the starvation
(occasioned by crops neglected whilst labouring to produce flax or
other commodity demanded in payment)--I say imagine, but I have seen at
least part of it.

After the demand for arms was supplied, came a perfect furor for iron
tools, instruments of husbandry, clothing, and all kinds of pakeha
manufactures. These things having been quite beyond their means while
they were supplying themselves with arms, they were in the most extreme
want of them; particularly iron tools. A few years ago the madness ran
upon horses and cattle; now, young New Zealand believes in nothing but
money, and they are continually tormenting themselves with plans to
acquire it in large sums at once, without the trouble of slow and
saving industry; which, as applied to the accumulation of money, they
neither approve of nor understand: nor will they ever, as a people,
take this mode till convinced that money, like everything else of
value, can only be procured as a rule by giving full value for it,
either in labour or the produce of labour.

Here I am, I find, again before my story. Right down to the present
time, talking of "young New Zealand," and within a hair's-breadth of
settling "the Maori difficulty" without having been paid for it; which
would have been a great oversight, and contrary to the customs of New
Zealand. I must go back.

There were in the old times two great institutions, which ruled with
iron rod in Maori land--the _Tapu_ and the _Muru_. Pakehas who knew no
better called the _muru_ simply "robbery," because the word _muru_, in
its common signification, means to plunder. But I speak of the regular
legalized and established system of plundering, as penalty for
offences; which in a rough way resembled our law by which a man is
obliged to pay "damages." Great abuses had, however, crept into this
system--so great, indeed, as to render the retention of any sort of
movable property almost an impossibility, and in a great measure, too,
discourage the inclination to labour for its acquisition. These great
inconveniences were, however, met, or in some degree softened, by an
expedient of a peculiarly Maori nature, which I shall by-and-by
explain.

The offences for which people were plundered were sometimes of a nature
which, to a _mere_ pakeha, would seem curious. A man's child fell in
the fire and was almost burnt to death. The father was immediately
plundered to an extent that almost left him without the means of
sub