1851 - Fox, William. The Six Colonies of New Zealand - CHAPTER II. THE NATIVES.

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CHAPTER II.

THE NATIVES.

§ 1. THEIR NUMBER.

BY far the greater portion of the natives reside quite in the northern part of the colony. They are comparatively few in every part of the southern province, and in the middle island there are scarcely any--not above 2600, on nearly 50,000,000 acres of land, and those greatly dispersed. In a late despatch (dated March 22, 1849), Governor Grey states the number of natives in the northern province to be 80,000 --in the southern 25,000. 1 There is reason to

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believe that the estimate is erroneous, and that half of the respective amounts would be nearer the truth.

It is a very remarkable fact, that notwithstanding the professions of interest in the welfare of the natives made by the government and the missionaries, neither of them have ever attempted a general census. It is evident that till such a step is taken, all measures adopted with a view to benefit the race, or to maintain even-handed justice between it and the European, must be founded on data so uncertain and inaccurate, that no satisfactory result can be obtained. How, for instance, can it be ascertained what proportion of the revenue is contributed by each, and to what proportion of expenditure on their special institutions each is equitably entitled, if their numbers are not known? Similar questions occur at every turn. A census is the only solution, and none exists.

However, a partial, and, as far as it goes, a very accurate census has been made by the Lieutenant-governor, Mr. Eyre, in the district around Wellington, and another, under his instructions, at Nelson; while the native population of the other portions of the southern province has been visited, and its numbers ascertained almost to a head, partly by officers in the employment of the local government, partly by

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others in that of the New Zealand Company. 2 The result is, that in this province for which Governor Grey estimates 25,000 natives, less than 11,000 are found actually existing. His estimate, as regards the northern province, is probably equally inaccurate, though the same positive test of its accuracy does not exist. But an approximation is to be arrived at from the following authorities.

In 1840, the missionaries and other parties, certainly not interested in understating the numbers, estimated them for the whole of the islands, at from 120,000 (the highest) to 109,000 (the lowest). In 1842, Dr. Deiffenbach, from information furnished by the missionaries in various parts of the islands, assumed 114,890 as the total number. In 1846, one of the oldest and

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most intelligent missionaries, holding high rank in the colonial church, expressed (privately) an opinion that the native population was 'under 90,000, possibly very much under.' In the same year, Captain Fitzroy, the ex-governor of the colony, estimated them at 80,000, (see his pamphlet.) In 1850, an intelligent and well-informed Wesleyan missionary estimated them at 70,000. Deducting from the last the ascertained number in the southern province (11,000), the number for the northern would be 59,000.

The above figures are probably near the truth. Their disparity, inter se, is accounted for by the different dates at which the estimates were made, extending over a period of ten years. And this raises another question, are the natives increasing or decreasing in number? The answer which statistics compel us to give is, that they are rapidly decreasing--that their extermination is to be looked for almost within our own lifetime--that in forty or fifty years there will scarcely be in existence an aboriginal New Zealander. 3 The conclusion is arrived at by the following process.

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In 1847, very careful enumerations of the inhabitants of many of the pahs near Wellington were made under the direction of Colonel M'Cleverty, the then commissioner of land claims, for official purposes. The disproportion of women and children to men was very conspicuous, there being only seventy-seven women and fifty children to every 100 men. A more recent and extensive return, including the country district for 150 miles of coast-line, made by Mr. Kemp, the native secretary of the local government in 1850, gives fifty-two children to every 100 men. In England and Ireland there are more than 100 women, and 140 children to every 100 men. In the United States of America there are 161 children to every 100 men. Now it is evident, that from fifty to fifty-two children are altogether insufficient to sustain and replace a population of 177 adults of both sexes. It is obvious, moreover, that such a proportion provides for a decrease of the race equal fully to the amount of natural increase existing in England, Ireland, or America.

A comparison of Mr. Kemp's returns for the pahs in and about the town of Wellington for 1847 and 1850 also shows a decrease at the rate, as nearly as possible, of four per cent, per annum, the number of seven pahs being 633 in 1847, and 558 in 1850. And taking the established proportion of women and children all through

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the islands, the above ratio of decrease among the natives may be assumed as general.

It is a strong confirmation of the correctness of the above calculation, that, taking the highest estimate of 1840, (viz., 120,000,) a decrease of four per cent, per annum would reduce the number in 1850 to 78,841, not very far from the estimates of the missionaries and Captain Fitzroy, before referred to.

Taking the more moderate calculation of 1840, and reducing them by four per cent, per annum, the result corresponds as nearly as possible with those estimates.

Unless, therefore, some check be immediately interposed to the process of dissolution, and the native race can be forced back from the vortex into which it is descending, the annihilation of the New Zealanders, as a race, will occur in about fifty years at longest. Nay, as it is probable that many of the causes in operation will act upon the race more forcibly as its numbers decrease, a shorter period will probably suffice.

Supposing, then, that statistics prove the fact of the progressive extinction of the natives, what are the causes by which it is effected?--are they removeable? Can their force be lessened, or is it likely, on the contrary, to increase?

The causes, though fatal, are few. They may

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be divided into the physical and moral. The physical causes are --1. Deep-seated scrofulous disease, pervading the whole race, and developing itself not only in its primitive forms, but in consumption, fearful abscesses, and disgusting cutaneous diseases, of which last, if I remember rightly, Cook says he saw no instance in his time. These, I was told by the late very intelligent superintendent of the Taranaki Hospital, Dr. M'Shane, are more and more increasingly prevalent in the rising generation than in the adult. Thousands are swept off every year by this cause. 2. Very early and very general habits of depravity among the women. 3. Drudgery imposed upon the women, who do all or most of the hard work and destroy their constitution by it, cultivating the land and carrying loads that would not be thought light by a ballast-heaver. I asked a native who had accumulated a good deal of property, how he got it; he pointed to his three wives, and said he made them work for it. 4. Polygamy is thus profitable, and it forms, to some extent, another cause of unfruitfulness. 5. Female infanticide did exist formerly, and I cannot think that, in those parts where the influence of civilization has not much extended, there is reason for supposing that it has yet entirely ceased.

The moral cause in operation is perhaps less

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obvious, but no less certainly at work, and probably little less effective. It consists in a depression of spirits and energy which, in the mind of the savage, ensues upon his contact with civilized men. He soon sees his inferiority; his pride may struggle against an admission of it for a time,--he may still occasionally bedeck himself with the ornaments of the warrior, and endeavour to shame by his barbaric splendour, the plainness of civilized industry; but the great ships that throng his harbours, the (to him) magnificent buildings that spring up on every side,--the display, if there be any, of military force--nay, what to the colonist are the merest articles of every-day use--his watch, his plough, his axe, his pocket-knife--all declare in a language which he cannot misunderstand, that it is a superior race which has come to share his country. From the day when he makes this acknowledgment to himself, he feels that his greatness is departed, that his nation is henceforth a nation of Helots. He cannot form in his mind the hope of rising to the level of the superior race; its existence, and everything connected with it, are a mystery to him; what the North Americans call a 'great medicine,' the New Zealanders, a Typo, or divinity. The gulf between him and the new comer is too great; he cannot conceive the possi-

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bility of bridging it, so he sits down and broods in silence till his appointed time.

