hand, that a regular and energetic Government should be established forthwith in that island; but the native chiefs are utterly incapable, on the other, of forming such a Government of themselves – being altogether destitute of the intelligence, virtue, and energy of character that would be indispensably requisite to sustain a republic, and too jealous of each other to allow any one of their number to exercise authority as lord paramount over the rest. But if the sovereignty of the island were at once assumed by Her Majesty, and exercised, as it would undoubtedly be, for the protection of the natives from European aggression, for the preservation of peace between their different tribes, and for the promotion of their intellectual and moral advancement, there is no room to doubt, from all I have heard of the New Zealanders in all parts of the island for the last sixteen years, that such an event would be universally hailed by the natives and most cheerfully acquiesced in. The New Zealanders are uniformly desirous that Europeans should settle among them; and so untutored are they in regard to the ideas of civilized men on the points of national independence and sovereignty, that they have often represented it as a singular instance of bad taste, as

well as of partiality, on the part of the British Government, that the Sovereign of Great Britain should have sent a Governor for so inferior a race as the black natives of New South Wales, and none for them.

I beg therefore most respectfully to suggest that Her Majesty should be advised forthwith to assume the sovereignty of New Zealand, for the general purposes of colonization from the mother country, as well as for the protection and preservation of its Aboriginal inhabitants; such colonization to be effected on the principles on which the colony of Southern Australia has recently been established, but with a special reference to the superior intellectual condition and general prospects of the Aboriginal race. If an Act of the Imperial Parliament could be obtained for such a purpose, it would doubtless be highly desirable; but it appears to me that under the original Act of Parliament authorising the King in Council to form a Colony on the east coast of New Holland, including within its jurisdiction the adjacent islands of the Pacific Ocean, Her Majesty is fully authorised to take immediate steps, if she shall think fit, for the colonization of New Zealand, without the sanction of a new Act of Parliament at all.

Supposing, therefore, that it should be determined on the part of Her Majesty's Government to colonize New Zealand, or to speak more properly, to throw open that island for colonization, I would earnestly recommend that the following general principles be acknowledged and established as the fundamental principles of the undertaking: –

1. – That the land in all the islands constituting the New Zealand group – including Chatham Island, the Auckland Islands, Norfolk Island, and Lord Howe's Island – belongs to the Aborigines of these islands respectively; and that no part of that land shall be settled by European colonists without the express consent of the natives, and without

having been previously purchased from the natives at what they shall consider a fair and adequate price.

2. – That all private purchases of land from the natives whether past or future, shall be utterly disallowed, as an infringement of Her Majesty's undoubted right of preemption; the Government, or Commissioners acting on their behalf, to be the sole purchasers from the natives, and a Board of Protectors of the Aborigines to ascertain beforehand, and to certify to that effect in every particular case, that in all such purchases, the interests and feelings and wishes of the natives have been duly consulted.

3. – That the land so purchased from the natives shall be sold by the said Commissioners at not less than a certain fixed price per acre, and that the proceeds of such sales shall be appropriated in the following manner: viz.

1st. Towards the payment of the original price of the land as purchased from the natives.

2d. Towards the payment of the salaries of the Board of Protectors of the Aborigines; that that Board may be alike independent of the European colonists and of the Local Government.

3d. Towards the support of schools and other kindred institutions for promoting the intellectual and moral advancement of the natives.

4th. Towards the encouragement and support of voluntary emigration from Great Britain and Ireland.

That a vast extent of eligible land of the first quality could in this manner be purchased from the natives of New Zealand, in all parts of the islands, at a merely nominal price, is undeniable. The islands of the New Zealand group are but thinly inhabited; and as the natives are not a pastoral people, and as there is no game on the islands to employ them in hunting, a comparatively small portion of land is adequate to all the wants of a New Zealand tribe

or family. On the other hand, it is by no means desirable that in their present circumstances the natives should receive a high price for their land from the colonizing Government; for that price would in all likelihood be squandered away very speedily in procuring for them some trifling or momentary gratification. It would be incomparably better for the natives to have a certain portion of the proceeds of the lands so purchased from them and resold to European colonists, appropriated for the establishment of some permanent provision for the furtherance of their intellectual and moral advancement.

It is in reference chiefly to these probable results of the sale of their land, in the event of its being sold exclusively to the Government, and not to the mere difference of the price they would receive for it, that it becomes a matter of the highest importance, not only to the New Zealanders, but to the British nation generally, that Her Majesty's right of pre-emption from the natives should be maintained inviolate. If the New Zealanders, for example, are willing to sell a hundred thousand acres of their land at a penny an acre, let them do so by all means; the land may in all probability be worth no more to them, and the fair price of a thing, surely, is what it is worth to the seller. But it is a very different question altogether, whether they shall be allowed to sell their land at that price to the Queen of England exclusively, or be at liberty to sell it, if they please, to Mr. Fairbairn, the Christian, from Parramatta, or Mr. Polack, the Jew, from Sydney. 13 For even supposing, in the latter case, that

the stipulated price of the land should be all well and truly paid, without cozening or cheating of any kind, by Mr. Fairbairn or Mr. Polack – and such a supposition, my Lord, can only be made by that charity which hopeth all things – the natives will in all likelihood be told to go about their business as soon as the deeds are signed, and be left thenceforth to live and die as mere beggars, if they please, among the whalers and other dissolute Europeans in the sea-ports of their own island; while the land they have sold will be suffered to lie entirely waste till it acquires a comparatively high value from its situation, from the influx of Europeans, or from some other adventitious circumstance: and when it has acquired such value, the price at which it will eventually be sold in small portions, or the yearly rental it will yield when let to European cultivators, will only serve to elevate the family of the Fairbairns, of Mount Fairbairn, or the Polacks, of Polack Hall, to the rank and dignity of an illiterate, narrow-minded, purse-proud, heartless colonial aristocracy – one of the most intolerable nuisances on the face of the earth. But if sold to Her Majesty the Queen, and resold to European capitalists at a pound an acre, in the way I have proposed, a portion of that price will be appropriated towards the maintenance of a body of men whose peculiar duty it will be to look after the interests of the natives, and to protect them from European aggression; and another portion of it will be appropriated towards the support of schools and other kindred institutions, for the furtherance of their intellectual and moral advancement; while the rest of it will be devoted towards the

conveyance of a large body of European emigrants to New Zealand, to settle with their ministers and schoolmasters in the midst of the natives, to set them the example of European arts and industry, and to allure them by acts of brotherly-kindness to the reception and practice of the Christian religion. It is surely not difficult, my Lord, to determine which of these systems is the best, or to recognise the deep interest, which every British subject of right principles ought to feel, in maintaining Her Majesty's right of pre-emption in New Zealand against all persons whatsoever.

It is extremely gratifying to observe that the generous and philanthropic policy I have thus advocated, in regard to the Aborigines of New Zealand, has found supporters, in the highest and most influential quarters, in regard to another most interesting race of Aborigines, in the United States of America. The General Government of the United States, as your Lordship is well aware, allows no private individual, nor even a Sovereign State, to acquire land from the Indians in any way; the right of acquiring such land being vested by the Constitution in the Supreme Government exclusively. The land so acquired, whether by purchase, by exchange, or by the extinction of native titles in any other way, is sold thereafter by the General Government at a certain fixed price – about five shillings per acre – and the proceeds of such sales are thrown into the Public Treasury of the United States. In his Report to the President, however, of November 25, 1832, the American Secretary at War strongly recommends that in future the revenue, (amounting recently to four millions sterling per annum) arising from such sales, should be appropriated exclusively towards the general improvement of the Aborigines. 14

"It cannot be doubted," observes the philanthropic Secretary, in the Report referred to, "that a course, so consistent with the dictates of justice, and so honourable to the national character, would be approved by public sentiment. Should we hereafter discard all pecuniary advantage in our purchases from the Indians, and confine ourselves to the great objects of their removal and establishment, and take care that the proceeds of the cessions are applied to their benefit, and in the most salutary-manner, we should go far towards discharging the great moral debt which has come down to us as an inheritance from the earliest periods of our history, and which has been unfortunately increased during successive generations by circumstances beyond our control. This policy would not be less wise than just. The time has passed away, if it ever existed, when a revenue derived from such a source

was necessary to the Government. The remnant of our aboriginal race may well look for the full value, and that usefully applied, of the remnant of those immense possessions which have passed from them to us, and left no substantial evidences of permanent advantage to them."

