they have taken up that theft in New Zealand is looked upon as one of the worst of crimes, and always punished with death.  It is so, we have no doubt, when committed by one of the common people upon any of the privileged class.  In that case, the mean and despised condition of the delinquent, as compared with that of the person whose rights he has dared to invade, converts what might otherwise have scarcely been deemed a transgression at all into something little short of sacrilege.  The thief is therefore knocked on the head at once, or strung up on a gallows; for that, too, seems to be one of the modes of public punishment for this species of crime in New Zealand.  This severity is demanded by the necessity which is felt for upholding the social edifice in its integrity; and is also altogether in keeping with the slight regard in which the lives of the lower orders are universally held, and the love of bloodshed by which this ferocious people is distinguished.

But when one “cookee,” or common man, pilfers from another, it is quite another matter.  In this case, the act entirely wants those aggravations which, in the estimation of a New Zealander, give it all its criminality; and the parties, besides, are so insignificant, that the notion of avenging any injury which the one may have suffered from the other by the public execution of the offender would probably be deemed in that country nearly as unreasonable as we should hold a proposal for the application of such a scheme of government in correction of the quarrels and other irregularities of the lower animals.

It need not, therefore, surprise us to be told, especially when we consider also the trivial value of any articles of property they possess, that thieving among the common people there is regarded, not as a crime, but as an art, in which, as in other arts, the skilful and dexterous practitioner deserves reward rather than punishment; nearly as it was regarded among the Spartans, who punished the detected thief, indeed, but not so much for his attempt as for his failure; or more nearly still as it is said to have been among the ancient Egyptians, by whom such acts were, in all cases, allowed to be perpetrated with impunity.

This view will go far to explain various incidents which we find noticed in the different accounts of New Zealand.  The reports of the missionaries, in particular, abound with notices of individuals put to death by the chiefs for alleged acts of theft; but in every case of this kind which is mentioned, the person punished is, we believe, a slave.  We have observed no instance, noted, in which the crime in question was punished, either with death or in any other way, when committed by one “cookee” on the property of another; and it is abundantly evident, from many things which are stated, that the natives themselves really do not consider the act as implying, in ordinary cases, that moral turpitude which we generally impute to it.