1836 - Marshall, W. B. A Personal Narrative of Two Visits to New Zealand - [Front Matter]

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THE PROFITS (IF ANY) ARISING FROM THE SALE OF THIS VOLUME, WILL BE HANDED OVER TO THE CHURCH MISSIONARY SOCIETY FOR THE IMMEDIATE EXTENSION OF THEIR MISSION IN NEW ZEALAND TO THE THREE TRIBES AT CAPE EGMONT, WHO WERE SURRERERS BY THE MILITARY PROCEEDINGS DETAILED IN THE SECOND PART OF THE NARRATIVE.

SHOULD THE PERUSAL OF THE WORK INTEREST THE FRIENDS OF MISSIONS GENERALLY, IN SENDING A MESSAGE OF PEACE TO A PEOPLE WHO HAVE SUFFERED SO MUCH BY THE DESOLATION OF WAR, THEY ARE INFORMED THAT SUBSCRIPTIONS "FOR THE CAPE EGMONT MISSION" WILL BE RECEIVED AT THE CHURCH MISSION HOUSE, SALISBURY SQUARE, FLEET STREET; BY MESSRS. NISBET AND CO. BERNERS STREET; AND BY THE AUTHOR, 9, BEAUFORT ROW, CHELSEA.

J. Dennett, Printer,

Union Buildings, Leather Lane.

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A PERSONAL NARRATIVE

OF

TWO VISITS TO NEW ZEALAND.

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THE PROFITS (IF ANY) ARISING FROM THE SALE OF THIS VOLUME, WILL BE HANDED OVER TO THE CHURCH MISSIONARY SOCIETY FOR THE IMMEDIATE EXTENSION OF THEIR MISSION IN NEW ZEALAND TO THE THREE TRIBES AT CAPE EGMONT, WHO WERE SURRERERS BY THE MILITARY PROCEEDINGS DETAILED IN THE SECOND PART OF THE NARRATIVE.

SHOULD THE PERUSAL OF THE WORK INTEREST THE FRIENDS OF MISSIONS GENERALLY, IN SENDING A MESSAGE OF PEACE TO A PEOPLE WHO HAVE SUFFERED SO MUCH BY THE DESOLATION OF WAR, THEY ARE INFORMED THAT SUBSCRIPTIONS "FOR THE CAPE EGMONT MISSION" WILL BE RECEIVED AT THE CHURCH MISSION HOUSE, SALISBURY SQUARE, FLEET STREET; BY MESSRS. NISBET AND CO. BERNERS STREET; AND BY THE AUTHOR, 9, BEAUFORT ROW, CHELSEA.

J. Dennett, Printer,

Union Buildings, Leather Lane.

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TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

CHARLES, BARON GLENELG,

OF GLENELG, IN THE COUNTY OF INVERNESS,

HIS MAJESTY'S PRINCIPAL SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES.

My Lord,

I HAVE the honour to submit to your Lordship's notice, A Narrative of Two Visits To New Zealand, in the year 1834, while I was serving as an assistant surgeon on board His Majesty's Ship Alligator.

The two parts of that narrative will be found to exhibit, in remarkable contrast, the very opposite effects produced, by a Christian mission, upon the minds and morals of the natives; and, upon their welfare and prosperity, by a military expedition.

The consideration of those different effects will awaken in your Lordship the very contrary emotions of delight and of disgust; of delight, as a statesman,

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in contemplating the happy progress of an infant society from the savage to the civilized state; from ignorance to knowledge; and from vice to virtue; under the mild and benignant influences of our holy religion, since its introduction into New Zealand: but of disgust, as a philanthropist, at beholding the worst features of the most savage people exhibited by men of our own name and nation, acting under the sanction, and rewarded by the publicly expressed approbation, of a local Government in one of His Majesty's Colonies.

In the good providence of the GOD of our fathers, who putteth down one and setteth up another, your Lordship has attained to honour, and greatness, and power, that, while assisting in the councils of an earthly sovereign, you might be the minister of HIS will, by whom kings reign and ministers decree justice, and who is at once the King of kings and the Lord of lords. Nevertheless, in entreating your Lordship's interference, as a minister of the crown, on behalf of the natives of New Zealand, and the Aborigines of barbarous countries generally, I would not be thought guilty of so gross an act of indecorum as that of presuming to dictate to your Lordship as to the mode of fulfilling the will of God concerning the poor outcasts of our race, who have hitherto experienced neither

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justice nor mercy at our hands as a nation, however numerous and plentiful the streams of beneficence which may have flowed through their respective countries, from springs first opened in our own land by private individuals, and still kept open through the instrumentality of companies of men, whom the supineness of the Church and the indifference of the State, have compelled to form themselves into voluntary associations for the temporal and spiritual good of those who must otherwise have perished for lack of knowledge, and have died in ignorance, and sorrow, and shame.

