I would rather be governed by Nero on the spot than by a Board of Angels in London.—John Robert Godley.
Though Governor Hobson landed in January, the formal annexation of the Colony did not take place until May. He had first to take possession; and this could only be effectually done with the consent of the native tribes. The northern chiefs were therefore summoned, and came to meet the Queen's representative at Waitangi (Water of Weeping). Tents and a platform were erected, and the question of annexation argued at length. The French Bishop Pompallier appeared in full canonicals, and it was found that chiefs under his influence had been well coached to oppose the new departure. Behind the scenes, too, that worst of beachcombers, Jacky Marmon, secretly made all the mischief he could. On the other hand, Henry Williams, representing the Protestant missionaries, threw his weight into the scale on the Governor's side and acted as translator. While many of the chiefs were still doubtful, if not hostile, Waka Nene, the most influential of the Ngapuhi tribe, spoke strongly and eloquently for annexation. His speech gained the day, and a treaty was drawn up and signed. By the preamble, Queen Victoria invited the confederated and independent Chiefs of New Zealand to concur in Articles to the following effect:—
(1) The Chiefs of New Zealand ceded to Her Majesty, absolutely and without reservation, all their rights and powers of Sovereignty.
(2) Her Majesty guaranteed to the Chiefs and Tribes of New Zealand, full, exclusive, and undisturbed possession of their Lands and Estates, Forests, Fisheries and other properties; but the Chiefs yielded to Her Majesty the exclusive right of Pre-emption over such lands as the proprietors thereof might be disposed to alienate, at such prices as might be agreed upon.
(3) Her Majesty gave to the natives of New Zealand all the Rights and Privileges of British Subjects.
Nearly fifty chiefs signed the treaty there and then, and within six months—so energetically did the missionaries and Government agents carry it throughout the tribes—it had been signed by five hundred and twelve. Only about one chief of first-class rank and importance refused to sign it. This was that fine barbarian, Te Heu Heu, whose home lay at the foot of the great volcanoes by Lake Taupo on the plateau in the centre of the North Island. Te Heu Heu was the last of the old heathen warriors. Singularly fair-skinned, and standing fully six feet high, he looked what he was, a patriarch and leader of his people. Scoffing at the White men and their religion, he defied Governor and missionaries alike until his dramatic end, which came in 1846, when he and his village were swallowed up in a huge landslide. At present, as he could neither be coerced nor persuaded, he was let alone. For the rest, it may fairly be claimed that the Maori race accepted the Treaty of Waitangi.
They had very good reason to do so. To this day they regard it as the Magna Charta of their liberties. They were fully aware that under it the supreme authority passed to the Queen; but they were quite able to understand that their tribal lands were guaranteed to them. In other words, they were recognised as the owners in fee simple of the whole of New Zealand. As one of them afterwards expressed it, "The shadow passes to the Queen, the substance stays with us."
At the same time Governor Hobson had announced to the white settlers by proclamation that the Government would not recognise the validity of any of their land titles not given under the Queen's authority. It is not easy to see how else he could have dealt with the land-sharks, of whom there had been an ugly rush from Sydney on the news of the coming annexation, and most of whom as promptly retreated on finding the proclamation to be a reality. But at the same time his treaty and his proclamation were bound to paralyse settlement, to exasperate the entire white population, and to plunge the infant colony into a sea of troubles. Outside the missionaries and the officials every one was uneasy and alarmed. All the settlers were either landowners, land claimants, or would-be land purchasers. Yet they found themselves at one and the same time left without titles to all that they thought they possessed, and debarred from the right of buying anything more except from the Crown. And as the Governor was without funds, and the Crown, therefore, could not buy from the natives, there was a deadlock. Space will not admit here of a full discussion of the vexed question of the land clause in the Treaty of Waitangi. As a rule civilized nations do not recognise the right of scattered handfuls of barbarians to the ownership of immense tracts of soil, only a fraction of which they cultivate or use. However, from the noblest and most philanthropic motives an exception to this rule was made in the case of New Zealand, and by treaty some sixty to seventy thousand Maoris were given a title guaranteed by England—the best title in the world—to some sixty-six million acres of valuable land. Putting aside the question of equity, it may be observed that, had not this been done, the Maoris, advised by the missionaries, would certainly have refused their assent to the Treaty. The millions sterling which have had to be spent in New Zealand, directly and indirectly, in acquiring Maori land for settlement, supply of course no argument whatever against the equity of the Treaty. When honour is in the scale, it outweighs money. Yet had Captain Hobson been able to conceive what was entailed in the piecemeal purchase of a country held under tribal ownership, it is difficult to think that he would have signed the Treaty without hesitation. He could not, of course, imagine that he was giving legal force to a system under which the buying of a block of land would involve years of bargaining even when a majority of its owners wished to sell; that the ascertainment of a title would mean tedious and costly examination by courts of experts of a labyrinth of strange and conflicting barbaric customs; that land might be paid for again and again, and yet be declared unsold; that an almost empty wilderness might be bought first from its handful of occupants, then from the conquerors who had laid it waste, and yet after all be reclaimed by returned slaves or fugitives who had quitted it years before, and who had been paid for the land on which they had been living during their absence. Governor Hobson could not foresee that cases would occur in which the whole purchase money of broad lands would be swallowed up in the costs of sale, or that a greedy tribe of expert middlemen would in days to come bleed Maori and settler alike. Yet it would have been but reasonable for the Colonial Office to exert itself to palliate the effects of the staggering blows it thus dealt the pioneer colonists of New Zealand. They were not all land-sharks; most of them were nothing of the sort. It was but natural that they felt with extreme bitterness that the Queen's Government only appeared on the scene as the friend and protector of the aborigines. For the Whites the Government had for years little but suspicion and restraint.
