144 HOW TO LEGISLATE [PART I. 



verbal only, and not recorded in the written docu- 

 ment. It would indeed be sad were the native 

 obliged to trust to humanity, where insatiable and 

 grasping interest is his opponent, and where the 

 land has gone through ten different hands since 

 the first purchaser, who perhaps bought it for 

 a hundred pipes, and where not one of the buyers 

 ever thought of occupying it. In transferring 

 land to Europeans the natives had no further idea 

 of the nature of the transaction than that they 

 gave the purchaser permission to make use of a 

 certain district. They wanted Europeans amongst 

 them ; and it was beyond their comprehension that 

 one man should buy for another, who lived 15,000 

 miles off, a million of acres, and that this latter 

 should never come to the country, or bestow upon 

 the sellers those benefits which they justly expected. 



The most vital point in regard to the native in- 

 habitants, where they occupy part of claimed land, 

 and are inclined to retain it, is that the extent of 

 such disputed land should be fixed by legal titles 

 and boundaries, and that they should be protected 

 in the possession of it against the cupidity of the 

 Europeans. 



Her Majesty's Land Commissioners, in decid- 

 ing questions according to the letter of the deeds, 

 where the native sellers do not dispute the le- 

 gality of the title, cannot be aware of the hardship 

 and injustice which in some cases they will entail 

 upon native tribes. I will give one instance. An 



