Wentworth and his associates for their twenty millions of acres in the Middle Island. A great deal was said by this gentleman, in the course of his address to the Council, of corruption and jobbery, as well as the love which men in office have for patronage. But, gentlemen, talk of corruption! talk of jobbery! Why, if all the corruption which has defiled England since the expulsion of the Stuarts was gathered into one heap, it would not make up such a sum as this; if all the jobs which have been done since the days of Sir Robert Walpole were collected into one job, they would not make so big a job as the one which Mr. Wentworth asks me to lend a hand in perpetrating; the job, that is to say, of making to him a grant of twenty millions of acres at the rate of 100 acres for a farthing! The Land Company of New South Wales has been said to be a job; one million of acres at eighteen pence per acre has been thought to be a pretty good job, but it absolutely vanishes into nothing by the side of Mr. Wentworth's job. In the course of this gentleman's argument, he quoted largely from Vattel and the Law of Nations to prove the right of independent people to sell their lands; and he piteously complained of the grievous injustice which we should do to the New Zealanders if we were to deny them the same right; and the Council may recollect that when I reminded him that he was here to maintain his own rights and not those of the New Zealanders, he replied, not unaptly, that as his was a derivative right, it was necessary for him to show that it had previously existed in the persons from whom he had derived it; it was, in fact, necessary for him to show that the right existed in the nine savages, who were lately in Sydney, to sell the Middle Island, in order to show his own right to purchase it from them at the rate of 400 acres for a penny! Lastly, gentlemen, it has been said that the principles on which this Bill is founded are derived from the times of Cortez and Pizarro--times when not only the rights of civilised nations, but the rights also of humanity, were disregarded. To this I answer, that whatever changes (and thank Heaven they are many) which the progress of religion and enlightenment have produced amongst us, they are all in favour of the savage, and not against him. It would be indeed the very height of hypocrisy in Her Majesty's Government to abstain, or pretend to abstain, for religion's sake, from despoiling these poor savages of their lands, and yet to allow them to be despoiled by individuals being subjects of Her Majesty. It is in the spirit of that enlightenment which characterises the present age, that the British Government is now about to interfere in the affairs of New Zealand. That it interferes against its will, and only under the force of circumstances, is evident from Lord Normanby's despatch; the objects for which we go to New Zealand are clearly set forth in it, and