I would fain, however, avail myself of the kindness which permits me to inscribe this unpretending volume to your Lordship, even at the risk of appearing to trespass beyond the limit of a layman's duty, for the purpose of imploring your Lordship's attention to the deplorable impotence of the law to shield the Aborigines who dwell upon our colonial borders from the outrages of British subjects; in order to the enactment of some legal provision for their future defence.

The murders, which, at almost every page, have blotted with blood the history of British Colonies, cry out against us unto the Most High God with a voice that has not always been unanswered, for national calamity to succeed national wickedness.

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May He, in whose hands are all hearts, mercifully dispose your Lordship's heart to desire, graciously vouchsafe unto your Lordship the necessary wisdom to devise, and of his much goodness strengthen your Lordship's hand to accomplish the deliverance of hundreds of thousands of our fellow men, at present in the forlorn condition of savages, from the oppressions and cruelties of our fellow countrymen, whom civilisation separated from Christianity hath rendered a hundred thousand times more savage than the most degraded of the aborigines of heathen lands.

The despised New Hollanders--the small living remnant of a murdered race in Van Dieman's Land--the demoralized Indians of North America --and the "irreclaimable savages" so, slanderously, branded by the iron hand of authority, of what, was, ere it had been stolen from the native proprietors of the soil, but of what is no longer Caffre Land, as they. mingle their tears with the blood of their King, in the waters of the Keiskamma, --all, all, with uplifted hands and eyes, and hearts too full to express the universal grief, ask the protection of law at the hand of your Lordship, to interpose in all time to come, between themselves and men every way more despicable, more degraded, more immoral, and more irreclaimably savage than themselves.

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Am I transgressing the bounds of even an Englishman's liberty, in following so vast a train into the presence chamber of the King's minister, with my own humble petition to add to their's, that so necessary a boon, so excellent a benefit, may with all practicable speed be conferred upon so large a multitude of miserable men; and that the hand to confer it may be the band of one who is not unpractised in conferring benefits with a good grace; one already accustomed to do justice, and habituated to love mercy; one whose hereditary name entails upon him an hereditary obligation "to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke." In short, that the name of my Lord Glenelg may be identified with a better and more humane policy towards the Aborigines not only of British Colonies, but of all lands to which British influence can possibly extend.

I have the honor to be,

My Lord,

Your Lordship's faithful, humble Servant,

WILLIAM BARRETT MARSHALL.

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PREFACE.

IN bearing testimony to the labours and successes of the Church Missionaries in New Zealand, I have done so the more cheerfully, in as much as my testimony, being that of an individual in no wise connected with the Society which sent them there, seemed not so liable to suspicion, as if it had been borne by one of themselves, or by a member of the Church Missionary Society. To the lover of truth, whether in the Church or the world, it will not be the less welcome for being found to contradict in many particulars, the adverse testimonies previously published by other maritime visitors to New Zealand.

That it cannot be considered a work of supererogation, thus to bear witness on their behalf, will be apparent from the fact, that, when in the East Indies, I was assured by one who professed to speak of that which he knew, that one of the Clergymen in the mission was living in open violation of the seventh commandment; and upon my venturing to question the accuracy of the statement, I was threatened for my pains with the usual quietus for plain speaking; --a challenge! We afterwards met on New Zealand ground, where I was enabled

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quietly to demonstrate the falsehood of the assertion, and so to force the backbiter into the altered position of one who had spoken, not what he knew, but "what he had been told! The desirableness of an impartial Visitor, relating to the public ear that which he himself has seen, heard, and known of the unobtrusive labours of men occupying so remote a portion of our Lord's vineyard, as a witness to the consciences of men, will be equally apparent upon mention of another fact: --Two vessels were becalmed on the Line, one carrying missionaries to New Zealand, the other having a miserable cargo of male convicts for New South Wales, with the usual officers naval and military, one of whom afterwards boasted of the party to which he belonged having wiled away the ennui of a calm at sea, by drinking among other toasts--damnation to the missionaries! to whom, doubtless, these enlightened gentry ascribed the continuance of the calm which annoyed them.

