Justice to New Zealand, Honour to England

Montague J. G. Hawtrey

First published by Rivingtons in 1861

Digitised and made available online by the University of Auckland Libraries and Learning Services.

Epub © 2014 Early New Zealand Books Collection

ISBN 978-1-927288-42-9

[TITLE PAGE]

JUSTICE TO NEW ZEALAND,

HONOUR TO ENGLAND.

"Oh that statesmen, would consider what a glorious privilege they enjoy, when they are allowed to become the fathers of a new nation." – JULIUS CHARLES HARE.

LONDON:
RIVINGTONS, WATERLOO PLACE.
1861.

[Page ii is blank]

JUSTICE TO NEW ZEALAND,

HONOUR TO ENGLAND.

BY THE

REV. MONTAGUE J. G. HAWTREY, M.A.
RECTOR OF RIMPTON, SOMERSET, AND PREBENDARY OF WELLS.

"The more I have reflected upon this subject, and the more information I have received respecting it, the more I have been confirmed in the persuasion that the main requisite for the support and preservation of the Natives of New Zealand, is that JUSTICE should he done to them; and that if savage tribes have hitherto melted away before (be white man, it is only because the white man takes so little trouble to discover what is justice, when he stands in the threefold character of judge, jury, and principal party in the suit." – Earnest Address to New Zealand Colonists with reference to their Intercourse with the Native Inhabitants.

LONDON:
RIVINGTONS, WATERLOO PLACE.
1861.

LONDON:
GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, PRINTERS,
ST. JOHN'S SQUARE.

INTRODUCTION.

INTRODUCTION.

IF any one should ask the writer of these pages why he comes out from the retirement of a country parish to mix himself up with a grave question of politics, he must answer as David answered when he was reproached with having left those "few sheep in the wilderness" and come down to see the battle: "What have I now done? is there not a cause?"

The fairest of England's colonies is threatened with disaster. There is a general cry that to save the colony we must exterminate the natives. After several months of useless desultory war we hear that a great victory has been gained, and the newspapers congratulate us on the intelligence; but we are told by the colonists themselves now in England that this last news is the very worst that has been received; "that it will take 10,000 troops to take possession of New Zealand from the natives, and it will cost this country 1,000,000l. or 1,500,000l. to do it 1."

Under these circumstances the thoughts of the writer are irresistibly recalled to the part which he took in the project for colonizing New Zealand in the year 1837. His views and feelings will be best seen in a letter which he addressed to his Grace the Duke of Newcastle, Her Majesty's Chief Secretary of State for the Colonies, on the 21st ult.; and the subsequent pages will be devoted to the fuller development of those views by quoting from the writings to which he refers in the letter to his Grace, and by pointing out their bearing on the present state of things.

Rimpton, Sherborne,

Feb. 12th, 1861.

1 Mr. Walter Brodie's Letters in the Times, Dec. 25th, and Jan. 18th.

To His Grace, the Duke of Newcastle

JUSTICE TO NEW ZEALAND,

&c.

TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF NEWCASTLE,

CHIEF SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES.

Windsor, Jan. 21st, 1861.

"MY LORD DUKE,

"I have long desired to address your Grace on the subject of New Zealand, and I am prompted to do so at once by seeing that you are to receive a deputation of New Zealand colonists on Monday.

"I am one of those who worked with the New Zealand Association of 1836. I promoted their views by my writings. My earnest aim was to strike out something which should avert from the natives the usual result of colonies – the demoralization and eventual destruction of the primitive race.

"Various thoughts, grounded on the common principles of human nature and the lessons of history, suggested themselves to my mind. I embodied them first in an essay on 'Exceptional Laws in favour of the Natives of New Zealand;' afterwards in an 'Earnest Address to New Zealand Colonists, with reference to their Intercourse with the Native Inhabitants;' and subsequently in letters to two Secretaries of State for the Colonies.

"The main principle on which I went was this, – that it was necessary to step forward and meet the New Zealanders with institutions devised, expressly

for the purpose of preserving them, not to leave them merely to general rules of justice; for I foresaw a thousand things which might come into operation to destroy them under a show of justice.

"At the same time my plans were founded on strict justice: they grow out of these two considerations – compensation for the cession of their land – compensation for the cession of their sovereignty.

"Now it is precisely the violation, or at least the imagined violation, of these two principles which has aroused the innate patriotism of the New Zealanders; for what is rebellion viewed from our side is patriotism viewed from theirs. The land-league movement, the native-king movement, are surely proof sufficient that we ought to have done something to compensate him for the cession of his land, something to compensate him for the cession of his sovereignty, something to avert from his mind, the instinctive galling reflection that he had been cheated of the one and robbed of the other.

"The plan which was suggested to give him compensation for his land was, that such portions of land should be reserved for him within the settled districts as would place the native chief in as favourable a position, with regard to the possession of landed property, as the wealthiest colonist. I mean property in the settled districts, made valuable by population, and producing a rental. A modification of this plan was adopted by the New Zealand Company in their 'native reserves.' I earnestly advocated their general adoption in letters to Lord John Russell and to Lord Derby, when they were respectively Her Majesty's Secretaries of State for the Colonies, but I need not say without success.

"Now, will it be denied that such reserves would have been a just compensation for the cession of the thirty million of acres, said to have been purchased for the Crown? And can it be doubted that if they had been made in a generous spirit, and with the con-

scious purpose of building up the New Zealand people into a great constituent portion of the united commonwealth, the New Zealand Land-League would never have existed?

"I would also have compensated the New Zealander for the cession of his sovereignty, and would have formed the rude savage chief, the noble of nature, into the noble of civil life. This may be laughed at, but the New Zealand king movement cannot be laughed at. This movement is their unconscious vindication of the plans which I devised twenty-five years ago to save them from destruction, and England from the trouble and dishonour which will attend it.

"One of the things that were proposed in order to work towards this object, was the establishment of that principle which we see recurring again and again in history. I mean the principle of guestship, the Xenia [Greek] of the Greeks. Your Grace must remember that noble passage of the Iliad, where the two hereditary guest-friends meet unexpectedly in hostile ranks, and perpetuate the alliance between their families by an exchange of armour. The principle is again seen in the relation of patron and client in the Roman Commonwealth; and again, singularly enough, in the laws which Gondebaut, second King of the Burgundians, gave to the people formed by the mixture of the Romans of Gaul with their Burgundian conquerors, and to which Montesquieu refers in his 'Esprit des Lois,' (Liv. xxx. chap. ix.) as proving that the barbarians could conduct their conquests with moderation and humanity.

"Carrying out the principle indicated by the recurrence of these relations among different peoples in different ages, I would have encouraged the formation of social alliances between the chiefs and the principal British settlers to be made with ceremony, to be accompanied with oaths of mutual fealty and friendship, and to be rewarded with some honour. Such an in-

stitution would have been well suited to a romantic infant people, and given a happy direction to their thoughts. It would have cemented friendship between chiefs and colonists, and helped to prepare the New Zealand chief for taking his place in the senate of the combined people.

"These thoughts are not in sympathy with the mechanical spirit of our age, and would be condemned as visionary by many. But I beg your Grace to notice that, having done my best twenty years ago (reckoning from my last efforts) to effect their adoption without success, I gave up what did not appear to be my province, and that it is only now, when I am startled by the actual occurrence in a most alarming form of those very results which it was my object to anticipate and prevent, that I again endeavour to bring them forward, and to do so most effectually by submitting them to your Grace's enlightened and humane consideration.

"Your Grace will observe that I have expressed no opinion as to the merits of the present quarrel, nor suggested, any measure to meet its difficulties; my object is to interest your Grace in the above general principles. But I have so very strong a feeling as to the first step to take, that I am impelled to state it. It would be to send a peacemaker to Wirimu Kingi – the office of kirnx [Greek] is as well understood among the New Zealanders as it was among the Greeks – and to offer him, on the part of the Queen of England, peace and a code of laws. Should this be done before it be too late, any action on the part of the troops, which your Grace will be requested to send out, would, I believe, be found to be unnecessary.

"I have received strong confirmation of this opinion from a letter, dated Auckland, November 5th, which appeared in the 'New Zealand Examiner,' of January 14th. The writer says: 'If, however, the Government should determine to carry on this war

until the insurgents voluntarily lay down their arms and sue for peace, it is the firm conviction of all reliable Maori authorities that peace will not be restored until the natives are exterminated. In all their former wars among themselves, an instance of voluntary submission of the weaker party has never been known. In fact, it is a point of honour with them that the overture for peace should come from the stronger party.'

"I have the honour to be,

"Your Grace's obedient humble Servant,

"MONTAGUE HAWTREY."

In the year 1836, the writer of these pages was Curate of Upper Chelsea, and happened to live within a few doors of Mr. Edward Gibbon Wakefield. This led to an acquaintance with him, and to a knowledge of the plans which he was then arranging, in concert with the Earl of Durham, Lord Petre, the Hon. Francis Baring, Sir William Molesworth, Sir George Sinclair, Mr. Philip Howard, and other gentlemen, most of whom were members of Parliament, for the Colonization of New Zealand. The great beauty of the country, its insular character, its noble forests, rivers and havens, and wide tracts of fertile land,

seemed to point it out as a most desirable place for trying that principle of colonization which had been newly devised by Mr. Wakefield, and adopted by Great Britain in the more recent of her Australian colonies. I mean the principle of selling land at a fixed price instead of granting it, and thus at once securing a collected instead of a scattered population, and creating a fund for conveying labourers to the settlement and promoting its prosperity in many ways.

But New Zealand could not be dealt with as a wild unoccupied country. It was tenanted by a primitive race, the noblest perhaps that ever existed in a wild state on earth: a race which had shown a surprising thirst and wonderful capacity for civilization; proud, warlike, jealous of their honour, possessing a language full of images and poetry, and who had now been for a long time under the influence of Christian teaching.

What was to become of that race? It was too certainly known that, as a general rule, wherever colonies had been established in a country occupied by aboriginal tribes, the wild race had been exterminated by the civilized. Was this to be the fate of the New Zealanders?

This was a topic on which the writer of these pages thought deeply and earnestly. It was obvious to him that to attempt to stop the settlement of civilized man in a country so attractive as New Zealand was like attempting to stop a river. And on this point he was at issue with the leaders of the Church Missionary Society, who, naturally interested in the work they had carried on so long and so devotedly, shut their ears against every proposal of co-operation, and used the most persevering, and for a long time successful efforts, to thwart every plan for its systematic colonization. Far from sympathizing with these obstructive efforts, he rejoiced that there was a body of enlightened gentlemen banded together to carry on the 'heroic' work of colonization in a heroic way; and

he regarded it as a subject for devout thankfulness to God that those gentlemen received the suggestions which he made to them for the benefit of the native race with hearty concurrence and approbation, and were determined, if they had succeeded in obtaining their charter, to carry them out with good will. He need not state how it happened that the charter was not obtained. His object is to show what he had planned for the benefit of the natives, and why he thinks that if those plans had been adopted the present troubles would not have occurred. He will endeavour to show this by making extracts from the publications descriptive of his views which he put forth at the time, pointing out their bearings on the present crisis. He proposes to consider the subject under the following heads: –

1. On the general principle of exceptional laws.

2. Compensation to the New Zealander for the cession of his land versus the Land-League.

3. Compensation to the New Zealander for the cession of his sovereignty versus the New Zealand king movement.

4. Amalgamation – Les Gombettes.

5. "The Real question at issue."

I. ON THE GENERAL PRINCIPLE OF EXCEPTIONAL LAWS.

I.

ON THE GENERAL PRINCIPLE OF EXCEPTIONAL LAWS.

IN an earnest and most important letter from Captain Byron Drury, late in command of the Marine Survey in New Zealand, which appeared in the "Times" of November 16, he says, "Extraordinary circumstances require exceptional measures." That such was the writer's opinion, in anticipation of the colonization of New Zealand, twenty-four years ago, may be seen by the following extract from an essay on "Exceptional Laws in favour of the Natives of New Zealand," which appears in a work called "The Present State of New Zealand," published by the New Zealand Association in 1837. The first portion of the Essay is as follows: –

"1. It is possible to oppress and destroy under a show of justice.

"The conduct of Europeans towards the original inhabitants of newly-discovered countries has been for the most part so recklessly unjust and destructive, that we should seem at first sight to be conferring a great and unwonted blessing on a barbarous race, were we to settle among them as friends, and having purchased their lands from them at their own price, to declare them our equals in every particular, and surround them in precisely the same measure as ourselves by the just and impartial sanctions of British law. Such an assumption, however, would be eminently fallacious. The establishment of the same rights and the same obligations can only be fair between parties who have the same power in the same field; but where one of the parties is immeasurably inferior to the

other, the only consequence of establishing the same rights and the same obligations for both, will be to destroy the weaker under a show of justice. Now, it is obvious that such would be the case with the New Zealanders, or any other barbarous race, if put in competition with the European. And since it is one of the characteristics of civilization, and pre-eminently so of modern British civilization, that every individual is more or less in a state of competition with every other individual, it may safely be inferred, that were a colony of British to plant themselves in New Zealand, on land purchased from the natives, and on which the natives should continue to reside, under the influence of British law, and on a footing of perfect equality with British subjects, though no cruelty were inflicted, though strict and impartial justice were administered, though posts of honour and emolument were offered equally to all, a species of social attrition would at once begin, and never cease till it ended in the degradation and destruction of the New Zealanders.

"In the mean time, neither the New Zealanders nor the British might be conscious of the process; and its effects might be deeply lamented by those very individuals who were the instruments of promoting its operation, and who, from the long-settled persuasion that the principle of 'equal laws and equal rights for all' is the great glory and blessing of a well-regulated constitution, would never suspect the possibility of a state of things in which the same principle would be unjust, tyrannical, and oppressive.

"So that it might well be questioned whether it would not be less destructive to conquer the whole country by force of arms, as Britain was conquered by the Romans 2, and by arbitrary power to make such allotments of the land, and establish such laws and institutions as should be suitable to the state and genius of the people, than to invite them to a community of rights, without placing them in such a position as would enable them to derive

from such rights the same benefit as we should ourselves.

"2. Laws should be adapted to the character and circumstances of those whom they are to govern.

"No law nor any concession of his own could at once convert the New Zealander into a British subject. The very idea of law supposes a preadaptation of nature in those who are to be the subjects of the law. And no power can by an instantaneous operation effect that in the mind and moral constitution of the New Zealander, which has been insensibly imbibed from his earliest years, and inherited from his ancestors, by the Englishman. Since, then, the people are not adapted for our laws, the only course which remains to us is to adapt our laws to the people; acting in the spirit and under the sanction of the philosophic reflections of Octavio Piccolomini: –

'The way of ancient ordinance, though it winds,
Is yet no devious way. Straightforward goes
The lightning's path, and straight the fearful path
Of the cannon-ball. Direct it flies and rapid,
Shattering that it may reach, and shattering what it reaches.

My son, the road the human being travels,
That on which blessing comes and goes, doth follow
The river's course, the valley's playful windings,
Curves round the corn-field and the hill of vines,
Honouring the holy bounds of property.'

Coleridge's Translation of Wallenstein, Act 1, Scene 4.

"In order to put these principles into execution, there must be an accurate knowledge of the existing institu-tions of the country, their present laws, and the genius of the people, as expressed in their language. We must carefully distinguish those which are radically bad, the result of passion, caprice, or vanity, from those which are founded on the permanent principles of human nature; and while patiently removing what is vicious, we should spare whatever is at once innocent and characteristic, and sedulously foster whatever may be a germ of future good. To aid us in this work, we should have a sound

knowledge of the principles of human nature, and be well acquainted with the experience of past ages, and the various steps by which former races, possessing the same characteristic traits as the present inhabitants of New Zealand, have been moulded into civilization." 1837.

I now proceed to give some extracts from the "Earnest Address to New Zealand Colonists," published in 1840: –

Of Laws and Civil Institutions for New Zealand.

"I am now brought to a topic which I naturally approach with the greatest diffidence, as it is by far the most important and most delicate that can be discussed with respect to New Zealand, and is beset with difficulties of every kind.

"Those who opposed the New Zealand Association of 1837, were anxious for the establishment of a native dynasty governed by laws framed with an especial view to native interests, and administered by natives. I should have rejoiced had it been possible to realize a project so novel and so chivalrously benevolent to the aborigines. But I believe that such expectations are now given up by every one. It only remains for us to hope that the whole New Zealand question will be taken up by Government, and that the collective wisdom of the legislature will be exerted in the construction of a scheme which shall provide for all the peculiarities of the New Zealand case, and lay the foundation of one uniform, powerful, and happy state.

"The grand difficulty that besets the case is, that at present the sovereignty of New Zealand may be said to be in abeyance. Whether it will be obtained by England, or retained by New Zealand; or whether the country will be parcelled out into little separate sovereignties, (some under Great Britain, some under single chiefs, and some under congresses of chiefs,) it is impossible to say; and it is therefore impossible to say what individual, or what body of individuals, should be addressed with a view to the establishment of a good constitution and code of laws for New Zealand.

"That neither you nor any other body of Englishmen

resident in New Zealand, can legally enact laws for your own government, has been decided. But it is by no means so certain that you will not be called upon to propose laws to be enacted and executed by the native chiefs in the territory where you reside. This the missionaries of the London Society have done for the natives of Otaheite, and the same thing might be done with equal propriety by the Church missionaries for the natives of the Bay of Islands, or by you for the natives of Port Nicholson.

"So that, – although I believe you will agree with me in thinking that such a contingency is neither to be expected nor desired, – it will not be altogether out of place to address you upon this subject. And, indeed, whether British sovereignty is established or not, every British inhabitant of New Zealand must exercise an important influence over the future destinies of that country; and the law must leave much to be determined by the opinion and will of individuals, whether acting separately or conjointly.

"One thing I trust may be anticipated with confidence, that some laws will be made with an especial reference to the circumstances of the natives. For to submit them at once to the rigorous action of British law, would be to oppress and exterminate them under a show of justice, – the most cruel and most wicked way in which a helpless and confiding people can be destroyed.

"For a rigorous subjection to British law they are unfitted on two most important accounts: – 1st, Because British law is law suited not for a savage, but for a highly civilized people; and 2ndly, Because British law is law suited for a people of one race; – whereas the inhabitants of New Zealand are of two races, not merely differing in language and national usage, but in every possible way in which two people can be contrasted. Hence the absolute necessity of exceptional or special laws of some kind or other; – of special laws to regulate the course of justice between British and native, and special laws to regulate the course of justice between native and native." 1840.