It would have been only just and statesmanlike if the recognition of Maori ownership had been accompanied by a vigorous policy of native land purchase by the authorities. But it was not. Captain Hobson was only scantily supplied with money—he had £60,000 sent him in three years—and did not himself appear to recognise the paramount need for endowing the Colony with waste land for settlement. He is said to have held that there need be no hurry in the matter inasmuch as the steady decrease of the Maoris would of itself solve the problem. Nearly sixty years have passed since then, and the Maori race is by no means extinct. But Captain Hobson, though a conscientious and gallant man, was no more imbued with the colonizing spirit than might be expected of any honest English naval officer. Of such money as he had he wasted £15,000 at the outset in buying a site for a town in the Bay of Islands on a spot which he quickly had to abandon. Moreover, he was just what a man in his irksome and difficult position should not have been—an invalid. Within a few weeks after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi he was stricken with paralysis. Instead of being relieved he was left to be worried slowly to death at his post. To have met the really great difficulties and the combination of petty annoyances which beset him, the new governor should have had the best of health and spirits. The complications around him grew daily more entangled. In the North the excellent settlers, who with their children were to make the province of Auckland what it is, were scarcely even beginning to arrive. The Whites of his day there were what tradesmen call a job lot. There were the old Alsatian; the new speculator; genuine colonists,rari nantes; a coterie of officials; and the missionaries, regarding all with distrust. The whole barely numbered two thousand. Confronting the Whites were the native tribes, who, if united and irritated, could have swept all before them. Hobson, a man accustomed to command rather than to manage, was instructed to control the Maoris by moral suasion. He was to respect their institutions and customs when these were consistent with humanity and decency, otherwise not. How in the last resort he was to stamp out inhuman and indecent customs was left unexplained, though he asked for an explanation. Certainly not by force; for it would have been flattery to apply such a term to the tiny handful of armed men at his back. Troops were not sent until the war of 1844. During the five years after that the defence of New Zealand probably cost the Imperial Government a round million, the result of the starving policy of the first five years.
VIEW OF NELSONVIEW OF NELSONPhoto byHENRY WRIGHT
Moreover, for the reasons already sketched, the English in New Zealand formed a house divided against itself. The differences in the north between Maoris' officials, Alsatians of the old school, and settlers of the new, were sufficient to supply the Governor with a daily dish of annoyance. But the main colony of New Zealand was not in the north round Governor Hobson, but in Cook's Straits. There was to be found the large and daily increasing antagonistic element being brought in by the New Zealand Company. With an energy quite unchecked by any knowledge of the real condition of New Zealand, the directors of the Company in London kept on sending out ship-load after ship-load of emigrants to the districts around Cook's Straits. The centre of their operations was Port Nicholson, but bodies of their settlers were planted at Wanganui, at the mouth of the fine river described in the first chapter; at New Plymouth, hard by the Sugar-Loaves, in devastated almost empty Taranaki; and at pleasant but circumscribed Nelson in the South Island. Soon these numbered five times as many Whites as could be mustered in the north. Upon them at the very outset came the thunderbolt of Governor Hobson's proclamation refusing recognition to their land purchases. Of this and of the land clause in the Treaty of Waitangi the natives were made fully aware by the missionaries. Rauparaha, before told of and still the most influential chief near Cook's Straits, was exactly the man to take advantage of the situation. He had taken the muskets and gunpowder of the Company, and was now only too pleased to refuse them the price they thought to receive. It was, as already said, impossible to justify all, or nearly all, of Colonel Wakefield's gigantic purchase. But it was certainly incumbent on the Government to find amodus vivendiwith the least possible delay. On the one hand they had thousands of decent, intelligent English colonists newly landed in a savage country, and not in any way responsible for the Company's haste and ignorance. The settlers at any rate had paid ample value for their land. They had given £1 for each acre of it. Angry as the English Government had been with the New Zealand Company for the defiant dispatch of its settlers, Lord John Russell had instructed Hobson's superior, Sir George Gibbs, that the emigrants should be regarded with kindness and consideration. On the other side were the native tribes, who, as the price of land went in those days, had certainly received the equivalent for a considerable territory. There was room for an equitable arrangement just as there was most pressing need for promptitude. Speed was the first thing needful, also the second, and the third. Instead of speed the settlers got a Royal Commission. A Commissioner was appointed, who did not arrive until two years after the Governor, and whose final award was not given for many months more. When he did give it, he cut down the Company's purchase of twenty million acres to two hundred and eighty-three thousand. As for land-claims of private persons, many of them became the subjects of litigation and petition, and some were not settled for twenty years. Why three or four Commissioners were not sent instead of one, and sent sooner, the official mind alone knows. Meantime, the weary months dragged on, and the unfortunate settlers of the Company were either not put in possession of their land at all, or had as little security for their farms as for their lives. They were not allowed to form volunteer corps, though living in face of ferocious and well-armed savages. Yet the Governor who forbade them to take means to defend themselves had not the troops with which to defend them. To show the state of the country it may be noted that the two tribes from whom Colonel Wakefield bought the land round Port Nicholson quarrelled amongst themselves over the sale. The Ngatiraukawa treacherously attacked the Ngatiawa, were soundly beaten, and lost seventy men. At first, it is true, settlers and natives got on excellently well together. The new-comers had money, and were good customers. But as time went on, and the settlers exhausted their funds and hopes, they ceased to be able to buy freely. And when they found the Maoris refusing to admit them to the farms for which they had paid £1 an acre in London, feeling grew more and more acute. The Company's settlement at Port Nicholson was perversely planted just on that place in the inner harbour which is exposed to the force of the ocean. It had to be shifted to a more sheltered spot, and this the natives denied they ever sold. That was but one of a series of disputes which led to murder and petty warfare, and were hardly at an end seven years later. The settlers, though shut out of the back country, did, however, hold the townland on which they had squatted, and which is now the site of Wellington, the capital of New Zealand.