The circumstances of our own Government, however, in regard to the colonization of New Zealand, are altogether different from those of the General Government of the United States, in regard to the settlement of the waste lands of the American Union. In both cases the claims of the Aborigines are doubtless the same; but in the case of New Zealand, a revenue to be derived from the sale of land, over and above what may be indispensably requisite to meet the claims of the natives, is absolutely necessary for the promotion of an extensive emigration from Great Britain and Ireland: but such a revenue may be raised, my Lord, and the great national object of effecting an extensive emigration to New Zealand accomplished, with the utmost facility, simply by raising the minimum price of land in that island to four times the American rate, or a pound an acre. 15

The land purchased from the natives by the Government could easily be sold either to European capitalists or to emigrant colonists, at a pound per acre. It would be well worth that amount to those who could turn it to a proper account; and provided a considerable extent of land were sold annually, as would infallibly be the case, in the event of the islands being thrown open for colonization, such a price would afford abundant resources for all the objects I have enumerated. The price of land even at present in the neighbourhood of the Bay of Islands, notwithstanding the uncertainty necessarily attending the native titles, is from eight to ten shillings per acre; and for building allotments near the anchorage ground in that Bay, as much as a pound sterling per foot of frontage has already-been paid for land having an extent of sixty feet back. In short, the rates established for Southern Australia, viz. twelve shillings for the first twelve months, and 1l. per acre thereafter, could be established with perfect safety to all parties as the minimum price of Crown land in New Zealand.

Supposing, therefore, that such a plan should be carried into effect, and that considerable bodies of European colonists should be settled at the Bay of Islands, the River Thames, the Hokianga, Kaiparra, and Manukau rivers, and at Port Nicholson in Cook's Straits; and supposing that the same duties on all imports and exports should be levied in these settlements as in New South Wales, I am confident that the revenue derived from such a source during the first three years of the existence of the Colony, would be fully adequate to all the expenses of its civil government; for although there might be a deficiency during the first year, there would in all likelihood be a surplus revenue during the third. A large portion of that revenue, I am sorry to say, would in all probability be derived from duties on the importation and sale of ardent spirits. If indeed the importation and manufacture of ardent spirits could be altogether prohibited in New Zealand, it would doubtless prove an unspeakable blessing, both to the natives and to the colonists; but as this would obviously be utterly impracticable in a maritime country frequented by vessels of all nations, and having a coast line of upwards of two thousand miles, with innumerable harbours,, it would be the policy of the Government to subject the importation of ardent spirits to a comparatively high duty, and to place the sale of them under proper regulations. For this purpose an efficient police would be requisite in the principal maritime ports of the island – at the Bay of Islands especially – from the very first.

In the event of the colonization of New Zealand, I conceive, my Lord, there would be no necessity for a body of military to protect the colonists. If many hundred Europeans can live at present in perfect safety among the New Zealanders in all parts of the island, even when pursuing a species of traffic that reduces the unfortunate natives to absolute beggary in their own land, it must be evident that as many thousand Europeans would stand in still less need

of military protection, especially when living together in concentrated communities, and all their intercourse with the natives conducted on the principles of impartial justice and enlightened Christianity. The protection of one or two ships of war, to be employed in surveying the coast, and in establishing a friendly intercourse with the native tribes at a distance from the principal settlement, would be all the protection which the colonists would require from the mother country. A colonial police, with a corps of native constables attired in a gay uniform and receiving rations and moderate pay from the Government, would be quite sufficient for the maintenance of the civil power in the island.

As New Zealand will always be the head-quarters of the South Sea Fisheries, and as the supply of provisions to the Whalers frequenting the Bay of Islands will, in the first instance at least, form a considerable item in the general trade of the island, it would obviously be good policy, on the part of the Government, to encourage the resort of these vessels to the principal sea-ports of the island, by establishing a low rate of port charges; and thereby to prevent their resorting for supplies to places or islands where there is no European Government established, and where their influence on the natives is in general exceedingly demoralizing. The exorbitantly high port-charges of Sydney repel the South Sea Whalers from New South Wales, and induce them to look for their supplies in places where there is either little or nothing to pay under that head.

Of the commercial intercourse already subsisting between New Zealand and New South Wales, some idea may be formed from the fact, that during the year 1838, there were 39 arrivals of vessels from New Zealand in the port of Sydney, and the same number of departures for that island. The commercial intercourse of the island with Van Dieman's Land is probably as great, though confined chiefly to its Southern ports; and there have re-

cently also been vessels at Hokianga for timber from Port Phillip and Southern Australia. The following list of arrivals in the Bay of Islands during the year 1838, will give no unfavourable idea of the commercial importance of that harbour, as the general rendezvous of the numerous Whalers of the Southern Pacific.

AMERICAN.

1838.
Arrivals.

Ship's name.

Master.

Barrels.

Months out.

Sailed.

Jan. 3

James Munroe

Plasket

1700 Sperm

37

Feb. 24

" "

Mary

Coffin

1500 "

29

Jan. 13

" 6

Pantheon

Pell

1900 Bl.& Sp.

29

Feb. 19

" 4

Rambler

M'Leave

1700 "

28

Jan. 22

" 8

Nantucket

Edwards

120 Sperm

" 13

" 10

Orizimbo

Sherwin

2600 Blk.

6

" 31

" 11

Dartmouth

Starbuck

600 Sperm

18

Feb. 19

" "

Hunkas

Clark

1500

28

" 28

" 15

Ganges

King

1700 Bl.& Sp.

26

" 24

Bowditch

Ramsdell

1900 Blk.

26

Mar. 4

Feb. 5

Columbus

Ellis

800 "

6

Feb. 20

" 14

Regia

Jackerson

1750 "

8

" 15

John Colleshall

Macy

1700 Sperm

28

" 19

Independence

Davis

" 20

Vulcan

Trapp

3600 Bl.&Sp.

19

Mar. 15

" 25

Wm. Thompson

Weeks

4100

33

25

Mar. 5

Thule

Coldman

2000

20

" 20

" 12

Atlantic

Russell

1400

28

Apr. 25

" 13

Luminary

Warens

400

8

Mar. 29

" 15

Java

Taber

900

8

" 30

" 23

Atlas

Russell

Sundries

" 29

" 25

Splendid

Luce

1200

Apr. 15

" 27

Arab

Russell

300

Mar. 31

Apr. 3

Rose

Heall

1700

11

" 5

America

Topham

1000 Bl.&Sp.

6

Apr. 10

" 8

Rd. Mitchell

Cleveland

2400 Bl.

32

May 1

" 9

Susan

Russell

60 Sp.

5

" 1

" "

Oqua

Manger

1600 Bl.

9

" 1

" "

Chariot

Champlin

3200 Bl.

19

" 2

" 10

Corinthian

Gardner

" 1

" 18

Favourite

Swift

2700 Bl.

" 10

" 20

Waverly

Chase

2000 Bl.&Sp.

" "

Baltic

Kean

2600 Bl.&Sp.

" 24

Thos. Dickinson

Harvens

1800 Bl.

9

" 9

" "

Isabella

Taber

2500 Sp.

42

" 10

May 2

Lexington

Pollard

850 Bl.&Sp.

17

" 15

" 10

Statesman

Coffin

Full

June 2

" 13

Micmac

Starbuck

50 Bl.

" 4

" 17

June 8

White Oak

Burney

50 Bl.

4

" 17

Aug. 24

Uncas

Clark

1900

Sept. 14

" 14

Hercules

Finney

900

14

" 14

" 21

Rajah

West

Full

" 10

AMERICAN.

1838.
Arrivals.

Ship's name.

Master.

Barrels.

Months out.

Sailed.

Aug. 25

Tybee

Millet

Goods

Sept. 2

Sept. 22

Corinthian

Gardner

2600

" 28

" 30

Geo. Howland

Weeks

Oct.

Oct. 2

Wm. Hamilton

Swain

Clean

Nov.