In illustration of these views I need only refer to the history of New Zealand for the last twenty years, issuing in a state of things which threatens

ruin to the colony, or the extermination of the native race.

The notion of a national sovereignty residing in the whole New Zealand people led to the treaty of Waitangi, which purported to transfer that sovereignty to the crown of England. The effect of this treaty on those who accepted and signed it was to convert them at once into British subjects, and make them amenable to every minute regulation of British law. We shudder at the ruler who wrote his laws in characters so small, and placed them up so high on pillars, that his people could not read them, and punished them for unconsciously breaking them. How then can we defend our own conduct, when we induced the chiefs of New Zealand to bind themselves to a treaty, the nature and obligations of which they could not possibly understand, and which has virtually given them nothing but the privilege of becoming rebels?

See how it works. They sign the treaty in ignorance – this must be so, it could not be otherwise – then when their eyes open to their new relation and its consequences, when they would retrace their steps, and pull down the English flag to vindicate their rights unconsciously let go, our loyalty is roused, we call them rebels, and shoot them down with the highest feelings of self-approbation.

Or we may take another course. We are ourselves the interpreters of the treaty, and though they are British subjects, we need not deal with them exactly as we should with British subjects.

Now this is the principle I have myself advocated. But as it is possible to make exceptional laws in his favour, so it is possible to deal with him in an exceptional way for his destruction. Thus, if they choose, according to their old national customs, to fight tribe with tribe, we may stand by and let them fight it out. And this has been done, as appears by the following extract from the "War in New Zealand," by William Fox:

"Another cause which gave great impulse to the movement, was the declared policy of the Governor not to interfere in armed feuds between native tribes. Such feuds had become rare, but one was raging at Taranaki at the date of his arrival. He then laid down the principle, that unless when the conflict actually occurred within the limits of an European settlement and endangered its peace, he would not interfere. The immediate consequence was, that four intertribal wars were raging in different parts of the island during the following year, while his Excellency's chief adviser in one instance, and subordinate officers of the native department in others, actually stood by and looked on as spectators of the fight. What could the natives think of such a policy? It seemed to them a declaration that they were an independent people, neither controlled nor cared for by British power. It was urged by them as an argument for joining the King movement. 'Let us have a king of our own, then these feuds will be stopped. The Queen is glad to see us kill each other; when we are gone she will take our lands and have nothing to pay.' They would gladly have seen the Governor interfere to prevent their fighting, and any such interference on his part would have met with general support among them 3."

Compare with the above the following passage of the "Earnest Address," written with reference to unfair wages, but more painfully applicable to such a case as the preceding: –

"There certainly is an instinctive feeling that it would be unwise and injurious to pursue precisely the same course in dealing with savages which we should in dealing with our own countrymen; and this instinctive feeling is a perfectly just and correct one, and has prompted the well-wishers of New Zealand in their desire for exceptional laws in favour of its native inhabitants. But, – if we grant that some departure should be made from the principles of dealing which we adopt towards our coun-

trymen, – for the sake of all that is righteous let it not be a departure in the WRONG DIRECTION!

"A short time ago I was called on by a decent-looking seafaring man, with a somewhat dejected countenance. His object was to raise subscriptions to replace a small cutter, on which he and his father had depended for the support of their families, but which had recently gone down off Lymington. The story was this: – The cutter was returning from Poole, laden with various articles of traffic. The crew consisted of the man, his father, and a boy. It was a dark evening, in the early part of the year, and there was a light breeze from the east, when suddenly they became aware of a large vessel which was close by and coming towards them. A loud cry of 'Starboard' instantly issued from the little cutter, and almost as instantly larboard went the helm of the great vessel, – her prow came heavily against the side of the cutter, – she returned to her former course, and sailed on towards the west.

"'Starboard, we cried, sir, and larboard they put the helm, and stove in our side. I saw directly that she was beginning to fill, and I called to my father to get ready the small boat, for we were going down, and we had scarcely got into the boat and pulled a couple of strokes away from the cutter, when she went down, and the water made a whirl, and went down after her.'

"'But,' said I, 'could you not make the owners of the ship replace your little vessel?' 'Yes, sir, we could, if we could get hold of them, but they sailed right away to the west the moment they'd touched us, because they knew they'd have had to pay, and we never heard of them afterwards; – only when they'd got some hundred yards to leeward, – and then they cried out, "We hope, my lads, we haven't hurt you."'

"This little incident may convey a word in season to the New Zealand colonists: had the vessel gone straight she might have grazed the cutter; had the helm been, put starboard she would have avoided her; but as it was put larboard she went into her and sunk her.

"We grant that you must adopt new principles in paying wages to the natives. We grant that it might be

dangerous to place immediately in their power the same amount of remuneration that you would give to an Englishman; they might squander it and injure themselves with it in a thousand ways. But it will be still more certainly destructive to them to put nine-tenths, or even two-thirds of it into your own pockets. If you do, we must expect the little vessel of the fortunes of New Zealand to sink and disappear, even before its mariners have taken to their boat, or heard your farewell cheer, 'We hope, my lads, we haven't hurt you.'" 1840.

Again, we may restrict him, intending our restriction for his good, and it may do him harm. Because in the days of his ignorance the land-sharks of New South Wales purchased whole districts from him for a mere song, we, for his protection, made a law that no settler should purchase land directly from a native, but that all native land should be sold in the first instance to the Crown, and by the Crown to the settlers. I am not sure whether the price paid by the Crown to the native was three farthings or three-pence per acre, but the price paid by the settler to the Crown was 10s. At all events, the native now looks upon the law as doing him injustice by giving a monopoly to the Crown, and taking from him the benefit of competition. This has led to the formation of a land-league, or agreement among the natives to sell no more land; and as the Crown must have land, this has led to Governor Browne's determination to purchase Waitara, though King (the chief of the tribe to which the land belonged) forbade its purchase. Whether the chief was right or wrong in claiming to exercise this veto I will not say, but the question was decided by the Governor without referring the matter to any court of law. I think I may say there was no court to refer it to. This led King to prevent the completion of the purchase by force, and this led to that outbreak which has already desolated the fairest province of New Zealand, and now threatens ruin to

the colony, extermination to the natives, and the inevitable maintenance of a wearisome and expensive war to England.

Take another instance of the mischief which arises from neglecting to give them laws suited to their circumstances. About five years ago the instinct of political life originated among them what has been called the New Zealand King movement. They elected a King to rule over them, as the Governor rules over the British settlers. How was this treated? Was it regulated so as to make it a serviceable feature of the political system of the combined races, or was it put down? Neither one nor the other. It was regarded as child's play, not worthy of a thought – "mere talk." And now it has assumed dimensions which make it no less alarming for all parties than the war with William King: indeed the last battle seems to have been fought with its partisans. And Mr. Brodie, in his letter to the "Times" of December 25th, regards the King movement as a more important one than the land-league.

Here then are the results which have followed from not making special laws with a view to our relations with that people and theirs with us. On all sides disaster to the colony, extermination to the native, dishonour and expense to England, stare us in the face. And this when there is nothing which the New Zealanders themselves so much desire as to have laws given to them.

Long before the colonization of New Zealand, a letter was written by a New Zealand chief to Mr. Marsden, the first Missionary, entreating him to give them laws on various specified subjects; and it was the want of laws suited to their peculiar circumstances which appears to have originated the Native-king movement. "I want order and laws," said a chief in reference to that movement; "a king would give these better than a governor. The Governor never does any thing, except when a Pakeha is killed; we

are allowed to fight and kill each other as we please. A king would end these evils 4."

In reference to their willingness to receive laws at our hands, I said in the "Essay on Exceptional Laws:"

"The assertion and defence of his own personal independence is the most universal characteristic of the modern Englishman. This disposition may have its use among ourselves; many causes might be assigned for it; and it is itself the cause of innumerable phenomena in our social condition. But we should mistake were we to suppose this feeling to be indigenous to the New Zealander, and we should miscalculate were we to act in such way as to excite it within him. He always regards the Englishman as a 'melior natura' – he looks up to him as a being so eminently superior to himself, that the idea of asserting his own independence or equality never enters his mind; and he is ready to receive, as inestimably valuable, every boon which he may be willing to grant him. Now, in just the same degree as it would be base and execrable to abuse this disposition by trampling on, and depressing him to serve a selfish purpose, it would be great and generous to avail ourselves of it, in order to confer upon him the greatest benefits, and to mould him together with ourselves into the best and purest form of social existence." 1837.

The great influence which the missionaries had acquired over the natives, assures me that all this was perfectly true at the time when it was written, and I believe it would be found to be perfectly true now if the New Zealander were treated with by persons having the power as well as the will to make laws for the common benefit of the two races.

I close this portion of my work by one more extract from the "Earnest Address:" –

"I. I think the first business of the British constituted authorities, in reference to criminal affairs, should be to observe and not to act.

"(1.) To arrange and classify according to their different amounts of guilt the various crimes and enormities habitually committed by New Zealanders.

"(2.) To observe and ascertain the different degrees of criminality or illegality which may be attached to them, according to New Zealand estimation.

"(3.) To inquire what punishments, either in accordance with the lex talionis, or in any more formal manner, are usually awarded to particular crimes.

"(4.) To inquire what native customs respecting crime might with advantage be systematized and consolidated, so as to make punishment fixed and distinct, instead of random and uncertain; what native customs should be abolished as being in themselves criminal and contrary to humanity, and what new penal laws should be enacted.

"But let it not be supposed that in dissuading from an early exercise of penal measures, I mean that criminal acts ought not to be prevented. Let every effort be made, let no pains be spared, to prevent them. Were a murder about to be committed, either of a child by its mother, a slave by its master, a victim by the priest, or a captive by the conqueror, there is a law above every law, which would impel us to rush in and prevent the butchery, even at the risk of our own life. In such cases the authority of the British magistrate may safely be interposed; and it is to be hoped that his calm presence and strong prohibitory arm will be sufficient to put an effectual stop to all such proceedings throughout New Zealand. There must be in every human soul, civilized or savage, such an innate consciousness of the guilt of such actions, as to invest with a character of rectitude the power interposed for their prevention, even though that power have no civil right to exercise its authority for such a purpose; and these firm prohibitory acts would deepen in the New Zealand mind, the innate sense of the guilt of such atrocities, as their own old customary usage has long tended to weaken it. But it is one thing to prevent a crime, and it is another thing to punish it by death when it has been committed.

"II. Whatever laws issuing from British authority are brought to bear upon the natives, ought first to have the

sanction of the natives themselves, and afterwards to be thoroughly made known throughout the country. The office analogous to that of herald which they are said to have among themselves, would probably afford facilities for this measure. It appears to me that if this be not done; the course pursued in order to invest Great Britain with the sovereignty of the country is a deception. If native consent is necessary in the one case, it is also necessary in the other. British sovereignty is not British despotism, and will not authorize an overthrow of the institutions of the country. The natives should find that the establishment of our dominion on their shores is not the annihilation of their political existence. It is evident from the measures which they take previously to the alienation of their lands, that they have some kind of social organization among themselves; that they have methods for ascertaining the public will, and making it the rule of their proceedings. This certainly ought not to be abolished, but modified in such a manner as to find its place among the future institutions of the country. It ought especially to be made use of in order to lay before the natives, and confirm by their sanction any change which it may be desirable to make in the customary law of their country respecting criminal matters.

"III. The difficulty of establishing a good penal code in New Zealand may suggest the advantage of adopting, in the case of an infant people, what is found so advantageous in the training of all other infants, the principle of rewards and honours. This principle is incompatible with an advanced condition of society, where a knowledge of the benefit of right doing is motive sufficient for the great majority; but there are many reasons for its adoption in the management of New Zealanders. For they, like infants, will not practise what is right for its own sake; but will easily be led to prize it for any arbitrary value we may append to it; and will by habit learn to esteem it as it deserves for its intrinsic worth.

"No objection on the ground of right can be made against this mode of governing. If we establish a system of rewards and honours, we make for ourselves a legiti-

mate and merciful instrument of punishment, by having the power of withholding rewards and depriving of honours.

"And it would be far from difficult to devise a system of rewards and honours, which, with very little expense and trouble to the settlers, would be most highly valued, and afford the strongest impulse to good conduct among the natives.

"One mode of conferring honours would be to place them in offices of authority and trust. It is a fact confirmed by the testimony of those who have had experience in the training of youth, whether in the navy or in public schools, that the very circumstance of being placed in a position of trust and authority, has often proved sufficient to call forth the qualities required for its discharge, where before there were no symptoms of their existence.

"Nor would distinctions purely honorary be without their use. One might, perhaps, suggest a ribbon, or a medal, or enrolment in an order of merit."

Had these suggestions been put in practice immediately after the Treaty of Waitangi, we should not have heard of the Governor now having for one of his allies the perpetrator of one of the foulest and most brutal murders ever committed in New Zealand 5. Nor would any English settler have had it in his power to make such complaints as the following: –

"In his intercourse with the natives the colonist is exposed to daily provocations. His cattle, for example, stray from his paddock; he follows them to a neighbouring pah, and is compelled to redeem them by an exorbitant payment. In the course of the altercation, a musket is perhaps levelled at him, or a tomahawk flourished over his head. On the other hand, should he try the experiment of driving native cattle to the public pound for trespass on his cultivations, a strong party of Maories, with loaded muskets, break down the pound and rescue them. He has to maintain party fences without contri-

bution from his Maori neighbour. Herds of native pigs break through to his crops. The dogs of the pah worry his sheep. To save his own farm, he has to pay for the extirpation of thistles on the neighbouring native land, hundreds of thousands of acres of which lie waste, and worse than useless, around his homestead. Redress in the courts of law is not to be obtained, because it would be dangerous to the peace of the country to enforce the judgment 6."

There is probably exaggeration in this, as the settler is telling his own story, but it indicates very plainly – not that British law as it exists should be enforced strictly on the native, a measure which could not be accomplished without a power sufficiently great to overcome all resistance, and crush out disobedience even at the risk of crushing out the whole race, but – that we should make laws which, while equally binding on and beneficial to both races, should be framed with an especial reference to their relative origin, character, and circumstances; and which, recognizing in the native the existence of political rights, and ratified by his sanction and concurrence, would enable us to enlist his arm in aid of our own for their enforcement.

2 See the evidence of Thomas Hodgkin, M.D., before the Select Committee on Aborigines. – Minutes of Evidence, p. 454.

3 Fox's War in New Zealand, p. 112.

4 Captain Byron Drury's Letter in the Times, Nov. 16th.

5 Archdeacon Hadfield's Letter to the Duke of Newcastle, page 9.

6 New Zealand Examiner, Dec 17th: "The real question at issue."

II. COMPENSATION TO THE NEW ZEALANDER FOR THE CESSION OF HIS LAND VERSUS THE NEW ZEALAND LAND-LEAGUE.

II.

COMPENSATION TO THE NEW ZEALANDER FOR THE CESSION OF HIS LAND VERSUS THE NEW ZEALAND LAND-LEAGUE.

IT is not the object of the writer to show that he uttered prophecies twenty years ago which, like those of Cassandra, would, had they been heeded, have averted the present calamities. His object is to help in the inquiry, now so intensely interesting and important, what is the true, the honourable, the safe, the hopeful way to get out of the present dilemma, and establish our future relations with the native race on a footing safe and honourable to all parties. But he believes that he will do this best in this place by showing how he fought the battle for them from the year 1837 to the year 1842.

The most important consideration that arises in view of the colonization of such a country as New Zealand is how to give the native a substantial equivalent for the land he cedes to us. In former times it was thought sufficient to pay in beads and trinkets. It was with such articles that Penn purchased Pennsylvania. Now such a payment, or any payment in perishable articles, or in money to be spent in such articles, is in fact no return at all for a possession so inestimably valuable as the soil.

The plan which occurred to the writer as the only fair one is described in the following passage from the "Essay on Exceptional Laws:" –

"Among the most obvious and striking peculiarities of the social system in New Zealand is the institution of chieftainship: one of the ancient, venerable, and heroic institutions of the human race, and one, therefore, which we may presume to be deeply rooted in the original constitution of human nature; and we may well conceive that nothing would tend more immediately to let down and totally to change the character of the whole New Zealand population, than a disposition to overlook this institution, and place all the inhabitants upon the same level.

* * * * * *

"This at once suggests to us one of those exceptional regulations which might be adopted by the founders of the colony in favour of the native inhabitants. Every chief who disposes of his lands to the British Crown, and consents to liberate his slaves, should have allotted to him, within the British settlement, such a tract of land, proportional in the case of each several chief to the extent of territory which he has ceded and the number of slaves to whom he has granted their liberty, as would place him in as favourable a position with regard to the possession of landed property as the principal English settlers. This land should be kept in reserve for him and his family, until by education and intercourse with civilized people he had learned to estimate its value. And it should, therefore, be provided that every sale of such land by a native to a British settler should be invalid. By this means a real and substantial benefit would be conferred upon the New Zealand chief, and through him upon the whole New Zealand population. The chief would at once be made a man of property and standing in the settlement, and find congenial support for that feeling of superiority which he would inevitably have acquired from the high post he had always occupied among his countrymen, who, in their turn, would derive civil importance

and numerous incidental advantages from the elevation of their chief.

* * * * * *

"Sound policy, no less than justice, and a view to the future standing of the native race, appears to call upon us to confer upon the chiefs the most solid and substantial benefits that we can, benefits which shall reach to their posterity, and maintain them in the same state of dignity and power which they now enjoy. For repeated examples in the history of the missionary establishments of New Zealand have shown us how great has been their influence, and in how beneficial a manner it has been exercised in favour of the missionaries; and may we not suppose that the same influence which has been exerted in protecting the lives and properties of our countrymen in their defenceless state, would be exercised in promoting favourable dispositions towards the British, and encouraging to labour and good order, when we had no need of their protection against open attack? Though their slaves would be set free, and their clansmen would be no longer in that state of feudal subjection to them in which they are at present, they could not fail to retain a very great influence over both; and how important that this influence should be kept available, that every thing should be done to maintain it entire, to strengthen, adorn, and support it." 1837.

