CHAP. IX.] 135 



CHAPTER IX. 



How to legislate for the Natives of New Zealand ? 



A FEELING of regret is, I believe, very generally 

 excited amongst thinking men, when they observe 

 how little benefit has resulted to barbarous tribes 

 from their intercourse with the people of civilized 

 nations. Not only does the bodily frame of the 

 savage lose its health and manly beauty, his mind 

 its instinctive acuteness and primitive resources, 

 but, either by the more violent means of wholesale 

 murder, or gradually, as if acted upon by a slow 

 poison, the races diminish in numerical strength, 

 until they cease to exist as nations or tribes. The 

 philosopher in his study speculates on the causes 

 of the disappearance of certain kinds of animals, by 

 changes which have taken place in the physical con- 

 dition of the globe, whether in the earliest or more 

 recent periods. It is well known that, besides one 

 division of natural history embracing the subject of 

 living animals and plants, there exists another re- 

 lating to those which are extinct, and for the in- 

 vestigation of which their fossil remains furnish 

 us with materials ; but it is not so generally 

 known that we have proofs of similar extinctions 



