The British government has been less guilty than is commonly believed as regards the destruction of the Maories. Since the original misdeed of the annexation of the isles, we have done the Maories no serious wrong. We recognized the claim of a handful of natives to the soil of a country as large as Great Britain, of not one-hundredth part of which had they ever made the smallest use; and, disregarding the fact that our occupation of the coast was the very event that gave the land its value, we have insisted on buying every acre from the tribe. Allowing title by conquest to the Ngatiraukawa, as I saw at Parewanui Pah, we refuse to claim even the lands we conquered from the “Kingites.” The Maories have always been a village people, tilling a little land round their pahs, but incapable of making any use of the great pastures and wheat countries which they “own.” Had we at first constituted native reserves, on the American system, we might, without any fighting, and without any more rapid destruction of the natives than that which is taking place, have gradually cleared and brought into the market nearly the whole country, which now has to be purchased at enormous prices, and at the continual risk of war. As it is, the record of our dealings with the Queen‘s native subjects in New Zealand has been almost free from stain, but if we have not committed crimes, we have certainly not failed to blunder: our treatment of William Thompson was at the best a grave mistake. If ever there lived a patriot he was one, and through him we might have ruled in peace the Maori race. Instead of receiving the simplest courtesy from a people which in India showers honors upon its puppet kings and rajahs, he underwent fresh insults each time that he entered an English town or met a white magistrate or subaltern, and he died, while I was in the colonies--according to Pakéha physicians, of liver complaint; according to the Maories, of a broken heart.