" 30

Baltic

Keane

Full

29

Nov. 22

Lydia

Ramsdell

1100

Dec. 26

" 23

Corinthian

Gardner

Full

" 12

" 29

Isabella

Davis

50

" 15

Dec. 2

Parker

Austin

3800 Bl.&Sp.

" 26

" "

Mary

Coffin

2600 Bl.&Sp.

" 22

" 15

Lalla Rhook

Bassett

1750 Bl.&Sp.

[1839

" 17

Benezet

Stetson

80

Jan. 3

" 20

Cadmus

Mayhew

170

" 1

" 31

Ganges

King

2400 Bl.

" 22

ENGLISH

Jan. 31

Hope

Ryley

1000

36

Mar. 10

Feb. 16

Jane and Eliza

Rhooks

200

18

" 29

" 27

Rifleman

Davis

50

3 1/2

" "

" 28

Diana

Harvey

800

17

" 31

" "

Elizabeth

Currie

1140 S.

24

Mar. 3

Neptune

Nagle

Sundries

" 10

" 5

Seringapatam

Wright

2300 S.

38

" 11

Ann

Pall

1100 S.

22

" 29

" 12

Chieftain

Howie

1500 S.

33

" "

" 18

Buffalo

Wood

H.M.S. Spars

" 25

May 16

Hawitt

Apsey

June 13

" 31

Buffalo

Wood

H. M.S.Spars

" 16

June 3

Hope

Ryley

1100 S.

16

" 10

Seppings

Rawkins

Sundries

" 17

" 12

Buffalo

Wood

H. M. S. finished

" 16

" 20

Marwhal

Brind

Full

Aug. 4

July 29

Marianne

Hingston

23OO

35

Sept. 24

Aug. 30

Patriot

Mullens

Timber

" 12

Oct. 27

Mars

Anderson

600 S.

Nov. 18

" 28

Matilda

Swain

400 S.

Nov. 27

Rifleman

Davis

1000 S.

Dec. 15

Dec. 17

Diana

Harvey

70 S.

[1839

" 20

Pelorus

Harding

H. M. S.

Jan. 6

FRENCH

Jan. 3

Manche

Le Bailly

400 B.

Feb. 16

" 10

Angelina

Manger

200 B.

6

Jan. 20

Feb. 2

Nile

Smith

400

6

Mar. 4

" 15

L'Asia

Jay

1000 S.

7

" 4

" 16

Jean Bart

600

8

" 23

Mar. 12

Gange

Gr. Seigne

900 B.

6

"

April 7

Angelina

Manger

1200 B.

9

Apr. 30

FRENCH.

1838.
Arrivals.

Ship's name.

Master.

Barrels.

Months out.

Sailed.

April 20

L'Oriental

Caspar

2200 B.

28

May 9

" 24

L' Heroine

Cecille

Corvette

May 10

Mississippi

Rossiter

Full

June 2

June 8

Elizabeth

Amand

2300 B.

10

" 15

Aug. 16

L' Heroine

Cecille

" 20

Cosmopolite

3000

14

Sept. 28

" 21

L'Asia

Jay

1900

" 12

Sept. 11

Pauline

Guerin

2300

" 27

" 22

Adele

Welsh

Full

Oct. 4

Manche

Le Bailly

1100

Dec. 26

" 6

Venus

De P.Thoire

Frigate

Nov. 10

Nov. 16

La Reunion

Bumpus

Full

" 21

Meuse

Clean

" 24

Dec. 20

Nile

Smith

2600

Jan. 20

BREMEN.

April 1

Virgina 1

Fitz

3000 B.

April 23

1   The first whale
ship from Bremen
that had anchored in
the Bay of Islands.

SYDNEY, NEW SOUTH WALES.

Jan. 9

Martha

Hay

Merchandize

Jan. 28

" 24

Micmac

Bears

650 B.

26

Mar. 4

Feb. 8

Nereus

Butcher

700 S.

16

" 5

" 15

Gov. Halket

Bolger

550 S

7

" 17

" 28

Nimrod

Milne

" 29

" 28

Lady Blackwood

Abbot

140

10

" 31

" "

Woodlark

Grimes

300

" 10

Mar. 23

Juno

Banks

500

" 29

" 26

Martha

Hay

Sundries

Apl. 10

May 16

Vittoria

McDonnell

" 23

Ann

James

Sundries

June 3

June 3

Currency Lass

Davis

" 24

Harlequin

Anderson

"

July 4

July 1

Lady Leith

Coutts

Aug. 18

Aug. 9

Nimrod

Butler

300

Sept. 12

" 16

Currency Lass

Davis

Sundries

" 12

Nov. 2

Jess

Clayton

Oil

Nov. 20

" "

Currency Lass

Davis

Sundries

"

" "

Skerne

Catlin

"

"

" "

Jane

Barber

"

Dec 15

Dec. 13

Clarkstone

Allen

550 S.

" 22

" 20

Elizabeth

Munns

Sundries

Jan. 7

HOBART TOWN, VAN DIEMAN'S LAND.

1838.
Arrivals.

Ship's name.

Master.

Barrels.

Months out.

Sailed.

Jan. 26

Elizabeth

Anderson

Sundries

Jan. 31

Sept. 14

Highlander

Lovitt

450 B.

Oct. 2

NEW ZEALAND.

Mar. 5

Uletea

Waddy

From Society Islands

Mar. 9

" 8

Trent

Wing

Sundries

Hokianga

Lauriston

Timber

" 28

Dec. 31

Tokivau

Wing

Ditto

COASTERS.

Jan. 10

Dublin Packet

Leathart

Sundries

Jan. 25

" 21

Hope

L'Orant

From Tahiti with Sugar.

Feb. 1

From the preceding list, which exhibits only the arrivals in a single port, although at present the principal one in New Zealand, for the past year, it must be evident to the commercial reader that, in a country enjoying such advantages of situation, and possessing such extensive intercourse with the civilized world as that list implies, there could be no difficulty apprehended as to funds, in establishing and supporting a Government in the island on European principles. At all events there would obviously be no necessity for applying for a grant from the British Treasury for the establishment of a colony in so favourable a locality; for if this was found unnecessary in Southern Australia, it would certainly a fortiori be equally so in New Zealand. The latter is a commercial country already, frequented for its valuable timber, its flax, and its provisions for Whalers; and its numerous native population are daily acquiring a taste for British manufactures. These they obtain at present at an exorbitant price in exchange for potatoes, pork, flax and maize; but if they could dispose

of these native productions at their fair value in a public market, the demand for such goods, and consequently the public revenue arising from their importation, would be indefinitely increased.

Supposing, therefore, that the principles of colonization above mentioned were established in the case of New Zealand, either by Act of Parliament or by Royal Ordinance, and Commissioners appointed, as in the case of Southern Australia, to carry these principles into effect, a Joint Stock Company could immediately be formed in London with the most favourable prospects of success for the prosecution of the Black Whale Fishery along the coasts of New Zealand; for the fishermen to be employed in the Fishery, the carpenters to build their boats and small coasting-vessels, and the rope-spinners to manufacture their whaling-gear from the native flax, could all be carried out to the Colony, with their wives and children, their ministers and schoolmasters, free of cost to the Company, and at the expense of the Land Revenue. Such a community would obviously be strong enough to protect its individual members from all attacks from without, on whatever part of the coast it might be settled: it would constitute, moreover, a valuable market for the agricultural and dairy produce of the other Colonists: and, by preserving the moral restraints of the mother country, it would exert a salutary influence on the surrounding natives; many of whom would gladly join the Europeans in their different occupations, and be at length amalgamated with them in the same Christian community. It is evident at all events that such persons would prove formidable competitors with the Americans and the French in the Fisheries of New Zealand.

Independently altogether of agricultural emigrants, or rather, in addition to such emigrants, the cutting and col-

lecting of spars and other timber for exportation, and the gathering and preparing of the native flax for the home market, as well as for Colonial manufacture, would likewise afford immediate, permanent and profitable employment to a considerable European population; which could also be carried out free of cost, in addition to agricultural emigrants properly so called. There would thus be a considerable variety of employment for the industrious portion of the Colonial population – a state of things which is always advantageous to society, as it enables its different constituent parts to afford each other mutual support.