This suggestion was the origin of the system of "native reserves," adopted by the New Zealand Company, the nature and intention of which will be best seen by the following extract from "Instructions from the New Zealand Land Company to Colonel Wakefield, principal Agent of the Company," enclosed in a letter from William Hutt, M.P., to the Marquis of Normanby, dated April 29th, 1839 7: –

"We intend to sell in England, to persons intending to settle in New Zealand and others, a certain number of orders for equal quantities of land (say 100 acres each),

which orders will entitle each holder of land or his agent to select, according to a priority of choice to be determined by lot, from the whole territory laid open for settlement, the quantity of land named in the order, including a certain portion of the site of the first town. And one-tenth of these land-orders will be reserved by the Company, for the chief families of the tribe by whom the land was originally sold, in the same way precisely as if the lots had been purchased on behalf of the natives. The priority of choice for the native allotments being determined by lot, as in the case of actual purchasers, the selection will be made by an officer of the Company, expressly charged with that duty, and made publicly responsible for its performance. Wherever a settlement is formed, therefore, the chief native families of the tribe will have every motive for embracing a civilized mode of life. Instead of a barren possession with which they have parted, they will have property in land intermixed with the property of civilized and industrious settlers, and made really valuable by that circumstance. And they will thus possess the means, and an essential means, of preserving in the midst of a civilized community, the same degree of relative consideration and superiority as they now enjoy in their own tribe... You are aware of the distinctions of rank which obtain amongst them, and how much he prides himself on being a rangatira or gentleman. This feeling must be cultivated, if the tribes are ever to be civilized; and we know not of any method so likely to be effectual for the purpose, as that which the Company intends to adopt, in reserving for the rangatiras intermixed portions of the lands on which settlements shall be formed."

In proof that this system of Reserves has not been a failure, I have now to quote what will, I trust, be read with deep attention by every thoughtful reader, as it seems to be a light breaking into the cavern and showing us the way out. I quote it from an article in the "New Zealander," giving an account of what passed at the conference of native chiefs, which was held at Kohimarama, the educational establishment

of the Melanesian mission near Auckland, on the 10th of July last.

"Governor Gore Browne opened the proceedings with a formal address, and his Excellency has since, on several occasions, communicated with the meeting by 'message.' Day by day the several points raised in the Governor's speech, and special questions incident thereto, have been discussed with orderliness and propriety, such as we might look in vain to find in some other places of greater pretension.

"One of the most important results likely to issue out of the conference is the disabusing of the minds of the Maories with respect to the value of their lands without population. This is a point upon which the native secretary (Mr. M'Lean) has been very frank with the assembled chiefs. In introducing the Governor's message on the land question, he remarked that there were two topics which mainly demanded their special consideration. The first was the land; the second, the Taranaki war. It was for them to decide to which they would first pay attention – the individualization of property and Crown grants for their lands, or the Taranaki quarrel. The chiefs were not long in making up their minds – the land question was that which they most cared about.

* * * * * *

"Mr. M'Lean, having thus elicited the general views of the chiefs, urged upon them the necessity of great caution with respect to the definition of boundaries, so as to prevent future quarrels. The whole matter should be most carefully considered in their several tribes. There were some of them who blamed the Government for purchasing native lands for a small sum and re-selling them at a comparatively high rate to Europeans; but, as he had always been careful to explain in all the purchases he had effected, the land was of little value in itself until English capital was expended upon it in the construction of roads, bridges, and other material improvements, without which there was little chance of their being able to take their produce to a profitable market. Land, again, was of little value where there was not a dense popula-

tion to act as the consumers of its produce. So clearly was this principle understood among white men, that, as in the case of Andalusia in Spain and of Canada on the American continent, free grants of land were offered as inducement to Englishmen to become settlers, and thus give a value to that which was otherwise valueless. In New Zealand, too – in this very province of Auckland – this great truth was understood and acted upon; and while the natives were paid for their land, and the provincial Government was at the expense of having the land so bought surveyed and divided, it awarded to each immigrant a certain proportion of land in exchange for his passage-money from England, and thus gave a value to otherwise waste lands, and induced a large flow of consumers for the products of Maori as well as European cultivation.

"This practical argument was well understood by the southern chiefs, many of whose 'reserves' have risen to a value in consequence of the influx of European population, which has made them men of considerable wealth. They have given their northern countrymen the benefit of their experience, and the consequence is that the wisdom of selling their surplus land is a question that is eagerly discussed each night in the respective hapus or cantonments."

One thought which irrepressibly arises on reading this report of proceedings at Kohimarama is the question: Why was all this not done before! Why was this assembly not held before? Why were the natives left for twenty years without instruction on a matter so vitally important both to them and to the colonists as the comparative value of land in a wild and in a well-peopled district? Why, during all this time, were they not invited to have a voice or express an opinion about their own affairs? Another thought which arises in the writer's mind, and which he trusts will commend itself to the minds of his candid readers, as helping to indicate the course we ought now to adopt, is the conviction that he was right; and that, if the principle of reserving certain

portions of land, both in town and country, in each settlement as it was successively formed, for the benefit of the native race, had been generally adopted, and administered with wisdom from the foundation of the colony, the land-league would never have existed, and the happiest relations would by this time have existed between the races. And he cannot forbear referring now to the further steps which he took to promote its adoption, as he believes that in doing so he will best show his views as to the way out of the present difficulty.

This peculiar system of native reserves having been adopted and set on foot by the New Zealand Company, the next object aimed at was to get them adopted throughout New Zealand by Her Majesty's Government. For this purpose a letter was addressed to Lord John Russell, who was then Secretary of State for the Colonies, at the end of December, 1840, minutely setting forth the objects aimed at, and the plan proposed for carrying them out. This letter was courteously acknowledged by Lord John Russell, who thanked the writer, through Sir James Stephen, for the pains he had taken to explain and enforce his views for the benefit of the natives of New Zealand, adding that the subject had from the first engaged the serious attention of Her Majesty's Government, and that when the whole correspondence relating to the affairs of New Zealand should be printed, he trusted it would be found that the most effectual securities had been taken for the protection of that race which the case in its nature admitted of.

This was in the beginning of January, 1841, and the correspondence came out in May. It then appeared that Lord John Russell had on the 9th of the previous December addressed a despatch to Governor Hobson containing that sentence, which must ever be so reassuring to the friends of the native New Zealanders in the midst of all the perils that beset them and threaten their existence from within and without:

"The aborigines of New Zealand will, I am convinced, be the subjects of your constant solicitude, as certainly there is no subject connected with New Zealand which the Queen, and every class of Her Majesty's subjects in this kingdom, regard with more settled and earnest anxiety." And the despatch went on to give many wise and valuable directions on a great variety of topics relating to the management and cultivation of the native race.

On the 29th of January another despatch relating expressly to the aborigines was addressed by Lord J. Russell to Governor Hobson, and in this there were two important regulations; first, as to a reservation of land in their favour: –

"The surveyor-general should also be required, from time to time, to report what particular tract of land it would be desirable that the natives should permanently retain for their own use and occupation. Those reports should be referred to the protector of aborigines, and the lands indicated in them, or pointed out by the protector as essential to the well-being of the natives, should be regarded as inalienable, even in favour of the local government, after the governor, with the advice of the executive council, shall have ratified and approved the surveyor's reports, and the suggestions of the protector. Such inalienable tracts should, as far as possible, be defined by natural and indelible landmarks."

Secondly, as to a provision for their benefit out of the money arising from the sale of lands acquired from them by the Crown: –

"As often as any sale shall hereafter be effected in the colony of lands acquired by purchase from the aborigines, there must be carried to the credit of the department of the protector of aborigines a sum amounting to not less than 15, nor more than 20 per cent. in the purchase-money, which sum will constitute a fund for defraying the charge of the protector's establishment, and for defraying all other charges which, on the recommendation of the protector, the governor and executive council

may have authorized for promoting the health, civilization, education, and spiritual care of the natives."

There was nothing, however, in the despatch which contemplated the creation of that particular system of reserves which the writer had in view. And, consequently, when Lord John Russell had been succeeded in the office of Chief Secretary of State for the Colonies by Lord Stanley (now the Earl of Derby), and when the writer heard that his lordship was about to introduce a bill for the regulation of the Sale of Land in New Zealand and Australia, he addressed him a letter which was kindly presented to him by the Earl of Devon (then Lord Courtenay), a nobleman who took a deep interest in the colonization of New Zealand, and heartily concurred in the views of the writer. A portion of that letter shall now be transcribed: –

"The particular system of reserves for which I am so anxious to obtain your lordship's approbation is substantially the same as that which is adopted by the New Zealand Company in their settlements of Wellington, Nelson, and New Plymouth; reserves, namely, not of tracts of land to be occupied by the natives alone, apart from the districts laid out for British settlements, but of properly selected portions of the town land, and of the rural and suburban land in every British settlement as it is formed.

"My reason for advocating this latter description of reserves in preference to the former is their greater value, and the ampler means they would place in the hands of the Crown for preserving and civilizing the aborigines.

"I need not inform your lordship that the reserves directed to be made in favour of the natives of New Zealand by your lordship's predecessors, and described in their lordships' despatches to Governor Hobson in 1839 and 1841, are of the other kind. In the first of these despatches it is directed, that 'no territory shall be purchased from the natives, the retention of which would be essential, or highly conducive to their comfort, safety, or

subsistence.' In the second, that 'particular tracts of land, defined as far as possible by natural and indelible landmarks, should be pointed out by the surveyor-general in order to be permanently retained for their use and occupation.'

"I am far from saying that the reserves which are thus described by Lord Normanby and Lord John Russell are not required in the present state of New Zealand; but I think they would fail in securing the object which justice and expediency require us to aim at, namely, to preserve its aboriginal people, and give them a fair share of the advantages of civilization.

"It is with great deference that I venture to express this opinion; but it is borne out by a long and painful experience. The principle of reserving particular districts for the use and occupation of native tribes has already been tried in America, and, notwithstanding the utmost efforts of benevolent societies and individuals, has not succeeded in civilizing them or preserving them from destruction. They have diminished in their numbers and importance. They have receded further and further from the pale of civilization, and their fate has given too much ground for the disheartening notion, that the coloured races are doomed to melt away before the white. Nor is there any reason to expect a different result in New Zealand, if these inalienable tracts of land are to be the only patrimony of the natives. When I picture to myself their future destiny, I see them wandering within their narrowed boundaries, a separate and inferior race, without prospect of wealth or impulse to civilization, their numbers dwindling, their spirit broken, their untouched districts standing as melancholy blanks in the landscape of the country's prosperity, till at last these bars to British enterprise are swept away, and a scanty remnant of the old lords of the land dispersed as menials among the British settlers.

"Now that which particularly distinguishes the other system of reserves is that they provide for the future rather than the present, that they aim at securing to the natives not a dwelling-place but a property, that they do not stand separate and distinct from the rest of the land,

but share equally in all the improvements introduced by a highly civilized people, and in that progressive increase of value to which the colonist looks forward as his reward for settling there.

"It may occur to your lordship to inquire how these reserves should be managed, in order to effect the objects proposed. I am not so presumptuous as to imagine that I can lay before your lordship a plan complete in principle and in details; but I think it would be desirable,

"First, That the reserves in each particular settlement should be vested in trustees, of whom the resident clergyman should be one.

"Secondly, That the trustees should appoint a land agent, and should make it their business to manage the lands in the best way, with a view to two objects: the one, to draw from them an immediate return; the other, to improve them in value.

"Thirdly, That the money from time to time arising out of the reserves should be invested in the names of the governor, the bishop, and the chief justice, or placed at their disposal, to be expended for the benefit of the natives.

"Fourthly, That this money (added to any other accruing from other sources) should be available for the general advantage and improvement of the natives in the several settlements, and more especially for the purpose of educating the native children in such a manner as to fit them for different situations in life, the children of the common people for the exercise of useful arts and trades, and the children of the chiefs for their proper position in society.

"Fifthly, That, after the lapse of a certain number of years, the native reserves should be portioned out into estates of greater or less magnitude, and that these estates should be given to the heads of the chief native families of New Zealand; every such grantee being understood to have become properly qualified for its possession and enjoyment.

"Your lordship perceives, that one of the chief objects here contemplated is to preserve to the chiefs and their families that relative superiority of station which they have hitherto enjoyed. It is a new element in the process

of civilization; but I think it is one which both justice and reason invite us to adopt. Justice demands it, for otherwise we rob the chiefs of a valued privilege. It is not less urgently required by a just estimate of the interests of the whole native population, for nothing would secure so high a social standing for the whole race, as the enjoyment of a certain degree of eminence by some persons of their own blood.

"The chiefs already possess the rank of a superior class, with its concomitant elevation of feeling. And are they not susceptible of that development of character, and enlargement of understanding, which would make them gentlemen, and qualify them for the discharge of civil functions? It is a curious and deeply interesting question; but it is one which never can be answered, unless they receive a proper education, and are endowed with sufficient property to sustain their rank. And I see no means of providing for these purposes so cheaply and so well as by reserves of improvable land within the British settlements.

"One of the objections urged against this plan is the difficulty of letting land on lease, or drawing from it a growing return of any kind, except by personal occupation, in such a country as New Zealand. I feel the force of this objection as it regards rural districts. But it is reasonable to suppose that where land is dear, or likely to increase rapidly in value, there will be as great a demand for property to be held on lease, as in similar situations in England; and that those native reserves which should possess a water frontage, or be favourably situated in or near towns, could in many ways be made to yield a very valuable return.

"The rural reserves would become valuable as soon as the land in their neighbourhood was occupied. In expectation of this accruing value, they might be left idle for a few years, or a very small rent required for their occupation. Or they might become farming establishments for the purpose of raising food for the subsistence of the natives, and where the natives might be instructed in agriculture and other useful arts, and be brought into beneficial intercourse with the settlers."

After referring here to the provision made by Lord John Russell, and confirmed by Lord Stanley, that a portion of the proceeds of the sale of land, amounting to not less than fifteen, nor more than twenty per cent. of the purchase-money, should be devoted to providing for and humanizing the aborigines, the letter proceeds,

"I trust your lordship will believe that I am fully sensible of the large and liberal character of this provision, as compared with any thing which has ever yet been done for aboriginal tribes. But at the same time I cannot help expressing my conviction, that even this large share of the proceeds of the sale of their land will afford them less solid and permanent advantage than they would derive from the reserve, for their benefit, of a moderate share of those choice portions of their land which are so highly prized by Europeans. If it be probable, as Lord John Russell observes, that the proceeds thus arising will, generally speaking, be expended within the year, what will remain for the subsistence and comfort of the natives when all the land is disposed of? If all is to be spent in their civilization, what is to support them when they are civilized? It may be replied, 'their labour.' Should we then be satisfied with a provision, which, however large and liberal it may be as a present supply, tends at last to disappear, and leave the whole native population in the condition of a labouring class? and this, while by a contemporaneous process, carried on by means of the occupation of their land, some of the lowest of our countrymen are rising to opulence and honour!

"But, my lord, it appears to me that every thing could be secured at precisely the same expense to Great Britain by a slightly different arrangement, namely, by assigning, for the benefit of the natives, a portion of this 15 or 20 per cent. in the shape of reserves, and a portion in money. Supposing, for instance, that the probable proceeds of the sale of a township were 100,000l., and that twenty per cent. out of the sum so raised, that is to say 20,000l., were to be devoted, in pursuance of Lord John Russell's plan, to the charges of the protector's establishment, and the other charges connected

with the civilization of the natives; I should propose that land to the value of 10,000l. should be reserved for them within the settlement, and that 10,000l. only should be devoted to their present protection and civilization. This would require greater economy in the protector's establishment, and in the process by which this civilization is to be promoted; it would also leave more to be done by the voluntary charity of benevolent societies at home, and perhaps in New Zealand; but it would give a greater stimulus to the exertions of all parties, in the better prospect it would hold out for the ultimate success of all these measures. Besides which, I think it is to be expected, that after a few years the annual proceeds of the lands so reserved would far more than make up for the moiety of the fifteen or twenty per cent. withdrawn on their account from the present service of the protector's establishment." 12th March, 1842.

The proposal contained in the above letter was referred by Lord Stanley to the consideration of the Commissioners of Colonial Land and Emigration, who discussed it at great length and decided against it.

At this point the efforts of the writer to benefit the New Zealanders, by securing for them a portion of the wealth which the colonization of their country was to produce, came to an end. The matter seemed taken out of his hands, and he left it. But the events which have recently occurred imperatively recall him to the subject. And he now entreats his countrymen to give to it their frank and honest consideration.

It is the principle that he contends for, the principle of winning the New Zealander to become civilized, and to co-operate in the colonization of his country by giving him land for land – land made valuable by colonization, which he cannot have without us, for land to become valuable by colonization, which we cannot have without him; and by bringing this principle to bear on the whole question of the land-league, the tribal tenure, the individualization of native land rights, and the substitution of British

for native titles to land. This fair and just principle of a little of the land such as we make it, for a great deal of the land such as he gives it, has never yet been adopted, except by means of the native reserves of the New Zealand Company, and in that case it has been successful. Mark the words, – "This was well understood by the southern chiefs, many of whose 'reserves' have risen to a value in consequence of the influx of European population, which has made them men of considerable wealth." The way in which the Crown has given land for land is very different from this. The Crown has bought land from them at 3d. an acre, and if they wish to hold that land or any part of it unfettered from the disabilities attached to the native title, they must buy it back from the Crown at 10s. an acre. The land is precisely the same in every respect, not a whit improved by population, but to purchase the chance of selling it on some future day at an advanced price, he must pay 10s. for what he has sold for 3d.; or, in other words, for ceding 120 acres of wild land to the Crown, he gets three acres of wild land returned to him. This is not fair, and it is no wonder that he prefers retaining his wild land and tribal tenure with all the disabilities attached to his native title.

To say that wild land is of no value is a fallacy. It is of no value qua civilization, but it is of immense value qua savage life. It gives the savage his uncontrolled freedom, his ignorance of social inferiority, the unembarrassed enjoyment of his old rights and customs, the free indulgence of his traditional habits and recollections. Now from much of this it is highly important to wean him. But this is not to be done by taking every thing and giving nothing, or by taking what we value very highly and giving what he does not value at all.

The failure of the Canada Clergy Reserves has been cited against the system of Native Reserves, proposed in these pages. But the cases are not

similar, and it only depends upon ourselves to avoid in this case all that was objectionable in the case of the reserves in Canada. But I repeat that it is the principle I contend for, and if the principle can be carried out with fairness to the native and under the watchful eye of those having his interest at heart, in any other way, I am not so wedded to the particular plan which I thought of before New Zealand was colonized as to dissent from what may, under the present circumstances, be more expedient.

Under this feeling I close the present section of my work with a passage from the pen of a distinguished Member of the Legislature of New Zealand 8.