Cooped up in their narrow plots by the sea, Colonel Wakefield and his settlers established a provisional Government. Captain Hobson, hearing probably some very exaggerated account of this, sent down his Lieutenant, Mr. Willoughby Shortland, in a Government vessel, with sailors and marines, to put down this act of insubordination. Mr. Shortland, who suffered from the not uncommon failing of a desire to magnify his office made the process as ridiculous as possible. He began by stealthily sending a scout on shore at daybreak to haul down the Company's flag in Wellington and hoist the Union Jack instead. Then he landed amongst the settlers, who had gathered to welcome him, in the fashion of a royal commander sent to suppress a rebellion. The settlers consoled themselves by laughing at him. Apart from one circular visit occupying two months, Captain Hobson himself kept sedulously away from the southern settlements, and stayed in the north, then a longer journey away from Wellington than Australia is now. Under the rather high-sounding title of Chief Protector of the Aborigines, Mr. Clarke, a missionary, was appointed to be the Governor's adviser on native matters; yet Mr. Clarke, the settlers complained, was a larger land claimant than any of themselves. It is not to be wondered at if a feeling grew up among the New Zealand settlers directed against both officials and missionaries, which at times intensified to great bitterness, and which took many years to die down. Even now its faint relics may be observed in a vague feeling of dislike and contempt for the Colonial Office.
The New Zealand Company, however, cannot be acquitted of blame in more respects than one. The foundation of the Wakefield theory rested on a secure supply of useful land. This not available, the bottom dropped out of the whole scheme. When in New Zealand the Company's estate was put into chancery, the Wakefield system could not, of course, work. Not only were the Company's purchases such as could not be sustained, not only did the directors hurry out thousands of settlers without proper knowledge or consideration, but they also committed a capital error in their choice of localities for settlements. Wellington, with its central position and magnificent harbour, is undeniably the key of New Zealand. It was in after years very properly made the seat of government, and is always likely to remain so. But it was an almost criminal error on the part of the Company to plump down its settlers in districts that were occupied and certain to be stubbornly held by warlike natives. Nearly the whole of the South Island had no human occupants. Shut off by the Kaikoura mountains from the more dangerous tribes, the east and south-east of that island lay open to the first comer. Moreover, the country there was not only fertile, but in large part treeless, and therefore singularly suited for rapid and profitable settlement. It is quite easy to see now that had the New Zealand Company begun its first operations there, a host of failures and troubles would have been avoided. The settlement of the North Island should not have been begun until after an understanding had been come to with the Imperial authorities and missionaries, and on a proper and legal system of land purchase. This and other things the Company might have found out if it had taken early steps to do so. The truth is that the first occupation of New Zealand was rushed, and, like everything else that is done in a hurry, it was in part done very badly.
So little was known or thought of the South Island that sovereignty was not proclaimed over it until four months after the Governor's arrival in the north, and even then the royal flag was not hoisted there. The consequence was a narrow escape from an attempt by the French to plant a colony at Akaroa in Banks Peninsula. The French frigateL'Aubeput in at the Bay of Islands in July, 1840, bound for the south. Her captain, hospitably entertained by Hobson, let fall some incautious words about the object of his voyage. Hobson took the alarm, and promptly dispatched theBritomartto hoist the English flag at Akaroa. Thanks to bad weather, theBritomartonly reached the threatened port a few days before the Frenchmen. Then it was found that an emigrant ship, with a number of French settlers, was coming with all the constituent parts of a small colony. The captain ofL'Aube, finding himself forestalled, good-humouredly made the best of it. A number of the immigrants did indeed land. Some of them were afterwards taken away to the Marquesas Islands in the South Seas: others remained permanently settled at Akaroa. There around a bay, still called French Bay, they planted vineyards and built cottages in a fashion having some pathetic reminiscences of rural France. There they used to be visited from time to time by French men-of-war; but they gave no trouble to any one, and their children, by removal or intermarriage, became blended with the English population which in later days surrounded them.
Captain Hobson had to choose a capital. After throwing away much good money at Russell in the Bay of Islands, he saw that he must come further south. A broader-minded man might have gone at once to Wellington, and planted himself boldly amongst the English settlers. But the prejudice of the officials and the advice of the missionaries combined with Hobson's own peculiar views of the Cook's Straits colonists, to keep him in the north. From his despatches it is clear that he regarded the immigrants in the south—one of the finest bodies of settlers that ever left England—as dangerous malcontents of anarchical tendencies. As he would not go to Wellington and take his natural position at the head of the main English colony and at the centre of New Zealand, he did the next best thing in going to Auckland. In pitching upon the Waitemata isthmus he made so good a choice that his name is likely to be remembered therefore as long as New Zealand lasts. By founding the city of Auckland he not only took up a strategic position which cut the Maori tribes almost in half, but selected a very fine natural trading centre. The narrow neck of land on which Auckland stands between the winding Waitemata on the east and the broader Manu-kau Harbour on the west, will, before many years, be overspread from side to side by a great mercantile city. The unerring eye of Captain Cook had, seventy years before, noted the Hauraki Gulf as an admirable position. Hobson's advisers, in choosing it as his seat of Government, are said to have been the missionary, Henry Williams, and Captain Symonds, a surveyor. As the capital of New Zealand it was the wrong place from the first. From every other standpoint the selection was a master-stroke. Twenty-four years later Auckland ceased to be the capital of the Colony; but though in this she had to yield to the superior claims of Wellington, she could afford to lose the privilege. First in size and beauty, she is to-day second to no other New Zealand city in prosperity and progress.