Much of the beneficial influence to be hoped for from European colonization in New Zealand, as far as the natives are concerned, would depend on the number and concentration of the colonists, and on the moral and educational machinery with which they should be attended from their first landing on the island. The settlement of a few straggling European adventurers among the uncivilized Aborigines of any country is always unfavourable to the moral welfare of both parties. It would therefore be of importance to the New Zealanders to prevent such dispersion, and to induce the Europeans settling in the island to concentrate themselves in suitable localities. In a pastoral country like New South Wales, this would doubtless be both absurd and impracticable; but in a maritime and agricultural country, like the northern parts of New Zealand, it would be comparatively easy. Besides, the Government Commissioners, and Board of Protectors, would have it fully in their power to prevent any European colonist from acquiring property in land wherever his settlement might be deemed likely to prove unfavourable to the natives.

As the climate and soil of the northern parts of New Zealand are similar to those of the South of Europe, it

would be extremely desirable, in the first instance at least, to encourage the emigration and settlement in the island of agricultural emigrants from Germany, Switzerland, and France; to introduce those branches of culture that are peculiarly suited to such a climate, but with which the natives of the British islands are unacquainted: such as the culture of the vine, the fig-tree, the olive, the mulberry, and the tobacco plant, &c. with the making of wine, the preparation of dried fruits, the rearing of silkworms, and the manufacture of tobacco. These branches of agriculture and manufacture, the mere English farmer is slow to learn. He will never learn them from books; and they can never be expected to be introduced into a new country colonized from England, unless by an agricultural population imported expressly for the purpose, and accustomed to them in their native land. Besides, the actual condition of the native population of New Zealand renders it peculiarly desirable that there should be introduced into the island as speedily as possible branches of agricultural labour or manufacture suitable for women and children; which, it is well known, the branches I have just enumerated peculiarly are.

In short, while the state of things which subsists at present in New Zealand, – where every European adventurer is at perfect liberty to treat the natives as he pleases, and to do whatever he deems right or profitable for himself, and where the natives are consequently oppressed, and trodden down, and exterminated in every direction – affords a complete exemplication of the uniform character and results of British colonization in all times past; I am confident that the colonization of New Zealand, on the principles and in the manner I have stated, would prove an incalculable blessing to the natives, and would not only afford a sufficient guarantee for their protection and preservation, but would greatly hasten their adoption of the manners and religion

of Christian Europeans, and their final amalgamation with the other subjects of the British crown, – a consummation, my Lord, which even in remote anticipation, I am sure your Lordship will regard as incomparably more gratifying to a philanthropic mind than all the dreams of poetry or the visions of romance.

Colonization in New Zealand, to be of any real benefit to the natives, must be engaged in vigorously, and pursued to a great extent; and it is gratifying to reflect that there is no conceivable amount of British capital which might not be expended in effecting that object, so as to afford a handsome return to the capitalist, and to be productive of much real benefit to all others concerned. At all events I am confident there is no country in which all the necessaries of life can be procured with greater facility by industrious free emigrants on their arrival, or in which moderate labour would meet with a more certain or plentiful return. There are thousands and tens of thousands of the half-starved semi-maritime population of the north and west of Scotland in particular, who, if suffered to remain in their native country, will only be a dead weight to the community, neither adding to its strength, nor increasing its resources; but who, if transplanted into the more genial soil and climate of New Zealand, would not only arrive in due time at comfort and independence themselves, but would secure for Great Britain and her colonies, what they are otherwise so likely to be deprived of, the riches and the empire of the Southern Seas.

In regard to the politico-ecclesiastical system which it would be proper to establish in New Zealand, in the event of the colonization of that island, your Lordship is sufficiently aware, that the time has gone by in which the British Government could even attempt to set up an exclusive ecclesiastical establishment in any new Colony of the Empire. If the Government are henceforth to support

religion at all in new Colonies, by grants of money from the Public Treasury, these grants must be given indiscriminately to all religious denominations. No other principle will any longer be tolerated by the people. This principle, my Lord, has recently been publicly recognized, and acted on extensively by the Government, in the Australian Penal Colonies; in which your Lordship is doubtless aware, there is now either no established church at all, or all churches are established and supported alike.

That such a system must at once put an end to all those heart-burnings and jealousies which the existence of an exclusive establishment in the Colonies is sure to give rise to, is evident and undeniable; but that it will promote in a high degree the moral welfare and religious advancement of the Colonies, is a very different question, in regard to which I would merely put your Lordship and the public in possession of the following facts, from which the right inferences may be deduced with comparative facility.

In the first place, therefore, the system in question has already established in the Australian Colonies a powerful Popish Hierarchy; such indeed as could never have existed in these Colonies, at least during the present generation, but for the support of Government. Viewing the Romish religion merely in a political light, as being an acknowledged and monstrous incubus upon the intellectual and moral energies of man, such a result of a political regulation, sincerely intended, as I firmly believe, by the British Government, for the public welfare, cannot surely be regarded without painful feelings by any rightly constituted mind.

In the second place, the system in question has also established in the Australian Colonies that species of Protestant Episcopacy of which the peculiar principles are delineated in the Oxford Tracts; which holds, as the first and most important tenets of Christianity, those doc-

trines of the dark ages, baptismal regeneration, apostolical succession, and the indefeasible right of the Church to lord it over the understandings and consciences of men; that species of Protestant Episcopacy, in short, which Messrs. Shiel and O'Connell regard with so much reason and so much complacency as the symptoms of an eventual and speedy return to Romanism. Whether the Colonial Episcopalian laity would have either tolerated or supported such a species of Episcopacy, if the State had only left them to find religious instructors for themselves, I leave your Lordship and the public to determine.

In the third place, the system in question has in great measure neutralized the efficiency of the Colonial Presbyterian Church, as one of the chief bulwarks of Protestantism in the Southern Hemisphere; by throwing open its doors for the admission of ministers who, after having run the gauntlet for church-preferment over all Scotland and been beaten in every parish, betake themselves as a last resource to the Antipodes, for the Government salaries that are now so easily to be had there.

Finally, the system in question has not only afforded the Colonial Government a pretext for interfering in ecclesiastical matters, in the way of petty and vexatious regulation and legislation – a species of interference which is uniformly disastrous to the Christian Church – but has given rise to an unseemly canvassing for mere names, to swell their Government Lists of adherents, among the ministers of different religious denominations; it being too frequently the case that after the name is given the individual is forgotten.

Nay, it is already the avowed opinion of some of the ablest financiers of New South Wales, that the system of supporting the clergy of all denominations from the Public Treasury of that Colony cannot possibly subsist long; and that the salaries allowed, under the General Church Act of

1836, must either be greatly reduced, to enable the country to bear them at all, or entirely withdrawn: and this consummation, it is generally supposed, moreover, will be greatly accelerated by the establishment and success of the South Australian Colony; in which the Government have, with only one insignificant exception, which I am given to understand is not likely to be permanent, left all religious denominations to shift for themselves.

With such examples so close at hand, I conceive, my Lord, it would not only be impolitic in the highest degree, but even hazardous in the extreme, to establish the politico-ecclesiastical system of the Australian Penal Colonies in New Zealand, in the event of the colonization of that island. Let the Government only leave the truth in matters of religion – whatever it may be, and wherever it may exist – to find its own level; as it is no longer practicable to support the truth beyond seas without also supporting innumerable forms of error. It may doubtless be a good maxim in English law, that it is better that ten guilty men should escape than that one innocent man should suffer: but such a maxim is surely altogether inapplicable to the case of religious establishments; for I maintain that, in the event of the colonization of New Zealand, on the principles I have enumerated, the innocent man – the man who would propagate the truth – would run no risk of suffering from merely being denied support from the public treasury. I certainly do not mean to assert that, in the event of that island being colonized and no Government provision made for the support of the ordinances of religion, the people would support of their own accord so many ministers of religion, in proportion to the population, as are soon likely to be found in New South Wales and Van Dieman's Land, under the new politico-ecclesiastical system of these colonies; but I do mean to assert, that if these ministers were

chosen and supported exclusively by the people, one-half the number would do at least double the duty.