The most probable method by which the operation of these feelings could have been checked in New Zealand, would have been the encouragement to the greatest extent compatible with the general government of the colony, of the institution of chieftainship, which we found existing among the natives. The men of the most enlarged minds and of the greatest influence were of that class; and had they been, as I think they might, maintained in an elevated position, and their feudal authority supported at least for some years, it would have given them a position round which the rest of the race might have rallied, and whence they might have taken their first step towards one more elevated and advanced. But with the exception of the early founders of the Wellington settlement, it has been the policy of those in whose hands were the destinies of the natives, to discourage the institution of chieftainship, and to reduce to a general level all classes of natives. An individual chief may occasionally, and sometimes very indiscreetly, have been petted and encouraged. But the 'chieftainship,' and the various shades of nobility and gentry subordinate to it, have been allowed to sink into ruin, and carry all along

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with them to a lower social level than before. Nothing more touching and pathetic was ever penned than the complaint of Tamati Ngapora, addressed to Governor Grey, in 1848. 4 'Friend, the governor,' he says, 'this is my speech to you; hearken to my word, oh, my friend. Do not slight my thoughts, because this is the thought of many of the chiefs of New Zealand. This is the thing that causes confusion in all their villages. Formerly, oh father the governor, when we adhered to our native customs, we had light; but now, new thoughts have been imbibed, and darkness is the consequence. The slaves of my village will not obey me; when I ask them to work, they will not regard me. The result of this conduct is theft and adultery. I cannot determine in these matters. In your estimation perhaps they are trifles, but to me they are great things, because they affect the welfare of the chiefs. Formerly our word had some weight, but now it is lost. The slaves look upon themselves as equals with their fathers the chiefs, which has caused us to be very angry. Is it right for a servant to be indolent, and disobey his master? It is my wish to protect my slaves and to respect them, and I wish them to respect me in return. If

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my slaves do evil, their sin will affect myself; when my people do well, my heart rejoices. I am desirous that myself and my people may be an example to the evil ones. Reflect, O father, upon my words, that a law may be made for the native chiefs, that their slaves may be induced to obey them; and do you strengthen our hands, so that the many slaves of this land may be kept in awe, and the chiefs be enabled to love and protect you.'

Bishop Selwyn also complains that the missionaries can obtain no hold on the minds of the natives, owing to the loss of influence of the chiefs. They are, says he, 'a rope of sand; the young men escape from all control.' Mr. Clarke, the chief native protector, wrote to the same effect in 1845.

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§ 2. THE NATIVES--CIVILIZATION.

But, it may be asked, is this theory of mental depression consistent with actual fact? Are not the natives rapidly becoming civilized? Are not their energies evoked by the paternal care of the government? What is this that we hear about their owning numerous coasting vessels, about one of them keeping a livery stable, and another having an account at the bank? How are such facts consistent with your theory?

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The answer is, that the facts alluded to relate to a very few individual cases. The theory has its operation on the great bulk of the people. The superior advancement of a few more energetic minds, individually isolated, will not rescue the race. It might if you had time for it, but you have not. Before the effect can be produced, scrofula and consumption, the drudgery and degradation of the women, will have done their work: the race will be gone.

And as regards the degree of civilization attained even by the most advanced, it is very superficial and limited. In rescuing savage races from barbarism, there are three stages to be passed. First, they are to be brought to tolerate the presence of the civilizer. It was not till after numerous massacres of casual visitors, and the expulsion of the missionaries more than once, that the New Zealander was got past this stage. Secondly, there is the stage of barter, when, impelled by the desire of procuring the luxuries and comforts possessed by the civilized race, they bring their food or raw produce to market in exchange. And lastly, there is the constructive stage, in which they learn the arts of civilized life--how to make for themselves those things which they desire.

The New Zealanders have got no further than the second stage. They have, it is true, pur-

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chased a few coasting vessels, but they have never yet attempted to build one, not even a boat. 5 They have a few ploughs; they have never made one, and not many have ever held one. A few of them carry their produce in carts to the place of barter, but those carts are made by English cartwrights. In short, unless it be one or two about the mission stations in the north, or the whaling stations in the south, I do not know a single native who can do the commonest carpenter's work, or has any acquaintance with any mechanical trade. A few (say 500 or 600) of them were employed at navvies' work, for a year or two, on the roads constructed by government, and in the Canterbury settlement. In the course of this, some learned the art of stone-dressing, of which much has been made in official reports. But if the Europeans were to leave the colony to-morrow, I see nothing in their present civilization which would be likely to prevent the lapse of the natives into absolute barbarism almost the next day. The opportunity for barter would then have ceased. They cannot construct (I believe I may safely say) one single article of utility which they could not before we knew them. Their

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skill as mechanics would be found limited, as it then was, to the fabrication of the scanty clothing, the domestic utensils, and the warlike weapons of savage life.

Why so few attempts have been made to teach the natives mechanic arts (the most solid foundation for civilization), is a question which has yet to be answered by those who have claimed credit for peculiar interest in them. How rational and how feasible would it have been for the government to have apprenticed native youths to tradesmen and artificers in the towns, or even, if necessary, at Sydney. The money which has been lavished on useless and even mischievous objects would have paid the apprentice fee of many hundreds. The pernicious 'Protectorship' must have cost at least 5000l. or 6000l. in one way or other. The government brig, an entirely useless appendage, has cost the colony 20,000l. or more. Taking an apprenticeship fee at 40l., these two items of misspent money alone would have converted into useful mechanics between 600 and 700 natives, now savage and ignorant, carrying them through the third stage of civilization, and affording a basis for security and progress wherever their personal influence might reach. Instead of taking active practical steps of that sort, the government has satisfied itself with mere talk and despatch writing; and if it can

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point to a complimentary letter written by a native chief to the governor, or a native house with glass windows and a verandah (of which, I believe there are three in the country), it flatters itself with the idea that it has discovered the problem of civilizing the aborigines--nay, even reduced its theory to practice.

