Now as the enforcers of this law were also the parties who received the damages, as well as the judges of the amount--which in many cases (such as that of the burnt child) would be everything they could by any means lay hands on--it is easy to perceive that under such a system, personal property was an evanescent sort of thing altogether. These executions or distraints were never resisted. Indeed in many cases (as I shall explain by-and-by), it would have been felt as a slight, and even an insult, _not_ to be robbed; the sacking of a man's establishment being often taken as a high compliment, especially if his head was broken into the bargain: and to resist the execution would not only have been looked upon as mean and disgraceful in the highest degree, _but it would have debarred the contemptible individual from the privilege of robbing his neighbours_; which was the compensating expedient I have alluded to. All this may seem a waste of words to my pakeha Maori readers, to whom these things have become such matters of course as to be no longer remarkable; but I have remembered that there are so many new people in the country who don't understand the beauty of being knocked down and robbed, that I shall say a few more words on the subject. The tract of country inhabited by a single tribe might be, say, from forty to a hundred miles square, and the different villages of the different sections of the tribe would be scattered over this area at different distances from each other. We will by way of illustrating the working of the _muru_ system, take the case of the burnt child. Soon after the accident it would be heard of in the neighbouring villages; the family of the mother are probably the inhabitants of one of them, and have, according to the law of _muru_, the first and greatest right to clean out the afflicted father; a child being considered to belong to the family of the mother more than to that of the father--in fact, it is their child, which the father has the rearing of. The child was, moreover, a promising lump of a boy, the makings of a future warrior, and consequently very valuable to the whole tribe in general; but to the mother's family in particular. "A pretty thing to let him get spoiled." Then he is a boy of good family, a _rangatira_ by birth, and it would never do to let the thing pass without making a noise about it: that would be an insult to the dignity of the families of both father and mother. Decidedly, besides being robbed, the father must be assaulted with a spear. True, he is a famous spearsman, and for his own credit must "hurt" some one or another if attacked. But this is of no consequence: a flesh wound more or less deep is to be counted on; and then think of the plunder! It is against the law of _muru_ that any one should be killed, and first blood ends the duel. Then the natural affection of all the child's relations is great. They are all in a