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Observer, Volume 2, Issue 35, 14 May 1881, Page 373

"We overheard a ghastly conversation at the Star Hotel the other day. An English gentleman "doing" the colonies was talking to a local worthy about the people here, and asked, apparently in sober earnest, whether Auckland had ever been a penal settlement ! " No," was the surprised response, " Surely you are aware that convicts were never at any time sent to New Zealand." "I thought not" said the traveller, " and it is that very fact which puzzles me. Do you know that never, in the whole course of my peregrinations, have I seen so many low and repulsive casts of countenanceas in Auckland. I refer, be it understood, not to the lower classes, but to your leading citizens. They look, many of them, as if they had been spawned in the gutter, and educated" in "Seven I)ials. : ' I was introduced yesterday to an apparently notable J.P., a puffy, consequential person, well ." At this point we stopped our ears in order to hear no more. Our best feelings had been trampled on, and the delusions of a lifetime shattered. We fled.