The account which Rutherford gives of the law, or custom, which prevails in New Zealand in regard to the crime of theft, may seem at first sight to be somewhat irreconcilable with the statements of other authorities, who tell us that this crime is regarded by the natives in so heinous a light that its usual punishment is death; whereas, according to him, it would seem scarcely to be considered 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 the condition of the great body of the population, except in so far as it affected, or was affected by, that of the chiefs.  Hence the impression