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266 INFLUENCE OF COMMERCE. more fair proportions ; and New Zealand, instead of being portioned out among a small number of magnates, (land sharks,) holds out to all a chance of obtaining a portion of the loaves and fishes of an infant colony. From the New Zealand missionaries, as well as from the dealers in tobacco and gunpowder, an opprobrious epithet has been removed ; and the name itself, like the reality which it denoted, may be consigned to oblivion. Of the merit of civilizing the New Zealanders, a large share has been frequently assigned to the intercourse of traders and the visits of ships. The influence of com merce in communicating to barbarous nations a know ledge of the arts and habits of civilized life is known : races of men far less gifted than the New Zealanders have derived the elements of improvement from this source. To the commerce of the Phoenicians we trace the first appearance of refinement among the primi tive nations of Europe; and even our aboriginal fathers were rescued by their Roman conquerors from their native barbarism, which comprised cannibalism among its features, and from the influence of Druidical super stitions as “ dark and sanguinary as those practised by the worshippers of Mawe.” All this is true of com mercial intercourse, in a general sense; nevertheless, from all that I have seen or heard respecting the fixed traders in New Zealand, or the casual visiters for the purpose of trade, it may be affirmed, in the most positive terms, that not one of them has ever attempted to teach a native to read and write, or to communicate to his mind one ray of Christian knowledge or of moral rectitude. With a few honourable exceptions, they have been, in their inter course with the natives, guided by one ruling impulse—