62 ADVENTURE IN NEW ZEALAND. Chap. IU. 
nuations of artful and interested parties, such as Mr. 
Tod and other private land-claimants, or of others who, 
from their station as Christian pastors, should have 
been the last to employ such means. The poverty and 
ambiguity of the native language was a ready weapon 
in the hands of such unprincipled persons, because 
their advice and opinions, even when repeated in their 
own words, was capable of a harmless as well as of a 
mischievous interpretation. Thus the natives daily dis- 
played increased jealousy of the whites, and more false 
suspicions of their ultimate intentions towards them. 
Prone to lay great stress on a heedless action or an 
insignificant word, painfully sensitive to expressions 
which they formerly considered as a joke, and learning 
to watch with diffidence and incredulity every propo- 
sition made for their own good, as though it were a 
plot against their quiet or their liberty, they were well 
prepared to view the letter of Mr. Clarke as a warning 
against premeditated fraud and deceit. The production 
of this letter by themselves, when pressed for the reasons 
of their varying and unconciliatory conduct, showed 
that they looked upon it as their armour against an 
unworthy ruse. The very mention of driving them 
from their pas led them to look upon the proposed 
bargains as excuses for their violent expulsion ; and 
their dignity was naturally oftended as much as their 
fears were excit-ed. 
Thus the final arrangement of this momentous ques- 
tion was indefinitely postponed, because the Government, 
instead of aiding to adjust it satisfactorily by lending its 
own influence and persuasion towards obtaining the 
free consent of the natives, threw its weight into the 
opposite scale by a manuscript mandate, which was 
hardly impartial even in its words, and was in effect 
strongly conducive to their conviction that it wsis ex- 
