men, seven of whom were very respectable, were killed. The natives got the better of the whites and drove them from the field; though they have now all left the place and gone to the North Island, about thirty miles north of Kapita, and intend building there a large fortification, and having their vengeance on the Europeans."

This last statement is not altogether correct, as Seth Howland, in his deposition before the magistrates of Nelson says, towards the conclusion of his evidence,

"I then asked their reason for killing Captain Wakefield, and they told me it was because he had shot Rangihaiata's woman. I asked why he did so,

and where she was shot, to which they replied that she was shot whilst sitting by the side of Rangihaiata. I asked Rangihaiata where he and his party were going, and he told me that they were going across to the opposite shore, from thence to Wanganui, and then into the bush to live quietly and to die there ; they wanted no more fighting." And Alexander MacLune, the mate of the "Three Brothers," bears his testimony to the same effect, as he depones to "having heard the natives say that they did not intend to fight any more, and that the white people might now take the Wairoa."

Upon the whole merits of the case, the conclusion which I have come to, after much deliberation, is generally, that though there may, no doubt, be some truth in the several reasons assigned by the settlers as the cause of the late disaster, yet that none of them can, properly speaking, be said to apply to the natives; and that it must be looked upon as having been the result of a variety of unforeseen and unfortunate circumstances combined; and attributable more to the

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inconsiderate and cowardly conduct of the settlers, and the rash conduct of the magistrate who directed their movements, than to any premeditated design on the part of the aborigines.

But although I have arrived at this conclusion, yet I must admit that I sympathize most sincerely with the settlers, in the great delay that has so unfortunately, though it may be so unavoidably, taken place in the settlement of their claims. Owing to this delay, they state in their petition to the Queen, and they state most justly, "that they have been prevented from cultivating the lands they purchased before leaving England, and have been obliged to live on the produce of foreign countries, while their capital has been wasted, and themselves nearly ruined."

Though now far removed from that scene of strife and of bloodshed, I can never forget that I myself was once, like them, a settler in that savage land, and that my claim, like theirs, is still unsettled. And I shall ever retain a vivid recollection of the surpassing beauty and sublimity of the valleys and mountains which adorn that romantic country, and cherish in my memory an attachment to those friends who cheered and supported me during these the days of my wanderings and of my exile, and who are still sojourners in that distant and unhappy land.

I had written the preceding observations regarding the Wairoa massacre, as they had occurred to myself on perusing carefully the whole statements on both sides, when, by the arrival of New Zealand journals in this country, in July 1844, I found that the views which I had been led to entertain on this disastrous affair, were identically the same as those of the new governor, Captain Fitzroy. In his address

to the inhabitants of Wellington, Port Nicholson, on the 24th of January, 1844, immediately on landing there, he says, "difficult indeed would it be to induce the intelligent, active, and daring chiefs of New Zealand, supported as they are by their thousands of armed warriors, to submit tamely to laws administered with such evident injustice, as that which, to the disgrace of our nation, indelibly characterised the fatal proceedings at Wairoa. The majority of the native population of New Zealand are, as yet, ignorant of our legislation. How unjust, oppressive, and unchristian would it be, to exact a rigorous obedience to unknown laws. You have dwelt so much on the fatal catastrophe at Wairoa, that I feel it imperative on me to remind you, painful as it is to my feelings, that our countrymen were there the aggressors; that the principal magistrate was acting illegally; that at least thirteen of our countrymen fell during the heat of a conflict brought on by the misconduct of those in authority; and, that the other nine, though mercilessly slaughtered after they had surrendered, fell victims to those ferocious passions they had roused to the utmost extent, and which were still wild with savage fury." And, in his address to the inhabitants of Nelson, on the 1st of February, 1844, he expressed his disgust with the conduct of those who, after the conflict began, had so basely deserted their leaders. And on landing on 12th February, 1844, at Waikanai, a little to the north-west of Porirua, where he found Rauperaha with 500 followers, and Rangihaiata with fifty; he addressed them in reference to the part they had taken in the massacre at Wairoa, and told them, that though the white man was wrong, yet that the natives, in killing their prisoners, were

guilty of a great crime, and that white men never killed their prisoners. Rauperaha said that it was according to their custom, after a fight, to kill the chief men of their enemies, and they did not consider their victory complete unless this were done.

The very able and impartial report of the committee of the House of Commons, appointed in 1844 to examine into the affairs of New Zealand, having 1eference in particular to the disputes that had arisen betwixt the Company and the Government, which was given into the House in July 1844, (and will be found printed in the Fourteenth Report of the Directors of the New Zealand Company,) censures the conduct of the Government in one or two particulars, and vindicates in a great measure the conduct of the Company. The nineteenth resolution adopted by the committee is as follows:-" That the committee, upon a review of the documentary evidence relative to the loss of life at Wairoa, without offering any opinion on the law of the case, deem it an act of justice to the memory of those who fell there, to state that it appears that the expedition in question was undertaken for a purpose believed by the parties to be lawful and desirable, and which also, example in analogous cases had unfortunately led them to expect might be effected without resistance from the natives."

The committee also report that the New Zealand Company were entitled to be put in possession, by the Government, of the quantity of land awarded them by Mr. Pennington. This will amount to nearly a million of acres.

At a time when emigration is increasing, and new colonies are springing up, when adventurers from the old continents are rapidly pressing onwards amongst

the inhabitants of the new, it would naturally be desirable to define the origin of the right of property in uncivilized countries; and the late sad event in New Zealand has given an additional impetus to the subject, as, had this question been settled, the late massacre, in all human probability, would not have

occurred.

Even admitting, as we are disposed to do, that in the event alluded to, the natives showed considerable forbearance, and that the main body of our countrymen exhibited, first, an overbearing forwardness, and then an un-English cowardice, and that to these the unfortunate result must in a great degree be attributed, -this relates nothing to the real matter in hand. The state of things was such as necessarily to lead to collision at some time or other, and had we escaped it on this occasion, it would but have been to encounter it elsewhere.

Much has been written on that important question, "Whether the inhabitants of a civilized country are entitled to go to a barbarous country and drive the natives like sheep to a distance, or, if necessary, extirpate them altogether ;" and the general opinion is that they are. Mr. Matthew, in his "Emigration Fields," says, in reference to this subject, "A nation which by the establishment of social order, and the advanced arts in life, increases in population beyond the means of a full subsistence within its own territory, has a right to extend itself over the uncultivated regions of the earth, and if necessary, displace the miserable hordes of wandering savages, who can neither bring out the powers productiveness of the country they roam over, nor submit to the social order amongst civilized men." And in the Report of the Committee of the House of Com

of