In 1841, however, by way of making as bad a start as possible, little Auckland began with a land boom. Forty-four acres were sold at auction by the Government for £24,275. Small suburban lots a few months later fetched £45 an acre, and cultivation lots £8 an acre. For one or two picked city frontages as much as £7 10s. a foot was paid. The hanging up of the northern land claims, and the inability of the Government to buy native land while it refused to let private persons do so, joined, with a trade collapse in Australia, to make the condition of the Auckland settlers soon almost as unenviable as that of their fellow-colonists in the Company's settlements.
Governor Hobson died at Auckland after ruling New Zealand for a little less than three years. His best monument is the city which he founded, and the most memorable verdict on his life is written in a letter addressed by a Maori chief to the Queen. "Let not," said this petition, "the new Governor be a boy or one puffed up. Let not a troubler come amongst us. Let him be a good man like this Governor who has just died." When these words were written, the judgment of the English in New Zealand would have been very different. But time has vindicated Hobson's honesty and courage, and in some important respects even his discernment. He anticipated the French, baffled the land-sharks, kept the peace, was generous to the Maori, and founded Auckland. No bad record this for the harassed, dying sailor, sent to stand between his own countrymen and savages at the very end of the earth, and left almost without men or money! If under him the colonists found their lot almost unbearable, the fault was chiefly that of his masters. Most of his impolicy came from Downing Street; most of his good deeds were his own. It must be remembered that he was sent to New Zealand, not to push on settlement, but to protect the natives and assert the Queen's authority. These duties he never forgot.
"Awhile he makes some false way, undebarred
By thwarting signs, and braves
The freshening wind and blackening waves,
And then the tempest strikes him; and between
The lightning-bursts is seen
Only a driving wreck,And the pale master on his spar-strewn deck."
In 1842 it took eight months before an official, when writing from New Zealand to England, could hope to get an answer. The time was far distant when the results of a cricket match in the southern hemisphere could be proclaimed in the streets of London before noon on the day of play. It was not therefore surprising that Hobson's successor did not reach the Colony for more than a year after his death. Meantime the Government was carried on by Mr. Secretary Shortland, not the ablest of his officials. He soon very nearly blundered into war with the Maoris, some of whom had been killing and eating certain of another tribe—the last recorded instance of cannibalism in the country. The Acting-Governor was, however, held back by Bishop Selwyn, Chief Justice Martin, and Swainson the Attorney-General, a trio of whom more will be said hereafter. The two former walked on foot through the disturbed district, in peril but unharmed, to proffer their good advice. The Attorney-General advised that what the Acting-Governor contemplated wasultra vires, an opinion so palpably and daringly wrong that some have thought it a desperate device to save the country. He contended that as the culprits in the case were not among the chiefs who had signed the Treaty of Waitangi, they were not subject to the law or sovereignty of England. Though it is said that Dr. Phillimore held the same opinion, the Colonial Office put its foot upon it heavily and at once. Her Majesty's rule, said Lord Stanley, having once been proclaimed over all New Zealand, it did not lie with one of her officers to impugn the validity of her government.
Mr. Shortland's day was a time of trial for the land claimants. After nearly two years' delay Mr. Spain, the Commissioner for the trial of the New Zealand Company's claims, had landed in Wellington in December, 1841, and had got to work in the following year. As the southern purchases alone gave him work enough for three men, Messrs. Richmond and Godfrey were appointed to hear the Auckland cases. By the middle of 1843 they had disposed of more than half of 1,037 claims. Very remorselessly did they cut them down. A well-known missionary who had taken over a block of 50,000 acres to prevent two tribes going to war about it, was allowed to keep 3,000 acres only. At Hokianga a purchaser who claimed to have bought 1,500 acres for £24 was awarded 96 acres. When we remember that among the demands of the greater land-sharks of the Colony had been three for more than a million acres each, three for more than half a million each, and three for more than a quarter of a million each, we can appreciate what the early Governors and their Commissioners had to face. The Old Land Claims, now and afterwards looked into, covered some eleven million acres. Of these a little less than one twenty-second part was held to have passed from the natives, and was divided between the Crown and the claimants. A number of the Church of England missionaries had to go through the ordeal with the rest. Some twenty-four of these, together with members of their families, had, between 1830 and 1843, bought about 216,000 acres of land from the natives. The Commissioners cut down this purchase to about 66,000 acres. Even then there was some litigation and much bitterness. Some of the very missionaries who had been most prominent in thwarting and denouncing the land purchases of the New Zealand Company were themselves purchasers of land. As may be imagined, the criticisms directed at them were savage, noisy, and often unjust and exaggerated. Years afterwards Governor Grey became involved in this miserable controversy, which only slowly died away when he passed ordinances that did much to settle doubtful and disputed claims.
Not all the missionaries laid themselves open to these attacks. Neither Hadfield, Maunsell, nor the printer Colenso were amongst the land-buyers, and the same honourable self-denial was shown by all the Catholic missionaries, and by all the Wesleyans but two. Nor were the lay land-claimants always ravenous. Maning, the Pakeha Maori, had paid £222 for his 200 acres at Hokianga. At Tauranga £50 had been given for a building site fifty feet square, in apa. At Rotorua the price given for half an acre had been £12 10s. Many of the most monstrous claims, it may be noted, were never brought into court.
