Page:Rambles in New Zealand.djvu/38

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RAMBLES IN NEW ZEALAND.
21

their teachers, as it too often does; most of the Europeans laying all the blame of the progressive craftiness of the natives to the missionaries, who, they say, spoil them, and "teach them their impudence:" whereas, the fact is, the missionary natives, knowing more than their uninstructed brethren, like all people who know very little indeed, but yet something, are apt to think they know a great deal, and presume accordingly. They often fancy that they know quite as much as the "Pakiha Mowries" (a name applied to the pork-traders, &c., who have native women for wives), if not as the missionaries themselves. There is a terrible dislike amongst the low Europeans generally to the missionaries; and it is easily accounted for—the former all live with native women as wives, which is discountenanced by the missionaries. The generality of them are great rascals, runaway convicts, sailors, &c., who, with the ordinary rancour of low minds, dislike people superior to themselves in intelligence and respectability; especially when they see that in spite of their utmost efforts, the influence of the missionaries is greater, even amongst those not professing to be Christians, than ever they can expect to acquire, for the very obvious reason, that the disinterested exertions of the preachers are all directed to one object, and they all support each other—while the others only work for themselves, and hate one another in proportion to the proximity of their residences. With regard to what they all say about the missionaries causing the natives to sell their produce of pigs, &c. dearer, and require more for their labour, it is wholly without foundation: for one pig, or pot of potatoes or corn, that the one buys, the others buy five hundred; and to my certain knowledge the mission price for labour is not more than half that which the Pakihas give. I also know that the price paid for pigs, &c., is not more in one instance than the other; and if it were, it could do the traders no harm, as the