After Fifty Years.

All the heartburnings and jealousies which came into play in the early days of the coloinsation of New Zealand have passed away even to their very memory, except in the minds of some of our earliest settlers. Europeans and natives, laymen and missionaries, Government immigrants and Company's settlers, now work together as one harmonious whole, all equally having the interests of the colony at heart, and equally priding themselves on the glorious progress it has made.

Looking back through the vista of years to the year 1840 (fifty years ago), but little will be found with which the Government of the colony, whether under Imperial regime or as a self-governing colony, has to reproach itself, and never was a colony established in which the interests of the aboriginal race lave been considered and cared for as they lave been in New Zealand.

It is far too general an opinion that the advent of the colonists has proved fatal to the native race, and that they are slowly dwindling away owing to their contact with Europeans. We venture to express in the most emphatic manner a contrary opinion, viz., that the colonisation of the colony has page 9 arrested the destruction of the Maori race. Their losses in wars waged with the colonists were as nothing compared to the wholesale destruction that had been raging among themselves for generations, and which was finally put an end to on their subjugation by a stronger race. The true state of the case is, we think, put forth in the following words of an old chief, as related by Mr. Barstow in a lecture which he delivered some years ago in the Auckland Institute. Mr. Barstow put the question: "Suppose the white people had never come here?" The aged warrior paused, and then apostrophised: "I see an old man standing on the look-out post of lofty Te Ranga's pa. He strains his eyes, peering in every direction; no sign of human being, no uprising smoke meets his gaze, and then he cries to himself: 'Nobody, nobody; alas, not one! Days have passed since last I tasted the sweetness of human flesh. Is it all finished? One thing at least—no one survives to consign my body to the hangi (cooking oven).'"