Ill Manning's 'Old New Zealand' 339 



for as the Maori, and none apparently ever took so 

 readily to the ways of Christianity and civilisation ; 

 but they went, according to the behests of that 

 terrible law : ' Remove thyself, that a higher than 

 thou may take thy place, as soon as thou hast 

 sufficiently warmed it for him.' A law so stern and 

 inexorable, that the very means used to prevent its 

 execution only assists it, and the efforts of the in- 

 coming race to preserve some relics of the outgoing 

 one only hasten its destruction. Often as not it is 

 the civilisation that kills, as the ' bra' stone cottage,' 

 with its ill-cemented, draughty walls, and bonnie 

 iron grates, swept away the northern Highlander, 

 wheti mistaken kindness bade him leave his cozy, 

 warm, black turf hut, with its mighty central smok- 

 ing peat fire, filling the air with rich preservative 

 distillisations, for their shivering chillinesses, to 

 cough away his life in hopeless consumption. 



No 1 whatever the Spaniard and others have 

 done, we English are not to be blamed for the 

 disappearance of the native races before us.^ We 

 have never used them off the face of the earth to 

 dig our gold in its bowels, or burned them off like 

 withered grass because they would not conform to 

 our particular religious whimsies. We have merely, 

 with the best intentions, improved them off, — that 

 is, in situations which permit us to take their places 

 with comfort and advantage to ourselves, — places 



^ Ha ! hum ! How about the black fellow of Australia and the 

 poisoned damper? 