The Bay of Islands, to which I have so repeatedly alluded as the present head-quarters or principal rendezvous of the South Sea whalers in the Southern Pacific, is a splendid harbour, although by no means to be compared with Port Jackson. At its entrance the cliffs and detached rocks, to the right and left, exhibit the black columnar appearance that characterizes a basaltic formation; and the land immediately around it rises abruptly into irregular hills of considerable height, exhibiting a reddish clayey soil, and a scanty vegetation. Either for grazing or for agriculture, the land adjoining the Bay of Islands is decidedly of inferior quality; but the various navigable streams or inlets, of which it constitutes the common reservoir, conduct to large tracts of valuable land at no great distance, and will eventually afford a considerable extent of inland navigation. I was particularly struck, on ascending the Kauakaua river, one of these navigable inlets, at observing various native canoes, some with an English blanket, and others with a native mat for a sail, pushing towards the Bay, deeply laden with potatoes. On my return, I found the owners of the canoes busily engaged in bargaining for their cargoes with Europeans residing in the neighbourhood. One would have an English blanket in exchange for his produce; another would have an iron pot, and a third a quantity of tobacco; while one native dealer, to whom I could not help giving credit for a very sinister look, would take nothing for his load but gunpowder.

About twenty years ago the shores of the Bay of Islands were inhabited by a numerous and comparatively powerful native population. That population, I am sorry to say, has already almost entirely disappeared; leaving only the names of the places where their Pahs or fortified villages

were formerly constructed on the head-lands of the Bay. The land for a considerable distance around the Bay has thus become the property of Englishmen residing in the neighbourhood; and the purchases they have effected have doubtless tended, in no small degree, as I have already observed in the case of the chieftain Riva, to hasten the extermination of the natives. The largest proprietors are the Church Missionary Society, who occupy the greater portion of the southern and western sides of the Bay, and who have large establishments at Paihia, Tippunah, and Waimate, on the Kidikidi River. Of these the station at Tippunah, on the west side of the Bay, was some time since the most considerable; but the Society have latterly had serious thoughts of abandoning it altogether in consequence of the depopulation of the neighbourhood. The second class of proprietors in the vicinity of the Bay of Islands are the Missionaries, considered as private individuals; the remaining proprietors being a few reputable Englishmen who have built comfortable houses and established themselves permanently in the island, together with a company of "publicans" and other "workers of iniquity," in the rising village of Kororadika.

In the prospect, therefore, of the colonization of New Zealand, on such principles as those I have taken the liberty to suggest to your Lordship and the public, it becomes a question of importance, What is to be done with these parties, and with all the other Europeans who have acquired land in that island, by alleged purchase from the natives? Are their titles to be held good in all cases, and are the British Government to become a party to the iniquitous bargains they have notoriously concluded in many instances, and to the wholesale injustice and oppression they have avowedly perpetrated on the defenceless natives?

For my own part, knowing that there are reputable men

in New Zealand, who have acquired the lands they occupy by fair and honourable means, and who have greatly improved these lands by the erection of valuable buildings, while there are others whose regularly drawn deeds in the English and New Zealand languages, give them no title in equity to the lands they lay claim to, I would respectfully recommend that, in the event of the colonization of New Zealand, and the assertion of Her Majesty's right of pre-emption in all cases whether past or future, a Board should be appointed, like the Court of Claims in New South Wales, with full powers to decide definitively, in all cases of land claimed on the ground of purchase from the natives; and that that Board should be instructed to lay it down as a general principle that no such deeds as I have mentioned should be regarded as a valid title to land, but that each case should be decided upon on its own individual merits, and that according as it should appear that the natives had or had not been fairly treated, and that an adequate consideration had or had not been given, the holder of the native deed should either receive a deed of grant from the Crown for such part of the land he claimed as he should be found fairly entitled to, or should merely have the right of pre-emption within a certain period at the Government minimum price. By this means the rights of honest men would be secured, while the Government would have ample means of doing justice to those natives who have been wrongfully despoiled of their lands by unprincipled Europeans.

If a British subject has a right to purchase the whole territory of a semi-barbarous chief, residing beyond the limits of the British empire, for a paltry consideration, he has a right to purchase his sovereignty also, and to establish an independent government of his own. And, incredible as it may seem, my Lord, this has actually been attempted within the last two years in New Zealand.

When the Rev. Mr. Kendall, the first superintendent of the New Zealand Mission, was residing at the Bay of Islands, the native chiefs in the district of Hokianga made him a present of a large tract of land in that district, on condition that he would take up his residence among them. Mr. Kendall, having gone to England some time thereafter, transferred his title to the said property to the Baron de Thierry, an English adventurer with a Continental title; the payment having been made in certain articles of British merchandise. Mr. Kendall afterwards left New Zealand and was settled for some time as an English chaplain at Valparaiso; from whence he subsequently returned to New South Wales, where he settled as a farmer at Kiama, on the east-coast to the southward, and was at last drowned in a small coasting vessel when bound with a load of cedar from his farm to Sydney. It was not till the year 1837, that the Baron de Thierry reached New Zealand; having touched on his way thither at Sydney, where he engaged various mechanics and labourers to proceed with him to his estate in that island. In the meantime he had procured a number of blank forms, with a lithographed heading, which, from the fabric of the paper and the form of the letters, appeared to have been of Parisian manufacture, to be thrown off to serve for manifestoes or other public documents in the island. The heading was singular enough; being "Charles, by the grace of God, Sovereign Chief of New Zealand." Such, my Lord, was the princely style assumed by this adventurer; and it appears, from various circumstances, that having probably no prospect of succeeding in such an attempt at Downing Street, he had been at some pains to get his title as a Sovereign Chief acknowledged by the French Government. The Baron is still at Hokianga; but as the native chiefs have refused to acknowledge his title to the land he claims, on account of Mr. Kendall's failure to fulfil the original condition of his

grant, and as his workmen have left him for more profitable employment, I am sorry to add that his sovereign chieftainship has turned out but a sorry affair after all. At all events, it is evident from this case, that if a few foreigners were acquiring native titles to land and jurisdiction in New Zealand – and I know myself of one case of the kind, that of an American shipmaster, naturalized in France, who has purchased a whole island in the Bay of Islands – and were placing themselves under the protection of any-foreign power having numerous whalers in the South Seas, and ships of war to protect them, it might be difficult, if not impracticable, for Great Britain, in a few years hence, to form a colony on that island at all – a state of things which would not only be deeply injurious to British interests and ruinous to the New Zealanders, but calamitous in the highest degree to the cause of civilization and genuine Christianity in the Southern Hemisphere. It is evident, therefore, that whatever Her Majesty's Government can do for New Zealand – and I am confident, my Lord, it can do all that is necessary in the case, and without putting the country to one farthing of expense – ought to be done quickly. That island is too splendid a prize to be lost sight of by other maritime and commercial nations, if Great Britain should neglect to pursue the course to which her own interest and her bounden duty alike unquestionably prompt her, by establishing a British Colony on its shores.

Such, my Lord, was the general impression produced upon my own mind by my short visit to New Zealand in the months of January and February last. While that impression was strong and vivid, I committed my ideas on the subject to writing, a few days after we had lost sight of the island, while our vessel was pursuing her homeward course across the Pacific; and with only a few unimportant altera-

tions, the preceding pages have been printed as they were then written. In writing these pages, I was, therefore, entirely unconnected with either of the parties who, I knew, had been at issue in England, on the New Zealand question; I had no private interest to serve in the matter; I had no motive to induce me to write but a sincere desire to subserve the cause of humanity, and to promote the interests and extension of the British empire. On touching at Pernambuco in the course of my voyage home, I was fortunate enough to obtain a copy of your Lordship's Report on the affairs of Canada, which had then just arrived from England in the Brazils; and on my arrival in London, I was induced, from my perusal of that admirable Report, and from the fact of your Lordship's having subsequently become the Governor of a Company established for the colonization of New Zealand, to address these letters to your Lordship. With the same entire freedom, therefore, from all party prejudice and personal considerations, with which, I am confident, the preceding pages were written, I shall now make a few concluding remarks on the peculiar position and general prospects of that Company in regard to its principal object, the colonization of New Zealand.

If I understand the subject aright, therefore, the New Zealand Association of 1837 was formed for the colonization of that island, on the principles already established by Her Majesty's Government for the settlement of Southern Australia. With this view a Bill for the colonization of New Zealand was submitted to Parliament during the past year, but was rejected by a majority of the House of Commons; chiefly, I believe, through the opposition of the Church and Wesleyan Missionary Societies and the consequent misapprehension of the public on the subject. In these circumstances the New Zealand Land Company has been formed to effect the original object of the Asso-

ciation of 1837, without the sanction of an Act of Parliament at all, and entirely on the principle of a Joint Stock Speculation. For this purpose the Company have acquired titles to certain large tracts of land in various parts of the island; the said land having been previously held by private individuals, on deeds of sale from the natives, but since disposed of by these individuals to the Company: and the Company propose to resell this land to intending emigrants or capitalists at the rate of one pound per acre, and to allow the purchasers three-fourths of their purchase-money in the conveyance of industrious emigrants of the humbler classes of society to New Zealand; the remainder of the purchase-money being appropriated for the payment of the cost price of the land, and the maintenance of the general establishment of the Company.

