quantities for the British navy, and finds a ready market in South America, Brazil, British India, and at the different ports of New Holland. The flax is of a peculiar description, called the Phormium tenax; it is of great strength and fineness, and grows wild in immense quantities. The only preparation it requires is stripping the outside coat from the long fibres which run down to the stock parallel to each other, an operation which the natives dexterously perform with a shell. It is at present much used for the manufacture of whale lines, a species of rope required to be of the most superior description, as property to a large amount frequently depends upon its strength and durability. For this purpose it is preferred in the whale fishery to Russian hemp; it sells at a higher price than the latter, being of a longer and lighter description, and consequently more productive. Almost all the grain, fruits, grasses and other vegetable productions of England have been cultivated in New Zealand with the greatest success, and the country has proved very congenial to the different European animals which have been hitherto imported. The rivers supply excellent fish, and there are wild ducks, wood pigeons and other birds in great abundance. Independent of these great advantages of soil and climate, its position in the midst of the Southern-Sea fisheries, and its proximity to New South Wales, which is likely to require for some years to come the agricultural productions that New Zealand is peculiarly adapted to supply, would render it a very desirable addition to the British settlements in that part of the world. The northern aborigines are a remarkably fine and intelligent race of people. They are tall, erect, of a light-yellow copper colour, and susceptible of high intellectual attainments. They build fine canoes and make excellent seamen, possess great natural shrewdness, and can reason with as much good sense respecting their own interests as persons in civilized life. They generally occupy themselves in fishing and shooting; as nature produces in abundance the fern root, on which they are content to live in common with their hogs, they are not free from the indolence and sloth which usually characterize savage life; but when they are roused by the excitement of war, they exhibit a great degree of vivacity and energy. The inhabitants of the Southern Island are an inferior race, of

shorter stature, and nearly black. The population of the two islands is very small, when compared with the extent of territory, not exceeding 200,000*; and is gradually decreasing, in consequence of their exterminating wars and native superstitions, which require them to devour their enemies slain in battle. It is to be hoped that when the Queen shall have re-acquired her sovereign rights over these fine islands, that this diabolical practice, and the wars in which it originates, and which are of an equally savage description, will be terminated together.

66

There is no doubt that the sovereignty of England did exist in New Zealand, to as great an extent as in New South Wales or any other of our foreign dependencies, where this right has been assumed by first discoverers and afterwards maintained by the Crown. In 1769 Captain Cook, acting under a commission from the Crown of England, took formal possession of these islands in the name of King George the Third. In 1787 a royal commission was granted to Captain Philip, appointing him "Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief in and over the territory of New South Wales and its dependencies." This territory was described in the commission as extending "from ، Cape York, latitude 11° 37' south, to the South Cape, latitude "43° 30′ south; and inland to the westward as far as 135° east "longitude, comprehending all the islands adjacent in the Pa"cific Ocean within the latitudes of the above named capes"†. As New Zealand extends from the 34th to the 48th degree of south latitude, the greatest part of it, including the Northern Island, to which the attention of emigrants is chiefly directed, was doubtless comprehended within this commission. This fact was moreover recorded by the Governor of New South Wales himself, for on the 9th of November, 1814, he declared by public proclamation New Zealand to be a dependency of his government, and appointed justices of the peace to act there. At that period the Earl of Liverpool was at the head of the Government, and Earl Bathurst, (father of the present earl), was colonial secretary; and yet three years afterwards, during the same administration, and when the noble Earl was

* Evidence before Select Committee on the State of New Zealand, 1838. Parliamentary Paper 680, p. 180.

† Papers presented to the House of Commons relative to New Zealand, 1840,

still at the head of the colonial department, an Act was passed in the Imperial Parliament*, intituled "An Act for the more "effectual punishment of murders and manslaughters com"mitted in places not within His Majesty's jurisdiction ;" in which it was declared-that "whereas grievous murders " and manslaughters have been committed at the bay of Hon"duras in South America, &c., and the like offences have also "been committed in the South Pacific Ocean, as well on "the high seas as on land, in the Islands of New Zealand and "Otaheite, and in other islands, countries and places not "within His Majesty's dominions," &c. This Act did not attract any observation in either House of Parliament, and was passed, sub silentio, although the declaration it contained in respect of New Zealand was directly at variance with the original commission granted to Captain Philip, and the proclamation of the governor of New South Wales in 1814, sanctioned if not directed by the Government at home.

