their instinct taught them to dislike it because the foreigner deemed it important. Among the Parliamentary documents from which we have been quoting, there is the following state paper in reference to the flag-staff

"FRIEND Governor Fitz-Roy, friend the new Governor, I say to you, will you come and let us converse together either at Paihia or at Waitangi, or at the Waimate, that my thoughts may be right towards you concerning the stick (flag-staff) from which grew the evil to the world. Walker and Manu (Kewa) and others say they alone will erect the staff; that will be wrong; it will be better that we should all assemble. They, we, and all the many chiefs of this place and of that place, and you too, and all the English also.

"Now this I say to you, come, that we may set aright your misunderstandings and mine also, and Walker's too; then it will be right; then we two (you and I) will erect our flag-staff; then shall New Zealand be made one with England; then shall our conversation respecting the land or country be right.

"Mr Busby; the first Governor; the second Governor; the third Governor; the Queen salutations to you all.

"From

(Signed) "JonN WILLIAM HEKE POKAI."

Heke was a great chief, and a great leader in these conflicts; but at the time when the letter just cited was written, the beginning of the year 1846, he was losing position among his brother chiefs, who were abandoning the conflict with the British authorities. More than three years afterwards, in July 1849, when New Zealand had become as tranquil as the Orkney Islands, Heke thought fit to address a long representation to the Queen, for the purpose of instructing her Majesty on the true state of affairs in the colony. Like most statements by disappointed men, it is a rather confused document

"To the Queen of England, greeting, Show us the same affectionate regard that King George did in what he said to Hongi when he went to Europe. King George asked him, 'What was your reason for coming here;' he said, 'I had two objects in doing so-muskets and sixty soldiers.' To which King George answered, 'I will not consent to send soldiers to New Zealand, lest you should be deprived of your country, which I wish should be left for your children and your people, for they

VOL. LXX.-NO. CCCCXXXII.

would not act properly.' They continued arguing on the subject for a long time, and then King George said to Hongi, 'It is better that I should send some missionaries to you, as friends for you, for they are good people; should they act wrongly, send them back; but if they act properly, befriend them.' And we accordingly befriended them. They asked us, 'Will you not give us some portions of your land? Our generosity induced us to consent, and we divided it with them -giving them part and retaining part ourselves. We thought that they were the only people who were to live in this country; but no, there were many thousands of others-but it was when we were foolish that we thought this.

"The immense congregations of people that took place here was what brought forth the day of trouble, which exactly agreed with what King George had said to Hongi. After trouble had ensued, Mr Busby arrived with a different arrangement, and then the first governor, William Hobson, with a different one again: the flag of New Zealand was abandoned, and that of England alone displayed. He did not state this at the meeting at Waitangi, in order that everybody might know that the flag-staff was the great protection of these islands; and his concealing it was the cause of my error, for I was the person that consented that both Mr Busby and the first governor should live on shore, thinking that they would act rightly; then came Fitz-Roy, the second gover nor, with a different arrangement again. Not understanding the authority which accompanied the appointment of gover nors, and to which we had in our folly consented, I urged him to come here, in order that we might talk on the subject of the flag-staff; he did not come, but recovered with tar. erected it, having four iron bars, and The obstinacy of his thoughts was the cause of the war, and of my transgressing against you. Then came Governor Grey, a fighting gover nor; I therefore say, who was it sent those people here? Which makes me think that you were the original cause of the dispute between us-which confuted what King George had said to Hongi. Don't suppose that the fault was mine, for it was not, which is my reason for saying that it rests with you to restore the flag of my island of New Zealand, and the authority of the land of the people. Should you do this, I will then for the first time perceive that you have some love for New Zealand, and for what King George said, for although he and Hongi are dead, still the conversation lives; and it is for you to favour and make much of 2 E

it, for the sake of peace, love, and quietness; therefore, I say, it remains with you to decide about the people who are continually arriving here, viz., the Governors, the soldiers, the French, and the Americans; to speak out to them to return; they are quarrelsome, and every place will be covered with them; I consequently am aware that their acts are making things progress towards trouble. I thought that when our fighting was over, the men-of-war and steamers would cease coming here and all their mischiefbreeding concomitants, for I am careful of the fiery darts of the world, the flesh, and the devil."

These last words showed that Heke had been listening to the missionaries, though he had derived little of the spirit along with the phraseology of Christianity. In the letter, of which the long passage just cited is but a comparatively small portion, the chief says-possibly in reference to the varied authorities, judicial, executorial, clerical, military, &c., whose conflicting powers puzzled the natives

"What I consider very bad is concealing the intentions, for there are many rooms in your house, which prevents their being all searched the calico room is that of peace, but then there is the room of red garments and the room of black garments-these two rooms ought to be concealed in that with peace of God."