"The fact is, that in New Zealand as well as elsewhere the natives have been treated justly in theory only; practically they have been injured. They know it, and feel it now, and hence a growing disposition to withhold their land. In theory they were told that they were British subjects, and entitled to all the privileges of British subjects. But in practice they are quite shut out from the privileges of reaping all the advantages they might have done by the sale of their surplus lands. They were not allowed to sell to any but the Government, and the Government would only buy when it suited its convenience to do so, and then only at a merely nominal price. The natives soon found that the land which they sold for threepence an acre to the Government would have fetched them, if sold to Europeans, 10s. or 20s., and in face of this apparent injustice it was useless to talk of the contingent advantages which they derived from the progressive occupation of land, formerly lying waste and useless. They were clever enough to reply – 'True, but those advantages would still be ours, after we had obtained the best price for our lands.' Governor Fitzroy, whose views on this subject were correct in principle, attempted to introduce a better system, but he failed because his scheme was not perfect in its details, and it

led to confusion. But some change must ere long be made. So deeply impressed are many of the oldest colonists on this subject, that a movement has recently been made for the purpose of bringing about an alteration. The plan they seem to contemplate is this, that the Government should abandon the practice of buying land; but that they should assist the natives in dividing and surveying their lands, giving them Crown grants for their possessions, making some of these grants inalienable, so as to secure them against improvidence, and leaving them to dispose of the others as they please, either by public auction or private contract; but in all cases under the sanction of the law. Whenever a system is introduced by which these surplus lands in the province – which are yet in the hands of the natives, and which are of a good quality – can be brought into the market, there will be inducements for capitalists far greater than those which the present system affords."

7 Papers presented to the House of Commons, April 8th, 1840.

8 Morning Star, Oct. 18th, 1860.

III. COMPENSATION TO THE NEW ZEALANDER FOR THE CESSION OF HIS SOVEREIGNTY VERSUS THE NATIVE-KING MOVEMENT.

III.

COMPENSATION TO THE NEW ZEALANDER FOR THE CESSION OF HIS SOVEREIGNTY VERSUS THE NATIVE-KING MOVEMENT.

THE native-king movement began in December, 1856, when a number of chiefs assembled together and defined a certain tract of territory within which native law was to be established, no more land sold, and, to make the seclusion more complete, no roads made. At the second meeting in May, 1857, it was decided to elect a chief to be "father of the people," but the younger and more ambitious preferred the name of "king," and to that dignity they appointed, much against his inclination, old Te Whero Whero, a chief who in former days, like Raupera and Ranghihaeta, had since become a Christian, and manifested much of the character of those who "when they are old" become "like little children." He took the name of Potatau on the occasion, and is believed to have accepted a position so onerous and perplexing, – so peculiarly trying to a man of his advanced years and enfeebled constitution, – in the hope of being able to preserve peace between the two races, and to restrain the actions of the more ambitious and impetuous promoters of the native-king movement.

An eye-witness gives an interesting description of the ceremony of presenting allegiance to the native king. A deputation of about 40 fine young men, some of them principal chiefs, arrived for that purpose

at Ngatiruawhia, while he was there. They were accompanied by a number of Ngatimaniapoto, in all about 150 men, wearing favours to distinguish their tribe. They marched up to the flag-staff three abreast. On reaching the flag-staff one stepped forward, and with a clear distinct voice said, "Honour all men, love the brotherhood, fear God, honour the king." Then turning to the train he said, "Honour the king." All responded by uncovering and kneeling. The leader of the Ngatiruanui then read an address, beginning, "O king, live for ever; thou art bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh; thou art a saviour for us, our wives, our children," and pledging their allegiance. The leader of the Ngatiawa then read a similar address. "Honour the king" was again demanded, and responded to by a low obeisance, and a general cry of assent. A native teacher then stepped forward and gave out a verse of the Maori Hymn, beginning, "We have left Egypt, the place of bondage, we seek another land – a land of rest," &c. The verse was then sung, then prayer was offered for God's blessing on their king and on the people. This ended, they retired backward, the whole body moving back till out of sight of Potatau, then they wheeled round and marched off to the place appointed for conference.

In June last old Potatau died. His last words were a caution to his countrymen to preserve peaceful relations with the British settlers, and the farewell speech of this fine old specimen of the Maori warrior was, there is every reason to believe, thoroughly sincere. One of his last official acts was to order the restoration of a number of cattle which had been driven off the land of an European settler, in consequence of a dispute between two native tribes as to the original ownership of the soil. There was a hope at first that Potatau's death might check the movement, but his son Matutaera has been chosen as his successor, and it is said that great moderation pre-

vails in his council, and that he seems desirous of treading in his father's footsteps.

This movement has been conducted peaceably, and allowed to go on without hindrance. Their meetings have been attended by Mr. M'Lean, the native secretary, and other gentlemen holding government offices; by the Bishop of New Zealand, and several Church of England, Wesleyan, and Roman Catholic missionaries. At these meetings speeches have been delivered with great boldness; some favourable, some unfavourable to the Queen's supremacy; some "fiercely patriotic," yet on the whole "cautious and practical." At their last meeting they discussed impartially the question at issue between the Governor and Wirimu Kingi, and decided that the Waikatos should not interfere in that quarrel, but as far as possible preserve peace with the white man. On the other hand it is unanimously agreed that no more land is to be sold to the Governor without "the king's" consent. A constantly increasing number of chiefs have given in their adhesion to the movement, and even Manihera, one who is described as "decidedly the most loyal, intelligent, wealthy, and powerful chief in the southern portion of the island," is said to have felt a disposition to join it from no other cause whatever than that, instead of being put down, it appeared to be promoted by the authorities, and to open to him a wide and honourable field for the gratification of an honourable ambition.

It is not surprising that the Governor and colonists of New Zealand have come to regard this movement with extreme alarm. The Governor's first step in order to arrest it was to carry out with decision the purchase made of Te Teira, and resisted by Wirimu Kingi. And when that measure was followed by disaster instead of deliverance, he wisely assembled a congress of native chiefs at Kohimarama, near Auckland, and gained them over to the cause of order by giving them some slight political importance. He invited them to state their grievances if they had

any, and to give their opinion on the great questions of the day. No grievances were stated; and resolutions adverse to the native-king movement, and favourable to the Governor's case in the matter of William King, were passed; while three of the chiefs expressed their dissent from the latter resolution in a document formally drawn up and signed.

This congress of chiefs is justly regarded as the dawn of better days for New Zealand. But in the mean time events have been hurrying onwards. Our weakness has made the New Zealanders more daring; and the natural unwillingness which has hitherto kept both parties from a death struggle is very likely to have passed away at the first taste of blood. It is difficult in the prospect of what may be impending to bring the mind to calm consideration; and it becomes a scarcely hopeful task to plead the cause of those who may even now be carrying fire and sword among our countrymen. God grant that these terrible anticipations may not be realized, and give us wisdom to consider the question calmly!

Let us first say a word in defence of the chiefs who have joined the native-king movement, and afterwards indicate the course which the existence of the movement appears to point out as just and honourable.

It may be argued in favour of the chiefs that they were led into it by degrees. It might have been checked in the bud. Its first promoters might have been called to Auckland, and the folly and disloyalty of the measure pointed out to them. The Governor might then have carried out quite easily what he speaks of in the following terms in a memorandum dated Auckland, April 27, 1860: "The government at one time entertained a hope – a hope now deferred but not abandoned – that the good elements in the king movement might gain the ascendancy, and become the means of raising the native population in the social scale." Could any time have been better for attempting to realize this hope than when the

movement first began? But no, it was then considered "mere talk" and child's play. And are we now to treat them as rebels because the "talk" which we allowed them to indulge in, but would not share with them, has turned into reality?

I would next ask whether the chiefs engaged in the king movement have not some excuse for the statement they make that they were beguiled in their childish ignorance to part with their sovereignty, and for the desire they avow to recover it 9.

It cannot be denied that the signature of the treaty of Waitangi was carried on with a speed inconsistent with its import, and by means very little to our honour or in accordance with our principles.

The assertion of the sovereignty of New Zealand stood for years as the grand barrier to its systematic colonization. It was the sovereignty of New Zealand which, in the hands of Mr. Coates and Mr. Beecham 10, broke down the New Zealand Association, and defeated a plan for the civilization and social elevation of the native race, which appeared to them Quixotic, but which others have thought far-sighted and benevolent. The sovereignty of New Zealand forms the subject of a Memorandum prepared by the late Sir James Stephen, and sent by the direction of Lord John Russell for the information of Viscount Palmerston on the 18th of March, 1840. In this memorandum, by a reference to three acts of parliament and a careful enumeration of important transactions and documents, the assertion of the Queen's sovereignty is repudiated, and New Zealand proved to be a substantive and independent state.

Will it be believed that, after thus insisting on the importance of the principle, this sovereignty – this valued attribute of the New Zealand people, was ob-

tained from them, not in the childhood, but in the very babyhood of their national existence, with a speed which utterly precluded any real explanation of the effect and import of their act, and by means little calculated to inspire them with that horror of bribery and corruption which is one of the proud boasts of the 'British subject?'

I beg attention to the following epitome of the transactions that took place at the signing of the treaty from Papers ordered by the House of Commons to be printed May 11th, 1841:

Waitangi. – Treaty read to chiefs Feb. 5th, 1840. Opposition. "Send the man away! do not sign the paper! If you do, you will be reduced to the condition of slaves, and be obliged to break stones for the roads. Your land will be taken from you, and your dignity as chiefs will be destroyed." Twenty-four hours given for deliberation, but not taken, chiefs being impatient to return home. Treaty signed Feb. 6th by forty-six chiefs. Presents made to the chiefs after signing. W. HOBSON.

Hokianga. – Treaty read Feb. 12. Opposition prompted by an Englishman who "conscientiously believed that the natives would be degraded under our influence." Treaty signed the same day by fifty-six chiefs. On the 14th, two tribes request their names might be withdrawn from the Treaty. Withdrawal of the names refused. W. HOBSON.

Waikato. – Middle of March. Many signatures obtained at a Missionary meeting by Rev. Mr. Maunsell; but the chiefs who had signed hearing afterwards that presents had been given, by the Government, to all to the Northward who had signed, remonstrated angrily and demanded the paper to destroy it. Captain Symonds allays the excitement by giving a few presents, and promising the like to all who had signed.

W. C. SYMONDS.

Manukau. – End of March. At first meeting no signa-

tures. At second meeting some sign, some refuse for the present, among these "Te Wera-Wera 11, the leading chief or King of Waikato." 18th of April, seven more chiefs sign; but Te Wera-Wera and several others still refuse. W. C. SYMONDS.

Coromandel Harbour. – Treaty read on 4th of May. Signed same day by four chiefs. One old chief refused, alleging as a reason that they wanted more time to assemble the chiefs of the Thames district and to consult with them. "It was to me very apparent also, that a trifling present was expected in payment for his adhesion; but in their exalted idea of the Queen's munificence, they at first all refused the present of a blanket, which was offered after their signatures were obtained, and which I wished them to consider as a gift personally from myself. It is, I conceive, much to be regretted that the objects of ordinary traffic between the natives and Europeans should have been selected as presents for the tribes on the coasts. Forage caps and scarlet or blue cloaks would have been highly appreciated."

THOMAS BUNBURY.

From East Cape to Ahuriri. – 8th of May. Signatures obtained, and a blanket given to each leading chief by Rev. W. Williams. W. WILLIAMS.

Tauranga. – 12th May. Most of the chiefs had already signed. The principal chief and two others refuse, because no presents had been given to them, and they would not believe Mr. Williams, who promised that some should be sent. THOMAS BUNBURY.

The Queen's sovereignty over the North Island, by virtue of the Treaty of Waitangi, was proclaimed by Governor Hobson on the 21st of May, after which the treaty was read at –

Kaitaia. – May 29th. Signed same day by sixty chiefs.

WILLOUGHBY SHORTLAND.

Port Nicholson, Queen Charlotte's Sound, Rangitoto, and to the North as far as Wanganui, the treaty had been signed by June 11th. HENRY WILLIAMS.

It was thus that the sovereignty of New Zealand became transferred to the Crown of England.

How well we can imagine the New Zealand chief, had we instructed him, as we ought to have done, in the principles of the British constitution, defending his adherence to the native-king movement by some such argument as this: "If a member elected into your House of Commons is proved to have given gifts to those who have elected him, his election is made void by that very fact, and he loses his seat. So, as you gave us gifts for signing the treaty of Waitangi, and many of us signed it for the sake of those gifts alone, the treaty is void, and your right of sovereignty is lost 12. "

Perhaps, however, it will be said, "There was no help for it; things were come to that pass that we were forced to gain the sovereignty of New Zealand by some means or other, and in making them British subjects we conferred upon them the greatest possible benefit." But let me ask my countrymen to consider what we undertook when we resolved to make the New Zealander a British subject. A British subject is the inheritor of a glorious constitution, built up for

him, and brought to its perfection by the wisdom and energy of his forefathers during a period of eight hundred years; which for eight hundred years has been taking a form more and more suited to his character and circumstances; which opens out before him grand roads to wealth, power, and eminence; which gives to the peer his hereditary domains, his honour and high functions, and to the people the right of making their own laws, and countless other benefits reflected upon them by their connexion in various ways with the great powers of their country.

And is the New Zealander, when he becomes a British subject, to forfeit all that he has inherited from his ancestors, and to receive nothing in return? Is he to be reduced to a state of "political nothingness." Was he made to comprehend this before he signed the treaty? Was it clearly explained to him that whereas among British subjects there were great chiefs, and lesser chiefs, and gentlemen, and common people, and labourers, each occupying his relative place, enjoying its privileges, and discharging its duties; the great chiefs, and lesser chiefs, and gentlemen, and common people, and labourers of New Zealand would, by virtue of that treaty, be all reduced to one common level, and forced to take their place below the lowest class of British subjects? Had they understood this, they would all have echoed the words of Revewa at Waitangi, "Send the man away! Do not sign the paper! If you do, you will be reduced to the condition of slaves, and be obliged to break stones for the roads. Your lands will be taken from you, and your dignity as chiefs will be destroyed." But this was treated as the suggestion of a hostile party. The chiefs were led to believe that they would have every thing to gain and nothing to lose by becoming British subjects. On the strength of that belief they signed the treaty. And that belief we are bound in honour to make good.

Indeed, we not only allowed them to infer that their dignity as chiefs would not be lowered – we dis-

tinctly told them that it would not. Te Hapaku, a chief of Hawke's Bay, refused to sign the treaty, because "he had heard that those who had signed it at the Bay of Islands had been made slaves." Major Bunbury, to whom this was said, pointed to Hara, a Bay of Islands' chief, who had signed the treaty, and inquired how it was then that he had not become a slave. Upon this Te Hapaku endeavoured to explain his meaning by a sort of diagram on a piece of board, placing the Queen by herself over the chiefs, as these were over the tribes. Major Bunbury told him that "it was literally as he described it, but not for an evil purpose, as they supposed, but to enable her to enforce justice and good government equally among her subjects," – that "it was not the object of Her Majesty's Government to lower the chiefs in the estimation of their tribes, and that his signature being now attached to the treaty could only tend to increase his consequence by acknowledging his title 13."

Now this statement is completely nullified if the whole native people is to be reduced to one dead level, and if the political importance of the chief is to be limited to his possible enjoyment of the elective franchise. If Te Hapaku's diagram pourtrays the literal truth, the chiefs must bear the same relation to their tribes, as the Queen bears to the chiefs. And if this is inconsistent with the amalgamation of both races into one great people, we must give the chiefs in their civilized state a substantial equivalent for that chieftainship, which is as much to them as their hereditary influence and high name is to the nobles of any other country, and which our entrance upon their shores obliges them to relinquish.

The New Zealand Association of 1837 foresaw this necessity, and endeavoured to provide for it. One of the rules of colonizing which they adopted was "deducere coloniam," to lead out a colony – not send

out emigrants – and it was hoped and expected that English gentlemen of influence and character would join in the "heroic work," and become leaders of organized bands of colonists, who would carry out with them all that was most attractive and humanizing in their old home association. This at once suggested the sort of Government which would be most suited for the infant community. It would be governed by a sort of patriarchal aristocracy, the members of which would be the leaders of each several band of colonists. And it was hoped that such relations would be established between them and the chiefs, as would attract the natives into the settlement, instead of repelling them from it, and lead eventually to a close social and political union between the two races. This will serve to introduce the following extracts: –

"5. Social alliances to be formed between the principal English families and the families of the chiefs.

"From the establishment of the principle of land reserves for the native chiefs above stated, many consequences would flow, and various institutions might be engrafted on it. One result would be the ascertainment and classification of the various native families within the British territory. This would be necessary in order to accomplish and record the formal cession of their land to the Crown; and it would have an excellent effect in giving character and individuality to the different members and families of the native race; and it would be the ground-work of the general system of registration which it would be expedient to adopt, in order to ascertain the descent of landed property, and the other particulars for which public registration is desirable.

"But the native New Zealander would not be transformed in a moment from the rude and untutored denizen of his own heights and valleys into the staid and orderly participant of the blessings of civilization; and though, from all that we can learn, he would be anxiously desirous to receive instruction and improvement from the Englishman, he would be as open to the contamination of the vulgar-

minded and the vicious as to the instruction of the high-principled and the good. For 'every thing from England is gold to the poor New Zealander 14.' It would, therefore, be incumbent upon the members of the best families among the English to lay themselves out, as one of the finest occupations in which they could engage, for the cultivation and improvement of the native mind, for training them up to civilized habits, courteous behaviour, decorous conduct, and generous sentiments. And they might be well assured that whatever labour they expended in such a work, they would be amply repaid by the enlargement of mind and elevation of feeling which they would themselves derive from it.

"In aid of this course of civilization, and also for the general protection of the native clans, and the superintendence of the landed interests of the chiefs, we might adopt, as another special regulation, the establishment of a principle of social alliances throughout the colony. Besides the advantage which the natives in general might derive from a protector appointed by law, a protection of a more genial kind might be afforded to them, were the principal English families to adopt, as their friends and allies, the chief families of the territory where they had established themselves. This family compact might be entered into between the principal individual of the English family and the New Zealand chief, on a special occasion, in set terms, and in a formal manner. It would be a solemn and ceremonious observance well calculated to impress the imagination of the New Zealander, and strictly in accordance with his feudal character.

"Nor would such an institution be without its value for the English gentleman, as well as the New Zealand chief. It would confer upon both an honourable distinction of a neutral character, and founded, as all honourable distinctions ought to be, in the high qualities of confidence, generosity, faithfulness, respect for social ties, and regard for the interests of posterity. The offices of the English leader towards his adopted friend would be to entertain him as his guest, to instruct him in the point

of honour, to correct his savage notions with regard to the retaliation of injuries, to influence his pursuits, to teach him the value of property, and the obligations it entails on its possessor. The younger members of the families of the chiefs might be introduced into the families of their English protectors, to undergo that wholesome mixture of education, service, manly exercise, and moral discipline, which the sons of our English gentry were once accustomed to receive in the houses of the wealthier nobility. Their daughters would be the especial care of the English ladies, and would receive from them such instructions, and render them such services, as would best fit them for their place in society." – Exceptional Laws. 1837.