Is it then possible to remove, or even materially to modify, the force of the causes which are sweeping away the New Zealanders from the face of the earth? If medical science could provide a remedy for the fatal disease which is so prevalent among them, how could you apply it to a population of 60,000 or 70,000 people, scattered over a space larger than England? The whole revenue of the colony, expended on hospitals, would hardly produce a perceptible effect. Can the habits of the women be changed in a day? Will the men in a day consent to restore them to their proper sphere, and relieve them from the drudgery they now subject them to? Can the spirit of the New Zealander be re-invigorated in a generation, and he take his place cheerfully in the race of progressive improvement? You might do something on all these points if you had the time--if you had three or four, or half a dozen, prospective generations, and a probable space of one or two hundred years to work upon--but what prospect is there of grappling successfully with such

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adversaries in the brief space to which (if you succeed not) the existence of the New Zealander is limited. It is too late. As in the case of his relatives at Tahiti and the Sandwich Islands, his days are surely numbered. In the former, the inhabitants in Cook's time were estimated at 70,000; they are now said to be only 7000. In the latter, the ratio of extinction, as proved by actual census, 6 is 8 per cent, per annum, at which ratio, if it continue, there will in a few years not be a Sandwich Islander living. The same doom awaits the New Zealander--it may be fifty, it may be sixty, it may be seventy years; but unless you can work changes in his moral and physical condition, which I see no chance of your working, it is only a question of time. His ultimate fate is certain; it is summed up in the single word -- extinction.

Three hospitals have been established in New Zealand, chiefly with a view to the natives; one at Auckland; one at New Plymouth; and one at Wellington. They are maintained by the government, but on a defective system, and one which renders them much less useful than they might be.

In England, all hospitals which are supported

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by public funds, are subjected to public control. They are generally under the charge of a committee elected by those who contribute to their maintenance, and the physicians and surgeons attached to them are elected by vote of the subscribers while the institution is ordinarily thrown open, to a great extent, to all the profession. The New Zealand hospitals are each under the absolute control of one surgeon, appointed by the governor. The rest of the profession are virtually excluded, and they are, in fact, to a great degree, the perquisite of an individual of whose fitness for the charge there is neither test nor guarantee.

Hospitals for Europeans are not required in New Zealand. All classes can afford to pay for medical attendance. They might, however, be very useful among the natives if established on a proper system. They ought to be placed in the districts most densely peopled with the natives; schools should be attached to them; and in charge of properly qualified men, they might be of the greatest use as a sort of political agency among the natives, and a medium of their civilization. Those in existence, however, have no such feature. They are all in European towns, none of them in the immediate neighbourhood of large bodies of natives; one, at least, is said to be very badly conducted, and their

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utility is comparatively very little. It is true, that quarterly returns of patients treated at them are made in the government gazette, and not without parade; but if the hospital did not exist there is no reason to suppose that medical advice would he denied by the profession to any native who might require it; and, if even small fees were charged, it would he better than the pauperizing system of a charity hospital. Such advice has always been, and is even now, extensively given by private practitioners, but they do not advertise their cures as is done by the government hospitals. It is a fact, also, that many of the natives have a great dislike to these institutions, and will not resort to them. A chief, resident within 100 yards of that at Wellington, refused to let his dying daughter be taken there, and it was stated, on very excellent authority, that such instances are common. The general opinion about them in the colony is, that they are a delusion, productive of little good to any one except the medical officer in charge.

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§ 3. THE NATIVES--OUR RELATIONS WITH.

The practical question remains, What are our present relations with the natives, and is there any ground for supposing they will be disturbed?

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It is certain that they are more inclined to peaceful councils than they were--that there is less chance of any disturbance. To what is this owing? To feelings of loyalty among them I attribute nothing. Queen Victoria is a mere abstraction, exercising no practical influence over them. Governors they have seen removed and renewed; they fully appreciate how 'a breath can make them, as a breath has made.' Nor do I think that, as a body, they entertain much fear of the military. They always speak of them with contempt, though for the blue jackets they entertain a profound respect, having, whenever they encountered them, found them much the most formidable enemies. The maintenance of a military force in the country, is principally desirable to meet the emergency of any sudden outbreak or riot. If the natives, as a body, were inclined to go to war with us, the military force at present in the country would be most insufficient. But they are not, nor is it likely that they will ever be. If the troops were removed there might be risk of local disturbances, which it might be difficult to quell. It is, however, none of these causes which keep the natives quiet as a body.

Still less is it anything which government has done for them. The establishment of three inconsiderable hospitals, the employment, for

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two years, of 500 or 600 of them on the roads, the passing of an ordinance for the recovery of small debts, and the administration of summary justice inter se, these are causes altogether incommensurate with any general result. No institutions of a permanent character, or capable of embracing any considerable number of natives, have been attempted; and it may be safely stated that the influence exercised over them by the government during the last five years has been all but inappreciable.

The link which binds them to us is one of self-interest. They get money from us, they buy and sell among us, they discover the fact of our mutual dependence. This is the great security for the continuance of peace. And this buying and selling brings collateral securities with it; the natives not only become averse to quarrel, they forget how to fight; the old men, 'dexterous in battle,' are fast dying out; the rising generation, in a few years, will never have seen a battle.

Of any other amalgamation between the Europeans and natives than that which is carried on over the counter, there is little prospect. A few of the old whalers in the southern island, and a few of the beach-combing population elsewhere, have been lawfully married to native women, but their number is inconsiderable. The bulk of the English immigrants are themselves

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married people, and even if they were otherwise the ignorance of the native women of the arts which contribute to domestic comfort, and the private habits of men who never sat on a chair would prevent even the humbler classes of colonists from forming permanent alliances among them. A sort of Rolfe and Pocohontas alliance, though not grounded on the same patriotic motive, may occasionally have occurred between single young men of the upper class and native girls, but, as a legal and permanent bond, very seldom indeed. The habits, character, and circumstances of the two races are so different as to preclude all prospect of amalgamation by marriage. With the exception of quite an inconsiderable number, the natives continue to reside in wretched hovels, go clothed in blankets full of vermin, help themselves to food with their fingers out of a common dish, indulge in conversation such as no civilized person could listen to, have no fixed laws or institutions, no books but testaments and hymns, and, in short, retain all the principal, and many of the most disagreeable features of savage character. 7

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§ 4. NATIVE CHARACTER.

In short, no writer of romance was ever farther from the truth than those authors, who, like Jean Jacques Rousseau, or Mr. Herman Melville, have described savage life as a state of Arcadian simplicity, and savage character as a field on which are displayed all the virtues which adorned humanity before civilized arts brought vice, confusion, and trouble into the world. 'The peaceful life and gentle disposition, the freedom from oppression, the exemption from selfishness and from evil passions, and the simplicity of character of savages have no existence but in the fictions of poets and the fancies of vain speculators, nor can their mode of life be called, with any propriety, the natural state of man.' 8 I have not room, in the limited space which I have allotted to myself, to illustrate this position by a description of the New Zealander from the earliest period of our acquaintance with him. I will only refer the reader to a very admirable little volume, which was published anonymously 9 a few years ago.

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It contains on the whole by far the best account of the New Zealanders extant, as well as a most philosophical and sensible disquisition, in one of the latter chapters, upon savage character in general. Individual character varies, no doubt, to some extent among savages, but to a much less extent than among civilized nations whose habits are less uniform, and whose more numerous employments necessarily generate a greater variety of thought and of action. Among the old New Zealanders as among most savages, war was the ruling passion, the one great excitement of life, and this fact narrowed to a very limited space the development of individual character. Indeed, I doubt if among the chiefs more than two developments were to be distinguished; that of the impetuous, headlong warrior, the 'impiger, iracundus, inexorabilis, acer,' of the Achilles breed, and that of the subtle, ingenious, treacherous, and longheaded schemer of the Ulysses sort.

