[PREFACE]
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PREFACE TO THE SECOND VOLUME.
As my life and health have been spared to so near the close of the nineteenth century. I have been able to fulfil my conditional promise to continue my History of New Zealand for a period embracing some thirty-two eventful years.
As intimated in my preface to the first volume, I have found the task more easy and more satisfactory, with the systematic and reliable public records available under our more modern civilisation, than it could be when relying so much upon the incomplete diaries of our earliest navigators, or upon the still more broken records of our earliest missionaries. I have consequently been able to write this second volume with more confidence, and the pleasure of writing it has been greatly enhanced by the very kind spirit in which my first volume has been reviewed, both by the New Zealand and by the English press, and approved by many of the public workers who, within my own memory, have assisted to form the history of New Zealand.
If the reviews as a whole had been less kind they would probably have been more helpful; as we are all liable to make mistakes, and are often most indebted to those who love us least for pointing them out. I have noticed only two newspapers, both very strong party organs, which express a belief that I have been too long an actor in New Zealand politics to be trusted as an impartial historian; and one of them most flatteringly honours me with the suggestion that even William Ewart Gladstone would not have been a reliable chronicler of the events in which he had taken so prominent a part. I differ from that view, and should have trusted Mr. Gladstone, even as an opponent, to do me as much justice as he would do to a friend; far more than I would trust a man who had seen nothing for himself, and had only written about public men as he found them pictured in public prints, both by their friends and by their foes. Indeed, I can conceive of no education that would qualify a man to be a really discriminating historian so well as working amongst the public men of his country; and especially as working both with and against them, as a conscientious man, with fixed opinions of his own, is generally called upon to do. A man must himself fight against large-minded, honest and capable men before he can appreciate the chasm that separates such men from the small-minded, bitter, personal partisans, who think that they are serving the cause of their party when they abuse and misrepresent the men who conscientiously differ from them. The long experienced public debater cannot fail
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to learn how very possible it is that, in a great contest for principle, he will be even more impressed with the great qualities of his opponents than with those of his friends; and cannot help being more disgusted with mean subterfuge and dishonest misrepresentation when resorted to by his friends, than when employed by his opponents. During fifty-eight years' experience and observation, as a public man in New Zealand, I have had many long and severe election contests and public debates, in opposition to such noble public men as Sir David Monro, Sir Edward Stafford, Sir William Fox, Sir John Hall, and the Honourables J. W. Barnicoat, C. W. and J. C. Richmond, Daniel Pollen, John Ballance, William Rolleston, W. R. Russell, and many others; but, the longer I contended with such honest and honourable men, the more I learned to esteem them, and the more I have been pained to hear them unjustly maligned. But none of them were faultless and none of them would have wished to be represented as superhumanly perfect.
Of course readers will greatly differ as to what subjects should find a place in the history of a country; so that, whilst many will wish that my history was far less political, some reviewers have held up their hands in astonishment that I should trifle with history as far as to write about racers, cows, pigs, sheep and horses. Notwithstanding my respect for and gratitude to my kind reviewers, I cannot express any regret for the attention I have given to such subjects. The quality of our New Zealand horses--the proofs of what they can do, in competition with the best horses in the world--should not be an uninteresting subject to any intelligent or patriotic New Zealander. Indeed I very much regret that my history does not supply a very much more complete record of what has been done by those benefactors of New Zealand who have made our domestic animals what we are all so proud to know them to be. I may, perhaps, go so far as to say that I look upon the importation of first class dams and sires for our domestic animals as only second in importance to the introduction of the high class progenitors who have supplied us with such competent brains, as those which control the pens that keep our public men in their place, and give their discriminating encouragement to our New Zealand authors.
WEST MELTON, CANTERBURY,
June 9, 1899,
[CONTENTS]
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CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XLI.
Seeking Peace. 1861-1862.... 1
CHAPTER XLII.
Miscellaneous Events..... 17
CHAPTER XLIII.
Fox Ministry in Parliament ... .... 29
CHAPTER XLIV.
The Domett Ministry in Parliament ... ... 49
CHAPTER XLV.
The Waitara Purchase .... 61
CHAPTER XLVI.
Divided Authority...... 84
CHAPTER XLVII.
Misnamed Coalition. .. ... 99
CHAPTER XLVIII.
Formality versus Brains...... 113
CHAPTER XLIX.
The Weld Ministry--Lost Faith in Old Friends......129
CHAPTER L.
With and Without General Cameron... ... ... ... 146
CHAPTER LI.
Stafford's Return to Power ... ... ... ... 160
CHAPTER LII.
"Sleepy Nelson" Awake to Duty... ... ... 173
CHAPTER LIII.
Mr. Stafford Yoked to his Opponents ... ... ... ... 186
CHAPTER LIV.
"The Poor Man's Lamb Taken Away by the Rich" ... ... 202
CHAPTER LV.
Should Public Men be Honest?... ... 215
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CHAPTER LVI.
The Nation or The Bank... ... ... ... 226
CHAPTER LVII.
With and Without Sir George Grey ... ... .... 238
CHAPTER LVIII.
Truth Forces its Way to the Surface ... ... ... 250
CHAPTER LIX
Stafford again Suffers for the Sins of His Colleagues ... ... 264
CHAPTER LX.
The Triumph of a Bold Borrower... ... ... ... 280
CHAPTER LXI.
Vogel in the Zenith of his Power... ... ... ... 297
CHAPTER LXII.
Stafford's Unhappy Victory ... ... ... ...312
CHAPTER LXIII.
The Provinces Doomed ... ... ... ... ... 326
CHAPTER LXIV.
Vogel's Absence and Decline.--Local Self Government Destroyed.....339
CHAPTER LXV.
The Retreat of an Autocrat: The Death of a Patriot ... ...351
CHAPTER LXVI.
No Economists Need Apply ... ... ... ...362
CHAPTER LXVII.
The Education Act ... ... ...374
CHAPTER LXVIII.
Stafford Sees no Hope for New Zealand... ... ... ...386
CHAPTER LXIX.
The Last of Sir George Grey as Premier... ... ... 400
CHAPTER LXX.
The Injustice of Party Government Exemplified ... ... ...412
CHAPTER LXXI.
The Royal Commission of 1880 ... ... ... ...423
CHAPTER LXXII.
The First Real Retrenchment Actually Accomplished... ...440
CHAPTER LXXIII.
The Arrest and Imprisonment of Te Whiti....453
