1864 - Muter, E. Travels and Adventures of an Officer's Wife in India, China and New Zealand. [NZ Sections only] - CHAPTER XIV, p 276-292

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CHAPTER XIV.

WHEN gentlemen ceased discussing sheep, horses, cattle, or the country, the conversation turned to the north island, and the relation between the Maories and the colonists. There were three ways of regarding this question. First, the Imperial or British taxpayer's view. Second, the colonial, or that held by the settlers of the north island, in proximity to, or actual contact with, the natives. And, finally, the southern aspect, taken by those settlers of the provinces who were in no way influenced by danger to life or property.

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At home the word signifying a country often conveys a simple idea, meaning a limited space, a government, and a people. Mrs. Smith will ask Lieutenant Brown, 50th Bombay Native Infantry, just from India, if he knows young Smith, in some Bengal regiment, whose number she cannot at the moment recollect; and Mr. Smith will write to his cousin at Kurrachee to look out for his married daughter going to Calcutta. A small and infant colony like New Zealand may well be regarded as a unit, when such ideas are held of our mighty Indian Empire.

It is to be hoped, when this question comes again before the public, that ignorance of its true merits may not lead to its being discussed and handled in a way to cause a separation between the two islands, as well as between the mother country and her young and vigorous offshoot. When the subject assumes an imperial interest Parliament will probably deal with it, impressed with the belief that the colony is a series of small settlements located among tribes of natives.

A large portion of the people derive their ideas of native races, subjects of the Queen, from Exeter Hall. Among them there is a strong impression

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that the spirit of contention in New Zealand has been raised by the grasping nature of the colonists, partly to secure to the struggling community a large expenditure from the Imperial treasury, and partly from the covetous wish to obtain the lands of the aborigines.

Such convictions will exercise their influence both on the rulers and on the nation, the more readily as the subject involves a money question. One section depicts the natives as the most intelligent race ever rescued from barbarism--brave and noble in their instincts, and Christian in religion. They consider it worth almost any sacrifice to elevate from a savage state to a high standard of civilization one of the finest races with whom we have been brought in contact; and here is the chance. We may prove to the world that it is compatible with the interests of colonization so to raise a heathen and benighted people, instead of crushing them out of existence to make way for ourselves.

The object is high, and if it is carried out in the true spirit of justice, it may not be impossible.

The other section represent the Maori as a mere savage, rendered the more dangerous by a smatter-

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ing of civilization; as a people to whom conciliation means fear; crafty, insolent, and grasping; regarding war as an excitement, with little to lose by plunder, and much to gain. Both sections agree in regarding the Maori as brave, intelligent, and physically strong.

This may all be readily comprehended, and the relations likely to spring up between these tribes and the English settlers located among them. But it is not understood in England that by far the greater part of the people, of the land, and of the property of the colony, is no more affected by the attitude of the natives, than is any gentleman's estate in Yorkshire, or any cotton mill in Lancashire. When a colonial minister points out to the colonists of New Zealand the unfairness of expecting the struggling classes in England to pay the expenses of a Maori war, he addresses a community the majority of whom have even less interest in the question than they on whose behalf the minister writes.

The term Middle Island, denoting the south, is so evidently absurd that I have not used it. As well might England, Scotland, and Wales be spoken of as the north island of Great Britain, because

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the Isle of Wight lies to the south, similar to the position of Stewart's Island in relation to the colony of New Zealand. The ridiculous names given by whalers are followed too servilely.

The North Island is nothing to the inhabitants of the south. To the people of England it is a splendid reserve for emigration, if not available now, to become available twenty years hence. The southern provinces have no such connection with the northern provinces as the latter have with the mother country. They are mere rival communities, competing for the stream of living beings drafted from Great Britain. Each would monopolize all to itself. Yet the Secretary of State tells them it is their business, but not that of the English people, to support the Imperial troops required for the protection of the northern settlers, not one of whose uniforms was seen in the south till the discovery of the gold-fields called for a detachment in Otago.

The tone assumed in England is aggravating to men so placed. It is held to be their war, commenced for the double purpose of robbing the quiet and inoffensive natives, and of profiting by the taxation of the poor people of England, while in reality they have no interest in the question,

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further than that raised by the draft of large sums from their treasuries to the exchequer of the north; and they are allowed no voice in the circumstances that caused the war, nor any control in the struggle when commenced.

England appoints the governor, giving him special instructions, and empowering him to act in native questions. When the strife he inaugurates breaks out, the struggle is conducted by imperial officers, wholly beyond colonial control. When the bill has to be settled, the authority who appointed the imperial officers calls on a section of the community to bear the burden of a contention in which they were without interest and without power; while he exempts another section, in whom the control was vested, and who had a considerable interest in the result.