A remarkable instance of each has been exhibited in New Zealand, and become familiar by name even to the English public, during the period of our colonizing the islands. Rauperaha, the older, most influential and better known, died a few months ago. Ranghiaeta, his colleague and fighting general, survives him.

Rauperaha has been often described. His

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cruel treatment of his enemies whom he seduced on board a ship, hanging them by hooks through their thumbs, cutting them to pieces, and boiling them for food in the ship's coppers; his treachery to his relation Te Pehi, whom in the critical moment of battle he deserted, securing thereby his own elevation to the chieftainship of the tribe; and the part which he bore in the Wairau massacre, are the leading events by which his name has become familiar to the English reader. After the latter event he placed himself under missionary protection, and by pretending conversion and likening himself to St. Paul, he succeeded in hoodwinking his protectors, and through them persuading the government of his fidelity at the very time that he was supplying Ranghiaeta the open rebel, with arms and ammunition. Detected, seized, and imprisoned on board the Calliope frigate, he was released at the end of a twelvemonth, and handed over to the chief of the Waikatos who became bail for his good behaviour. Carried by him to the north he was upbraided with his misfortunes by Teraia the man eater, while the more generous Te Whero-whero endeavoured to soothe his affliction. After a few months he was permitted to return to Otaki, the place of his tribe. There he resumed his pretensions to sanctity. 'I saw,' says an intelligent, but newly

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arrived clergyman, who visited him at this time, 'amongst the other men of note, the old and once powerful chief, Rauperaha, who notwithstanding his great age of more than eighty years, is seldom missed from his class, and who, after a long life of perpetual turmoil spent in all the savage excitement of cruel and bloody wars, is now to be seen every morning in his accustomed place, repeating those blessed truths which teach him to love the Lord with all his heart, and mind, and soul, and strength, and his neighbour as himself.' Those who knew Rauperaha better, may, perhaps, doubt whether the AEthiop had so completely changed his skin as to justify the belief in which an enlarged charity, exercised by an amiable man, thus led its possessor to indulge. A few days before his death, when suffering under the malady which carried him off, two settlers called to see him. While there a neighbouring missionary came in and offered him the consolations of religion. Rauperaha demeaned himself in a manner highly becoming such an occasion, but the moment the missionary was gone, he turned to his other visitors and said, 'What is the use of all that nonsense? that will do my belly no good.' He then turned the conversation on the Wanganui races, where one of his guests had been running a horse.

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Such were the last days of Rauperaha. His death was an event favourable to the continuance of peace and the amelioration of the native character. His direct influence had, by his age and recent imprisonment, been nearly annihilated; but the mere shadow of his name was something; it was mixed up with the traditions of the bloody wars, which, under his generalship, devastated for years the whole coast south of Taranaki, and exterminated the inhabitants of one side of Cook's Strait. It was a tocsin, to the sound of which, in the case of disturbances elsewhere, the natives might yet have responded, and the certainty of which being no more heard, is an event calculated to corroborate the assurance of peace.

Ranghiaeta has never concealed his true character beneath the veil of hypocrisy; he still continues to display its original features, as the bold uncompromising savage -- still exercises his influence, reduced though it is, to thwart the progress of civilization, and dissuade his fellows from selling their land. He tells the missionaries, when they seek him out in his lair, that 'it is useless for them to give themselves the trouble of preaching the gospel to the natives; that the Maories are by nature bad; that they brought the evil spirit with them from the far country from which they originally came; that it is still

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in them, and that therefore they cannot be reformed.' His wife in the meantime makes preparation for rude hospitality, screaming to her attendants, and seeming to think that the more noise she makes, the more honour she does to her guests. 'She was a coarse, dirty, ill-favoured woman; round her neck she wore an ornament of greenstone; her body, like her husband's, was smeared with red oxide of iron; her coarse and matted hair had evidently never known the use of a comb, and her only garment was a sort of loose gown, which was so filthy that its original colour could not be guessed. The result of her preparations were some roasted potatoes and a small wild bird, cooked in the flames, together with some tea, served up in tin mugs, with dark-brown, or rather, black sugar.' 10 But Ranghiaeta is the type of a class which is fast disappearing. In the north, Heke and Pomare are gone, and many a chief of similar character but less note. The circumstances out of which such characters grew, no longer exist; and though the same passions and temperaments may be found in the next generation, their development will necessarily be entirely different, changed by the changing circumstances of the time.

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§ 5. MISSIONARY INFLUENCE.

Whatever be the fate of the natives, it is unquestionable that the missionaries have exercised no small influence over it, and I am often asked what the effect of their influence has been. My answer is, up to a certain point beneficial-- beyond that, injurious in a very high degree.

So far as they have confined themselves to their legitimate province, instructing, civilizing, and christianizing the natives, their influence has been all for good. Whenever they have stepped out of their proper sphere, interfering in political matters, or dictating the forms of intercourse between the natives and Europeans, their influence has been without mitigation injurious.

It was missionary influence which carried the native through the first stage of civilization, which made him willing to tolerate the presence of the stranger. Without that influence, it is probable that we should never have occupied New Zealand. But their idea was to erect the New Zealanders into an independent state --a sort of Levitical republic, like that of the Jesuits at Paragua, guided, and in fact ruled, by the missionaries themselves. Colonization was death to such a scheme, and the determination

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of the missionary to 'thwart' its progress 'by every means in his power,' is matter of history. Defeated in the attempt to resist colonization, he still clung to the hope of keeping the native separate from the white man, whom he described as 'an enemy pouring in like a flood;' and he still aimed to establish his own power over the mind of the native by means of the separation of the races. His object in all this may have been single-minded; he may have contemplated solely the benefit of the native, and believed firmly that this was the way to secure it. I do not question his motive; I only deal with the fact.

The founders of the colony, on the other hand, believed that the surest method of civilizing the native, was to promote intercourse between him and the colonist--and schemes were devised for bringing them into the closest contact. It was the exact reverse of the missionary method.

Neither plan has been fully tried. Each has 'thwarted' the other, and with the exception of a single instance, I know of no case in which actual experiment has tested the merits of the two schemes. But there is one instance in which the two systems has been contrasted, and with a result to most minds very conclusive.

At Otaki and Waikanae, on the northern

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shore of Cook's Strait, fifty miles from Wellington, the nearest European settlement, there has been established for many years the headquarters of the church mission in the south, under the superintendence of an archdeacon of the colonial church, and another missionary. Here the attempt has been made to constitute a model community of natives on the separate system. They have been removed from their former habitation nearer the sea; the street lines of a small town have been surveyed; gardens allotted, and model-houses erected. The government has also aided in the experiment, appointing a salaried resident magistrate, and a constabulary staff, to reside among them. The bishop has repeatedly visited the village, and expressed his gratification at its condition; and it is pointed to by the supporters of the system as a most satisfactory specimen of native civilization.

