Chap. II. NEGLECT OF THE SETTLERS BY CAPT. HOBSON. 27 
perty was daily changing hands, and very numerous com- 
mercial transactions took place, debts remained unpaid, 
and contracts unfulfilled ; wills were unproved and 
unexecuted ; and trespassing, in its various forms, oc- 
curred daily and with impunity. 
The natives had begun to ridicule the idea that 
" Wide-awake's" white men were cared for by the Go- 
vernor or the Queen. The soldiers, while here, had only 
been used once, and then without effecting the object for 
which they had been called ; and in too many instances, 
both before and after their removal, the natives had 
been allowed to see that the person in authority steadily 
refused to interfere when a settler was aggrieved by their 
increasing insolence and extortion. Instances were 
gradually multiplying to prove that this spirit of non- 
interference excited in the minds of the natives a reck- 
less and presuming disposition ; and that such con- 
nivance at their caprices and cupidity could not fail to 
excite the very spirit of hostility to the settlers, which 
the Police Magistrate professed to dread as the conse- 
quence of a firm repression of these bad dispositions. 
Very children in their ideas, the natives could not 
appreciate the merciful forbearance and peaceable re- 
spect for the law which prevented the settlers from re- 
taliating or acting for themselves ; and it appeared to 
them that the 'pakeha were a timid and submissive 
race, relying entirely for defence and protection on dis- 
tant chiefs, who neglected their tribe in the most 
marked manner. And already many of the colonists 
who felt the warmest interest in the welfare of the na- 
tives, began to dread lest this state of things might last 
too long, and lest the mercy and generosity of the su- 
perior race might at some period become exhausted by 
continued and increased irritation, till the strong and 
civilized European should turn in anger on the simple 
savage, confessing his inferiority too late. 
