ed by them as a crime at all.

This apparent disagreement, however, arises, in all probability, merely
from that misapprehension, or imperfect conception, of the customs of a
foreign people into which we are so apt to be misled by the tendency we
have to mix up constantly our own previously acquired notions with the
simple facts that present themselves to us, and to explain the latter by
the former. With our habits and improved ideas of morality, we see in
theft both a trespass upon the arbitrary enactments of society, which
demands the correction of the civil magistrate, and a violation of that
natural equity which is independent of all political arrangements, and
would make it unfair and wrong for one man to take to himself what
belongs to another, although there were no such thing as what is
commonly called a government in existence.

But in the mind of the New Zealander these simple notions of right and
wrong have been warped, and, as it were, suffocated, by a multitude of
unnatural and monstrous inventions, which have grown up along with them
from his very birth. How misapplied are the epithets, natural and
artificial, when employed, as they often are, to characterise the savage
and civilized state! It is the former, in truth, which is by far the
most artificial; and much of civilization consists in the abolition of
the numerous devices by which it has falsified and perverted the natural
dispositions of the human heart and understanding, and in the
reformation of society upon principles more accordant with their
unsophisticated dictates.

Probably the only case in which the New Zealander looks upon theft as a
crime is when it is accompanied by a breach of hospitality, or is
committed upon those who have, in the customary and understood manner,
entrusted themselves to his friendship and honour. In any other
circumstances, he will scarcely hold himself disgraced by any act of
depredation which he can contrive to accomplish without detection;
however much the fear of not escaping with impunity may often deter him
from making the attempt.

Then, as for the estimation in which the crime is politically held,
this, we need not doubt, will be very much regulated by the relative
situation in regard to rank of the two parties. Most of the European
visitors who have hitherto given us an account of the country have mixed
chiefly with the higher classes of its inhabitants, and consequently
learned but little with regard to