At the Motueka, in Blind Bay, on the other side Cook's Strait, and nearly opposite to Otaki, there is a small community of natives of the same tribe as those at Otaki. They live in the heart of the Nelson settlement. Neither government nor missionary influence has ever been brought to bear upon them to any appreciable extent. But a community of European colonists, chiefly of the humbler classes, was located among

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them eight or nine years ago. Their intercourse has been close and harmonious; and whatever of civilization the natives there possess, they owe to their intermixture with Europeans. From them it has spread to other natives on each side of them, similarly free from government and missionary influence; and the whole of that side of the strait may be regarded as under the operation of the same principle. These natives, therefore, afford grounds for a fair comparison with those at Otaki.

What shall be the test? Sir Fowell Buxton, who had studied these subjects deeply, considered the plough the best test of the progress of civilization among savages. We will apply it here.

At Otaki, the specimen of the separate system, with a population of 664 souls, the entire amount of cultivation, according to the government census in 1850, is five acres of wheat, and 138 of other produce.

At Motueka, and the other shore of Cook's Strait, where the opposite principle has been worked, with a population of 1,400 souls, there are 1,000 acres of wheat, and 600 of other produce.

That is to say, on the separate system, the natives cultivate only one hundredth part of an acre of wheat per head, and less than a quarter

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of an acre of any sort of produce. On the free intercourse system, they cultivate three-quarters of an acre of wheat per head, and about an acre and a quarter of all sorts.

Need more be said to establish the point? I would only add that, as far as a very limited personal intercourse enables me to judge, the character of the natives at the Motueka is in other respects nearly as much in advance of that of the natives at Otaki, as it is in the particular of industry, as exhibited by the amount of their cultivation. 11

I have said that, with the exception of the Otaki instance, I am not acquainted with any in which the experiment of the separate system has received a fair and full trial, and is capable of contrast with a neighbouring community founded on the opposite principle. Generally speaking, the colonists will not be debarred from intercourse with the natives; and it is only

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where local or territorial circumstances interpose obstacles to their intercourse that the separate principle can be attempted: but the desire to carry it out is still manifested by some of the missionary body. When the colonists commenced their occupation of the Wiararapa valley, the missionary in that district used every means to check the intercourse of the races, even to the extent of prohibiting natives from engaging as shepherds, because they might be required to look after a flock on Sunday. Instances occurred in which natives refused employment on this ground, alleging Mr. Colenso's order as their reason. In thus resorting to spiritual weapons to enforce his theory of non-intercourse, he must either have forgotten that works of necessity are sanctioned on the Sabbath, or not considered sheep-tending a work of necessity.

And this introduces another question:--What has been the effect of the religious teaching of the missionaries on the native character? I am afraid that it is little more than skin-deep. No doubt there are instances in which individuals have been brought actually under the influence of religious principle, but I speak of the bulk of the natives who profess Christianity. With most of them it is a mere name, entirely inoperative in practice. They will exhibit an atten-

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tion to forms which would, and often does, mislead a stranger; but the next hour they will exhibit all the habits of an unconverted savage. Thus, when travelling, about four years ago, in the Wiararapa, I came upon a native encampment one Sunday evening. It rained, and we required some assistance towards building a hut, and wished to purchase some potatoes. Not a finger would the natives move because it was the sacred day. The next morning the same individuals attempted most deliberately to cheat us; and one of them, who had undertaken to guide us, for hire, to a river about ten miles off, attempted to trick us by declaring one we came to, at half the distance, to be that we sought; and he endeavoured to force us to pay and dismiss him, by seizing a gun which one of us had carelessly laid down. They will also exhibit smatterings of Scripture, which would lead one to believe them better informed than they are, though their applications of it are often sufficiently ludicrous. One of them, whom the governor was upbraiding with having sold his land three or four times over to different parties, justified himself by quoting the passage, 'After thou hadst sold it, was it not thine own?' Another, a very intelligent native too, to whom I was pointing out the impropriety of his having three wives, replied, 'Oh, never mind; all the same

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as Solomon.' A much more serious misapplication of the Scriptures occurred during the late war, when many of them tore up their Bibles to make wadding for their guns.

As to the interference of the missionaries in political affairs, it has been solely and extensively mischievous. It is a fact too well established to admit of the least dispute, that the government of the country for the first six years was carried on (in all that related to or bore upon the natives) under the advice of leading members of the missionary body. Governor Hobson placed himself unreservedly in its hands. Governor Fitzroy went the length of stating to his legislative council that he relied more upon Mr. Clarke (the present secretary of the mission in the colony, and formerly one of its catechists) 'than upon any five of the other officers of government.' Under these circumstances, a large share of responsibility for all the acts of government relating to the natives rests and must for ever rest on the missionaries. What the principle was on which they acted may be explained in a few words.

It was termed government by moral force --but government by immoral laxity would have been a much more appropriate designation. For it consisted in yielding on every occasion to the caprices and violence of the natives, whether

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exercised among themselves or directed against the colonists. Its natural and inevitable result was to destroy all prestige of the moral and intellectual superiority of the Europeans, to bring the government into the utmost contempt, and to terminate in rebellion only to be quelled at a great cost of life and property, besides retarding for years the progress and prosperity of the country.

To afford some idea of the follies which were enacted under this system take the case of Heki's earliest act of aggression, the cutting down the flag-staff at the Bay of Islands. He did it as a deliberate and declared act of rebellion against the British power. Governor Fitzroy, having procured troops from Sydney, paraded them on the shore at the bay, when, at the instigation of Mr. Clarke, Heki, who refused personally to appear, sent in ten muskets as an emblem of submission. The Governor returned them with a conciliatory message, and removed the troops. Within a few weeks afterwards, Heki sacked and destroyed the settlement, and drove its inhabitants out of the country.

I wish that I could report that such weaknesses were no longer exhibited in New Zealand. Little more than a year ago Governor Grey visited in person the settlement of New Plymouth, in the hope of terminating the long

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vexed land question there. He was riding into the country, when a small party of natives hostile to his object met him, flourished a tomahawk over his head and ordered him back to the town. He proceeded to the residence of a powerful and friendly chief, and, on complaining of the indignity, the tomahawk (but not the individual who used it) was brought in and laid at his feet. Sir George accepted the apology. It is not to be wondered at that before many days were over the hostile natives openly plundered some of the friendly ones of valuable presents which Sir George had given, and that the representative of British power shortly left the settlement without achieving his object.

