Chap. Vin. GOVERNMENT NEGLIGENCE. ' 213 
I> The miserable police establishment of Wellington 
had become very inefficient; and robberies of stores 
and houses along the beach were of very frequent 
occurrence. 
^ The want of an insolvent-law was beginning to be 
felt, as the impossibility of occupying country land 
until the question of claims should be settled was be- 
ginning to have its effect ; and several persons, ignorant 
of business, and who had been forced into keen com- 
petition with one another, had become insolvent shop- 
keepers instead of thriving farmers. 
The whalers complained loudly of the duties im- 
posed upon spirits and tobacco, which are both articles 
of great consumption at the shore stations. The to- 
bacco, especially, is employed to procure fire- wood and 
provisions for the party from the natives. They, not 
understanding at all how the Queen could make the 
White people pay twice as much for it as before she 
had anything to do with the country, were staunch in 
refusing to take any smaller quantity than before for a 
pig or a basket of potatoes. And the Wellington 
merchants, who had now got most of the stations de- 
pendent on them for supplies, and the Wellington 
people generally, who appreciated the importance of 
the whaling trade to the commerce of the port and 
town, took up the grievance as their own. 
At the beginning of July, the most recent dates 
from the metropolis reached Wellington again through 
Sydney, as we had none less than three months old 
from Auckland direct. The only intelligence from the 
stagnant capital was, that a Gazette had been published 
there officially in the Maori language. If used with 
talent and judgment, this might indeed have been made 
a powerful engine for the civilization of the natives. 
Now generally able to read, they seized on all print in 
