At the same time Governor Hobson had announced to the white settlers by proclamation that the Government would not recognise the validity of any of their land titles not given under the Queen’s authority.  It is not easy to see how else he could have dealt with the land-sharks, of whom there had been an ugly rush from Sydney on the news of the coming annexation, and most of whom as promptly retreated on finding the proclamation to be a reality.  But at the same time his treaty and his proclamation were bound to paralyse settlement, to exasperate the entire white population, and to plunge the infant colony into a sea of troubles.  Outside the missionaries and the officials every one was uneasy and alarmed.  All the settlers were either landowners, land claimants, or would-be land purchasers.  Yet they found themselves at one and the same time left without titles to all that they thought they possessed, and debarred from the right of buying anything more except from the Crown.  And as the Governor was without funds, and the Crown, therefore, could not buy from the natives, there was a deadlock.  Space will not admit here of a full discussion of the vexed question of the land clause in the Treaty of Waitangi.  As a rule civilized nations do not recognise the right of scattered handfuls of barbarians to the ownership of immense tracts of soil, only a fraction of which they cultivate or use.  However, from the noblest and most philanthropic motives an exception to this rule was made in the case of New Zealand, and by treaty some sixty to seventy thousand Maoris were given a title guaranteed by England—­the best title in the world—­to some sixty-six million acres of valuable land.  Putting aside the question of equity, it may be observed that, had not this been done, the Maoris, advised by the missionaries, would certainly have refused their assent to the Treaty.  The millions sterling which have had to be spent in New Zealand, directly and indirectly, in acquiring Maori land for settlement, supply of course no argument whatever against the equity of the Treaty.  When honour is in the scale, it outweighs money.  Yet had Captain Hobson been able to conceive what was entailed in the piecemeal purchase of a country held under tribal ownership, it is difficult to think that he would have signed the Treaty without hesitation.  He could not, of course, imagine that he was giving legal force to a system under which the buying of a block of land would involve years of bargaining even when a majority of its owners wished to sell; that the ascertainment of a title would mean tedious and costly examination by courts of experts of a labyrinth of strange and conflicting barbaric customs; that land might be paid for again and again, and yet be declared unsold; that an almost empty wilderness might be bought first from its handful of occupants, then from the conquerors who had laid it waste, and yet after all be reclaimed by returned slaves or fugitives who had quitted it years before, and who had been