For a further illustration of the nature and bearing of these social alliances, or guestships, as they may be called, I refer my readers to the next section of this work. The following is from the "Earnest Address to New Zealand Colonists, 1840:" –

"Importance to the New Zealanders of a due consideration for the Dignity of their Chiefs.

"The matter at which I look with the deepest anxiety is your treatment of the native chiefs. Upon this point your success or failure, as regards the aborigines, appears to me to depend. Not only justice to themselves, but a respect for the national importance of the New Zealand people, requires that the chiefs should continue to occupy as high a relative position after your settlement among them as before.

"One of the points most perseveringly urged against the colonization of New Zealand has been its interference with the independent sovereignty of the country. Now, the present possessors of this sovereignty are the native chiefs, for there is no king, nor is there any representative of the whole New Zealand people. The only way, then, in which we can respect, and the way in which justice imperatively demands that we should respect, the sovereignty of the New Zealand people, is to confer upon their chiefs such benefits as shall be fully tantamount to

whatever rude authority they possess in their savage state, and which must necessarily pass away from them as civilization advances, whether this civilization is effected by a British Colony, or by missionaries. Power or influence of some other kind must be given to them instead of that which they lose. This is no more than justice to them, in respect to the rights which they must lose, and it is the only way in which their presumed prerogative of sovereignty can, under present circumstances, be made available for the welfare of the New Zealand people.

"For it must be plain to any one, that the best way to make the New Zealanders truly respectable and dignified in their own feelings, and in the view of others, is to let them have some persons among them occupying a position of wealth and distinction. Even if there were no chiefs in New Zealand, it would be far more judicious to select certain persons from among them, and place them in a position of honour, than to distribute what would be requisite for this purpose over the whole people.

"But as this would be obviously judicious, quite irrespectively of the rights of the chiefs, how imperatively is it not demanded, when there is a class of people in the island, who by common consent and prescriptive right hold a position of eminence above the others, and connect with this position of eminence the acutest sense of the distinction which it confers."

The pages which now follow contain some thoughts on the formation of a Constitution for New Zealand, which were printed as an Appendix to the Address to New Zealand colonists. To these I particularly request the attention of my readers, not only as pointing out what would have been ample equivalent to the chiefs for their ceded sovereignty, but as presenting the idea of a Commonwealth, which would perhaps have been more productive of peace, happiness, and order, than those Democracies which it has been for some time the fashion to establish in the world. The person to whom in this prelusion I give the name of Lord-Lieutenant would of course hold a delegated sovereignty over the country very different from that

which is possessed, at present by any individual, or any body of men. For where does it now reside? Theoretically in the Legislative Assembly. But the management of the affairs of the natives, the inhabitants of by far the larger portion of the country, is taken from the Legislative Assembly, and placed in the hands of the Governor. And yet if the Governor wishes to have a council to deliberate with him, and share his responsibility in reference to those affairs, he is not only obliged to send to England for permission, but when the Crown wishes to grant him his request, the House of Commons steps in and says it shall not 15. We are, indeed, tempted to echo the words of the New Zealand chief, "A king would cure these evils."

"THOUGHTS ON THE FORMATION OF A CONSTITUTION FOR NEW ZEALAND.

"In reflecting upon the present state and future prospects of New Zealand, the mind is naturally disposed to speculate upon the form of Constitution which it would be most desirable to establish on its shores. For we cannot but believe, that from its situation and physical advantages it is destined to become, in the course of time, a position of political importance scarcely inferior to that which is occupied by Great Britain herself, and that this is the time when measures should be taken to form the social and political character of its future people.

"Now it must be acknowledged that, heretofore, England has not been happy in her measures of colonization. The present circumstances and relative position of the whole Anglo-Saxon population of the New World are far from being such as to permit her to congratulate herself on the wisdom she has hitherto displayed in laying the foundation of future States and Empires. And whatever direction may yet be given to Australian colonization, we must confess, with shame, that it began by the plantation of crime.

"But there is some reason to hope that the dawn of a brighter period is approaching. For many valuable suggestions, and for much indefatigable labour in the cause of colonization, we are greatly indebted to Sir Robert Wilmot Horton, and we are no less indebted to Mr. Edward Gibbon Wakefield for the discovery and unwearied advocacy of a mode of disposing of waste lands in the colonies which is now extensively adopted, and which must have the greatest possible influence on the whole future course of colonization. The subject is beginning to be considered under new aspects, and to be regarded with interest in quarters where formerly it excited no attention. And it augurs well, and is worthy of remark, that persons whose general views and particular predilections are at the utmost possible distance from each other, agree in the admission of one great principle with respect to it, namely, that the future colony should be in its form and constituent elements a counterpart of the mother country.

"The advocates of the Wakefield system of colonization have always urged as its greatest recommendation, that it affords an unexampled facility for carrying out to the new country, not individuals alone, but an integral portion of society as it exists in England; while the importance of this principle is distinctly recognized by their most decided political opponents. In proof of which I need only refer to the sentiments expressed by Sir Robert Inglis, who, on more than one occasion, has quoted the famous saying of the Duke of Wellington, that for a great nation like England, there can be no such thing as a little war, and has applied it to colonization, saying, that there

should be no such thing as a small project of colonization, and that every colony ought to be a miniature representation of the British empire.

"Under the sanction of this remarkable coincidence of opinion in two very different quarters, it may perhaps be permitted me to set down some reflections which were not unlikely to have occurred to me, while speculating on the course which it would be reasonable to pursue in order fully to carry out this idea in the particular case of New Zealand, and at the same time, to make the sovereignty of Great Britain perfectly consistent with the preservation and consolidation of every civil right which we can suppose to exist in the present lords of that country.

"I shall state at once, and embody in three propositions, the chief features of the course which has occurred to me, as best calculated to effect such a purpose, and I shall afterwards enter with more detail into its defence and general illustration.

"The propositions are these: –

"First. That New Zealand should be governed by a Lord-Lieutenant appointed by the Crown of England, and have a parliament of its own.

"Secondly. That to this end it should be the immediate care of Great Britain to provide for the establishment and perpetual maintenance of a Senate, or superior house of legislature for the new country.

"Thirdly. That this Senate, or superior house of legislature, should consist partly of Englishmen of large landed property in New Zealand, to be appointed for that purpose by the British Crown, and partly of the Native Chiefs of New Zealand, and that the members of this Senate should have titles of honour, and constitute an hereditary peerage as in England.

"I would only add, that such being the great framework of the body politic, it would be easy to make provision for the timely representation in the legislature of those specific popular interests, which would be evolved in the natural progress of the colony.

"Upon the above propositions I submit the following remarks: –

"To the proposed representative of the British Crown,

I give the title of Lord-Lieutenant, as indicating the high rank of the individual whom it would be desirable to see at the head of affairs in New Zealand, and as establishing a closer analogy with the state of things in our own country.

"By the term Senate, or superior house of legislature, it is intended to designate that portion of the body politic, whose natural province, according to its primary intention, is to deliberate on state affairs; and whose usual office, in a constitution fully developed, is 'by its tranquil and safe, but effective working, to act as an useful check on the popular branch of the legislature 16.' It appears under its first character as the Wittenagemot of our Saxon ancestors, and the Parliament of the early Norman kings, and under its second as the modern House of Lords.

"As a reason for proposing the establishment of a Senate in New Zealand, it may be enough to say that no national community is complete without one. Its importance as a deliberative body, and as the representative of a large class of most important interests, is amply borne out by the whole course of past testimony and experience. Every one admits that as a balancing power, it is absolutely essential to the safety and permanence of a limited monarchy. Nor can it be dispensed with in a republic. For it is asserted as an axiom by a great republican writer, that 'the necessary definition of a commonwealth, any thing well ordered, is that it is a government consisting of the Senate proposing, the People resolving, and the Magistracy executing 17.'

"But if it be granted that a Senate is indispensable to the completeness and good order of a State, I think it will readily be allowed that it is that portion of the community which ought, in order of time, to be the first embodied and invested with specific functions. The work to be first done in a newly settled country, is that which naturally falls under the province of a Senate, the presumable qualifications of which are deliberative wisdom,

prudence, forethought, experience, and theoretical knowledge of legislation. Indeed the interests of the several classes of a young community are so little at variance with each other, that in the early stages of a nation's growth, the Senate may be considered as the personification of the whole people. The business of a popular branch of the legislature being to check, counterbalance, and modify, comes naturally afterwards, and as a consequence of the growth of new and diverse interests.

"The third proposition will probably be read with some surprise; but, prejudice apart, is it not a more just ground of surprise (so far as regards the British portion of such a peerage), that among all the plans for colonial government, and the establishment and formation of colonies, a principle so essentially characteristic of the social polity of Great Britain should have been altogether disregarded?

"For a practical proof of the importance of providing at the earliest period of the growth of a colony, for the existence of a branch of the legislature distinct from that which represents and is elected by the people, we need only call to mind one of the recommendations of a great statesman whose loss we now deplore, respecting the most important case of colonial disorder that has recently occurred. At the close of the celebrated 'Report' of the late Earl of Durham, are to be found the following remarks upon the constitution of a legislative council for the Canadian provinces.

"'The constitution of a second legislative body for the united legislature involves questions of very great difficulty. The present constitution of the legislative councils of these provinces has always appeared to me inconsistent with sound principles, and little calculated to answer the purpose of placing the effective check which I consider necessary on the popular branch of the legislature...

"'The attempt to invest a few persons, distinguished from their fellow-colonists neither by birth nor hereditary property, and often only transiently connected with the country, with such a power, seems only calculated to ensure jealousy and bad feelings in the first instance, and collision at last...

"'It will be necessary for the completion of any stable scheme of government, that parliament should revise the constitution of the legislative council, and – by adopting every practicable means to give that institution such a character as would enable it, by tranquil and safe, but effective working, to act as an useful check on the popular branch of the legislature – prevent a repetition of those collisions which have already caused such dangerous irritation.'

"In this opinion Lord Durham does not stand alone. Those who are opposed to many of his views and principles allow that, in this instance, he precisely indicated the great exigency and desideratum of the case. But they say that the materials out of which such an improved house of legislature should be formed are no where to be found, and that we have, therefore, no means of getting out of the difficulty, and yet the source of the difficulty, and the mode, therefore, of obviating it in future, seems to be sufficiently indicated by the terms in which he states it.

"'The analogy which some persons have attempted to draw between the House of Lords and the Legislative Councils seems to me erroneous. The constitution of the House of Lords is consonant with the frame of English society; – and, as the creation of a precisely similar body in such a state of society as that of these colonies is impossible, it has always appeared to me most unwise to attempt to supply its place by one which has no point of resemblance to it, except that of being a non-elective check on the elective branch of the Legislature.'

"It is therefore most anxiously to be desired, for the future completeness and stability of the constitution of New Zealand, that the deficiency here indicated should be supplied beforehand; that the germ of its future society should be of such a sort as to produce all the necessary materials for embodying that power which affords the natural counterpoise to the popular interests and tendencies of the community. Nor is it required in order to fulfil this hope that any portion of the future society of New Zealand should be distinguished by extraordinary splendour and excessive wealth; for these circumstances, though inevitably mixed up with our con-

ceptions of an Upper House of Legislature from what we witness at home, are by no means necessary to the moral and mental accomplishment, and the relative social position which we should look for in such a body.

"But to bring this arrangement into consonance with the institutions and established practice of our country, it would be necessary that the persons forming such a body should not only possess comparative wealth and high moral and intellectual qualifications, but also, to a great extent, be descended from families of ancestral reputation in Great Britain. This would be one great means of making the colony a counterpart of the parent state, and would also promote a strong feeling of reciprocal affection and allegiance between the two countries. It seems scarcely necessary to contend that such persons would be the best qualified to form a council of government for the colony, and there is throughout the whole British population, when under the influence of their genuine feelings, such an affection and respect for the ancient gentry of the land, whether ennobled or not, that, could some scions from the venerable tree be carried over and take root in New Zealand, they would be followed by a large number of firm friends and faithful retainers, and be a centre of union and strength for the best and most English portion of the community.

"Nor should we overlook the moral qualifications which are most likely to belong to persons of such a class.

"In that remarkable passage of Bacon's on the subject of colonization, in which he says that it is a shameful and unblessed thing to take the scum of the people with whom to plant, he adds a recommendation that the persons on whom the government of the colony should depend ought rather to be 'noblemen and gentlemen than merchants, for they look ever to the present gain.'

"This also reminds me of a curious passage quoted from Harrington in the fine account of Sir Alexander Ball contained in Coleridge's Friend: –

"'There is something first in the making of a commonwealth; then in the governing of it; and last of all in the leading of its armies; which though there be great divines, groat lawyers, great men in all ranks of life, seems to be

peculiar only to the genius of a gentleman. For so it is in the universal series of history, – that if any man has founded a commonwealth, he was first a gentleman. Such also as have got any fame as civil governors have been gentlemen or persons of known descent.'

"The spirit of this quaint passage may perhaps be somewhat too exclusive, but I think we shall all acknowledge the correctness of thought with which Coleridge expresses himself in another place, where he commended Solon for having attached authority to 'high birth and property, or rather to the moral discipline, the habits, attainments, and directing motives, on which he calculated (not indeed as necessary and constant accompaniments, but yet) as the regular and ordinary results of comparative opulence and renowned ancestry.'

"But whatever opinion may be entertained as to the abstract question, it will doubtless be conceded that nothing could be more conducive to the welfare of the state about to be founded in New Zealand, than for the various bodies of which it will consist, to be led out, planted, and governed by a number of high-principled and accomplished men of well-known English families, and possessing that general acquaintance with affairs which is acquired during the course of a liberal education, and by habitual intercourse with the superior classes.

"And I cannot but think that if the authorities competent to realize such a project were convinced of its expediency, the difficulties in the way of its execution would disappear. The desire of occupying a high station in the legislature of an empire, of founding a noble family, and of connecting one's name with the progress of a nation's affairs, is so closely interwoven into all hearts, and especially into such as possess any touch of nobleness and generosity, that there would be no want of persons possessing all the necessary qualifications for such a charge, should the Crown of England consent to place them in that high and important post that we have described.

"If the best and noblest of our countrymen are willing to spill their blood in battle, and if the most honourable

boon that a grateful country can bestow on military heroism, is a seat among the hereditary legislators of our land, surely there is something in the work of laying the foundation of an empire, and handing down to one's own descendants the illustrious charge of rearing it to maturity, which would offer a sufficient inducement even to the noblest blood of England to make some momentary sacrifice for so great an honour.

"But to this enterprise there would be a further motive, less alloyed with selfish ambition, but not less truly glorious. There is no subject which excites so great a display of interest among the most estimable and well-constituted minds of all ranks and parties as the dawn of civilization and religion over the dark places of the world. Hitherto, however, the single agency that we have thought it necessary to adopt in order to hasten its arrival has been that of Christian missions; and, valuable as this agency undoubtedly is for the conversion of sinners, it is a vital error to suppose that it is intended or calculated to effect the complicated work of civilization. It is well known that the great majority of the missionaries who have been employed in uncivilized countries have been men of most humble circumstances and limited education, with no knowledge of secular affairs, no qualification in fact beyond that of skill in some handicraft employment, and zeal in their religious avocations. That such an order of men may be made instrumental of much good in any country, no Christian can doubt; but that they are qualified for the delicate and difficult work of giving form to the rude elements of society, no man of reflection will assert.

"But it is something far greater even than this which has to be done in New Zealand. The prospect which is there presented to us is something more than a common scheme of civilization. We behold there at this moment the co-existence of a number of very remarkable circumstances, which impress us with the belief that nothing but wise direction is required for the speedy formation of a great characteristic empire; and of this empire, justice, wisdom, and the fitness of things, no less than the often repeated declarations of Great Britain, imperatively

demand that the native people should form a great, dignified, and influential portion.

"What distinguishes the present from all other cases of the formation of a new empire is, that here the native race, instead of being depressed, is to be elevated. To this, both the British Government and all who have any thing to say to New Zealand colonization, have over and over again pledged themselves both by implication and direct assertion. And if this is neglected, we not only violate justice by depriving a people of what we have solemnly acknowledged to belong to them, and by inflicting injury on those who have conferred on us the greatest benefits; but we stand convicted before the world as false dealers and breakers of our word.

"Thus two of the greatest purposes which man can effect by his fellow-men have simultaneously to be performed: the heroic work of colonization, which, when carried on in its true spirit, conveys to a distant shore, not a rabble of needy adventurers, but a vigorous counterpart of the parent state; and the heroic work of civilization, or, more properly, social organization, which calls men from wilds and forests to build cities, and form themselves into well-governed communities; a work of which, notwithstanding all our efforts, we have no example in modern history, but of which there is some glimmering tradition in the records of very ancient nations, and which sheds a radiance of poetic glory over such names as those of Orpheus or Amphion 18.

"Were the work of colonization the only one to be performed, and were there no natives in New Zealand, or could we make them serfs, it would still be desirable to

send out and establish there a body of men who should feel their private interest to be bound up with that of the new country, and be qualified and empowered to discharge deliberative and legislative functions with the perfect confidence of the parent state, and the respect and approbation of all mankind. And it is impossible that any men could be so well qualified for such a task as those who should deserve to be selected out of the higher classes of the British gentry to form the senatorial order of the future nation.

"But this plan would have another great advantage distinct from, but co-ordinate with, and auxiliary to the former one; namely, that of making the supreme rule of Great Britain perfectly consistent with the retention in the hands of the New Zealand Chiefs of all that is substantial and important in their sovereign rights. Nay, more, of bringing into distinct form and visible body those rights, which at present only exist in embryo, while the fact of their existing only in embryo does not release Great Britain from the solemn and sacred duty of respecting them, and of taking the utmost care and pains lest they should be stifled in their birth.

"The nature of these embryo sovereign rights may be best collected from the following passage of an old author, concerning the sovereignty of our own island at an early period of its history. The author to whom I refer is Speed, and he writes as follows respecting the opinion of a previous historian: –

"'It seemeth by him and other latine writers the best recorders of kingdomes affaires, this Iland was gouerned rather after the maner of an aristocratie, that is, by certaine great nobles and potent men, then under the commaund of any one as an absolute monarch; though herein is a difference, in that in the aristocraticall regiment, the rulers are all peers of one commonwealth; whereas here so many princes so many severall publike weals.'