In the Cook's Straits settlements Mr. Spain strove to do equity. The very sensible plan was adopted of allowing the Company to make some of their incomplete purchases good by additional payments. But this, which might have brought about a tolerable adjustment in 1840, led to little but delays and recriminations in 1843. After three years of stagnation the Company was as exasperated and impecunious as the settlers. The positions of Colonel Wakefield in Wellington, and his brother and fellow-agent, Arthur Wakefield, in Nelson, were almost unbearable. It is hardly to be wondered at that the latter, in June, 1843, committed the very great mistake which led to the one misfortune from which the unhappy Colony had so far escaped—war.
In the north-east corner of the South Island lies the grassy valley of the Wairau. Rich in alluvial soil, open and attractive to the eye, and near the sea, it wanted only greater extent to be one of the finest districts in the Islands. The Company claimed to have bought it from Rauparaha and Rangihaeata, whose ownership—for they did not live in it—was based on recent conquest, and on occupation by some members of their tribe. The chiefs denied the sale, and, when the Company's surveyors came into the valley, warned them off, and burned down the huts they had put up. Commissioner Spain was coming almost at once to try the dispute as to the title. But the delays and vexations of the previous years had infuriated Captain Wakefield. He looked upon the chiefs as a pair of "travelling bullies" who wanted but firmness to cow them. With hasty hardihood he obtained a warrant for the arrest of Rauparaha on a charge of arson, and set out to arrest him, accompanied by the Nelson police magistrate, at the head of aposseof some fifty Nelson settlers very badly equipped. Rauparaha, surrounded by his armed followers, was found in a small clearing backed by a patch of bush, his front covered by a narrow but deep creek. The leaders of the arresting party crossed this, and called on the chief to give himself up. Of course he defied them. After an argument the police magistrate, an excitable man, made as though to arrest him. There was a scuffle; a gun went off, and in the conflict which followed the undisciplined settlers, fired upon by hidden natives, and divided by the stream, became panic-stricken, and retreated in confusion, despite Wakefield's appeals and entreaties to them to stand. As he could do nothing with them, Wakefield held up a white handkerchief, and with four gentlemen and four labourers gave himself up to Rauparaha. But Rangihaeata had a blood-feud with the English. A woman-servant of his—not his wife—had been accidentally shot in the fray. Moreover, some time before, another woman, a relative of his, had been murdered by a white, who, when tried in the Supreme Court, had been acquitted. Now was the hour for vengeance. Coming up wild with rage, Rangihaeata fell upon the unresisting prisoners and tomahawked them all. Captain Wakefield, thus untimely slain, was not only an able pioneer leader, but a brave man of high worth, of singularly fine and winning character, and one of whom those who knew him spoke with a kind of enthusiasm. Twenty-two settlers in all were killed that day and five wounded. The natives, superior in numbers, arms, and position, had lost only four killed and eight wounded. So easily was the first tussle between Maori and settler won by the natives. In the opinion of some the worst feature of the whole unhappy affair was that something very like cowardice had been shown on the losing side. Naturally the Wairau Massacre, as it was called, gave a shock to the young Colony. The Maoris triumphantly declared that themana(prestige) of the English was gone.
A Wesleyan missionary and a party of whalers buried the dead. No attempt was ever made to revenge them. Commissioner Spain visited Rauparaha, at the request of the leading settlers of Wellington, to assure him that the matter should be left to the arbitrament of the Crown. The Crown, as represented by Mr. Shortland, was, perhaps, at the moment more concerned at the defenceless position of Auckland, in the event of a general rising, than at anything else. Moreover, the philo-Maori officials held that Rauparaha and Rangihaeata were aggrieved persons. A company of fifty-three Grenadiers was sent to Wellington and a man-of-war to Nelson. Strict orders were given to the disgusted settlers not to meet and drill. On the whole, in the helpless state of the Colony, inaction was wisest. At any rate Mr. Shortland's successor was on his way out, and there was reason in waiting for him. Now had come the result of Hobson's error in fixing the seat of government in Auckland, and in keeping the leading officials there. Had Wellington been the seat of government in 1843, the Wairau incident could hardly have occurred.
Not the least of poor Mr. Shortland's troubles were financial. He inherited debts from his predecessor. Indeed, the New Zealand Treasury may be said to have been cradled in deficits. In 1841 Hobson's expenditure had been £81,000 against a revenue of £37,000, most of which was the product of land sales. In 1842 the revenue was £50,000, of which only £11,000 came from land sales; and in 1843 this source of income fell to £1,600. The southern settlers complained, truly enough, that whilst they found much of the money, nearly all of it was spent in Auckland. In 1844—if I may anticipate—Mr. Shortland's successor had the melancholy duty of warning the Colonial Office that to meet an inevitable outlay of £35,000 he could at the best hope for a revenue of £20,000. Mr. Shortland himself, in 1843, tried to replenish the treasury chest by borrowing £15,000 in Sydney. But New Zealand, which has lately borrowed many times that sum at about three per cent. interest, could not then raise the money at fifteen per cent. Mr. Shortland next drew bills on the English treasury, which were dishonoured, though the mother country afterwards relented so far as to lend the sum, adding it to the public debt of the Colony. Finally, the Governor, who on arrival superseded Mr. Shortland, made a beginning by publicly insulting that gentleman. With proper spirit the Secretary at once resigned, and was sent by Downing Street to govern a small island in the West Indies.