In common with other colonists, I have often been hurt and annoyed by meeting with respectable and intelligent persons newly arrived from home, whose minds had been impressed with the belief that the wars in New Zealand arose from the oppression of the natives by the colonists, and that they all involved disputes about land. Such an impression is the very reverse of truth. The ultimate cause of the wars has been none other than that government by moral force before alluded to; but even with the immediate causes the colonists have had nothing whatever to do. On three occasions it has been found necessary to have recourse to military

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force. The first was in 1845, when Heki sacked Kororarika. No difference about land or anything else existed there between the colonists and natives; but the imposition of custom and harbour dues had driven away the whaling ships with which Heki had carried on a profitable and iniquitous trade in female slaves, and which he hoped to restore if he could get rid of the British power. The second occasion was on the River Hutt, near Wellington, when the government undertook to expel certain natives from land of which they had repeatedly admitted they were not the owners, and with the true owners of which the government had itself negotiated a valid purchase and paid an ample price for it. In the usurped occupation of the district by the natives, there was no single extenuating circumstance, nor any hardship in requiring them to return to their own possessions. Their refusal to do so was accompanied by several cruel murders of inoffensive settlers, and other acts of violence and outrage. The third occasion was at Wanganui, where the necessity of employing the military arose from the barbarous murder of the Gilfillan family, as an act of retaliation for an accidental and not very severe wound inflicted on a chief by a midshipman of H. M. S. Calliope amusing himself with a pistol some time previously, and being in no

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way connected with the family on which the revenge was taken. The murderers, five in number were hanged by a military officer in command of the district, on which the tribe rose and a war of many months' duration ensued.

Upon the merits of these wars, in a military point of view, I am not prepared to enter. None but a military man could do so with effect; and though I know the opinions of many of that class who were engaged in them, I cannot without breach of confidence make use of the information I have received from them. But I may venture to state the opinion of the colonists on the subject, which was, that the operations were by no means creditable to those who conducted them, not at all calculated to add to the well-earned laurels of the British army, or to impress the natives with an idea of any great superiority on our side. And a careful perusal of the despatches relating to them leads necessarily to the same conclusion. When we read of a force being brought up to scale lofty palisades without ladders,--of attempts to capture a fort of extraordinary strength with no better weapon than small arms,--of the disastrous retreat of a body of regulars before a party of natives, which was immediately afterwards encountered and driven away by a dozen militia men,--of omissions to

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hem in a rebel chief and all his force in the only defile by which he could escape, or to cut off a fleet of canoes when they could have been surprised without difficulty; of an immense military parade, accompanied by the governor in person, being suddenly ordered back into barracks at the moment when the soldiers were levelling their bayonets to rush into conflict with an enemy not superior in numbers; when we read of such events as these, even civilians cannot help suspecting misconduct somewhere, and believing that, if rightly managed, the wars of New Zealand might have been brought to a much speedier, more honourable, and less costly conclusion. With whom the blame of these events rests, it is not for me to decide-- in some instances, circumstances point to the military officers in command; but it is only fair to the soldiers to state, that they almost to a man complain of the interference of the civil power with their movements, and that on some of the occasions when failure was most evident, they were under the immediate personal direction of civil authority. If any one should have curiosity enough to examine the official records of the New Zealand wars, he must carefully look at the facts and disregard the high-flown phraseology, or he will infallibly be led to mistake a skirmish in which seven or eight men

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fell on each side, for a victory greater than that of the Sutledj, when 15,000 of the enemy were swept into the river in a morning. Mrs. Hutchinson, in her Life of the Colonel, tells us of a certain Sir John Gell who with no appetite for fighting, was ambitious of the fame of a fire-eater; and, to obtain it kept in his pay the editor of a country paper. On one occasion, having nothing better to blow his trumpet about, he announced that Sir John Gell's troop had 'captured a dragoon in a plush doublet.' The reader will find among the official accounts of the New Zealand war many 'plush doublet' despatches.

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§ 6. NATIVE TITLE TO WASTE LANDS.

Any account of the present state of New Zealand would be incomplete without some remarks on the question of the native title to the waste lands.

Two theories have been propounded. According to one, the savage inhabitants of an unreclaimed country have an absolute right of proprietorship in its soil, based upon the mere fact of their residing on some portion of it. Thus, because they live in New Zealand, New Zealand belongs to them. According to the other theory (which I give in the words of

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Vattel,) 12 it is contended that, in an unreclaimed country, in which there are none but erratic natives, incapable of occupying the whole, they cannot be allowed exclusively to appropriate to themselves more land than they have occasion for, or more than they are able to settle and cultivate. It is urged that their unsettled habitation in those immense regions cannot be accounted a true and legal possession, and that the people of Europe, too closely pent up at home, are lawfully entitled to take possession of the waste and settle it with colonies.'

The advocates of systematic colonization hold to the latter theory. The Bishop of New Zealand, the missionaries, and the landsharking interest at Sydney and elsewhere, protest against it and adhere to the former.

I have never seen anything worthy of the name of an argument in favour of native right. The fallacy used is usually an appeal to the sense of justice on the cruelty of robbing the natives of what is theirs, 13 It is an evident petitio principii, involving the question whether what is called theirs, is theirs or not.

The argument on the other side resolves itself

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into two branches--first, the legal, and second, the expedient.

1. As regards the legal, we find, from the earliest days of British colonization, the crown lawyers treating the crown as entitled to an absolute fee simple in the waste lands of countries only occupied by savages, or as they called them, 'infidels.' In the letters patent given to John Cabot, the charter of Lord Carlisle for the West Indies, that of Sir Humphrey Gilbert for Virginia, and every other document of the same sort, from the reign of Henry VII. downwards, we find the crown conferring absolute rights in words which even the high prerogative notions of Bacon or Noy would not have led them to use, if they had not considered the right of the crown absolute and indefeasible. They are not such words as they would have used if they had considered the crown only entitled to a right of pre-emption over lands of which the 'infidels' were the true 'owners.'

It is true that the colonists in those times found it necessary, as a matter of fact, to treat with the overwhelming numbers of natives about them, for liberty to settle in the countries they resorted to. But they did not admit, matter of theory, any 'right' in the natives, as appears from an extract from the instructions to Governor Endicot (quoted by Bancroft) where

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he is told, that if the natives 'pretend any right of inheritance,' he is to treat with them accordingly. So far from admitting any such right, we are told by Chancellor Kent, 14 that 'the early colonists came to America with no slight confidence in the solidity of their rights to subdue and cultivate the wilderness, as being by the law of nature and the gift of Providence, open and common to the first occupants in the character of cultivators of the earth. The great patent of New England and the opinion of grave and learned men tended to confirm that confidence.' It is true the American courts have laid down a different rule for their own guidance, but neither their decisions nor the acts of private colonists or colonizing patentees could affect the common law rights of the British Crown. Nothing but legislation could do that, and there has been none on the subject. And in accordance with the same principle, the crown itself, on colonizing New Holland and Van Diemen's Land, barely fifty years ago, entirely disregarded the alleged native right. If it have any foundation, the sites of Sydney and Hobart Town have yet to be purchased from some wanderer in the Australian wilds.