"In the present state of the New Zealand Chieftains they are without that connecting bond which seems essential to the very idea of sovereignty considered as the attribute of a state. They possess no characteristic features of government which enable us to pronounce

under what description of 'regiment' or 'public weal' they may be classed. But as the Latin authors, to whom Speed refers, designated the early social system of this island by the name of an aristocracy, because that was the regular form of government which, viewed in regard to the rights possessed and exercised, it most nearly resembled; so it is clear that the form of government, into coincidence with which the social state of New Zealand might most easily be brought, would be an aristocracy governed by a uniform system of laws; each chief being magistrate and executor of the laws in his own sphere, and the work of legislation and deliberation on the affairs of the country being carried on by the whole body of the chiefs assembled in a common council, and acting as peers of one commonwealth. And that this is the form of government which natural sense assigns to New Zealand, appears from the British Resident having assembled together a Congress of Chiefs at the Bay of Islands to declare their independence, and present them with a national flag.

"But who can doubt that a state so constituted would be governed far more safely, with far greater convenience and security both to people and chiefs, if there was one presiding power over the whole, whether a native monarch or a Lord-Lieutenant appointed by Great Britain?

"That it is impossible to establish a native monarchy has long been evident, and indeed that the Native Chiefs should form themselves into an assembly of 'peers of one commonwealth' to govern the country according to the 'aristocraticall regiment' is equally unlikely. But who will say that it is not within the power of the Crown of England, the zealous vindicator and natural protector of the rights of the New Zealand Chiefs, to preserve and defend, or rather to develope, define, and consolidate these rights, and bring them into their most healthy and beneficial exercise, by associating with them as peers of the same commonwealth a chosen body of her most worthy sons, and placing over the whole a dignified representative of her own majesty?

"The Native Chiefs, it is true, could at present take but little share in the deliberations of such an assembly, but

their dignity would be preserved, they would meet each other, no longer as enemies, but as friends and councillors together. There would be no time lost if they had to spend a whole generation in acquiring the idea of an organized realm, and of an assembly meeting and deliberating as peers of such a realm. The honour of the whole aboriginal race would be kept up by the distinction thus conferred upon their chiefs. They would be a constant memento to their peers of the British race that the interests of the natives were of equal importance with the interests of the British, and they would themselves very soon acquire such a knowledge of the meaning of their proceedings as to be able to protect themselves against any thing manifestly injurious to their country. In the mean time they might be invested with certain executive and magisterial functions, each in his own peculiar sphere, – which would teach them the nature of law, – which would make them useful agents in the civil polity of the country, – and which would tend to keep up their dignity: three most important purposes in promoting the social organization of the new country.

"If such a scheme as this for the fulfilment of the utmost wishes of philanthropy respecting the native people, and the formation of a great British dynasty, identical in all its parts with the British nation itself, were placed before the nobility and the ancestral gentry of Great Britain; and if the rulers of England had sufficient faith in the excellence of our constitution and in the progress of empires, to call on her best sons to join in such a project, might we not hope that there is enterprise, valour, and virtue enough to undertake it among the worthiest of our land; and that, by the blessing of God, we should do that for the natives of New Zealand which has never yet been done for any of the coloured races of the world?

"Perhaps it will be said that the consequence of such a measure would be the creation of too formidable a power; but is it not better to create a great friendly power, than to suffer a great hostile power to create itself?

"According to the old, or rather the early modern, and still recent system of forming colonies, it seems to have

been forgotten that they were the seeds of future empires; for we see no evidence of any precaution having been taken to provide beforehand for the wants which an empire must experience in its growth and progress to maturity. Hence the powers of the new state have grown up of themselves, and have often been of a growth no less dangerous than rapid and vigorous.

"It was well said by the Bishop of London at a meeting of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, held with a view to the establishment of bishoprics in the colonies, that the United States would never have separated from Great Britain if the Church of England, under its complete episcopal form of Church government, had been established there.

"But how much more certainly would this connexion have been preserved, if, together with an establishment of the Church of England in her full order, beauty, and completeness, there had been given to her, as the ground-work of her legislature, an ample body of her nobility, invested with titles of honour, and forming a house of peers for her transatlantic empire! If, instead of neglecting and discouraging, or leaving merely to the im-pulses of their own adventurous spirits, those many ardent and noble souls, whose names are connected with the discovery and colonization of America, and who were among the most ancient families of our land, she had made them peers of the new country, how different would the history of America have been! But, alas! the time of the colonization of America was a time of dissolution, not of organization, – a time when the principle of Progression fearfully overbalanced the principle of Permanence 19.

"Had it been the design of Great Britain to raise on a distant soil a young counterpart of herself, she should have recollected that as labourers were required to till the ground, and architects to build cities, and mechanics and artisans to supply the wants of social life, and merchants to draw forth the natural resources of the country; so legislators were required to order and govern the state.

And she should not only have permitted but provided, that, from the very first outset of the new commonwealth, there should be a class of men fitted in every point by birth, by feeling, by education, by superiority to insignificant strifes and petty quarrels, and by a far-sighted acquaintance with the principles of government and human nature, to discharge the functions of her own hereditary councillors. There was no want of materials at the colonization of America for giving the future empire a perpetual succession of legislators devoted to the welfare of the parent state, and qualified by high feelings of honour and high mental endowments for rearing and upholding the fabric of government. And the noblest opportunities were granted to successive monarchs, from Henry VIII. downwards, for forming on the western shores of the Atlantic an exact counterpart of Great Britain, with all its characteristic institutions, and all its high and dignified associations, added to the spirit of youthfulness and enterprise, and comparative hardiness and frugality, for which colonies must always afford greater necessity than the mother country.

"Nor was there any want of events to call attention to the necessity of providing this element of social order for the incipient state. The peculiar circumstances, the political exigencies and difficulties of the American settlements, were forced again and again upon the attention of successive monarchs, and yet it never seems to have occurred to them that they were the germs of future empires; they seem never to have regarded them in any other light than as a small band of Englishmen struggling for subsistence on a distant shore, for whom certain laws and regulations were necessary, and to whom it was expedient to grant certain privileges, but for whose great future political wants it was quite unnecessary to make any provision.

"It is asserted by Robertson, with great appearance of reason, that the early mode of governing colonies originated in the grant of America to the Crown of Spain by the Pope. By this grant it was considered that the new country became the absolute property of the monarch, and that he could rule it with an exclusive reference to his

own interests. The example set by Spain was followed by the other colonizing powers of Europe, and the relation between parent states and colonies became one, not of protection and mutual benefit, but of dominion on the one hand and obedience on the other.

"But colonies cannot always remain in a state of absolute subjection to the mother-country. Either by concession or by violence, a self-governing power will sooner or later be developed within them. Sooner or later they will demand those institutions by which the sense of the people is enabled to declare itself, and become the law of the land. It depends upon the original care and prudent forethought of the mother-country whether they shall be trained up to the due exercise of these powers, and be themselves moulded into the best form of polity, and firmly attached in sympathies, character, and allegiance to the parent state; or whether they shall acquire these powers in a random way, according to the pressing exigencies of particular times, and led on by the accidental energy of particular minds, actuated by a rebellious spirit, and having 'neoterizein' [Greek] for their motto.

"The people will at length demand a representative assembly, and a representative assembly can easily be formed; but where, unless it can be provided beforehand, will be that other assembly which is equally essential to the idea of a state 'any thing well ordered,' and which, 'by its tranquil and safe, but effective working, shall act as an useful check upon the popular branch of the legislature?'

"In the case of New Zealand, and of every other colony which from its circumstances seems likely to be the germ of a future empire, there is a present exigency and there must arise a future one: a present exigency to possess at once a body of councillors qualified to deliberate from the first upon the affairs of the country, and from identification of interest with the soil, and permanent and territorial connexion with the rest of the people, more likely to determine wisely by their collective wisdom than any single governor, however wise, having only a temporary and official connexion with the country; and a future exigency of that kind which has been so strongly felt in

Canada, to possess an effective upper house to discharge the functions of a senate, and act as a check upon the popular branch of the legislature. Can we doubt that on both of these accounts it would be England's best wisdom to use the necessary means for gathering and sending out as the leaders of New Zealand colonization, such a body of men as she could safely invest with the titles and functions of an hereditary peerage 20?

"It would be easy to dilate on the many social and economical advantages which would accrue to the whole New Zealand community from the establishment of such an order of men upon its shores, the impulse it would give to the best kind of colonization, and the guarantee it would afford for the cultivation in New Zealand of every thing which is most admirable at home; but I shall content myself with making the following extract from Blackstone respecting the principle of an hereditary branch of legislature: –

"'The distinction of rank and honours is necessary in every well-governed state, in order to reward such as are eminent for their services to the public in a manner the most desirable to individuals, and yet without burden to the community; exciting thereby an ambitious yet laudable ardour, and generous emulation in others. And emulation or virtuous ambition is a spring of action, which, however dangerous or invidious in a mere republic, or under a despotic sway, will certainly be attended with

good effects under a free monarchy – where, without destroying its existence, its excesses may be continually restrained by that superior power from which all honour is derived. Such a spirit, when nationally diffused, gives life and vigour to the community; it sets all the wheels of government in motion, which, under a wise regulator, may be directed to any beneficial purpose; thereby every individual may be made subservient to the public good, while he principally means to promote his own particular views. A body of nobility is also more peculiarly necessary in our mixed and compounded constitution, in order to support the rights of both the Crown and the people, by forming a barrier to withstand the encroachments of both. It creates and preserves that gradual scale of dignity which proceeds from the peasant to the prince, rising like a pyramid from a broad foundation, and diminishing to a point as it rises. It is this ascending and contracting proportion that adds stability to any government, for when the departure is sudden from one extreme to another, we may pronounce that State to be precarious. The nobility, therefore, are the pillars which are reared from among the people more immediately to support the throne, and if that falls, they must also be buried under its ruins; and since titles of nobility are thus expedient in the State, it is also expedient that their owners should form an independent and separate branch of the legislature. If they were confounded with the mass of the people, and, like them, had only a vote in electing representatives, their privileges would soon be borne down and overwhelmed by the popular torrent, which would effectually level all distinctions. It is, therefore, highly necessary that the body of nobles should have a distinct assembly, distinct deliberations, and distinct powers from the commons.'

"What Blackstone here contemplates, is a house of lords as it exists in a fully developed constitution. What this essay describes is something which may be at once the germ of such a body, and the present great national council of New Zealand. I have said scarcely any thing about the provision of a house of legislature to be elected by the people, not from an oversight of the inevitable

necessity for the eventual formation of such a house, but because I think the legislative body that I have described would at first be sufficient for the government and public welfare of the whole community, as those distinct interests which require to be represented by an elective house of legislature cannot be expected to arise until the whole apparatus of society has been for some time in motion. We shall not succeed in making our colony a counterpart of the mother-country by a servile and artificial imitation of the outward frame of her institutions, but by inserting into its soil such roots of a future constitution as shall naturally grow into those forms which give its character and value to our own. The mode which has hitherto been adopted in planting colonies has naturally tended to make them nurseries of democracy.

"The objections against the principle of an hereditary element in a constitution are neither weighty nor generally held. The practice and common feelings of our countrymen agree in awarding worth and honour to the aristocratic branch of our community, and it is not likely that the example of any modern democracies will shake the natural faith which throughout all ages has been placed in hereditary honour and virtue, however ready we may be to acknowledge that honour and virtue are not the necessary, though they are the natural, consequences of high birth and hereditary wealth. We are also to consider that these institutions are not castes, and that the hereditary branch of our constitution is in a state of constant change by the extinction of old families, and the introduction into its body of men of high promise from other ranks. How different from the case of democratic America, where caste does exist in its most odious and debasing form! How different also from the morbid separations in society which are naturally engendered by convict colonization!

"I am perfectly sensible of the anomalous character that would belong to a council composed in part of New Zealand Chiefs and in part of English Gentlemen; but I think it would not be difficult, while conceding to the Native Chiefs, and securing to their descendants an hereditary right of legislating for their country, to provide

against their voting on questions respecting which there might be a strong difference of opinion among the British portion of the Senate, and by which the native interests would not be affected. Their honorary distinctions should be in all respects the same as that of the British Peers, but their political privilege should rather be that of assessors than of councillors. As regards the present generation of Chiefs, it should rather be a school for the formation of legislators than a legislative assembly; while in all questions relating to native interests their unanimous dissent should amount to a veto. In all this there would be difficulties, but we should reflect that these New Zealanders are now the lords of the land; and that were they unanimously to insist upon their independence, England could not exercise one single act of authority upon their shores. Our plan, as regards them, grows out of the peculiar exigencies of the case, and is intended to give form to the embryo rights of sovereignty which we acknowledge them to possess.

"It would also be a great mistake to suppose, because they are uncivilized, that they have the same inaptitude for deliberating on state affairs which the unlettered part of our own population would have. It is, I conceive, one of the redeeming points of savage life that the people at large do possess a tolerable acquaintance with the customs and institutions of their country, and we know that they are in the habit of holding assemblies and deliberating upon measures of public interest; and if such an expedient as this were not adopted for representing the native interests, it would be very difficult to devise any plan by which such a representation could be secured to them in the popular branch of the legislature." 1840.

Having given this expose of the views I entertained at the outset of the colonization of New Zealand, as to the elements it afforded us for laying the ground-work of a well-ordered State, I shall close this section, as I did the last, by referring to the hope of better things which seems to be dawning upon us from that country itself. It is connected, with the conference of Chiefs at Kohimarama, to which reference

has already been made. That conference has excited the greatest possible interest among the young chiefs who have attended it, and has awakened in them a determination to qualify themselves for admission into the Colonial Legislature.

"In this light the present Conference may be fairly regarded as a most effective training-school in legislation; and the Maori delegates now assembled have more than once given expression to their strong desire to have the Conference made a periodical gathering, to be held alternately in the North and South of the colony. They feel that they have been dealt with fairly and frankly; and they regard the convening of this conference of Chiefs from every part of the colony, as the first decided step towards their naturalization as British subjects – to their being placed on a footing of perfect equality with the white man.

"They have been asked to speak out their sentiments without reservation; and every speaker has had the report of his observations read over to him for correction – so that as the official reports appear from time to time, they will have all the authority which attaches to the reports of Parliamentary debates. Of this fact the speakers are all fully aware; and they one and all admit that it makes them doubly cautious as to what they say, so that they may make no statement to which they do not feel pledged as on oath."

The following is from the pen of Captain Byron Drury, to whose important letter in the "Times" of November 16th I have already referred: –

"Extraordinary circumstances require exceptional measures, and after studying the subject I am convinced that we should at once proclaim a Maori Chamber of Representatives – as near as possible numerically the same as exists – to sit simultaneously with ours. Interlard it with the popular native secretary and a small amount of forensic talent, – any one who knows the New Zealander is aware that he admires our law, is eager to learn and adopt it, – assisted by two or three men whose influence would widen their sphere of discussion, and instruct them

in the forms and decorum of debate. If they wish to make laws for districts as yet far removed from the influence of our magistrates, let them do so – they will follow our code. Their debates would be chiefly upon land and its transfer. The more this subject is ventilated the better, and the adjoining Chamber would learn their views.

"The natives would know their enactments were all subject to the Governor's veto. They largely contribute to the revenue, and should have a voice in its expenditure. Their speeches are short, poetical, and somewhat incoherent, but will soon expand, and if they tire in debate, still, they will allow the opportunity has been afforded them of legislating with us on an equality, and in another generation they may coalesce with the existing Legislature.

"Such a concession will be a death-blow to the king movement, and draw to us 53,000 out of 56,000 wavering natives, who at present remain loyal or neutral. They would act with us on their king's own principles, who recently told his subjects to 'hold fast Christianity,' 'hold fast love,' and 'hold fast law,' for what is the advantage of all other work?"

9 Governor Browne's Memorandum of April 27th.

10 Secretaries of the Church Missionary and Wesleyan Missionary Societies in 1837.

11 Alias Te Whero Whero, or Potatau, the Native King lately deceased.

12 It was clearly open to Great Britain to obtain the sovereignty of New Zealand, either by asserting it on the ground of discovery, or by voluntary surrender, or by purchase. But then it should have been clearly understood that it was by purchase, and a fair equivalent given, not 512 blankets. In 1803 Bonaparte sold the sovereignty of Louisiana to the United States for 80,000,000 francs, 3,200,000l. sterling; and it may be questioned whether the sovereignty of Louisiana then promised to be more valuable to the United States, than the sovereignty of New Zealand did to England when she obtained it.

13 Parliamentary Papers, May 11th, 1841, p. 111.

14 Marshall.

15 Reference is here made to the New Zealand Bill, the second reading of which was moved by the Duke of Newcastle in the House of Lords, July 3, 1860. The object of the Bill, as stated by his Grace, was "to institute a Local Council, upon whom should devolve the revision of the native laws, and the arrangements respecting the sale and purchase of native land." In the course of his speech he stated that of the Northern island 7,000,000 acres had been purchased by the colonists, and 26,000,000 still remained in the hands of the natives. The Bill was thrown out by the House of Commons.

16 Report on the affairs of British North America.

17 Harrington.

18 "Sylvestres homines sacer interpresque deorum,
Caedibus et victu faedo deterruit Orpheus;
Dictus ob hoc lenire tigres, rabidosque leones.
Dictus et Amphion, Thebanae conditor arcis,
Saxa movere sono testudinis, et prece blanda
Ducere quo vellet. Fuit haec sapientia quondam,
Publica privatis secernere, sacra profanis;
Concubitu prohibere vago; dare jura maritis;
Oppida moliri; leges incidere ligno."

19 See Coleridge's "Church and State."

20 "It is obvious that the material means of establishing such a body exist now as they never did before, – namely, in the recently-adopted principle of concentration, and the rapid increase which is thereby given to the value of land. Properties amply extensive to endow an hereditary peerage could be now purchased in New Zealand at a comparatively cheap rate, and with the great impulse which by an enlarged and magnificent plan of settlement might be given to the colonization of the country, these lands would soon acquire such a value as to support their possessors in a manner corresponding to their stations, and keep their dignity on a level with the increasing prosperity of the country."

IV. AMALGAMATION. LES GOMBETTES.

IV.

AMALGAMATION. LES GOMBETTES.