If neither Captain Hobson nor Mr. Shortland found official life in New Zealand otherwise than thorny, their career was smooth and prosperous compared to that of the Governor who now appears on the scene. Admiral—then Captain—Robert Fitzroy will have a kind of immortality as the commander of theBeagle—Darwin'sBeagle. His scientific work as a hydrographer at the Admiralty is still spoken of in high terms. He was unquestionably a well-meaning sailor. But his short career in New Zealand is an awful example of the evils which the Colonial Office can inflict on a distant part of the Empire by a bad appointment. It is true that, like his predecessors, Fitzroy was not fairly supported by the authorities at Home. They supplied him with neither men nor money, and on them therefore the chief responsibility of the Colony's troubles rest. But a study of his two years of rule fails to reveal any pitfall in his pathway into which he did not straightway stumble.
Captain Fitzroy was one of those fretful and excitable beings whose manner sets plain men against them, and who, when they are not in error, seem so. Often wrong, occasionally right, he possessed in perfection the unhappy art of doing the right thing in the wrong way. Restless and irascible, passing from self-confidence to gloom, he would find relief for nerve tension in a peevishness which was the last quality one in his difficult position should have shown. An autocratic official amid little rough, dissatisfied communities of hard-headed pioneers was a king with no divinity to hedge him round. Without pomp, almost without privacy, everything he said or did became the property of local gossips. A ruler so placed must have natural dignity, and requires self-command above all things. That was just the quality Captain Fitzroy had not. It was said that the blood of a Stuart king ran in his veins; and, indeed, there seemed to be about the tall, thin, melancholy man something of the bad luck, as well as the hopeless wrong-headedness, of that unteachable House.
For he landed at Auckland in November, 1843, to find an ample legacy of trouble awaiting him. The loyal and patriotic address with which the Aucklanders welcomed him was such as few viceroys have been condemned to receive at the outset of their term of office. It did not mince matters. It described the community as bankrupt, and ascribed its fate to the mistakes and errors of the Government. At New Plymouth a similar address declared that the settlers were menaced with irretrievable ruin. Kororáreka echoed the wail. Nor was the welcome of Wellington one whit more cheerful—a past of bungling, a present of stagnation, a future of danger: such was the picture it drew. It was not much exaggerated. On the coasts of New Zealand some twelve thousand colonists were divided into eight settlements, varying in population from 4,000 at Wellington to 200 at Akaroa. Not one of them was defensible in military eyes. There were no troops, no militia, no money. Neither at Wellington nor Nelson had more than one thousand acres of land been cleared and cultivated. Labourers were riotously clamouring for work or rations. Within fifty miles of Wellington was Rauparaha, who, had he appealed to his race, could probably have mustered a force strong enough to loot and burn the town. Some wondered why he did not; perhaps Hadfield's influence amongst his tribe supplied the answer.
Governor Fitzroy began at his firstleveeat Wellington by scolding the settlers, inveighing against the local newspaper, and grossly insulting Gibbon Wakefield's son when he was presented to him. At Nelson he rated the magistrates after such a fashion that they threw up their commissions. He then went to Rauparaha'spaat Waikanae near Kapiti. A dozen whites were with the Governor; five hundred Maoris surrounded the chief. After lecturing the latter for the slaughter of the captives at Wairau, Fitzroy informed him that, as the slain men had been the aggressors, he was to be freely forgiven. Only one utterly ignorant of the Maori character could have fancied that this exaggerated clemency would be put down to anything but weakness. Even some missionaries thought that compensation should have been demanded for the death of the prisoners. As for the settlers, their disgust was deep. Putting together the haste, violence, and want of dignity of his proceedings, they declared the new Governor could not be master of his own actions. That Gibbon Wakefield's brother should have been savagely butchered and not avenged was bad enough; that his fellow-settlers should be rated for their share in the disaster seemed a thing not to be endured. The Maoris grew insolent, the settlers sullen, and for years afterward a kind of petty warfare lingered on in the Wellington district.
Governor Fitzroy was no more successful in Taranaki. There the Company, after claiming the entire territory, had had their claim cut down by the Commissioners' award to 60,000 acres. But even this was now disputed, on the ground that it had been bought from a tribe—the Waikato—who had indeed conquered it, and carried away its owners as slaves, but had never taken possession of the soil by occupation. When Colonel Wakefield bought it, the land was virtually empty, and the few score of natives living at the Sugar-Loaves sold their interest to him readily enough. But when the enslaved Ngatiawa and Taranaki tribesmen were soon afterwards released through the influence of Christianity, they returned to the desolated land, and disputed the claim of the Company. Moreover, there were the Ngatiawas, who, led by Wiremu Kingi, had migrated to Cook's Straits in the days of devastation. They claimed not only their new possessions—much of which they sold to the Company—but their old tribal lands at Waitara, from which they had fled, but to which some of them now straggled back. On this nice point Captain Fitzroy had to adjudicate. He decided that the returned slaves and Ngatiawa fugitives were the true owners of the land. Instead of paying them fairly for the 60,000 acres—which they did not require—he handed the bulk of it back to them, penning the unhappy white settlers up in a miserable strip of 3,200 acres. The result was the temporary ruin of the Taranaki settlement, and the sowing of the seeds of an intense feeling of resentment and injustice which bore evil fruit in later days.
