Abstract:
In this thesis I have endeavoured to sketch a history of Maori civil law from the coming of the Europeans to New Zealand to the outbreak of the Maori Wars in 1860, which were caused chiefly, as I have tried to show, by the decay of the Maoris' barbaric substitutes for civil law and the failure of the Pakeha to rebuild what he destroyed.
The thesis is divided into two parts. The first contains a description of civil law in the social organisation of the Maoris, before the White Man so quickly shattered their primitive culture. The second part describes the decay of that civil law, and is divided into nine chapters, each of which except the last, deals with one of the causes of decay. The last chapter is a picture of Maori society after the destruction of its civil law, and is depressing when compared with the first few chapters, for it gives a conclusive proof that the British were not successful in the first twenty years of their administration of native affairs in New Zealand. Some of the gloom, however, is dispelled by an extract from a New Zealand Newspaper of this year, which shows that even if the British failed in their first attempts to civilize the Maoris, they succeeded in their later ones, for the Maoris are now a happy and contented race.