AMONG the cries which reach us from the Colony, now full of alarm, now full of fierceness and indignation, now mixed with bitter mockery, and all claiming the sacrifice of the native New Zealander on the altar of Anglo-Saxon progress, a voice is sometimes heard, strangely in contrast with the general tone, yet sometimes strangely blended with it, pronouncing, as the great panacea for the troubles of New Zealand, the word "Amalgamation." Nor can it be doubted that in that word lies the true solution of the difficulty. In fact, unless the New Zealanders expel the English, or the English exterminate the New Zealanders, it must come about; for we can hardly expect the course of colonization to stop short, or two dynasties under the same Sovereign to be established in the same Island.

Happily we are not under the law which said, "Thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son." And the opinions of the writer are still the same as they were in 1837.

"9. Of the powers given to Man for the formation of future Nations.

"But there may be those who would look with apprehension on any intermixture of foreigners with the native race, from its supposed tendency to obliterate a peculiar and interesting variety of the human species. 'Suffer the New Zealanders,' they would say, 'under the influence

of Christian missionaries, to grow up by themselves into a great, an educated, and a Christian people; but let there be no importations from without, which shall modify and finally efface the native character.' This feeling is natural and amiable, but it partakes of the gentle prejudice of Perdita, in expressing her dislike for the 'piedness,' or variegated character of carnations and other flowers, which she acknowledges to be the fairest of the season, but refuses to admit into her garden. Polixenes, to whom her conversation is addressed, inquires,

'Wherefore, gentle maiden,
Do you neglect them?

Perdita. For I have heard it said,
There is an art which, in their piedness, shares
With great creating Nature.

Polixenes. Say there be,
Yet nature is made better by no mean,
But nature makes that mean; so, o'er that art
Which you say adds to nature is an art
That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry
A gentler scion to the wildest stock;
And make conceive a bark of baser kind
By bud of nobler race; this is an art
Which does mend nature, change it rather; but
The art itself is nature.'

Winter's Tale, Act iv. Scene iii.

"Let us understand by nature, when used actively in the above passage, the energy of the Divine will, and the answer of Polixenes contains one of the sublimest and most mysterious truths in the philosophy of the human powers. God has so fashioned man, as to empower man to fashion nature, and, so to fashion nature, as to draw from her hidden elements forms of far greater beauty and utility, than, in her present state of imperfection, are offered to us by nature herself. It would be difficult to select a fruit, a grain, or a vegetable, which has not been raised to its present value by artificial means; and wherever we turn, we are reminded of the wonders which are effected in the floral kingdom by modern horticulture.

"The same power which man thus exercises over the

productions of the earth, is equally to be exercised over the various races of his kind; and this is not less true because in the formation of flowers and vegetables it is exercised with forethought; while in the formation of states and empires it has almost always been exercised at random, as the lust of conquest, the instinct of population, the spirit of adventure, or the necessities of exile, may have guided it. But, setting aside the great primeval branches of the human family who retained the impress of the Creator's mind 21, we cannot find an instance of any race that ever attained to a high state of culture, or as a nation emerged from barbarism, except by the ingrafting of a gentler scion upon the wilder stem.

"Yet who will say that the cultivated flower possesses a less distinct and individual character than the wild one? Or the kingdom which is formed by the intermixture of different races, than the primitive people whom history has handed down to us as the first possessors of the soil? A great author thus relates the origin of the Roman empire: – 'Urbem Romam, sicuti ego accepi, condidere atque habuere initio Trojani, qui, Enea duce, profugi, sedibus incertis vagabantur; cumque his Aborigines genus hominum agreste, sine legibus, sine imperio, liberum atque solutum. Hi, postquam in una moenia convenere, dispari genere, dissimili lingua, alii alio modo viventes, incredibile memoratu quam facile coaluerint 22.' Was the

character of the Roman people less distinctively their own, because of this intermixture of foreigners with the aborigines of Italy? Or should we have had a finer and a racier exhibition of national peculiarities, if the plains and promontories of Greece had never been tenanted by any tribes but the Pelasgian? Or has the world lost any thing in point of national identity, on account of the various ancestors which have contributed to the formation of the British people? 'Oh! that statesmen would consider what a glorious privilege they enjoy, when they are allowed to become the fathers of a new nation!' With this generous wish, an admirable modern writer thus concludes a passage on the subject of colonization by convicts. 'But this,' he continues, 'seems to be one of the things which God has reserved entirely to Himself 23.' It remains for us to pray, that every one who has the power to influence the future destinies of New Zealand, may be the intelligent and industrious promoter of His sacred purposes."?Essay on Exceptional Laws.

The whole of this is based on the hypothesis, that we give to the New Zealand Chief a just and honourable compensation for the territory and the sovereignty which he has ceded to us. If we give him the wealth which we are enabled to give him so easily, by the rapid increase in the value of the land which he gives us, and if we give him the honour and political importance which he has a right to demand in respect of the sovereignty he has relinquished in our favour, we put it into his power to bring up and to endow his sons and his daughters in such a way as not to preclude the idea of their making marriages with individuals of the other race. Such marriages have already taken place between persons of lower

rank, and they might be expected to flow as a natural consequence, and without any forcing or undue encouragement from the advantageous position to which we are bound in justice and honour to raise the New Zealand Chieftain.

Say that no such marriages are formed, that on the one side or the other there is a repugnance which renders them impossible, it only involves the continuance of the unmixed native a little longer, and his eventual extinction in the natural course of things without violence or breach of faith, above all, without that despondency which fills him when he views himself as the child of a doomed race, the victim of an overmastering necessity, from which he cannot extricate himself, and from which no friendly hand is held out to release him. Our business is to endow him, and to attract him into our settlements, and make him our friend, and let him help us to make laws for him, and then let things take their course. If he survives, well; if not, we have done our best, and can take what he leaves with an easy conscience.

But it is to be feared, that when some writers speak of amalgamation as the great solution of our difficulties, they have something in mind which begins not with the elevation, but the degradation of the native race. This is painfully apparent in a passage of Dr. Thomson's "Story of New Zealand." He writes:

"In all conquests, whether by the mind or the sword, which have terminated in good to the weaker party, the conquerors have invariably amalgamated with the conquered; and this is most necessary among the New Zealanders. It is therefore satisfactory to find that Caucasian blood already flows in the veins of two thousand of the native population. The late Rev. Mr. Lawry, the venerable superintendent of the Wesleyan Missions in the South Seas, states, that 'the New Zealanders are melting away; but,' he observes, 'they are not lost – they are merging into another and a better class. In this process there lacketh not sin; but Providence will

overrule this, and bring forth a fine new race of civilized mixed people, which shall be better for the world, better for the Church, and better for the new race 24.'"

We may heartily echo Mr Lawry's pious wish, that Providence may overrule this "which lacketh not sin," to promote His own great purposes of good to the human race. But shall we do nothing to effect the same object, by adopting measures which, instead of beginning in sin, shall begin in JUSTICE? We cannot create by law sentiments of honour and purity where they do not exist; but the more we raise the New Zealander, the more will sentiments of honour and purity infuse themselves into our intercourse with him, the less we shall degrade him, and the less he will degrade us. We may abolish laws which directly tend to lower his morality, and enact those which directly tend to raise it. Among the former class, if Dr. Thomson's testimony can be relied on, are the existing laws relating to the inheritance to native land. He says, that as the law now stands, "concubinage is indirectly encouraged, and legal unions between European males and native females are discouraged." Who can read this without indignation and shame?

But returning now to that nobler sort of amalgamation – the amalgamation of friendship, and equality, and co-operation, which I would fain see subsisting between the compeers of both races, and which might eventually lead to an amalgamation of blood – I would express the conviction that there is much in the character, sentiments, and hereditary ideas of the New Zealander, which makes him worthy to receive these elevating influences at our hands.

That they are eminently susceptible of religious feelings, is proved by their ready reception of Christianity. And there can be no stronger proof of the

sincerity and good faith of their religion, than the interest which is taken in them by those who have laboured among them. The Bishop of New Zealand, the Bishop of Wellington, and Archdeacon Hadfield are English gentlemen, and the ardour with which they espouse the native cause, is proof at least of one thing, that they esteem the native character. And this esteem is founded on a close and intimate acquaintance with it. Others may see the native only at a distance, and know him only as the tattooed warrior who stands between them and the acquisition of their soil. But these gentlemen have known him intimately and long; and their early intimate acquaintance with the young scions of England's best nobility 25 has not made them less ready to appreciate the points of interest in the character of the New Zealander.

The gentlemen to whom the letter to Lord Stanley (page 35) was submitted for consideration, remarked in their reply:

"It is, moreover, by no means certain that the distinctions of chieftainship amongst the savage tribes would not necessarily disappear when they came to be a civilized people. Strength and boldness, and perhaps cruelty, may have raised a savage to supremacy over his tribe; but it does not follow that the members of his tribe who on these grounds had been subject to him, would admit his claim to superiority when they had all become equally, and at the same time with himself and his family, instructed in the arts of civilized life 26."

It is to be hoped that the numerous books which have been written on New Zealand, and our improved acquaintance with the colony by letters and personal intercourse, have generally removed this very erroneous impression. There is abundant evidence that there

is as great a variety and distinction among the families and classes of the native New Zealanders as there is in England, and that high ancestry is perhaps more valued among them than among ourselves. One of the points at issue in the controversy between Wirimu Kingi and Te Teira is their lineal descent from the ruling family of their tribe, and it is argued that Te Teira's title is better than Wirimu Kingi's, because the former descends from the first ancestor by an unbroken line of seventeen generations, whereas the branch of the latter was grafted into the family by a mesalliance which took place thirteen generations back. So that it was quite a misnomer to talk, as was once done, of creating an aristocracy in New Zealand: the aristocracy exists already. All that rests with us is to endow them, as is right and fair, and for the benefit of their country, and to place them in a position of political importance equal to that which they gave up in signing the treaty of Waitangi.

Nor are they wanting in that poetry and refinement of sentiment, which is so becoming and natural in a superior class. A singular instance of this is to be seen in a lament composed in memory of his son by the father of Maketu, a young chief aged seventeen, who had died by the hand of Justice.

It was a dreadful tragedy. Maketu had been working for hire in the house of Mrs. Roberton, a widow, and had been insulted by her English servant. In revenge for this he split open his head while he slept, and being seen by Mrs. Roberton, killed her also, together with three children, one of them a half-caste, who lived with her. Having done this, he rifled the house of some of its contents, and set it on fire. He then fled to his tribe, who with the concurrence of his father delivered him into the hands of justice, and he was hung, though it was thought that the great atrocity of the act was due to a taint of insanity in his blood. The story is told at length in Dr.

Thomson's "New Zealand," and the "Lament" is as follows:

"Oh, my son!
I may ne'er forget thee. Thou art gone
Far hence; for the deep springs of fatherly
Affection are bubbling now, and the mind
Seems all bewildered, o'ertaken by a storm.
I fed thee with the fish which line the rocks
Along the ocean shore, and taught thee how to meet the enemy.

Oh, my son, I used to press thee to my breast!
Yes, Maketu, that child whom priests
Baptized in the fast-flowing stream.

Stay, my son! It was a day of life
When the people came in companies;
When the birds and other dainties were set
Before them. How now?

Ah! do not look upon my bird 27 with scorn;
So it is newly fledged, and comes from
That noble one, Whara Whara, the Great.
And when its death is known, the grandsons
Of famed Taingahue will come from
Distant places. Here are thy lines;
O'er those I weep, and then I place
Thy hooks within a basket, as a memorial
Of my lost one.

My son, thy name was scarcely known;
Thou wert a stripling, and yet
Thy hands have touched another's treasures.
Thy sires Pehi and Te Ngatata were great
And wise, then how hast thou become
Acquainted with Whiro, the god of plunder 28?"

The baptism "in the fast-flowing stream" does not refer to Christian baptism, but to the Iriiri, a native ceremony used in giving names to children, especially those of chiefs.

It is remarkable that in the "Lament" the father

tenderly reproaches his dead son for having plundered the house of his victim, but makes no allusion to the graver act. The fact is that robbery was forbidden by the custom of New Zealand; taking life, under certain circumstances, was enjoined. It is stated as an acknowledged fact, in one of the last numbers of the "New Zealander," that "we have fewer instances of offences against person and property among the native New Zealanders as a people than among any other population in the world." On the other hand it was as imperative, according to their law of honour, for a New Zealander to take the life of one who had insulted him, as it is among us to wipe out an insult by a duel. And that which strikes us as so cowardly and un-English, was in accordance with their principle of taking life (when the penalty of death had been incurred), with as little pain as possible to the sufferer. It was no degradation to Maketu, though a high chiefs son, to work for hire, but it was an insult to be told that he was lazy, and it was for that insult that he took the life of Mrs. Roberton's servant. When he had been condemned to death, he earnestly entreated that he might die at once, but this could not be allowed; and the English custom of death by hanging, so far less merciful than theirs of striking down by a blow upon the head, was also submitted to.

This all occurred soon after the arrival of Governor Hobson. How much evil might have been avoided, and how far the progress of National amalgamation might have advanced, if earnest attention had been given from that time to the adoption of laws suited to take the place of their own wild justice of revenge!

This native-king movement itself, what is it but a proof of political spirit and vitality, which marks him as worthy to be the ancestor as well as the descendant of a family of chiefs? We are all proud to be the countrymen of those barons who withstood their monarch with the words "Nolumus leges Angliae mutari," and it is just the same spirit which animates

the New Zealand, chiefs in their assertion of their political rights at this moment. And there is reason and moderation in their counsels. The extreme party indeed are earnest for a really independent national status, but a larger party ask for no more than effective magisterial authority, and a just share in the government of their country 29. Give to Potatau another name than king, call him as he wished to be called "the father of the people," recognize him as the spokesman of his race, and what would be more reasonable than the following reflection, made at their great meeting at Waikato in May last. "The Governor," said one of the native speakers, "ought to have gone and inquired into the conduct of Te Rangitake (Kingi), then returned, consulted Potatau, and formed a committee of missionaries, magistrates, and chiefs, to inquire into the matter, and if they found that Rangitake is wrong, settle the matter by giving the land to the Governor. But he went to Taranaki and let out all his wrath at once 30."

I shall now say a word or two more in illustration of the social alliances between individual families of the chiefs and individual families of the chief settlers, which was proposed for the adoption of the New Zealand Association in 1837. A similar method was adopted in the early history of many nations to soften the asperities of nationality and race, and promote friendliness between two peoples, especially when brought together as members of one State. The principle in each case is the same, though the circumstances differ.

There was the xenia [Greek] or guestship of the Greeks. The Greek interchanged a pledge with his Thracian or Lycian friend. That at once established rights of

hospitality and friendship between the two which descended to their posterity, and of course softened the natural hostility of the relations between Greek and barbarian. A most beautiful instance of the effect of this institution may be seen in the sixth book of the Iliad, where Diomed and Glaucus meet in the thick of battle, and after recognizing one another as hereditary guest-friends, exchange their armour –

chrysea chalkeion, ekatomvoi enneuvoion [Greek] –

as a further pledge of everlasting amity between their families.

The same thing in principle was to be seen in the relation between the Roman patron and client. This was also a hereditary tie between individuals among the Patres, who formed the original nucleus of the State, and individual foreigners who came to settle at Rome, and were collectively the origin of the Plebs. This practice was instituted by Romulus, and lasted six hundred years, and must have had a wonderful effect in cementing into one mighty people two classes so fiercely opposed to one another as were the Patricians and Plebeians of Rome.

Lastly, to explain "Les Gombettes." Among the barbarians who overran the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries were the Burgundians, who came from the north of Germany, and established a kingdom embracing within it the greater part of Switzerland and a large share of the eastern part of France. Gondebaut, the second king of this people, framed a code of laws which were particularly favourable to the Roman inhabitants, who formed the dominant class of the conquered country, the rest of the people being their slaves. This code of laws was named, after its framer Gondebaut, "Les Gombettes," and is the oldest barbarian code still extant 31; and

the following little sketch of some of its principal provisions is given by Montesquieu; –

"Justice of the law of the Burgundians and Visigoths as to the partition of lands.

"These partitions were not made in a tyrannical spirit, but with a view to assist the mutual needs of the two peoples that were to inhabit the same country.

"The law of the Burgundians declares that each Burgundian shall be received as a guest into the family of a Roman. This is in conformity with the manners of the Germans, who, according to Tacitus, were the most hospitable people in the world.

"The law declares that the Burgundian shall have two-thirds of the land, and a third of the slaves. It here followed the genius of the two peoples, and was in conformity with the manner in which they each procured their subsistence. The Burgundian, who fed flocks, needed much land and few slaves; and the cultivation of the earth required for the Roman less land but a greater number of slaves 32."

Here we have not only the guestship, but the principle of an equitable partition of lands. It would be singular if history should have to record that whereas Gondebaut, a barbarian of the fifth century, gave to his subjects, consisting partly of Romans, partly of barbarians, a code of laws by which they became amalgamated into one happy and flourishing people, England, by neglecting to frame any such code for a race of noble savages – who received her on their shores, resigned their sovereignty into her hands, accepted her religion, and asked her to give them laws – suffered them to proceed with disappointed hope, and injured pride, and dark foreboding, from one act of self-destruction to another, till they were blotted from the earth, and left her undisputed mistress of their soil.

21 The Stirps generosa seu historica, as a philosophic friend has named that portion of the Semitic and Japetic races, that had not degenerated below the conditions of progressive civilization. – Coleridge's Church and State, p. 80.

22 Tradition informs us that the first founders and possessors of Rome were Trojans, who had fled from Troy under the conduct of AEneas, and for a time wandered uncertainly from one settlement to another; and with these the Aborigines, a rude and savage people, living without laws or government, restraint or control; but it is marvellous with what facility these two races of different ancestry, different language, and living in different ways, formed themselves into one people, after they had established themselves within the walls of one city. – Sallust.
"Though modern writers have questioned the accuracy of this tradition as it respects the Trojans, they do not question the fact of an intermixture of races."

23 Guesses at Truth, by two Brothers, vol. i . p. 101.

24 Dr. Thomson's "Story of New Zealand," vol. ii. p. 305.

25 The Bishop of New Zealand and the Bishop of Wellington were both tutors at Eton.

26 Mr. Elliot and the Hon. E. E. Villiers to Mr. Stephen, April 30th, 1842.

27 An affectionate term for a beloved child.

28 Maori Mementoes, by C. O. Davis, 1855.

29 Memorandum accompanying the Memorial of the Church Missionary Society to the Duke of Newcastle, p. 36.

30 Fox, p. 37.

31 Chepmell's "Course of History," 2nd Series. Vol. i. p. 170.

32 The "Esprit des Lois," book xxx. chap. ix.

V. "THE REAL QUESTION AT ISSUE."

V.

"THE REAL QUESTION AT ISSUE."