Nor did Captain Fitzroy do any better with finance than in his land transactions. His very insufficient revenue was largely derived from Customs duties. Trade at the Bay of Islands had, by this time, greatly fallen away. Whalers and timber vessels no longer resorted there as in the good old Alsatian days. Both natives and settlers grumbled at the change, which they chose to attribute to the Government Customs duties. To conciliate them, the Governor abolished Customs duties at Kororáreka. Naturally a cry at once went up from other parts of the Colony for a similar concession. The unhappy Governor, endeavouring to please them all, like the donkey-owner in Æsop's Fables, abolished Customs duties everywhere. To replace them he devised an astounding combination of an income-tax and property-tax. Under this, not only would the rich plainly pay less in proportion than the poor, but a Government official drawing £600 a year, but owning no land, would pay just half the sum exacted from a settler who, having invested £1,000 in a farm, was struggling to make £200 a year thereby. The mere prospect of this crudity caused such a feeling in the Colony that he was obliged to levy the Customs duties once more. His next error was the abandonment of the Government monopoly of land purchase from the Maoris. As might be expected, the pressure upon all rulers in New Zealand to do this, and to allow private bargaining with the natives for land, has always been very strong, especially in the Auckland district. Repeated experience has, however, shown that the results are baneful to all concerned—demoralizing to the natives, and by no means always profitable to the white negotiators. When Fitzroy proclaimed that settlers might purchase land from the natives, he imposed a duty of ten shillings an acre upon each sale. Then, when this was bitterly complained of, he reduced the fee to one penny. Finally, he fell back on the desperate expedient of issuing paper money, a thing which he had no right to do. All these mistakes and others he managed to commit within two short years. Fortunately for the Colony, he, in some of them, flatly disregarded his instructions. The issue of paper money was one of the few blunders the full force of which Downing Street could apprehend. Hence his providential recall.
Before this reached him he had drifted into the last and worst of his misfortunes, an unsuccessful war, the direct result of the defeat at the Wairau and the weakness shown thereafter. It was not that he and his missionary advisers did not try hard enough to avert any conflict with the Maoris. If conciliation pushed to the verge of submission could have kept the peace, it would have been kept. But conciliation, without firmness, will not impress barbarians. The Maoris were far too acute to be impressed by the well-meaning, vacillating Governor. They set to work, instead, to impress him. They invited him to a huge banquet near Auckland, and danced a war-dance before their guest with the deliberate intention of overawing him. Indeed, the spectacle of fifteen hundred warriors, stripped, smeared with red ochre, stamping, swaying, leaping, uttering deep guttural shouts, and brandishing their muskets, while their wild rhythmic songs rose up in perfect time, and their tattooed features worked convulsively, was calculated to affect even stronger nerves than the Governor's.
It was among the discontented tribes in the Bay of Islands, where Alsatia was now deserted by its roaring crews of whalers and cheated of its hoped-for capital, that the outbreak came.
In the winter of 1844, Honé Heké, son-in-law of the great Hongi, presuming on the weakness of the Government, swaggered into Kororáreka, plundered some of the houses, and cut down a flagstaff on the hill over the town on which the English flag was flying. Some White of the beach-comber species is said to have suggested the act to him by assuring him that the flag-staff represented the Queen's sovereignty—the evil influence which had drawn trade and money away to Auckland. Heké had no grievance whatever against the Government or colonists, but he and the younger braves of the Northern tribes had been heard to ask whether Rangihaeata was to do all thePakeha-killing? At the moment Fitzroy had not two hundred soldiers in the country. He hurried up to the scene of disturbance. Luckily Heké's tribe—the Ngapuhi—were divided. Part, under Waka Nené, held with the English. Accepting Nené's advice Fitzroy allowed Heké to pay ten muskets in compensation for the flagstaff, and then foolishly gave back the fine as a present and departed. Nené and the friendly chiefs undertook to keep peace—but failed, for Heké again cut down the flagstaff. This, of course, brought war definitely on. The famous flagstaff was re-erected, guarded by a block-house, and a party of soldiers and sailors were sent to garrison Kororáreka. As H.M.S.Hazardlay off the beach in the Bay and guns were mounted in three block-houses, the place was expected to hold out. Heké, however, notified that he would take it—and did so. He marched against it with eight hundred men. One party attacked the flagstaff, another the town. The twenty defenders of the flag-staff were divided by a stratagem by which part were lured out to repel a feigned attack. In their absence the stockade was rushed, and, for the third time, the flagstaff hewn down. During the attack the defenders of the town, however, under Captain Robertson of theHazard, stood their ground and repulsed a first attack. Even when Robertson fell, his thigh-bone shattered by a bullet, Lieutenant Philpotts, taking command, had the women and children sent safely on board the ships, and all was going well when the outnumbered garrison were paralysed by the blowing up of their powder magazine. The townsmen began to escape, and a council of war decided to abandon the place. This was done. Lovell, a gunner, would not leave his piece until he had spiked it, and was killed, but not before doing so. Bishop Selwyn, landing from his mission ship in the Bay, had been doing the work of ten in carrying off women and children and succouring the wounded, aided therein by Henry Williams. To Selwyn, as he toiled begrimed with smoke and sweat, came running a boy, young Nelson Hector, whose father, a lawyer, was in charge of a gun in position on one of the hillsides outside the town. The boy had stolen away unnoticed, and crept through the Maoris to find out for his father how things stood. The bishop offered to take him on board with the women, but the youngster scouted the notion of leaving his father. "God bless you, my boy!" said the big-hearted Selwyn; "I have nothing to say against it"; and the lad, running off, got back safely. Out in the Bay the American corvetteSt. Louislay at anchor. Her men were keen to be allowed to "bear a hand" in the defence. Though this could not be, her captain sent boats through the fire while it was still hot to bring off the women and children, and gave them shelter on board. Anglo-Saxon brotherhood counted for something even in 1845. The scene became extraordinary. The victorious Maoris, streaming gleefully into the town, began to plunder in the best of good tempers. Some of the townspeople went about saving such of their goods as they could without molestation, indeed, with occasional help from the Maoris, who considered there was enough for all. Presently a house caught fire, the flames spread, and the glowing blaze, the volumes of smoke, and the roar of the burning under the red-lit sky, gave a touch of dignity to the end of wicked old Kororáreka.
