a—B

shoulder to shoulder, to meet the very difficult campaigns of the future ; and that, in doing so, it must be settled in a manner in keeping with the dignity of a proud people and compatible with the character of the New Zealand pakeha as the universally recognized champion of fair play towards Native peoples. 6. It is not our purpose to make adverse criticism of any person or groups of persons who are now voiceless and no longer able to speak for their actions before this tribunal. 7. Nor is it our desire to speak derogatively of utterances made by men of the past, or to stigmatize them as land-sharks, robbers, and marauders, be they missionary or otherwise. That is the prerogative of the historian, not ours. 8. Some of the colonists were drawn to the newly-discovered country by the hope of great gain, through land-speculation, but the great majority were seized with the genuine desire of building new homes in the land of their adoption for themselves and their families. While, at Home, the successive Secretaries of State who presided over the destinies of the Colonial Office were imbued with the spirit of the age—that of tolerance towards the down-trodden Native races of the world. 9. This was the post-Napoleonic period, an epoch in which almost every home in Europe was suffering from the results of those devastating wars. Perhaps it was this suffering which made the white man realize more fully the sad lot of subject races, and moved the hearts of men like William Wilberforce to preach the doctrine of racial tolerence which ended in the abolition of the slave trade, and the emancipation of the Negro peoples of America by Abraham Lincoln. 10. However, this reflection would be completely irrelevant to the subject-matter before us, only for the fact that this spirit of racial tolerance, fair play, and protection pervaded the instructions of the Marquis of Normanby, Lord John Russell, and Lord Stanley in their despatches to Governor Hobson which was embodied in the Treaty of Waitangi, the Magna Carta of the Maori people. 11. Kupe of Raiatea, his wife Hine Te Aparangi, and Peka Hourangi, the magician (priestly navigator), in their canoe " Matahourua," discovered New Zealand about the tenth century. Sir Peter Buck estimates the year 950. It was Kupe who left the sailing directions by which subsequent Polynesian navigators negotiated the waterways which led them to these islands. The people of the fleet of canoes which came over in the fourteenth century came to colonize. They brought their women and children with them, and on arrival dispersed to the different parts of the Islands and, without proclamation or flag, became the owners of all land, thus proving to posterity that the Maoris were the undisputed owners and rulers of what to them was known as Ao-tea-roa. 12. In New Zealand a generation passed before the first European settlement was followed by the establishment of some semblance of authority, in the person of James Busby, " the man-of-war without guns," as he was called by the Natives, and then by the Treaty of Waitangi, under which on a memorable day—-6th February, 1840 —the chiefs of the Maori peoples ceded to Her Majesty the Queen the rights and powers of sovereignty which they had exercised or possessed over their respective territories. 13. The whaler, the missionary, the adventurer, and the trader were the first to establish contact with the aboriginal owners, and some of the incidents of these contacts are of importance on account of the influence they were to exercise, for a generation at least after the establishment of British authority and influence, upon the relation of European to Maori, of the settlers to their own Government, and of this infant settlement generally to the Colonial Office. 14. The earliest land acquired in New Zealand was purchased by the Church Missionary Society in 1815, and this was the first land farmed and settled by Europeans. From 1815 to 1824 the land said to have been acquired by Europeans from the Maoris was 8,000 acres. From 1825 to 1829 the area was 1,000,800 acres ; from 1830 to 1834, 600,000 acres ; from 1835 to 1836, 120,000 acres ; from 1837 to 1838, 240,000 acres. In 1838, 12,000,000 acres, including Stewart Island, were the subject of purchase.

19