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Maori Messenger : Te Karere Maori, Volume IV, Issue 4, 15 July 1857, Page 1

It has been made known in a former number of the Messenger that the Governor has ordered the English law to be condensed and translated into the Maori language, and published for the information of theMaories. This is a work of difficulty, ani requires great care, lest there should be errors. When it isaccomplished, men willbeableto see with their own eyes and judge for themselves, whether it is better to have a law which protects the weak and which secures every man in the possession of his property and his rights, or whether he would prefer to live in a society where the offence of one man may bring vengeance on the heads of many, or where crime moy be altogether unpunished if the offender is powerful

his men on horses drove ihem before him ! down the sloping hill. Some of the English seeing that in his ardour he had risked his life, went to his father to beg him to assist the Prince, but he replied " Has he fallen? if not, let him win his spurs and have the glory of the day"—and so he had:—the French were beaten, and their General slain, and this battle, known by the name of Cressy, is unforgotten to this day. Against a strong town, Calais, Edward next turned his forces. He blockaded it with all his army for eleven months, and although i Philip with 13,000 men brought food to give the starving citizens he could not pass the English to carry it to the City, so that at last the poor men, worn out by want of food and by the hard struggles they bad borne, offered to let Kiug Edward have their town, and he allowed them to pass out unharmed upon condition that six of tbo richest of their great men should be given up to him. So these six came with halters round their necks and hair shirts on their backs, and he would have hanged them, had not his queen, who had a gentle heart, begged him to spare ihem. Edward had now destroyed the French army, both on the open battle field and in the well walled city, but a great plagu e broke out in England, thousands died and all were struck with terror, as the doctor's ait had found no cure for that terrific sickness,which seized the strong man like a child and laid him ready to be thrown into the Ijoles they dvs to heap the dead in, The

crops were left ungathered in the fields ; all work stood still; and Edward had to leave his triumphs incomplete for want of men and money. At last the sickness ceased, and when Philip (the King of France you have heard of,) died, Edward once more claimed to be the rightful heir; and as the French still did not own his claim, he sent the Black Prince to assert it. He was a brave and noble Prince who feared no danger and turned even difficulties to his advantage; and with 12,000 men he not only routed the French army, six times as strong, but took King John and bis son prisoners and carried them to London, where, gentle as he was brave, he treated them with kindness and attention, and waited on them while they sat at food. But though these victories sounded glorious and gave much delight to Edward, they did no lasting good. The English Channel was between France and England, and as the people on the different sides are not alike in manners, language, or laws, it was far better they should each remain with their own King and work their greatness out after their different systems. When John, who was a prisoner, died, his son King Charles recovered from the English all that the Black Prince bv his deeds had won except the town of Calais; and this brave Black Prince died before his father, worn out by the hardships he had borne and by the unhealthy climates he had fought in. Edward lived for a year after his son's death, but was a changed and saddened man, and died, leaving his grandson Richard to succeed him. Till this time, the English, as the Maories now do, brought their tools, their cotton and their cloth from Foreign Countries, giving them in exchange their corn and wood and wool. But Edward brought a skilful set of working men to England who set up manufactures and shops, and soon the English followed their example, and, in the present day, no country in the world can make or send abroad such tools, such cotton, or such cloth as England makes and sends in all her merchant ships over the whole known Earth.