It was necessary that this state paper should be duly laid before her Majesty. We are left in profound ignorance of the shape in which Heke may have received the announcement of its reception, but the Parliamentary papers contain a despatch from the Secretary of the Colonies to the Governor of New Zealand in these terms:

"I have received your despatch of the 18th July last, forwarding a letter addressed by the New Zealand chief Heke to the Queen, in explanation of his view of the causes of the difficulties which have taken place throughout the colony, and I have to request you will acquaint the writer that I have laid that communication before her Majesty."

But "the difficulties," many of them of Heke's own creation, were, as we have already hinted, conquered before he offered his intervention. The motives from which the armed forces in New Zealand gradually

dissolved, as it were, into peaceful workmen, is in itself a significant symptom of the character of this remarkable people. They began to find that it was a far better speculation to enter into a partnership - however humble-with the Europeans, than to fight with them. They are not, it must be admitted, an imaginative or ideal people; they judge values by hard cash. Their superstitions were found to be entirely subservient to their interests for instance, the inexorable tapu or taboo. A field which had been bought, but which was not to be given up, was found to be tabooed, and so a rifle which had been lent, and which the owner wanted back again. When a chief was wanted to fulfil a bargain, or was dunned by a creditor, he was found to be surrounded by the sacred tapu. This utilitarian spirit gradually undermined the zeal for national resistance. In fact, it was not national—it was personal and patrimonial. The chiefs and their followers who might side with the English had no reproaches of baseness, or unpatriotic desertion, to fear. Some of them were taken into service and employed as a police force and proud they were of the character. One or two chiefs who were wounded in the British service received pensions. There came, as among the Sepoys, to be a competition to get into the service, which extinguished the insurrections. Those who could not be employed in the government did still better by embarking in agricultural, shipping, or commercial enterprise. There never, perhaps, in the history of the world, was so sudden a revulsion from bitter war to the energetic pursuit of the arts of peace as these people have exemplified.

After agricultural enterprise, the chief pursuit of the natives, has been that of the miller. They appear to have entered on it with surprising rapidity. As the New Zealanders are very fond of letting her Majesty know all they are about, we have among the Parliamentary papers presented in the last session a letter to the Queen, with an account of the raising of one of the earliest grist mills, accompanied by a present of the meal ground in it.

"Governor Grey has been here at Otawhao and Rangiaohia, and has given us a plough; he also told us that Mr Morgan would arrange about some white man to teach us to plough, at which we were much pleased-and this year we commence to plough the ground. We have for a long time been desirous of this, but we are a poor people, and the majority of our pigs had been disposed of to pay for the mill, which was the reason that we did not plough; but now the governor has generously given us one, which has greatly rejoiced us; and we will persevere in ploughing the land. We have finished a water-mill, We and paid for it entirely ourselves. paid the white man who built it £200, which he obtained by the sale of pigs and flax-£20 being for flax, and £180 for pigs. The common labour we did ourselves-namely, building the dam, &c. &c. Our reason for constructing the mill was on account of having commenced to grow wheat at Rangiaohia. We were a year in collecting the requisite amount of money.

The New Zealanders are, at the same time, large shipowners; and they have a shipping-list, published in English and Maori, with departures and arrivals of vessels owned and commanded by natives.

We find the Governor of New Zealand, on 7th March 1849, reporting,

"During my journey through the extensive and fertile districts of the Wai

kato and Waissa, I was both impressed and gratified at the rapid advances in civilisation which the natives of that part of New Zealand have made during the last two years. Two flour-mills have al

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ready been constructed at their sole cost, and another water-mill is in course of erection. The natives of that district

also grow wheat very extensively: at one place alone, the estimated extent of land under wheat is a thousand acres. They have also good orchards, with fruittrees of the best kind, grafted and budded by themselves. They have extensive cultivations of Indian corn, potatoes, &c. ; and they have acquired a considerable number of horses and horned stock. Altogether, I have never seen a more thriving or contented population in any part of the world."

We may remark that, from so thinly peopled a country, so far off,

we must not expect to receive authentic intelligence down to a recent period. The Parliamentary papers issued in the past session seldom contain intelligence later than 1849. On the 25th June of that year, the Lieutenant-General of New Munster reports:

"At Otaki, the natives are still making rapid progress in civilisation, and the settlement is assuming the appearance of a neat European village. Many new

houses of a superior kind have been built during the last eighteen months; a magnificent church has been erected, and, though not quite complete, is in a state which is usable; in fact, I have myself attended service there, when, I think, there could have been little short of 900 natives within its walls. More attention has been paid to neatness than was formerly the case; and most of the fences are not only substantially put up, but are cut evenly at the top, and present a very neat and clean appearance. The gardens are also more attended to; and the use of milk, butter, tea, &c., more appreciated in the domestic arrangements.