In regard, therefore, to the tenure on which the Company hold their land, they stand precisely in the same situation as any European adventurer – such as Mr. Fairbairn, the Christian, or Mr. Polack, the Jew – who buys land from the natives for the merest trifle, and perhaps overreaches them in the payment. The Company do not even know whether the lands they have bought have been honestly come by – whether the natives have been fairly dealt with in the purchase of them or not. They do not even profess to guarantee the titles they promise to give to the purchasers of their land. These titles will doubtless be as good as the Company's own title; but the less, I apprehend, that is said about the validity of the Company's title, the better. Now I conceive, my Lord, it is impossible that the public can have the requisite degree of confidence in an undertaking which rests on so uncertain a foundation; nay, it is anything but desirable that they should.

But even supposing that the Company could guarantee the titles they propose to give to the purchasers of their land, what possible inducement, I ask, my Lord, can any

capitalist have to purchase the Company's land at all? Instead of purchasing that land at a pound an acre, the capitalist or intending emigrant can go to New Zealand himself and purchase a tract from the natives, quite as good as the Company's, and perhaps adjoining their boundary line, at probably not more than five farthings an acre, payable in British goods, moreover, on which the capitalist will realize a profit of at least fifty per cent. But if the Company should inform the capitalist, or intending emigrant, that three-fourths of the purchase-money of the land they dispose of are paid back to the purchaser in the conveyance of valuable labour to the Colony, the capitalist can reply, that for one-fourth of that amount he can import the same quantity of labour from the Colonies of New South Wales and Van Dieman's Land. In short, I conceive there can be no possible inducement at present for any capitalist or intending emigrant to purchase the Company's land.

But whether the Company should succeed in disposing of a large portion of their land or not, the mere existence of such a Company will produce an immediate and powerful effect in New Zealand and the Australian colonies, whenever the fact comes to be generally known, and will exert a reflex and superlatively evil influence on the unfortunate New Zealanders. The fact, which the existence and operations of the Company will sufficiently proclaim, of its being practicable to purchase land in that island, perhaps even at a penny an acre to-day, and to sell it at a pound to-morrow, will immediately excite the cupidity of a whole host of speculators and adventurers in these regions; and the scramble for land in New Zealand, which is at present active and unprincipled enough, will consequently be increased tenfold, and be generally characterized by a total disregard of all moral principle, and of the rights of humanity. So far from discountenancing such procedure, the formation and acts of the Company will only give it character

and respectability; as the titles to all the land which the Company have purchased in the island are merely the titles of individuals who, in all probability, have been despoiling the natives in precisely the same manner. The march of injustice and oppression, of demoralization and extinction, on the part of the Europeans towards the unfortunate natives, will thus be prodigiously accelerated, and the consummation which has been already realized in Van Dieman's Land, will perhaps ere long be realized also in New Zealand – I mean the complete extermination of the Aboriginal race. We are accustomed to talk, my Lord, with virtuous indignation and abhorrence, of the brutal atrocities of Cortez and Pizarro, and of the gaol-gang of Spanish ruffians that followed these bandit chiefs in Mexico and Peru; but we forget that even in the nineteenth century we have ourselves, as a civilized and colonizing nation, been acting over again the same bloody tragedy on a different field. Why, my Lord, it has only taken the same period of time – about thirty short years, – to exterminate the Aborigines of Van Dieman's Land, under the mild sway of Britain, that it took to exterminate the Aborigines of Hispaniola, under the iron rod of Ferdinand and Isabella. Within the last twenty years there were four different nations of Aborigines, each speaking a language of its own, in the island of Van Dieman's Land; but for several years past there has not been a single native on that island! After a long period of exterminating warfare, the miserable remnant of the Aboriginal race was at length collected from all parts of the island, and conveyed to a small island in Bass' Straits, by an individual whose heroic devotedness to the cause of outraged and oppressed humanity has been scarcely, if at all, inferior to that of the celebrated Howard. 16 In that island they have

been reclaimed in great measure from their savage habits, and instructed in the principles and duties of the Christian religion; 17 but as they have recently been dying off very fast, either from consumption or from confinement, Sir John Franklin, the Governor of Van Dieman's Land, and my Lord Glenelg, strongly recommended some time ago, that an asylum should be given them at Port Phillip on the south coast of New Holland, the expense of their maintenance to be paid by Van Dieman's Land. But even this miserable boon, my Lord, has been refused them – on the ground of their not being sufficiently civilized and christianized yet – by a cold-blooded Committee of the Legislative Council of New South Wales, with a Protestant Bishop for their Chairman! Nay, as the law in that Colony has recently been taking cognizance of certain murderous outrages lately committed on the defenceless Aborigines of New South Wales, by the convict-stockmen of the country, aided and abetted by their wealthy Colonial masters, individuals wearing the garb of gentlemen, and utterly disgracing the British name, have recently been giving out in

the Colony, that they will henceforth take a quieter mode of getting rid of the Black natives, whose grievous wrongs, my Lord, do sometimes, I confess, render them troublesome at the distant cattle-stations – viz. by giving them wheaten bread, of which they are exceedingly fond, steeped in a solution of arsenic! 18

Now, my Lord, the very individuals who have been perpetrating these atrocities upon the Aborigines of New South Wales and Van Dieman's Land for the last twenty

years, are now swarming in New Zealand; and the formation of the New Zealand Land Company, conjoined with the sanction which the British Government is at present indirectly giving to all sorts of aggression upon the unfortunate natives of that island, will only increase their number, and their nefarious operations, tenfold. It is vain to talk either of the Company or of the Missionaries being able, from their influence of any kind, to prevent such proceedings. The private adventurers will point to the Company's and the Missionaries' estates in New Zealand; and when they ask, Why they should not have as good a right to plunder the natives as others? I confess, my Lord, I am utterly unable to divine what answer either the Company or the Missionaries can give them.

Your Lordship will not suppose that these observations could possibly have been dictated by any desire to prevent the colonization of New Zealand: on the contrary, I regard the extensive colonization of that island – on right principles, such as Her Majesty's Government could at once establish and carry out, without expense to the country, and with the happiest effect – as affording the only hope for the preservation and general advancement of the native race. Neither will your Lordship suppose, that the observations I allude to could have been dictated by a spirit of hostility towards the New Zealand Land Company: on the contrary, I am most anxious for the success of that Company – I mean for the attainment of its general objects – and I have merely endeavoured, as an honest man, to point out to your Lordship and the public the precise position and the real prospects of the Company, to prevent eventual disappointment and probable ruin on the part of its friends and supporters, – a consummation which, I conceive, would be equally fatal to the Aboriginal race.

I had written thus far when I observed from the public

journals of the 26th June, that Her Majesty's Government had it actually in contemplation to colonize New Zealand, or rather, to throw open that island for colonization under the sanction and protection of the British Government. In such circumstances, my Lord, the interest and duty of the New Zealand Land Company are plain and obvious; and I would, therefore, beg most respectfully, through your Lordship, to point out to the friends and supporters of that Company the course which, as honest and honourable men, they ought, in these circumstances, decidedly to pursue.

Let the Company, therefore, lend their influence and support towards the maintenance of Her Majesty's undoubted right of pre-emption, in all cases, both past and future. The establishment of this principle will be of incalculable advantage to the New Zealanders; and not only to the New Zealanders, but to all persons whatsoever, in this country, who are about to embark in any way in the New Zealand colonization scheme.

For this purpose, let the Company make a voluntary and entire surrender of their native titles to Her Majesty's Government; – to be adjudicated upon individually by a temporary Board, like the Court of Claims in New South Wales, to be appointed for the purpose by the Government, on the understanding and condition that the Company shall have the right of pre-emption from the Government, at the minimum price of crown-land, to be established in the island, deducting the full amount the Company may have already paid for their lands; either to the natives, or to individual Europeans. The moral influence of such an example would be salutary in the highest degree, in New Zealand, as far as the actual European population of the island are concerned, and would strengthen the hands of the Government exceedingly, at the outset of the Colony, in carrying

out the simple but most important principle of Her Majesty's right of pre-emption in all cases, as regards the Aborigines.

