In the course of years the condition of the European settlements became a serious scandal; law and order were unknown, and there were constant collisions between the natives and the Europeans, in which the white men appear to have been frequently the aggressors. The Governor of New South Wales, who was supposed to exercise a shadowy authority over the British in New Zealand, reported strongly to the Colonial Office on the subject, and the missionaries loudly complained that their efforts among the Maoris were hampered by the presence of a considerable number of Europeans, whose conduct was unrestrained by any form of government. In 1840, England yielded to the pressure of public opinion and formally annexed New Zealand. This step, ostensibly taken solely for the benefit of the Maoris, was also influenced by political considerations, for the French had long desired to establish themselves in the Southern Pacific: ever since the time of Cook their ships had occasionally visited New Zealand, and it was known that France was preparing to found a colony in the South island. An English frigate, the _Druid_, sailed with the newly-appointed Governor about the same time as _L’Aube_, a French man-of-war started in charge of a transport full of emigrants for New Zealand. Our ship outstripped the French vessels, and when _L’Aube_ reached the South island her captain, to his bitter mortification, found that the Union Jack had been hoisted forty-eight hours before! The terms upon which New Zealand passed into the hands of the Crown were almost unique in the history of England. Our possessions in the East have been won by the sword in wars forced upon us by the lawlessness of the neighbouring States. In America the presence of a large French garrison in Canada and at the mouth of the St Lawrence was a thunder cloud constantly overhanging the New England colonies until we captured Quebec in the Seven Years’ War. In the southern hemisphere Australia was a no-man’s land--a wilderness inhabited only by a few tribes of degraded savages. The necessity of defending the colonists in South Africa against the attacks of marauding Kaffirs has caused the gradual extension of British rule from Cape Town on the Atlantic to Zululand on the Indian Ocean. But in New Zealand the chiefs were treated as our equals when, at the solemn treaty of Waitanga in 1840, they ceded on behalf of their clans the sovereignty of their territories to Queen Victoria, and accepted her protection, and with it all the rights and privileges of British subjects.