It has been feared by one of my friends, lest, in two or three places, I may seem to have thrown wide a door for religious controversy, upon subjects incidentally mentioned in the course of the narrative. I can only for my own part, disclaim all intention of doing so; while, in justice to the missionaries and the Society, I must acquit them of all participation in any opinions put forth by me in the body of my present work. For these, I alone am responsible; in some I know they would not agree with me, and in others perhaps but few Christians of the present day would go along with me altogether. But the strangeness of any views I may entertain on matters

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either of doctrine or of discipline, will not, I confidently hope, be suffered to impede the progress of Christianity on its way to the natives of Cape Egmont, whither it is desired to send two missionaries from the body of those already labouring in the land, for which purpose the proceeds of this volume, if any, will flow into the Exchequer of the Church Missionary Society, accompanied by any subscriptions the author may be enabled to raise. His desire being that the gospel of the grace of God should be conveyed to those unhappy barbarians, he is but little concerned to know more of the men who are to preach it, than that they have themselves exercised repentance towards God, and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ; ---that they are men whose faith works by love, and who are able as well as willing to give to every one, whether savage or civilized, a reason for the hope that is in them with meekness and fear; ---and that they are men whom the love of Christ, shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Ghost, constrains to entreat others to be in Christ's stead, reconciled to God. Such, he rejoices to esteem many of the Church Missionaries in New Zealand.

In detailing the occurrences consequent upon the Alligator's second and hostile visit, I was conscious of being engaged in a task of delicacy, difficulty, and even danger. For the delicacy of the task I was prepared by a clear perception of my duty, to avoid things private and personal, and to confine myself to matters of notoriety and public importance; my difficulty has consisted chiefly in

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being compelled either to censure or be silent, where censure was imperatively called for, and silence would have been criminal; to meet this I have studiously endeavoured to maintain the golden mean, "nothing to extenuate, nor aught set down in malice;" as for any risk to myself, which may result from the conscientious discharge of my own soul from blood-guiltiness, I am not at all careful about the matter; my God, whom I serve, is able to deliver me, and if not, be it known unto all whom it may concern, I fear not what any men, or set of men, whether in authority or out of authority, can do unto me--and while in the performance of what I know to be my duty, neither deprecate the wrath nor covet the favour of any, seeing that they, too, like myself, are, after all, but sinful dust and ashes.

To the truth of the facts, as stated in the following pages, so far as they fell under my own observation, the publicity which I now give to them, pledges me both as an officer and a gentleman, and much more as a Christian. For the correctness of any opinions interwoven with those facts, I do not pledge myself; my readers will be competent to detect any fallacies in my reasoning, and need not yield themselves to my judgment, although they will, in justice and courtesy, rely upon my testimony until it be contradicted. If, unknown to me, inaccuracies have crept into my statements, I shalt be happy to correct them, by whomsoever pointed out, in a second edition; and if, unconsciously, I have erred in judgment, thankful shall I

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be to any one who will convince me thereof, that I may depart therefrom.

I conclude with an enumeration of the objects I have in view in submitting; this volume to the public. They are,

1st. To bear an open testimony to the divine power of the gospel, and to the success of their labours whose lives are spent to proclaiming it to the New Zealanders, if haply my readers may be persuaded to praise God for His goodness and mercy to the children of men.

2d. To lift up at least one voice against a partial exercise of our power, to punish the inhabitants of barbarous countries, like New Zealand, for outrages upon British subjects, while the law continues incompetent to protect the Aborigines of those countries from the malicious wickedness of our own people.

3d. To put a final stop to military intervention in such cases, and to substitute, in its stead, a humane policy towards those nations upon whom it is too much the custom to look down with contempt, as upon savages.

4th. To obtain from the Government at home, redress for the wrongs inflicted by one of the subordinate Governments abroad, upon the tribes at Cape Egmont. And,

5th. To set in my own case an example of restitution, and, so far as in me lies, to compensate those tribes for the injuries they have sustained, by contributing to the utmost of my ability, to extend to them the blessings of

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Christianity, that they may cease from the practice and be saved from the consequences of war.

That the attainment of those objects may not be retarded by the way in which I have executed my labour, is my earnest desire; that it may be facilitated thereby, my fervent prayer.

W. B. M.