Downright honesty of this kind, my Lord, will decidedly be the best policy also, which the New Zealand Land Company can pursue, in reference to the really important objects they profess to have in view, in the colonization of that island. Let the important principle I have laid down be only recognized – and let a Government, simple in its machinery, just in its dealings, and energetic in its character, be established in New Zealand – and I am confident, my Lord, that the field for enterprize, in every department in that country, will be found as extensive and as inviting as the most ardent supporters of colonization could desire; while the career of the future Colony will, in all probability, be unexampled in the history of the world. Unquestionable as are the facilities for colonization in Southern Australia, as well as in New South Wales, they are not to be compared with those which New Zealand at this moment affords. In one word, whatever may be the destinies of the Australian Colonies, I am confident, that, if colonized on right principles, New Zealand will one day be the Great Britain of the Southern Hemisphere.

I have the honour to be,
My Lord,
Your Lordship's most obedient,
And very humble Servant,

JOHN DUNMORE LANG.

13 Mr. Polack has four or five estates in New Zealand. I walked over one of them, near the Wai Tangi, or Cataract River; but I am sorry I do not at present recollect how few muskets and how little gunpowder he had given for it. There was a New Zealand encampment on the land at the time, at which an amusing incident occurred during my stay. My fellow voyager, M. Lacoste, introducing himself, with the usual frankness of his nation, to a tidy New Zealand woman, who was sitting in front of her hut, with a little naked savage of from two to three years of age in her arms, for the purpose of shewing some mark of kindness to the child, the latter became exceedingly alarmed at the approach of the white man; first screaming violently, and then seizing a large withered branch from the side of the hut, and striking with all his might at the Frenchman, to the great amusement of all the New Zealand women of the encampment, and especially of its own mother.

14 Might not a large portion of that revenue (for the Indians would require but a small part of the whole amount,) be appropriated rather towards the gradual enfranchisement of the slave population of the United States, on the principle on which slavery was so happily extinguished in the British West Indies? It is preposterous to attempt to force upon the Americans, with their feeble Government, a measure – I mean that of immediate and unconditional abolition – which, with all the vigour and comparative omnipotence of our own Government, as regards the slave colonies, we were unable to carry ourselves. Let our own brilliant example of national justice be held up for imitation to our Transatlantic brethren. Let the principle of compensation be the keynote of agitation in America; and as the revenue from the sale of public lands, which might easily be increased greatly by raising the minimum price, is confessedly not required either for the general purposes of the Government of the United States, or for the encouragement of immigration, while a mere fraction of its annual amount would be a splendid fortune for the Indians, let that revenue be charged in future with the enfranchisement of the slave population of the American Union. What is wanted at present is a channel in which the stream of emancipation, so to speak, may commence flowing. The land-revenue would effect that object in the first instance, and religion and philanthropy would gradually widen the channel, till public opinion, gathering strength from year to year, would at length "break every yoke, and let the oppressed go free." The abolition-agitation, however, appears to be creating an organized resistance on the part of the slave-holder, and thereby to be defeating its own object.

15 A few weeks before the important principle of selling the waste land in the Australian Colonies, and devoting the proceeds to the promotion of emigration, was publicly recognised and established, in February, 1831, and while the subject was undergoing the patient consideration of the Government, I addressed a letter to Lord Goderich, of date 30th December, 1830, in consequence of a conversation I had had on the subject a few days before with my Lord Howick; pointing out two sources of immediate revenue, derivable from the sale of land in New South Wales, and applicable to the promotion of an extensive emigration to that colony. The first was the Crown allotments in the town of Sydney, of which I estimated the value at that time at 200,000l. The second was the clergy reserves of the colony; which, as in Canada, consisted of a seventh of the whole territory. Whether this letter had any influence in determining the Government on the point under consideration, I do not know; but the suggestion, as to the clergy reserves, which has since been acted on by the Government, gave prodigious offence in certain quarters. In that particular I had the example of my own brethren, the clergy of the Church of Scotland in Canada, before my eyes. That clergy, I knew, had been struggling ineffectually for many years for a portion of the Canadian clergy reserves, and had not only been exposing themselves in so doing to the inveterate hostility of the Colonial Episcopacy, but entailing upon themselves the envy and jealousy of the Methodists, Independents, and Roman Catholics of the provinces, who, naturally enough, conceived that they had all as good a right to a part of the reserves as the Presbyterians. In such circumstances it appeared to me to be a far better course for the Church and communion I belonged to, as well as incomparably better for the Government and the public, to lay the axe to the root of the tree of contention at once, by recommending that the clergy reserves in New South Wales should be sold for the public benefit, and the clergy, whom the Government might deem it incumbent upon them to support, paid their salaries in future out of the Public Treasury. This, accordingly, has been the law of the land in that colony, for six or seven years past, and, I am happy to add, it has been a law of peace to the community.

16 Mr. G. Robinson, now Chief Protector of the Aborigines in New South Wales.

17 Their proficiency in Psalmody, Mr. Robinson has recently informed me, is most remarkable. They sing in parts, and take great delight in the exercise; their singing being much superior to that of any European congregation in Van Dieman's Land. And yet these are the people whom the colonists of that island have been shooting down like wild beasts, for twenty years past. A spot was pointed out to me a few years ago in the interior of the island, where seventeen of them had been shot at one time in cold blood. They had been bathing in the heat of a summer's day, in the deep pool of a river in a sequestered and romantic glen, when they were suddenly surprised by a party of armed colonists who had secured the passes; and I believe not one of them was left to tell the tale. Nay, a convict bushranger in Van Dieman's Land, who was hanged a few years ago for crimes committed against the European inhabitants of the country, confessed, when under sentence of death, that he had actually been in the habit of shooting the Black natives to feed his dogs!

18 This atrocity of feeling, unheard of before in the British empire, has been greatly encouraged, if not directly produced, by a portion of the Colonial press, especially by the Sydney Herald, the paper in most extensive circulation in New South Wales; the Aborigines being systematically spoken of in that paper in the most contemptuous terms, and described as "monkeys," "black brutes," &c, and the policy of getting rid of them in the most summary manner being strongly, though insidiously, recommended. The Herald, I am sorry to add, is the principal Tory paper of the Colony, and is patronized by a large number of the wealthy Colonial stockholders, whose interests, forsooth, it thus professes to uphold. The individual who at present writes for that paper is an emancipated convict from Dublin, whom I succeeded about four years ago, at the risk of an action for libel, in getting dismissed from the editorship of the Sydney Gazette, by a series of articles published in another journal which I had established myself, (for moral and educational and not political purposes,) in which I had pointed out to the Colonial public the enormity and disgraceful character of a state of things which would permit such a person to occupy so highly important and responsible an office. My exertions on that occasion were applauded by the Sydney Herald, because it suited the politics of that paper to represent the Colonial Whig Government of the day as the patrons of the convict press; but no sooner was the purpose of the moment served, than the dismissed emancipated convict editor was taken into the pay of the Herald to write about "monkeys" and "black brutes," for the information and amusement of those sheep and cattle holders of the colony, whose assumed interest it was to have these "monkeys" and "black brutes" shot or poisoned by their convict servants. In short, to talk of moral principle and colonial politicians of any party in the same day would be singularly absurd.

APPENDIX. SOUTH SEA ISLANDS.

APPENDIX.

SOUTH SEA ISLANDS.

ON the 24th of November last, the French frigate, La Venus, Capt. Du Petit Thoire, arrived at Sydney, New South Wales, from the west coast of South America; having touched at Tahiti, one of the Society Islands, and the Bay of Islands in New Zealand, on her passage across the Pacific. Certain letters, addressed to individuals in Sydney, having arrived by the frigate, from the British Consul at Tahiti, from some Englishmen residing in the capacity of merchants in the Society Islands, and from several of the Protestant Missionaries in these islands; detailing what they all conceived an unwarrantable outrage, which had just been committed on the Authorities of Tahiti, by the Captain of the French frigate during her stay at that island; these letters were placed in my hands by the parties to whom they were addressed, with a suggestion that I should bring the matter before the public through the medium of the Colonial press. This I accordingly did, in the form of an article which the editor of The Colonist, a Colonial Journal, inserted as an editorial article in that paper on the 28th of November last. It was to the following effect:

BUCCANEERING EXTRAORDINARY AT TAHITI.

