162 ADVENTURE IN NEW ZEALAND. Chap. VI. 
The obnoxious Land Claims Bill, and the j)etty 
tyranny of the Government officers, had at length dis- 
gusted the mere land-jobbing population of Auckland. 
The newspaper of that settlement, after a long course 
of open jealousy, and mean abuse of us and our loca- 
tion, — after grudging us and Akaroa the seven weeks 
that the Governor had been absent, — after following 
his example in classing as a crime on our part the in- 
convenience which Auckland suffered from the distance 
at which we lay from it, with our larger commercial 
resources, — had positively turned round upon its own 
population, and urged them to take an example from 
us in our independence and public denouncing of our 
oppressors. The Editor asked them, rather naively, 
whether their long life in a penal settlement had 
taught them to submit so tamely to the yoke ? But, 
for this ebullition of spirit, he had received a sharp rap 
on the knuckles from the trustees of the printing 
company by whom he was employed. The principal 
shareholders of this company were either in the imme- 
diate pay of Government, or connected in some indirect 
way with the strings of the Treasury; and so the 
trustees wrote Mr. Editor a letter giving him " notice 
" to quit" at the end of three months. 
A schooner, wrecked near the East Cape, had been 
plundered by a band of natives, headed by some lawless 
White ruffians, who laughed at the master and crew 
when they threatened them with the interference of 
the Government. No further notice was taken of the 
afiair. 
At the Bay of Islands, a native named Maketu had 
committed a cruel murder upon the widow of a Cap- 
tain Roberton, in whose service he was engaged, as 
well as her man-servant and her children. He had 
first tomahawked the servant on account of some verbal 
dispute, and then the lady and children, as they had 
