erefore their choice; and it is perhaps to be
lamented, that from the period of their capture, they have not been
placed entirely under the parental care of some religious communion.
Those who think lightly of missionary institutions, will find here no
ground for exultation in the disastrous surveillance of the civil
government.

Englishmen, of whatever rank, cannot fail to survey the aboriginal
youth, less in number than many a colonial household, with deep
solicitude; or when estimating their claims, to remember the fortunes of
their fathers. Or should their helplessness and dependence ever tempt a
ruler to expose them to the corrupting influence of the lowest examples,
and to assign them the meanest education, he may be recovered to some
sense of justice by the following confession of a distinguished
predecessor:--

"Undoubtedly, the being reduced to the necessity of driving a _simple
but warlike, and, as_ IT NOW APPEARS, NOBLE MINDED RACE, from their
native hunting grounds, is a measure in itself so distressing, that I am
willing to make almost any prudent sacrifice that may tend to compensate
for the injuries that government is unwillingly and unavoidably the
instrument of inflicting."--GEORGE ARTHUR.[27]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 23:

+-----+---------+-----+--------+
|Date.|Captured.|Died.|Escaped.|
+-----+---------+-----+--------+
|1831 | 54 | -- | -- |
|1832 | 68 | 5 | -- |
|1833 | 42 | 40 | 3 |
|1834 | 20 | 14 | -- |
|1835 | 17 | 14 | -- |
| |---------+-----+--------+
| | 201 | 73 | 3 |
+-----+---------+-----+--------+

The numbers were-- In 1836 In 1838 In 1847
---- ---- ----
123 82 45]

[Footnote 24: The Bishop of New Zealand has wisely protested against the
blanketing process of depopulation. The ignorant natives, accustomed to
lie down in their damp huts, were steamed into consumptions.]

[Footnote 25: "They pine away: more than one half have died, not from
any positive disease, but from a disease they (physicians) call _home
sickness_;'--a disease which is common to some Europeans, particularly
the Swiss soldiers. They die from a disease of the stomach, which comes
on entirely from a desire to return to their own country."--_Evidence of
Col. Surgeon Barnes: Par. Papers._]

[Footnote 26: The subjoined abbreviated list may give an idea of the
rapid decline:--