2. On the ground of expediency still less can

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be said in support of the native right. Colonization being once permitted (and it cannot be prevented in some sort, either systematic or irregular,) the most beneficial thing that can be done for the natives is to promote the immigration of civilized people into their country. The admission of their absolute right to the land raises innumerable obstacles to beneficial colonization. It involves the colonizing government in endless disputes with landsharks about lands which they affect to have purchased from the natives. It causes a body of wretched speculators to throng to the colony for the express purpose of raising and establishing such claims; men who have neither the capital nor the energy to use an acre of the vast districts they acquire, but who hope to make a fortune by its re-sale, as it gains value by the exertions of others and the increase of population. 15 It creates in the breast of the natives an insatiable cupidity, which condemns them to listless inactivity and a continuance in barbarous habits so

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long as they have an acre of land remaining by the sale of which they can hope to live in indolence. The money they receive for it does them no good, but is wasted, or at least spent, almost as soon as received, and often in ways very injurious to them.

But though, on grounds both of justice, law and expediency, it might, at the commencement of New Zealand colonization, have been desirable to negative the claim put forth on behalf of the natives, it is now too late to think of it. They have been taught a contrary 'doctrine,' by men of sacred character, high in office; and though, I believe, without such teaching they might at one time have been easily persuaded to surrender the waste land to the crown, yet now it is too late. The only method by which it can now be got possession of, is by gradual and sometimes very tedious negotiation and purchase.

And supposing the native race not to become extinct, or not so rapidly as I believe they will, a practice has sprung up which will disincline them to sell the waste lands; which has, in fact, already prevented their selling one district--the Wiararapa valley--the acquisition of which is of almost vital importance to the settlement of Wellington. The practice I allude to, is that of colonists leasing the waste lands from the natives, the history of which forms an instructive chapter

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on the feebleness of the colonial government in reference to the aborigines.

At the very commencement of the practice, in March 1844, the late Colonel Wakefield, the principal agent of the New Zealand Company, foreseeing its certain consequences, called the attention of the local government to it; on which an official notice was issued by the latter, warning all persons against entering into any negotiations with the natives for purchase, lease, or otherwise. Long experience of the feebleness of the local government had rendered its proclamations waste paper; and numerous parties, from the highest to the lowest, openly and without any attempt at concealment, proceeded to enter into arrangements with the natives in the Wiararapa in direct contravention of the notice, which described the practice as one 'which retarded the adjustment of very important questions, on which the prosperity of the settlements depended.' No attempt was made to prevent them; but in November, 1846, two years afterwards, an ordinance of council was passed, declaring the practice illegal, and imposing very heavy penalties on such as might follow it. This ordinance, like the previous notice, remained a dead letter; till about a year afterwards, in December, 1847, the local government, being again called upon by the Company's agent,

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issued another notice, referring to the ordinance, and threatening its enforcement. Nothing however was done till another year had elapsed, when, as if the occasion for these threats had become intermittent, another notice was issued similar to the former ones, while a party was gazetted as public informer, who was himself notoriously an offender against it. No prosecutions ensued; but, in October of the same year, (the Company's agent having determined on a final attempt to purchase the valley) one more proclamation was issued, being thus the fifth document published by the Government, threatening all sorts of pains and penalties on such as should disobey its edicts; and the Lieutenant-governor, Mr. Eyre, in his executive council, pledged himself to enforce the law.

The negotiation for purchase failed for the time, and the proclamation was heard of no more till about nine months afterwards, when fresh transactions being brought to his notice, the Company's agent again appealed to the government, and reminded the Lieutenant-governor of his pledge. A long correspondence ensued, in which that officer manifested every anxiety to fulfil his promise, and maintain the dignity of the law; but it ended in his being prohibited from proceeding by Governor Grey, who informed him that if the Company's agent

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wished the practice to be stopped, he might do it himself which, as the Company had no executive political functions of any sort and no officers to employ in such a matter, was equivalent to saying it should not be done.

In the meantime, while these paper threats against occupation were being issued, the district was being occupied. The whole valley is now parcelled out amongst a body of colonists holding by lease under the natives, and paying them a rent of no less than 600l. a-year. The Government has admitted that the occupants have, by its neglect to enforce the law, acquired a vested interest, for which they must be compensated whenever the district is bought from the natives.

If this practice is continued, the renewal of disturbances with the natives may be looked for as a matter of certainty wherever it is allowed. Their covetousness has already led them to repudiate their bargains, and many sources of difference are growing up between them and their tenants. Both are transgressors of the law, and living practically beyond its pale. The only means of settling any serious dispute which may arise will be the tomahawk. Retaliation will ensue, and the responsibility will rest on those who ought to have prevented the origin or continuance of the practice.

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§ 7. THE WASTE LANDS.

The right of the natives to the waste lands, though so contrary to principle, and attended with so many bad consequences to themselves and to colonization, is now in practice, and ex necessitate, admitted, while the right of the crown is reduced to a mere right of pre-emption; that is to say, it retains the privilege of being the only purchaser from the natives, and prohibits its subjects from doing so. Hence, it is through the instrumentality of the crown alone (or, in other words, of the Colonial-office and the local government) that every acre which is to be reclaimed from the waste and subjected to colonizing operations, must be obtained. And it follows that every private title must (to be valid) be traced back to a grant from the crown.

This privilege which the crown claims is not a mere feudal or prerogative one, but is founded on a wise and constitutional principle, by virtue of which it assumes the office of regulating the future settlement and occupation of the country. In the absence of such an exclusive power there would result a general scramble, and colonization would be an impossibility.

But in the exercise of this right, the crown is but a trustee for the public, and for the colonial public as distinct from the general mass of Bri-

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tish interests; a position recognised by the Royal Instructions of 1846, (now in force,) by the Australian Waste Land Sales Act, and various other legislative and official documents which provide for the application of the funds arising from the land sales. The waste lands of a colony are the inheritance of the crown, but only for the purposes of regulation and administration; not to use at pleasure--not to be granted away for favour--or to be disposed of for the benefit of strangers. In any other point of view a right so large and so oppressive to a colonial community would be intolerable.

In what manner the trusteeship of the crown has hitherto been exercised in New Zealand, it will not be uninteresting to inquire.