Other indications of the advancement of the native race, and of their growing confidence in the value of civilised institutions, are to be found in their frequent applications to the resident magistrates' courts, whenever they consider themselves aggrieved, whether by Europeans or by other natives; and in the readiness with which they submit to and abide by the decisions. In these courts, during the last eighteen months, several cases of grave importance, between native and native, have been adjudicated upon, which would have formerly involved the life of the offender, and might have led to a general disturbance."

The thoroughly and almost impetuously practical character of the natives, and their freedom from ideal influences, is shown in the manner in

which they have welcomed the services of the medical profession.

The colonial surgeon, in his report for 1849, says,—

"The short, but, I apprehend, somewhat indiscreetly alarming account of small-pox, which was published in the native language some twelve months ago, made an extraordinarily powerful impression in this district on the Maori mind, creating, at the same time, a singularly urgent anxiety to be vaccinated. Hence, no sooner was it known that the antidote was in our possession, than not only the hospital and the town practitioners were besieged by applicants from far and near, but ex-professional gentlemen also were eagerly solicited to become operators in the cause, as if the enemy they so fearfully dreaded was at the threshold, and not a day to be safely lost; nay, so great was the panic among them, and so precocious, too, their intuition, that ere long they began to vaccicould produce vesicles, or pustular blots nate one another; and finding that they any way like to these, vaccination hence went on in indiscriminate progress, to the neglect of all observances, and in hand-inhand deterioration, which it is impossible now, with any probability of truth, to estimate or surmise."

and almost selfish character which we As an equitable balance of the hard have attributed to these people, let us conclude by saying, that many documents and works which we have perused in reference to them, convince us that they are an eminently goodhearted race. Several instances are recorded where they have made considerable sacrifices to serve Europeans to whom they were under obligations; and in more than one instance, their communities have subscribed to relieve distress caused by fire, shipwreck, or inundation-a form of generosity eminently indicative of civilisation.

THE emeute of Paris, which cast out the Bourbons, is the key to all the subsequent emeutes of Europe. The nations of the Continent, however differing in features and language, are one family; they have the same policy, the same habits, and the same impulses. No member of that family can be moved without communicating that motion, more or less, to the whole body; like a vast lake, into which, stagnant as it may be, a stone flung spreads the movement in circle on circle, and spreads it the more for its stagnation. But, if the great moral expanse had any inherent motion; if, like the ocean, it were impelled by a tide, the external impulse would be overpowered and lost in the regular and general urgency of Nature.

This forms one of the distinctions which mark England as differing from the Continent; in this country there is a perpetual internal movement. Open as England is to all foreign impulses, they are overpowered by the vigour of change among ourselves. She has the moral tides; constantly renewing the motion of the national mind, guided by laws hitherto scarcely revealed to man; and tending, on the whole, to the general salubrity and permanence of the national system. This preserves England from revolutions; as manly exercise preserves the human frame from disease, and from those violent struggles with which nature, from time to time, throws off the excess of disease. Thus, it is scarcely possible to conceive a revolution in England!

In the life of a single generation we have seen three revolutions in France; and those three revolutions have been of the most decisive order; -the first comprehending an overthrow of the laws, the government, and the religion-a total overwhelming of the fabric of national society, an explosion of the State from its foundations;-no simple plunder of the palace, or disrobing of the priest-no passing violence of the mob, like a thunder cloud passing over the harvest-field, and though it prostrated

the crop, yet leaving the soil in its native fertility ;-but a tearing up of the soil itself; an extermination of monarchy, priesthood, and law; requiring a total renewal by the survivors of the storm. The two succeeding revolutions were overthrows, not merely of governments, but of dynasties-the exiles of kings and the imprisonment and flight of cabinets great national convulsions, which would once have involved civil war, and which, but for the timid nature and sudden ruin of those dynasties, must have involved civil war, and probably spread havoc once more through Europe. Yet England was still unshaken. She had tumults, but too trifling for alarm, and apparently for the purpose of showing to the world her innate power of resistance to profitless innovation; or for discovering to herself the depth of her unostentatious loyalty to the constitutional throne.

The French emeute of 1830 propagated its impulse through every kingdom of Europe. The power of the rabble was proved to all by the triumph of the French mob; a new generation had risen, unacquainted with the terrible sufferings of war; the strictness of the European governments had been relaxed by the long disuse of arms; the increasing influence of commercial wealth had tended to turn ministers into flatterers of the multitude; and the increasing exigencies of kings had forced them to rely for their personal resources upon the merchant and the Jew. A less obvious, yet perhaps a more effective ingredient than all other materials of overthrow, was the universal irreligion of the Continent.

Divided between Popery and Infidelity, the European mind was prepared for political tumults. Superstition degrades the understanding, and makes it incapable of reason. Infidelity, while it makes the world the only object, gives loose to the passions of the world. The one, extinguishing all inquiry, merges all truth in a brutish belief; the other, disdaining all experience, meets all