A strong party in the south has formed itself into a league, having its head at Dunedin, to agitate for the separation of the islands into two distinct governments. The reason it puts prominently forth is the advantage the southern provinces would gain by having a local seat of rule; yet that which will have most influence in drawing into this league the southern people, is the one above

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given. In their minds they condemn the abandonment of their sister in the north, in her emergency and distress, as ungenerous and un-English. But if England sets the example of abandonment, can she expect an infant community, struggling on a tract of waste land, to take up the burden she drops? Yet, if individually asked, there are few men in England who would not stigmatize the desertion of a sister community by the southern people, under such circumstances, as a cowardly act. In their proximity the settler in the south, as well as his countrymen at home, sees the links that morally bind him, while those of England are lost in the distance. Yet they exist even more strongly for her, and should the country sever this claim, in a moment of pressure and irritation, she will drag the broken links for many a weary year.

The native race is said to be dying out, and the colonists are recommended to wait patiently, bearing every indignity, till natural causes leave them lords of the soil. A suggestion more likely to be disregarded, cannot be imagined. A man insulted, threatened, and injured by another carries his case before a judge, who tells

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him his adversary will not live for ever, and therefore he had better wait, if allowed, till his enemy dies, for peace and security. It is not easy to realize the full significance of this advice. It condemns our people located in the island to abandon their property, or to become slaves. Imagine the clenched hands and knit brows of a race whose lordly instincts can scarcely endure the equality of foreigners, with skins as white as their own, condemned to be the slaves of a copper-coloured community of savages. The result may easily be foreseen. The man of peaceful instincts, with wife and children exposed to danger, would abandon his estate, and begin anew in a province of the south. He of iron nerves and sinews, with rifle in hand, and scalping-knife in belt, would hold his own in defiance of all comers; while a fine field would be opened to the lawless, to those who derive a pleasing excitement from danger, and to those who without capital are willing to risk their lives. The Maories would melt from the face of creation as snow from the plains of Canterbury, leaving the island in peace, a blood-stained solitude. What an end for the high aspirations with which we looked forward to the future of these aborigines!--what

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a territory for the flag of our sovereign! Dreadful as is this picture, it but fairly portrays what would actually take place were the northern island deserted by England and by the south.

From its earliest settlement, the seat of government has been discussed with an animosity and bitterness peculiar to small communities--the more as it involved a question of personal gain. Circumstances have changed since the days when Wellington met Auckland, on this point, with a feeling of hostility that in olden times would have brought the forces of both parties in contact on a field of battle. Then the cities destined to solve the question were the one a paltry village and the other unborn, its site the abode of Paradise duck, and its wild vegetation the cover of quail. Now. the argument is between the islands. Hitherto the south has been a dependency of the north, but the rapid increase of wealth and population in the former has turned the tables, and the time has arrived when the immense disproportion of means requires that the north should be governed from the south. It is thus that the league argues, and on this ground it stands for local rule, with the

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threat that if the seat of government be not fixed on their island, they separate.

Many will legislate for momentary gain, sinking the great interests of futurity, unless checked by statesmen of large mind and patriotic heart. Colonists are more likely so to legislate than the inhabitants of an old nationality; for those who expatriate themselves to secure the means of living at home will not, as a general rule, have the welfare of their temporarily adopted country very deeply at heart. How easy to sever--how difficult to rejoin! Interests will arise opposed to the future junction. There will be laws to repeal, hostile feelings to soothe, claims to compensate. Indeed a great task will be prepared, perhaps occupying the life of a statesman to undo the reckless work of an hour. If there be an axiom true on earth, it is that "union is strength," yet when I was in Toronto, the subject of debates and of newspaper leaders was the disruption of the tie between Upper and Lower Canada. At the Cape it was the severance of the eastern and western portions, and now in New Zealand the erection of separate governments for the north and south islands. I offer no

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opinion on the league, yet I regret the rise of any influence tending to disturb the unity of this splendid colony.

The opinions I heard expressed as to the manner of dealing with the Maories concurred in recommending vigorous and decisive measures. If we give, they grasp; if we back, they advance. While our gauntlet lies on the ground, and the native feels in his heart that his first step to pick it up will be the signal for a deadly strife, he will refrain. If he can, he will trade on the panic he has created; and though sufficiently crafty to see our fear, he does not know how far he can go. Hence the argument was adduced that bold and decisive measures will avert war, and that a timid and retiring policy will insure it.

When the campaign was discussed, it was painful to see how ungenerous was the judgment of the colonists on the conduct of the troops. The difficulties of a New Zealand war cannot be estimated by those who do not know the country, even though competent to give an opinion on military matters. The grossest ignorance of warlike operations was no bar to the expression of the freest opinion.