In 1823 an Act in like manner passed by the Imperial Parliament for the better administration of justice in New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land, extended the jurisdiction of the supreme courts in these places over offences" committed "or that shall be committed in the Islands of New Zealand, "Otaheite, or any other island, country, or place situate in "the Indian or Pacific Ocean and not subject to His Ma"jesty ;" an enactment which is repeated by 9 Geo. IV. c. 83. s. 4. In 1832 Lord Ripon despatched Mr. Busby to New Zealand as British resident, with a view of superintending British interests, and at the same time of protecting the natives against the various outrages committed upon them by British subjects; and in a letter to the chiefs explanatory of the nature of his commission, the King addressed them as an independent people. But this was not all, for in 1835 there was a solemn declaration signed by the chiefs of the northern parts of New Zealand assembled at Waitanga, in the Bay of Islands, of the independence of their country, and of their having united their tribes into one state under the designation of the United Tribes of New Zealand, which was formally recognised by the British Government in a despatch from

*57 Geo. III. c. 53.

Lord Glenelg to Major General Sir Richard Bourke, dated Downing-street, 25th of May, 1836. An union of the tribes into one state was, however, scarcely to be hoped for. There never has been any form of government or any superior authority recognised amongst them. Each chief is absolute in his own tribe, and feels himself bound to protect every member of it from injury. When a criminal is required to be given up to justice, there is always a grievance to be brought forward in his defence; and the tribe which refuses to surrender him is thereupon declared to be participators in his guilt. Every individual aggression thus becomes an incentive to war, and the atrocities perpetrated during its continuance are constantly extending its sphere and involving new parties in the contest. A people amongst whom such habits have become inveterate, and who cherish old animosities from generation to generation, are not likely to agree with respect to any code of laws which would require maturity of judgement to frame, and a delegated authority to execute,-until time shall have effected a total change in their character and customs.

Blackstone says, that "plantations or colonies in distant "countries are either such where the lands are claimed by "the right of occupancy only; by finding them desert and un"cultivated, and peopling them from the mother-country; or "where, when already cultivated, they have been either "gained by conquest or ceded to us by treaties. And both "these rights are founded upon the law of nature, or at least 66 upon that of nations*." In another part of his great work he somewhat qualifies this opinion. In reference to the right of migration or sending colonies to find out new habitations when the mother-country was overcharged with inhabitants, practised as well by the Phoenicians and Greeks as the Germans, Scythians and other northern people, he observes: "So long as this was confined to the stocking and cultivation "of desert uninhabited countries, it kept strictly within the "law of nature. But how far the seizing on countries already "peopled, and driving out or massacring the innocent and "defenceless natives merely because they differed from their

* Blackstone's Commentaries, vol. i. p. 106.

"invaders in language, in religion, in customs, in government, or in colour; how far such a conduct was consonant to nature, to reason, or to christianity, deserved well to be "considered by those, who have rendered their names im"mortal by thus civilizing mankind *".

It is of great importance that the right of migration should be referred to true principles, which as such must be consonant to reason and humanity; and as few countries have been selected for the purpose of colonization, in modern times, which were not found to contain a native population, it is impossible to justify any scheme of settlement in them which did not include a provision for the protection of the aborigines. The course pursued by the early colonists cannot be regarded without the deepest dissatisfaction and regret by serious and thinking men. The extensive and civilized nations of Europe, who carried their arms and arts into the wilderness, have exhibited indeed to the feeble savage the power of the one; but have done little to impress him with the honesty of the other. If the new territory were acquired by force, it was sufficiently clear that justice was not likely to be a part of that boasted civilization which the victor promised to bestow in return for its acquisition; and if ceded by treaty, the native tribes soon discovered, that the guarantee for the quiet enjoyment of their more distant lands and dwellings, by which it was usually accompanied, formed but a feeble barrier against the desire of the new settlers for a more extended dominion. A scheme of colonization-especially in reference to a country possessed by a race of men who understand the rights of property, and are physically and intellectually superior to the native population of any part of our adjoining colonies, was naturally regarded with distrust by the Government, and which the fate of the aborigines of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land did not tend to remove. But while the natives were depopulating their beautiful country by their intestine wars, the Bay of Islands became the constant resort of runaway convicts from New South Wales of the most abandoned description, who, in conjunction with men of desperate character left in the Islands by whale-ships and other

* Idem, vol. ii. p. 7.