In 1840 New Zealand was made an independent colony, and under the act of 3 & 4 Vic, c.62, the crown granted it a formal constitution and a separate legislature. The act enabling the crown to erect such constitution, contained no provisions applicable to crown lands, which remained as before, subject to crown regulation, and it would seem, not liable to be affected by acts of the local legislature. By the charter (granted in 1840 under the great seal), power was given to the Governor, but subject to any royal instructions to be thereafter given, to make grants under the public seal of the colony, to

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private persons for their own use, or to bodies politic for public purposes. By the instructions under the sign manual of the same date, it is directed that all the waste lands shall be sold at an uniform price per acre (to be fixed by the Secretary of State)--the purchaser having the privilege of recommending, for a free passage, a number of emigrants proportioned to the amount of his passage-money. Ss, 44 and 55. By the Australian Land Sales Act, 5 & 6 Vic, c. 36, all waste lands are to be sold by auction at an upset price of not less than 1l. an acre, the whole proceeds to be applied to public purposes, and one-half of the gross proceeds to emigration. 16 By a subsequent act, New Zealand was exempted from the operation of the Australian Land Sales Act, and the crown's power over the waste lands restored. By the charter of 1846 (under the great seal) the crown gave the governor power to grant waste lands to private parties or public bodies, in accordance with royal instructions to be issued from time to time (the same as in the charter of 1840.) By instructions under the sign manual of the same

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date, the governor was directed to ascertain and register the native titles, and to consider all lands not covered by such titles as demesne of the crown. This has not been attempted, the opposite doctrine having, as already stated, been allowed to prevail in practice, and the demesne of the crown having been limited to so much as it has actually purchased from the natives, whether occupied by them or not. The demesne so ascertained was to be sold by auction at an upset price of not less than 1l. per acre, the net proceeds to be held in trust for emigration and other public services. These instructions were suspended by the act 10 & 11 Vic, c. 112, till the 5th July, 1850, but are now again in operation.

From the general system exhibited above, there have been exceptional variations.

1. By stat. 10 & 11 Vic. c. 112, the lands of the southern province and their administration were vested in the New Zealand Company for three years, which expired, and all rights &c were surrendered by it, on the 5th April, 1850. But the land fund stands charged for ever with a debt of about 260,000l. and interest due from the Home Government to the company under an arrangement of the Colonial Office in 1846. 2. About 2,000,000 acres in the middle island have been vested in the same manner

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in the Canterbury Association, with powers of administration, for a term of ten years, contingent on certain events, and renewable by the crown. 3. Several local ordinances have been pursued, more or less affecting the waste lands; such as four or five different land claims ordinances, by which a tribunal was established for the purpose of adjudicating on purchases by individuals from the natives before the colony was formed; an ordinance prohibiting purchases from the natives; an ordinance for quieting the titles of certain parties who had obtained grants in the north supposed to be invalid, but which the crown had been defeated in a first attempt to reverse and which threatened to be productive of much litigation; an ordinance to regulate the pastoral occupation of the waste lands in the northern district, under which licences are granted, 17 and some others.

But a new light has been thrown on the whole aspect of the subject by certain decisions of the supreme court of the colony, involving consequences of such magnitude and importance as must excuse a brief notice of them,

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A great number of grants of land were issued by Governor Fitzroy, in an irregular manner, to private parties claiming under purchases direct from the natives--some previous and some subsequent to the establishment of British authority. In some instances these grants were in contravention of the provisions of local ordinances; in others, in opposition to the recommendation of the commissioners; and in all they were opposed to the charter and the royal instructions.

Under instructions from home, Governor Grey took steps to settle the question of their validity by proceedings in the supreme court at Auckland. Similar proceedings were taken at Wellington by the New Zealand Company, whose title was in some instances affected by such grants, claiming to over-ride it. 18 In all the cases tried, the court decided that the grants were valid and irreversible. It was thus established, by repeated decisions of the highest tribunal in the colony, that a grant of land made by the Governor and under the colonial seal, though in

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opposition to royal instructions, to the charter, and to local ordinances, is valid and binding on the crown, conferring a good title on the grantee and his assigns. Hence a Governor, though acting contrary to instructions, might grant away at his pleasure the whole of the waste lands, his power being absolute and uncontrollable even by the crown itself.

It might have been expected that a decision involving such consequences would have been carried before the Privy Council, on appeal. But Governor Grey, apparently foreseeing the agitation which such a course would have created among the European population immediately around the seat of Government, yielded, and passed an ordinance quieting the disputed titles, and rendering valid 'all grants under the colonial seal made previously to the passing thereof.' 19

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The governor, however, wrote to the Colonial Office, pointing out the consequences of these decisions, transmitting a copy of his ordinance, and requesting that the 'whole subject might be brought under the review of the home Government, in order that the authority of the Governor may be clearly defined, and such difficulties avoided in New Zealand or other colonies for the future.' The despatch containing this request was written on the 24th of July, 1849, and received at the Colonial Office on the 3rd December in the same year. It was not till the 13th of August, 1850, when a whole session of parliament had elapsed and all opportunity of doing anything had passed, that Lord Grey answered the governor's despatch, when he merely acknowledged its receipt, expressed his appreciation of the motives which led the governor to pursue the course he had, and intimated her Majesty's approbation of the ordinance. As far as appears by the Blue Book, no other notice has ever been taken of this most important matter; another session has since elapsed, and it still remains in statu quo.

It will be seen from the above brief statement, that many questions of the utmost importance arise out of the present unsettled state of the law on this subject--questions too abstruse and difficult to be disposed of or even discussed

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within my present limits. They are such as these:--

1. What is the nature of the crown's power over the waste lands? In what form ought it to be exercised? Is the Governor by his commission absolute territorial lord of the colony, capable of alienating at pleasure the entire territory to the exclusion of future colonists, and the complete extinction of all attempts at systematic colonization?

2. In what way can the sale of waste lands be carried on most advantageously, effectually, and economically for the service of the colony? This involves the still larger question, of how can emigration be best promoted?

3. Is the local legislature at present competent to make regulations relative to the waste lands, and, above all, to 'quiet disputed titles,' which virtually means to grant away the lands of the crown? If not, ought not steps to be taken to repeal, or rather declare null, the ordinance passed at Auckland, and to restore the crown to its rights? Can this question be settled except by the imperial parliament?

4. What ought to be the application of the funds arising from land sales?--ought they to be charged with debts incurred for special purposes, such as the pensioner immigration, or

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the New Zealand Company's debt--and could any authority, except the imperial parliament, with propriety have made, or hereafter make, such charges? This involves the larger question of the right of the colonists to administer their own affairs, and particularly their own lands.

If indeed it could be shown that this large and important branch of colonial administration had been hitherto wise economical and effective, the answer would be simple--to leave matters as they are. But there is a deep-seated feeling in the colony and elsewhere, that its interests are neglected and mismanaged; and that whether wilfully or through inability, the Colonial Office and its dependent board the Land and Emigration Commission, have failed in the object for which governments are established-- the promotion of the prosperity and welfare of the governed. In that portion of the colony in which the crown has retained the administration of the waste lands (the northern province), scarcely any lands except a small portion in the town of Auckland have been sold; while I believe not less than from 300,000 to 400,000 acres have been granted away by it without consideration, and in respect of which no immigration has been effected. The only emigration which has been effected by means of the land

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fund in New Zealand, is that which has occurred in the southern province, where the government had put the administration of the waste lands out of its own hands.

I shall now conclude my subject by an inquiry into the nature and condition of the local government of the colony,