Chap. III. THE " GOVERNMENT FEVER." 5ft 
The going over of these two gentlemen to the enemy 
was one of the earliest instances of what afterwards 
came to be called " catching the Government fever." 
This idea of some Wellington wit very pithily expressed 
the manner in which the oldest settlers and most un- 
prejudiced officials from England generally imbibed the 
distinctive manners, the vulgar haughtiness and im- 
portance, and the opinionated partisanship, of the Auck- 
land staff, with their first draught from the Auckland 
treasury. 
Colonel Wakefield was in constant communication 
with Captain Hobson on the various subjects comprised 
in the recent *' agreement " in England. To the 
great surprise of most people, it soon got abroad that 
many of the despatches from the Colonial Office to the 
Grovernor were first made known to his Excellency by 
the perusal of copies which had been forwarded to 
Colonel Wakefield by the Directors. Many instances 
occurred in which Captain Hobson denied having re- 
ceived certain instructions, and was startled to find a 
copy of them handed to him out of a little packet of 
papers in the despatch-box of the Company's Agent. As 
all the despatches for the Governor had been forwarded 
to him, and received before his departure from Auck- 
land, the absence of some of the most important among 
them, of which copies had been openly given to the Di- 
rectors in England, looked very like gross neglect or 
intentional omission on the part of the home officials. 
It soon became clear that the Governor would not 
carry out the whole spirit of the agreement, and that 
he would issue no titles to the land which the Com- 
pany had a right to expect, until their purchases should 
be examined and proved before a Commission of Land 
Claims; thus placing them in precisely the same po- 
sition as the other land claimants, and repudiating the 
