It is by no means surprising that a community which has made so many experiments in legislation should have turned its attention to the question which may perhaps be looked upon as most specially inviting attention from social reformers in a new country. The circumstances of New Zealand in relation to the land were from the first exceptional. In every other country occupied by savage tribes in modern times which has been taken possession of for purposes of settlement by people of European race, the ownership of the soil has been assumed, as a matter of course, to vest not in the aboriginal natives, but in the intruding settlers. Spain, England, France, Holland, Germany, and the United States have one after the other adopted this convenient theory of international morality, and entered with a cool assumption of right upon the inheritance of their comparatively helpless predecessors. In New Zealand the conditions of the country and its inhabitants rendered this popular system wholly inapplicable. The area of the country was limited, to an extent which rendered it impossible to adopt the fiction which has lain at the root of nearly all the forcible confiscation of the territory of native tribes, namely, that they could make no profitable use of so great an area. The islands of New Zealand contain only a little more land than Great Britain itself, and sixty years ago, when England first thought of annexing them to her empire, the native inhabitants numbered little if anything short of a hundred thousand souls. They were besides a settled people who cultivated the soil, and moreover they were warlike, and formidable to any invader. In consequence of these things a wholly new departure was made in the case of New Zealand. The country was not occupied on any plea of discovery or of conquest, as had been done in so many parts of the world before, but the sovereignty of the islands was obtained by treaty with the chiefs of the native tribes, upon the distinct guarantee that the full rights of the aboriginal inhabitants to their lands should be recognized and protected by England against all comers.