Loaded with booty, Heké's men went off inland in high spirits. Three vessels crowded with the ruined Alsatians sailed to Auckland, where for a while the astonished people expected nightly to be roused from their beds by the yells of Ngapuhi warriors. Our loss had been thirty-one killed and wounded, and it was small consolation to know that, thanks to the ship's guns, the Maoris' had been three times as great. The disaster was a greater blow to the EnglishManathan even the Wairau Massacre. But the settlements showed spirit everywhere, and under the stress of the time the Governor forgot some of his prejudices. Even those much-suspected people, the Wellington settlers, were allowed to form themselves into a militia at last.
Thanks to the divisions among the Ngapuhi, Heké did not follow up his victory. Troops were procured from Sydney, but they had no artillery. The natives relied on theirpasor stockades. These, skilfully constructed by means of double or triple rows of heavy palisades, masked by flax and divided by shallow ditches which did duty for rifle-pits, could not be carried without being breached by cannon. A fruitless attack upon one of them soon demonstrated this. Thepa, called Okaihau, though strong in front, was weak in the rear. Four hundred soldiers, supported by as many Ngapuhi friendlies under Waka Nené, marched against it. Fruitlessly Nené advised the English Colonel to assail the place from behind. The Colonel, who had seen Nené yelling in a war-dance, and looked upon him as a degraded savage, approached the front, where Okaihau was really strong. As he had no guns he tried the effect of rockets, but though terrified by the strange fire, the defenders gained heart when they found that the rockets hit nothing. They even charged the English in the open with long-handled tomahawks, and only fell back before a bayonet charge in regular form. After skirmishing all day and losing fifty-four in killed and wounded with but negative results, the English retreated to Auckland to request artillery. Waka Nené carried on the fighting on his own account, and in a skirmish with him Heké was badly wounded. Guns were fetched from Australia, and Heké's men were brought to bay at their principalpa, Ohaeawai. Colonel Despard commanded the besiegers, who outnumbered the defenders by more than three to one. After bombarding the palisades for some days, the colonel, in defiance of the advice of his artillery officer—who declared there was no practicable breach—ordered an assault. Two hundred soldiers and sailors were told off for the duty, and at four o'clock on a pleasant, sunny afternoon they charged up a gentle, open slope to the simple-looking stockade. Only two or three got inside. In a quarter of an hour half the force were shot down, and the survivors only saved by the bugle-call which Despard ordered to be sounded. Forty, including a captain and two lieutenants, were killed on the spot or died of their wounds. Sixty-two others were wounded. Gallant Lieutenant Philpotts, the first through the stockade, lay dead, sword in hand, inside thepa. At the outset of the war he had been captured by the natives whilst scouting, and let go unharmed with advice to take more care in future. Through no fault of his own he had lost Kororáreka. Stung by this, or, as some say, by a taunt of Despard's, he led the way at Ohaeawai with utterly reckless courage, and, to the regret of the brave brown men his enemies, was shot at close quarters by a mere boy. The wounded could not be removed for two days. During the night the triumphant Maoris shouted and danced their war-dance. They tortured—with burning kauri gum—an unfortunate soldier whom they had captured alive, and whose screams could be plainly heard in the English camp. Despard, whose artillery ammunition had run short, remained watching thepafor several days. But when he was in a position to renew his bombardment, the natives quietly abandoned the place by night, without loss. According to their notions of warfare, such a withdrawal was not a defeat.
Such are the facts of one of the worst repulses sustained by our arms in New Zealand. It will scarcely be believed that after this humiliation Captain Fitzroy, on missionary advice, endeavoured to make peace—of course, without avail. Heké became a hero in the eyes of his race. The news of Ohaeawai reached England, and the Duke of Wellington's language about Colonel Despard is said to have been pointed. But already the Colonial Office had made up its mind for a change in New Zealand. Fitzroy was recalled, and Captain Grey, the Governor of South Australia, whose sense and determination had lifted that Colony out of the mire, was wisely selected to replace him.
"No hasty fool of stubborn will,But prudent, wary, pliant still,Who, since his work was good,Would do it as he could."
Captain Grey came in the nick of time. That he managed because he wasted no time about coming. The despatch, removing him from South Australia to New Zealand, reached Adelaide on the 15th of October, 1845, and by the 14th of November he was in Auckland.
He arrived to find Kororáreka in ashes, Auckland anxious, the Company's settlers in the south harassed by the Maoris and embittered against the Government, the missionaries objects of tormenting suspicions, and the natives unbeaten and exultant. The Colonists had no money and no hope. Four hundred Crown grants were lying unissued in the Auckland Land Office because land-buyers could not pay the fee of £1 apiece due on them.
But the Colonial Office, now that it at last gave unfortunate New Zealand a capable head, did not do things by halves. It supplied him with sufficient troops and a certain amount of money. The strong hand at the helm at once made itself felt. Within a month the circulating debentures were withdrawn, the pre-emptive right of the Crown over native lands resumed, the sale of fire-arms to natives prohibited, and negotiations with Heké and his fellow insurgent chief, Kawiti, sternly broken off.
The Governor set to work to end the war. High in air, on the side of a thickly-timbered hill, lay Kawiti's new and strongestpa, Rua-peka-peka (the Bat's Nest). Curtained by a double palisade of beams eighteen feet high by two feet thick, strengthened by flanking redoubts, ditches, and traverses, honeycombed with rifle-pits and bomb-proof chambers below ground, "large enough to hold a whist-party," it was a model Maori fortification of the later style.