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Perhaps the most difficult position in which a commander can he placed is that occupied by a general in a colony like this on the outbreak of such a war. He is operating in a country of gigantic mountains and impenetrable forests. He has a circle of isolated settlements to defend, without internal communication of any sort, while his enemy holds the fastnesses in the centre. Considering the positions he has under his protection and those he has to attack, his situation seems hopeless. He has to defend cleared spaces in the wilderness, perhaps hewn from the dense and pathless forest, with farm-houses, cattle, and corn-fields. He has to attack a horde of naked savages, whose possessions are almost confined to their arms, without a single point against which to direct the operations of civilized war. His own army requires an elaborate system of carriage and care, but his enemy can subsist on the fern-root dug from the hill-side.

Two conflicting elements make him the pivot on which they turn. The missionaries, backed by the majority of the English people, enjoin on him a war of gentleness, conciliation, and forgiveness, while his savage foes are tomahawking and burn-

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ing all before them. The exasperated settler fiercely demands satisfaction, a war of extermination, a strife of scalps. The escape of an enemy, in the settler's eye, is a crime of the deepest dye; and when the general attacks a pah, he demands such a distribution of the force, that no Maori can fly from the stronghold. He does not stop to argue whether such a distribution be opposed to every military rule, and every dictate of common sense, whether it be not offering lives, entrusted to the care of the commander, an easy prey to the enemy, or whether the destruction the settler meditates, if the wholesale massacre of men, women, and children, comports with orders. He is a figure set up on high for every arrow, the butt of every colonial pen, till the very name of New Zealand and its miserable wars have become hateful to the great army that has carried in triumph the British colours from Cairo to Peking, and from Washington to Sebastopol.

Ridiculous as it seems, I believe a larger force is necessary to settle speedily and effectually the New Zealand difficulty than to coerce China. Bush-rangers take to the wilds of Australia, setting law and police at defiance, attacking gold-escorts,

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and plundering citizens without exciting surprise. Thus they maintain themselves in spite of, and as a standing menace to, such strong communities as Victoria and New South Wales. Maories bid defiance to our arms. They are inaccessible, and cannot be made really to feel an attack, unless it be prosecuted on a scale so great that the means seem out of all proportion to the end. The question is discussed as if these savages had carried on a civilized war against us in a fair field, and held their own.

Were the forty or fifty thousand that comprise the whole native population assembled on the plains of Canterbury, with all the arms they could muster, a detachment from the north island could in a few hours annihilate them. It would be a mere massacre. But to bring the cumbrous machinery of trained columns to bear against these people, placed as they are, is like sending a steam ram, such as the Defence, into shallow waters to sink a fleet of piratical row-boats. Any men who can submit to a savage life, and the hazards and disagreeables of the enterprise, may band together, and burn, rob, and murder, in a wild country without roads. They may attack at disadvantage, and defeat de-

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tachments of police or soldiers, and cause the greatest panic and trouble. This is simply what the Maories do, but these doings cannot be regarded as civilized war.

Two very different objects are involved in a warfare for the extermination of a people, and a warfare to secure a political result. It is opposed to every Christian principle of the nation to wage such a strife as the former, and it would not be tolerated by the empire, nor carried out by its army. If the object, then, is not to destroy the inhabitants as reptiles, no general is justified in sending the men he commands into jungles and swamps, sacrificing them to ensure the destruction of some of his enemies, where nothing is gained beyond the loss of life. In discussing these Maori campaigns, the harsh critics of New Zealand should never lose sight of this principle.

Happily there are no political questions to break up the community into bitter parties. The people are too prosperous and well employed for any demagogue to drive a trade, and at present there is more chance of their not looking closely enough to the administration, than of obstructing it by factious

opposition. A portion of the talent of the settlers

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is due to a country which gives to them so generous a support, to be employed in its advancement and well-being, and it is fortunate men of ability are devoted to politics, even where personal gain seems to be the one object of life. But though in New Zealand there are statesmen of broad views and commanding eloquence, there is a general disinclination to enter councils and assemblies, surrendering valuable time to public affairs. If men of wealth and position leave the coast clear, their place will be supplied by needy adventurers, who use politics for selfish ends. Nor is this the chief loss the country sustains. The administration grows demoralised--demoralizing the public. Places become a mere matter of barter, and men of honour are excluded from a share in the government of a land where their stake may be immense. As yet the constituencies elect the best candidates they can get, preferring, as a general rule, property, high character, and good education.

New Zealand has been surfeited with government--General Assemblies, Provincial Councils, City Boards; and, if I have observed correctly, the tendency of opinion is towards centralizing this expensive and cumbrous system into a governor

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and assembly. If good locomotion amalgamates villages and small towns into one city, it acts similarly in uniting the local rule of small communities into a general whole. Before the days of steamers on the coast, these provincial governments were useful, although expensive, for young and small settlements, and they have hitherto acted most beneficially. The time is now, however, dawning when they will cease to be required, and New Zealand will be governed from one city, let us hope as a compact and united colony, and not, as threatened, as two separate and divided communities.