or more than a year after his death. Meantime the
Government was carried on by Mr. Secretary Shortland, not the ablest
of his officials. He soon very nearly blundered into war with the
Maoris, some of whom had been killing and eating certain of another
tribe--the last recorded instance of cannibalism in the country.
The Acting-Governor was, however, held back by Bishop Selwyn, Chief
Justice Martin, and Swainson the Attorney-General, a trio of whom more
will be said hereafter. The two former walked on foot through the
disturbed district, in peril but unharmed, to proffer their good
advice. The Attorney-General advised that what the Acting-Governor
contemplated was _ultra vires_, an opinion so palpably and daringly
wrong that some have thought it a desperate device to save the
country. He contended that as the culprits in the case were not among
the chiefs who had signed the Treaty of Waitangi, they were not
subject to the law or sovereignty of England. Though it is said that
Dr. Phillimore held the same opinion, the Colonial Office put its foot
upon it heavily and at once. Her Majesty's rule, said Lord Stanley,
having once been proclaimed over all New Zealand, it did not lie with
one of her officers to impugn the validity of her government.

Mr. Shortland's day was a time of trial for the land claimants. After
nearly two years' delay Mr. Spain, the Commissioner for the trial
of the New Zealand Company's claims, had landed in Wellington in
December, 1841, and had got to work in the following year. As the
southern purchases alone gave him work enough for three men, Messrs.
Richmond and Godfrey were appointed to hear the Auckland cases. By the
middle of 1843 they had disposed of more than half of 1,037 claims.
Very remorselessly did they cut them down. A well-known missionary who
had taken over a block of 50,000 acres to prevent two tribes going
to war about it, was allowed to keep 3,000 acres only. At Hokianga a
purchaser who claimed to have bought 1,500 acres for L24 was awarded
96 acres. When we remember that among the demands of the greater
land-sharks of the Colony had been three for more than a million acres
each, three for more than half a million each, and three for more
than a quarter of a million each, we can appreciate what the early
Governors and their Commissioners had to face. The Old Land Claims,
now and afterwards looked into, covered some eleven million acres.
Of these a little less than one twenty-second p