Chap. XV. UNFAIR ABSTRACTION OF LABOURERS. 409 
population of his metropolis to the number of 150. It 
was added that Captain Hobson expressed no intention 
of coming hither for the present. An official notice 
appeared, moreover, in the Gazette, signed by the Police 
Magistrate, offering high wages, and temporary rent- 
free allotments of land for residence, as an inducement 
to twenty-one mechanics to proceed to Auckland in 
the employ of Government. This advertisement ex- 
cited much unpleasant feeling in the minds of the co- 
lonists. They remembered that these labourers had 
been brought to Port Nicholson by means of the high 
price which they had paid in England for their land ; 
they knew that all the labour in the settlement was at 
this time employed, at good wages ; and they justly 
grudged their abduction by these higher inducements, 
to be employed on Government works which, at that 
enormous distance, could confer no possible benefit on 
the settlement to which the labourers in all fairness 
belonged. And his Excellency was by many accused 
of wishing to inflict a grievous injury on the settlers 
in Cook's Strait, in addition to his long and inexplica- 
ble neglect. . It was not known that his Excellency 
was at this time writing dispatches to the Colonial 
Minister in England disparaging the capabilities of 
Port Nicholson, and asserting the refusal of the natives 
to part with the land near it. The letters of Lieutenant 
Shortland, on which he founded these accounts, were 
dated at Russell in October and November ; that is, 
after he had got back from Port Nicholson. I must add, 
that the extraordinary misrepresentations contained in 
them, as to the position and capacity of the harbour 
and the nature of the surrounding country, were fully 
contradicted by the best authorities after the letters 
had reached England. 
The Governor's liberal invitation was, however, some- 
