finances of one or other of the self-governing parts of the Empire.
Many of its members never expect to see a colony. But they have come
to recognise that those new-comers into the circle of civilized
communities, the daughter nations of Britain, are not unworthy of
English study and English pride. They have begun to suspect that
the story of their struggles into existence and prosperity may be
stirring, romantic, and interesting, and that some of their political
institutions and experiments may be instructive, though others may
seem less safe than curious. Some of those who think thus complain
that it is not always easy to find an account of a colony which shall
be neither an official advertisement, the sketch of a globe-trotting
impressionist, nor yet an article manufactured to order by some honest
but untravelled maker of books. They ask--or at least some of them, to
my knowledge, ask--for a history in which the picturesque side of the
story shall not be ignored, written simply and concisely by a writer
who has made a special study of his subject, or who has lived and
moved amongst the places, persons, and incidents he describes.

I have lived in New Zealand, have seen it and studied it from end to
end, and have had to do with its affairs: it is my country. But I
should not have presumed to endeavour to supply in its case the want
above indicated had any short descriptive history of the colony from
its discovery to the present year been available. Among the many
scores of books about the Islands--some of which are good, more of
which are bad--I know of none which does what is aimed at in this
volume. I have, therefore, taken in hand a short sketch-history of
mine, published some six months ago, have cut out some of it and have
revised the rest, and blended it with the material of the following
chapters, of which it forms nearly one-third. The result is something
not quite so meagre in quantity or staccato in style, though even now