rofitable use of so great an area. The islands of New
Zealand contain only a little more land than Great Britain itself,
and sixty years ago, when England first thought of annexing them to
her empire, the native inhabitants numbered little if anything short
of a hundred thousand souls. They were besides a settled people who
cultivated the soil, and moreover they were warlike, and formidable to
any invader. In consequence of these things a wholly new departure was
made in the case of New Zealand. The country was not occupied on any
plea of discovery or of conquest, as had been done in so many parts of
the world before, but the sovereignty of the islands was obtained by
treaty with the chiefs of the native tribes, upon the distinct
guarantee that the full rights of the aboriginal inhabitants to their
lands should be recognized and protected by England against all
comers.

From the first, therefore, the lands of New Zealand have been
purchased by the government before they could be disposed of to the
settlers. The community had no vast tracts of land to dispose of which
had cost nothing but the expense of survey, but as a matter of fact
had to look on every acre as an investment which must be sold for a
certain definite price unless the transaction was to result in an
absolute loss of money to the people at large. It may well have
happened that the result of so unusual a condition of affairs was to
lead the community to regard the public lands in a somewhat different
light from other people. At any rate it led to all lands being sold
for a price which prevented their being lightly esteemed or as a rule
held as freeholds in large areas. So much was this the case that from
the first nearly all pastoral lands were held under leases from the
government at fixed annual rentals. Fully forty years ago the
southern, and larger, of the islands was nearly all purchased from the
comparatively small native population by the government, and in that
island a very large proportion of the land has always been let on
lease for grazing. In the northern island nearly one-half of the land
even now belongs to the original native owners, and much of this area
is leased from them by Europeans for farming or grazing purposes.

In this way it has happened that in New Zealand, more than in any
other country occupied by people of European race, the inhabitants
have grown accustomed to the idea of holding land on lease, with the
people at large, as