The Legislative Council had lost no time in passing beneficial Acts, the citizens were inclined to be law-abiding, and trade, of a sort, flourished. The architecture in the towns was not exactly classic; but all looked confidently forward to the time when the weather-board house with from two to six rooms should be replaced by the mansion, and the tiny general store make way for the splendid palace of the merchant prince. Compare pictures of a street in Auckland or Wellington in 1842 with photographs of the same street to-day, and admit that the expectation has been fulfilled. The children who had accompanied their parents to the new land were not allowed to run wild, and education was not entirely neglected. The power of the Press, too, had already made itself felt by the issue of nine newspapers. These had neither the dignity nor the imposing size of the mighty dailies of to-day, being for the most part smaller than a single page of any of them, while one, at least, was printed in a mangle! Yet there they were and, if most of them died, they have left descendants to be proud of. Keeping in view that these forward steps of the infant colony were made within one year of her assumption of independence, that the colonists had to struggle against real financial troubles, that, in many cases, their claim to the land they had bought was disputed, and--most sinister obstacle of all--that they were face to face with a proud, intellectual, warlike race, not altogether friendly, and outnumbering them by five to one,--keeping all this in view, is it not admirable that those strenuous men of yesterday and their worthy descendants of to-day should, in little more than half a century, have raised New Zealand from a tiny colony of eight scattered settlements to a dominion of the Empire? We have seen how Governor Hobson opposed what he held to be the illegal acts of a Company engineered by men not likely to take blows "lying down." The Directors in England represented their case as just, and claimed some twenty million acres as fairly purchased. The British Government accepted their statement, allowed the claim, and on the 12th of February, 1841, gave the Company a Royal Charter of Incorporation. The Company were jubilant. It now mattered not if grumbling Maori should declare that their lands had been unfairly acquired, and aver, as they did aver, that the purchases of the Company were "thievish bargains"; the power of Britain was behind the Company, who could henceforth defy opponents of whatever colour. Not quite. There was Governor Hobson to be reckoned with, and his counterblast was terribly effective. He refused--under the proclamation of the previous year--to give the Company Crown grants for any of their purchases.