"One of the most unheard-of aggressions – disgraceful in the highest degree to the agent of a civilized nation, and characteristic only of the

olden times of piracy and buccaneering – has just been perpetrated by a ship-of-war under the French flag on the Queen and inhabitants of Tahiti. Some time ago two French Roman Catholic priests landed clandestinely on the island of Tahiti, with the view of propagating among the Protestant natives of the island the errors of Popery. They had come in a small schooner from Gambier's Island, where a Roman Catholic mission has been established; and after traversing the southwestern side of Tahiti, proclaiming that they were the only teachers of the truth, and that the Protestant missionaries were false teachers, (in proof of which they alleged the astounding fact of the latter being married) they were received and accommodated in a cottage on the premises of Mr. J. A. Moerenhout, American Consul – a Belgian, we believe, by nation, and a Roman Catholic by profession. To this individual and to the two priests whom he thought proper to take under his protection, it was intimated by the Queen of Tahiti, who was apprehensive of disquiet and disturbance from the character and machinations of the priests, that the latter must leave the island by the schooner in which they had arrived; and Moerenhout and the priests having expressed their determination to refuse obedience, they were furnished with a copy of one of the Tahitian laws enacted years before, which prohibited the residence of any foreigners on the island, without the express permission of the Government. This was one of those laws of self-protection and self-preservation which all Governments have an undoubted right to enact, and of the enactment and enforcement of which, France has ever been of all civilized nations the readiest to set the example. The two priests having expressed their determination to sit violently, as they say in Scotland, notwithstanding this communication, and having accordingly locked themselves up in their cottage, a posse of Tahitian constables were sent, under the direction of one of the district judges of the island, who was present to protect the priests from personal violence, to compel them to embark on board the schooner when ready for sea. Finding the door locked within, the constables lifted up the rafters of the roof of the house from the wallplate, and springing over the wall, opened the door from within. One of the priests, finding resistance no longer practicable, walked down to the canoe that was waiting for him on the shore; the other refusing to move, was lifted up as gently as possible by the natives and placed in the canoe with all their property, and rowed off to the schooner.

During the negociation with the Government, Moerenhout had written very impertinently to the Queen, whose authority he pretended to set at nought, on the ground, forsooth, of her being under the influ-

ence of Mr. Pritchard, now British Consul, who had formerly been a Protestant missionary on the Island. As a proof, however, of the manner in which this individual's conduct, throughout the whole affair, was viewed by the American Government – a Government perhaps the best acquainted with the law of nations, and the most respectful of the rights of others of any in the civilized world – the circumstances of the case were no sooner made known to the American President than Moerenhout was dismissed from his Consulate.

A false and flaming account of the whole transaction, however, was immediately transmitted by Moerenhout and others to the French Government, and M. du Petit Thoire, Captain of the French frigate La Venus, on the South American station, was ordered to proceed forthwith to Tahiti to obtain satisfaction. This, as we have already hinted, M. du Petit Thoire proceeded, immediately on his arrival at Tahiti, to exact in a style and manner much more accordant with the practice of the old Buccaneers of America than with that of the agent of a highly polished and gallant European nation in the nineteenth century. Proceeding direct to the residence of Moerenhout, (who it seems has since been invested with the office of French Consul at Tahiti) and spending a long time with this individual, but without deigning to enquire into the circumstances of the transaction in any other quarter, M. du Petit Thoire addressed a letter to the Queen requiring her –

1st. To pay 2,000 dollars as a fine for her conduct in dismissing the priests.

2nd. To hoist the French flag and salute it with twenty-one guns.

3rd. To write a letter of contrition and apology to the King of the French.

All this was to be done within 24 hours, otherwise M. du Petit Thoire, who, suiting the action to the word, got his sixty-gun frigate prepared for action, would batter down the town of Matavai, subvert the Queen's Government, and elevate to the throne an inferior chief of questionable character, under the influence of Moerenhout. It is needless to add that these unheard-of demands had all to be complied with. There was not a single dollar in the Tahitian treasury; for what have a people emerging from semi-barbarism to do with money? but the money was generously advanced for Queen Pomare by three British subjects, Mr. Pritchard, the British Consul, Dr. Vaughan, a resident on the island, and Mr. Bicknell, the son of a missionary. There was scarcely a gun fit for service on the island; but the flag was hoisted and the salute fired, and M. du Petit Thoire, having pocketed the dumps and his letter from the Queen of Tahiti to Louis Philippe, has touched at our port to

show us his frigate, and to give us an opportunity of congratulating him for a piece of heroism, in comparison with which the glorious deeds of his own Jean Bart, as well as of our "Nelson of the Nile," must sink into insignificance.

Holding, therefore, that the Queen of Tahiti did not violate the law of nations, but exercised her own undoubted right in sending the two French priests off the Island, and holding also that the procedure of M. du Petit Thoire was a direct violation of the law of nations, as well as in every way unworthy of that great nation which he represents, we beg to remind M. du, P. T. that the Tahitian Government and Nation are under British protection, that protection having been guaranteed to them by the late Mr. Canning; and we beg to assure that gentleman, moreover, that the unwarranted aggression of which he has thus been guilty on an unoffending and comparatively helpless people, will not be forgotten by that greater nation which has so long rendered itself conspicuous in the world for its heroic defence of the rights of men. We shall take special care to forward a copy of this paper to Mr. T. F. Buxton, who, we feel assured, will represent the case immediately to Lord Palmerston, with a view to his obtaining an immediate explanation of the transaction from the French Government, and will also bring it forward in the British Parliament. At all events, M. du Petit Thoire may rest assured that the case of the Venus at Matavai will make as much noise in Europe as that of the Vixen.

How differently do British naval officers manage these affairs! When a British ship-of-war was sent down lately to chastise the natives of Wallis Island, where the Sir David Ogilby was attacked and the captain and mate murdered, it was found after a careful investigation, that the Europeans had been the aggressors, and nothing was done to the natives.

How differently also does the spirit of Popery manifest itself from that of Scriptural Protestantism? The latter has been labouring silently and unseen for thirty years past, transforming whole nations of barbarian and treacherous islanders into civilized and Christian men. Popery, on the contrary, comes in at the eleventh hour of the day to seize upon, not the barbarous but the Protestant islands, and gets a French frigate to support her impudent and lying pretensions by threatening to batter down an unoffending town.

We have derived our information from letters from Tahiti; not from the rigmarole production on the subject in our columns of this day.

This was the only article I ever wrote on the subject, and I wrote this article at the request of parties deeply in-

terested in the welfare and protection of the South Sea Islanders, and solely, as far as I was personally concerned, from a sincere desire to vindicate the rights of an injured and unoffending people. A variety of other articles, however, and some of them of a sufficiently vituperative character, were published on the subject soon after in the other Colonial Journals; and I have since been given to understand that M. Du Petit Thoire and the other officers of the frigate were made to believe that all these articles were written by me, and that, in writing them, I was actuated merely by a spirit of rancorous hatred towards the French nation. Now as there are men of character in France as well as elsewhere, to whom I happen to be known, and to whom I should not like to be misrepresented in this manner, I take this opportunity of stating that I cherish no such unworthy feelings, and that if the case of Capt. Du Petit Thoire had been that of the Captain of a British ship-of-war, I should have treated it in precisely the same manner, only with additional severity. As an officer of high standing in the French Navy, and as the son of a Post Captain in that Navy, who, I believe, fell when fighting gallantly in the service of his country, at the battle of Aboukir, I can entertain towards M. Du Petit Thoire, personally no other feelings than those of respect. But I am still satisfied that his conduct towards the Queen of Tahiti – the effect I believe of unfounded representations on the part of Moerenhout the Belgian – was altogether unwarrantable, and that it requires investigation on the part of the British Government. The establishment of a regular Government in New Zealand, however, would soon put an end to all such irregularities in the South Sea Islands for the future.

LONDON: PRINTED BY STEWART AND MURRAY, OLD BAILEY.

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