WITH an earnest hope and prayer that it may please God to bless the means which Her Majesty's Government has adopted to put a stop to the present troubles, and that firmness may be so tempered with wisdom and justice, that peace may be restored and the honour of England maintained without further bloodshed, the writer would conclude his remarks by referring to what is considered in New Zealand to be "the real question at issue 33."

This appears in a Memorandum addressed by the Colonial Ministry to Her Majesty's Government, which represents that "the grand desire of the British colonists in respect of the natives is to see the Maori people rendered amenable in their dealings with the settlers to British law," or, as it is expressed further on in the Memorandum, "that all the inhabitants of New Zealand should be subjected in their mutual dealings to the control of one equal law."

Now in order to bring this about with justice we must retrace our steps. Strictly British law is only just for Britons. Strictly equal law is only just between those who are equal in every respect. As we have gone amongst the New Zealanders by our own choice and to serve our own purposes, we must take the trouble of using our higher intelligence and experience to devise laws which shall be suitable to the widely different circumstances of the two races. The

"Native Question" must no longer be considered as "a bugbear;" but as a real difficulty, which we must take in hand and deal with both energetically and justly.

Hitherto this has not been done. Colonial prosperity – imports and exports – the increase of individual wealth – self-government – a constitution framed according to the most approved theory, and on the most liberal principles, these are the things which have wholly engrossed our attention; while, with respect to the natives, whom practically we have found it impossible to make British subjects, we have used one temporary expedient after another, submitting to the inconvenience of an uncertain state of things rather than looking the difficulty in the face; or, if we do make an effort to accustom them to the usages of British law, doing it in such a way that our boon, compared with the solid British privilege which we might have given them but have withheld, has been represented as "analogous to the worthless beads navigators pitch to savages 34."

To deal justly by them we must consider them as they were when we went amongst them – not a horde of wild savages, each doing what was right in his own

eyes, and only yielding a temporary obedience to the wilder and more ferocious savage who by strength or cruelty gained the ascendancy over his immediate circle, but a people having laws, and institutions, and a social order defined with great exactness, and suitable to their circumstances. Some of these are totally unsuitable to the new circumstances with which we have surrounded them; some are not. Many of them they have relinquished under a religious influence through persuasion and conviction; some they still cherish and tenaciously adhere to. Here, then, is subject-matter for patient, wise, and mature deliberation. Are we, the strangers, to sweep away their old laws and institutions and social order, and forcibly make them subject to our own – or rather to the restrictions and penalties, without giving them the privileges of our own? Or, shall we not consider what part, what characteristic feature of their system may be incorporated into ours, or what portion of our laws may be so given to them as to be in accordance with their own ideas, or whether we cannot give them some equivalent, something to make up to them for those usages which we require them to give up?

When we arrived in New Zealand the people of the country was composed of eighteen nations, each governed by a prince, or great chief, having the title of Ariki, who united in himself the offices of priest and king. This office and title were hereditary, and regularly descended to the eldest son of the eldest branch of the kingly family. The other members of this family formed a class of superior nobility. Beneath these were the lower nobility or gentry, called Rangatiras, a class composed of the chiefs of the numerous tribes of which the nation consisted, and their families. Then came the common people or middle classes, called Tutua; the Ware or lower classes; and the Taurakareka or slaves. Thus in New Zealand, as among us, there were two great divisions of society – the Rangatiras and all above

them forming the upper division, the Tutuas and all below them the lower division.

Many interesting particulars respecting this social system are to be found in Dr. Thomson's "Story of New Zealand," Part I. chap. v. It would seem that though the order of society was arranged on such strictly aristocratic principles, and so much honour was accorded to birth and hereditary standing, the civil constitution of the people was eminently republican, every individual having a right to influence the decisions of their public assemblies by the free expression of their opinions. From this would naturally flow what has been remarked as a trait in the New Zealand character, that they accost their equals without levity and their superiors without awe. There was no outward prestige of regal splendour in their chiefs, but the various ranks were easily distinguished. Slaves were recognized, not by their dress, but from being noisy and talkative; while chiefs were known from possessing dignity of manners, and that noble feeling of self-respect which renders dishonour worse than death 35.

Now here, in this institution of chieftainship, we have a characteristic feature of their social system, which might very safely and with advantage be incorporated with ours, while the whole tendency of our legislation has hitherto been to ignore it. Practically we have not ignored it, for we could not. It is an existing fact, which we are obliged to notice. Thus the utmost care was taken that none but chiefs should sign the Treaty of Waitangi 36; and when the peace of the country is seriously imperilled, the Governor summons a congress of chiefs as the most effectual means of putting an end to disorder. But our laws ignore it. The law of the elective franchise, so liberal, so popular, so thoughtful of the desires and

prepossessions of the English settler, ignores it. The law of the Native Circuits Court Act, and the Native Districts Regulation Act, which was meant to accustom the native to the British custom of trial by jury, ignores it; since, according to these acts, a jury composed of men who may have been slaves can be called on to decide trifling matters, indirectly affecting the honour and property of chiefs.

Now it might be argued, that it is useful and expedient to keep alive among a people that elevation of sentiment, those feelings of dignity and honour, which are usually found to co-exist with a regard for ancestry, and which all testimony declares do co-exist with it in New Zealand. But that is not my argument. It is on the ground of justice and adherence to implied agreement, (following in this the example of the New Zealand chief himself, who "rarely broke his word, and never fulfilled promises to the ear and broke them to the sense 37,") – it is to avoid that useless expenditure of blood and treasure which will be involved whenever a sense of slighted honour arouses him to a fresh death struggle, – it is as the only practicable way of representing the native interests in the legislature of the combined people, and framing laws which shall be equally suitable to all and equally binding on all, – that I still plead for giving to the chiefs that fortune, and dignity, and weight in the commonwealth which will make their position as advantageous in civilized New Zealand, as it was in New Zealand uncivilized.

I know that I lay myself open to a charge of great presumption when I pass from the region of general principles into that of particular measures. Without authority, and in ignorance of many things, I feel it almost impossible to do so without damaging the cause I wish to support. And yet one ought to be

able to give some answer to the question, "What would you do?" It might at least elicit thought, and draw forth a better answer from others. With this qualification I may venture to ask, what harm would follow, if the heads of the eighteen nations of New Zealand were allowed to sit in conference with the twenty members of the Legislative Council? I can suppose the proposition to be a startling one; but is it more startling than a New Zealand rebellion? and I still say, what harm would ensue? A great, a wonderful boon would be given. The whole New Zealand people would probably feel themselves attached to the Crown, and incorporated with the people of England by that one act in a way which they could be by no other: and what would be the harm of it? It would be ridiculous, absurd, unheard of! But would it not be just, and honourable, and faithful to our word? – But these men, if they come to Auckland, must live in houses! And why not build them houses? it will be less expensive than spending a million to put down a New Zealand war. – They must have an income! Would there be any injustice in devoting some of the Crown lands about Auckland to that purpose? – But they cannot speak a word of English! The less they will interrupt your proceedings. – But some of them are still half-savages! Could we do any thing more likely to civilize them, and through them the whole New Zealand people?

Let me ask again, what harm would ensue, if each member of the Legislative Council should do so romantic a thing as to bind himself by a compact of mutual friendship and good faith with one of these chiefs, and should enter with a good heart on the work of carrying it out? one of his offices being to explain to the chief, as far as he was able, the purport and bearings of any measure under discussion. Then, to meet the inconvenience of the difference of tongue, there might be committee-rooms, where the chiefs might converse and debate questions together in the

presence of some of the members of the council understanding their language.

No doubt it will be said that this would all be child's play. It might be child's play so far as any real influence which they would have in the council, but it would not be child's play in regard to the honour done to them, the allegiance won for the Crown, the peace of the colony, and the faith of treaties!

Again, a similar element might be introduced into the Chamber of Representatives. Each nation might be empowered to elect a representative, or the larger ones two, and some of the smaller ones voting together one. How is it possible otherwise to represent the native interest? It is very well in England to vote by territorial divisions. But even here we have in our our borough members, and members for the great manufacturing towns, and members for the universities, a representation of special interests. But in New Zealand one whole interest, the interest of the original possessors of the soil, the owners at this day of three-fourths of it, is totally unrepresented or completely swamped.

Some chiefs, some nations might, perhaps, not avail themselves of the privilege. It is possible. And yet I think that some such proclamations as the following, or writs issued to the same effect, would have a wonderful influence in promoting that grand social amalgamation which is so much to be desired:

"From this day forth it shall be lawful for the Ariki of each nation of New Zealand to sit in council with the Legislative Council of New Zealand, and to deliberate and vote on matters touching the honour of Her most gracious Majesty Queen Victoria, and the common welfare of the united people of New Zealand."

"From this day forth it shall be lawful for each nation of New Zealand to elect by their votes two

Rangatiras 38, to be their representatives in the House of Representatives of New Zealand, and to deliberate and vote on matters touching the honour of Her most gracious Majesty Queen Victoria, and the common welfare of the united people of New Zealand."

This would not be exactly according to the forms and precedents of legislation, but I cannot help thinking that some such measures would act as a great and beneficial alterative upon the constitution of New Zealand, and bring about a state of things the advantages of which would be far greater than its disadvantages. I cannot help thinking that it would lead simply and easily to the enactment of such laws as would be respected and obeyed by all. I believe it would greatly promote sentiments of honour and good faith, and raise instead of depressing the general tone of feeling throughout the Colony.

Again, one of the symptoms of the present disorder in New Zealand is their desire to have a flag as a symbol of their political existence. The flag, too, was the grand bone of contention in Hone Heki's rebellion. Why not turn this source of trouble into a source of order? What if instead of one flag we gave them eighteen, it matters little whether as the flag of each several nation, or as the family banner of the Ariki of the nation. In England every Ariki, and every Rangatira has his flag. Nay, there is not an English Tutua who has made his fortune by land-jobbing in New Zealand, or sheep-farming in Australia, who could not on his return to England procure himself at the Herald's Office a flag to flaunt on gala days in honour of his family, and be to all future generations a symbol of their social elevation! Why

withhold from a people among whom superiority of birth is so recognized and prized this very harmless mode of keeping up, in their altered political condition, a measure of that social distinction which they enjoyed before? Why refuse them this little gratification of a very natural feeling? Is this treating them as "British subjects?" But British subjects pay for their coats of arms! And has not the New Zealand chief paid for his ten thousand times over in signing the Treaty of Waitangi? This may all be thought very simple and childish, but there is sometimes a wisdom in childish simplicity; especially when it leads us to do as we would be done by. And where should wisdom be more likely to coincide with childish simplicity than in dealing with an infant people?

Take an instance of the sort of law that might be proposed for the enactment of such a united Legislature. Reference has been made to the Acts by which it was proposed to accustom the native to the practice of trial by jury, by allowing them to decide in this way on local matters of no great importance 39. In matters of higher importance, where a native has killed a settler, or a settler has killed a native, we do not allow him, though a British subject, to sit on the jury at all 40. And we have heard the complaint that where a native kills a native British law does not interfere, but lets things take their course 41. Now I think it would not be difficult to get it enacted by such a mixed Legislature as I have described, that where a native kills a native he shall be tried by a jury of his peers – his peers in race and peers in rank – before a British judge, and with the assistance of British lawyers. There would be nothing in this

hurtful to the feelings of any class of natives, and it would tend to the spread of order and law and peace throughout the whole community. And it might be hoped that the work of introducing various laws and institutions suitable to the mixed character of the two peoples, and the abolition of customs and usages, which in the present state of things are only detrimental and embarrassing, would gradually and happily proceed.

Among these latter would be found the whole land question, native title, tribal tenure, property in common, &c. Now to break them off from their attachment to these customs, which are no less obstructive to their own prosperity than to that of the Colony, I should like to try the effect of some such apologue as this: –

In a country far away beyond the sea there is a large and beautiful lake. On its shores are many towns, full of fine buildings. The hills that rise from its banks are covered with gardens, and corn-fields, and pasture lands. And on its waters are stately canoes with gaily ornamented prows, and filled with bold and joyous rowers, who pass from side to side of the beautiful lake, and carry merchandise from town to town, and gain wealth and honour for themselves.

This beautiful lake was once a valley, and on its steep sides now buried below the water there was a forest of large and lofty trees. But it happened that the side of a great mountain gave way, and filled up the mouth of the valley, and the streams which poured into it from the mountains had no outlet, and so they raised their waters higher and higher. Then they said, What shall we do with our large and stately trees, shall we leave them to rot below the water? No, we will make them into great canoes to carry us about upon its surface. So the trees were taken up by the roots, and the canoes were made, and when the waters had turned the valley into a lake, the towns were built, and the hill sides covered with rich fields and pastures.

The valley is New Zealand as it was. The lake surrounded by hills is New Zealand as it will become. The fall of the mountain is the order of events permitted by God's providence. The streams from the mountain sides are the strangers coming in. The trees are the chiefs and people of New Zealand. Their roots fastened into the earth is their attachment to the customs and usages of New Zealand in its savage state.

Now, as it was necessary in order to preserve the trees to take them out of the ground, and to give them a new and beautiful form suited to their new circumstances, so, if the chiefs and people of New Zealand would be preserved, and share the benefits of the altered condition of their country, they must give up their attachment to those customs which are unsuited to their new state, and take a new form and character; and then they will be lifted up by the flowing-in among them of a European population instead of being overwhelmed beneath it, and instead of rotting beneath the water, they will receive a new principle of life, and derive wealth and honour and many comforts and advantages from the British settlements planted among them, like the towns on the shores of the beautiful lake.

But if we tell them this, we must be true to our words. If they give up their tribal tenures for individual titles, we must take care that the arrangements following thereupon shall be according to the strictest principles of justice and honour, and respect for all that is really valuable and great in the old institutions of the country. Things should not be done in a hurry. Tribes should be allowed to commute their tribal for an individual right as parishes were allowed to commute their tithes. There should be commissioners to see that it was done fairly. The chiefs portion should be in proportion to his chieftainship, that of the rest of the people in proportion to their relative political consideration. I believe

that if the division was left altogether to the chiefs, they would be more inclined to wrong themselves by taking too little, than to wrong their tribes by taking too much, the custom of possessing property in common having made them insensible to the importance of individual wealth. Indeed, a generous indifference to individual gain is one of the marked characteristics of the New Zealander. When the chiefs have received payment for land they have been known to divide nearly the whole of it among their tribe, retaining little or nothing for themselves. This ought not to be allowed when the land is divided individually among them, and the sort of paramount authority over the whole of the land, which the chief has hitherto possessed, done away with.

Then comes the question, under what title and with what privileges or disabilities annexed are they to hold the land? Is the Crown still to have the right of pre-emption? Supposing them to have the right of selling to whom they please, may not something still be done to prevent them from divesting themselves of the whole?

I would still earnestly advocate such a system of Reserves as is described in the foregoing pages, as the best and fairest price which the Crown can pay for the land which it acquires from the natives. I have heard that the price now paid by the Crown is a shilling an acre, but what is even that, or what are even ten shillings an acre to the value which land must acquire if colonization advances favourably? It is because there is no limit to the amount of this increase of value, that I urge it as the only fair way of remunerating the native for the wild land, the rough material of the future wealth of the country.

Mention has been made of Mahinera, who is described as "decidedly the most loyal, intelligent, wealthy, and powerful chief in the southern portion of the island." I should like much to know whether he is not one of those southern chiefs whose "Reserves"

have made them men of considerable wealth? If so, it proves that our best way to make chiefs loyal is to make them wealthy, and the way to make them wealthy, and at the same time to interest them in the progress of the colony, and to amalgamate them into one people with the colonists, and dispose them to submit to one general law, is to give them land interspersed among the lands of the colonists and made valuable by their presence. Why should not certain parts of those portions of the Crown lands which will be the first to produce a rental, be set aside for this purpose? They need not be in blocks of a hundred, or of forty, or even of ten acres. Much smaller portions might be set aside. The very circumstance of their being small, and being contiguous to occupied land, would render it all the easier to get rent for them. And these rents might be made use of as at least part of the compensation to the native for the sale of his land to the Crown.

The value of the property possessed by the colonists in New Zealand is estimated by one of their number 42 at nearly 10,000,000l. By far the greater part of this must be the produce of the soil of New Zealand and its improved value by colonization. This proves two things: on the one hand, the great amount of our debt to the New Zealanders on account of the great wealth which they have already enabled us to create by giving us possession of their land; on the other, the great facility with which we should have been able to repay that debt, had we from the first reserved but a very moderate proportion of the land which they made over to us, for the purpose of paying them in the only way in which it was possible to pay them with justice. It would have been an easy matter for the Crown, when it obtained power through the Treaty of Waitangi to give secure titles to all the land held in New Zealand, to have imposed this small tax of a reserve for the native people on all land

already purchased from them by Europeans, as well as on all land to be obtained from them through the intervention of the Crown in future. Such reserves would have afforded an easy means of giving substantial remuneration to those chiefs and tribes who had ceded their lands to the Crown, by making them wealthy instead of poor; they would have been the best possible refutation of the painful belief which has been growing upon the New Zealanders, that they will eventually be dispossessed of their land altogether; and therefore the most effectual antidote to the land-league and all its lamentable results.

In reference to the question in dispute between the Governor and Wirimu Kingi I have hitherto said nothing, feeling that it was not a question with which I had any thing to do. But I would just say before I conclude, that looking at it broadly, it appears to me that if we give to the Treaty of Waitangi the liberal construction it ought to receive, considering that its terms were enunciated by ourselves, and the other party had not the knowledge requisite even to propose a modification of them, the natives cannot exercise their right to the "undisturbed possession of their lands so long as they wish to retain them 43," in the case of land held by tribes in common, as all native

land appears to be, unless by the vote of the tribe, or the will of the chief. It also seems to me to have been plainly intimated that some forcible change was about to be made in the principles which had hitherto been adopted in the purchase of land from the natives by the Crown, and that the proclamation of "fighting law" gave to Wirimu Kingi no other alternative but to fight.

With regard to the King movement, treasonable as it sounds in the natives to talk of withdrawing their allegiance from the Queen, I think the treason is more in sound than in reality; they cannot think it very disloyal to talk, as they have been allowed to talk for the last five years without interruption. They feel that hitherto they have in point of fact had no ruler, and they do not think it unreasonable that they should have one of their own within their own borders. It is remarkable that at a late great native meeting at Hawke's Bay, to which the Superintendent of the district and other influential Europeans were invited, and where they were treated with the greatest courtesy and hospitality, though the feeling of the meeting was decidedly favourable to the Maori King, a proposal made by one of the English speakers that they should memorialize the Queen and Grand Runanga (or Parliament) of England was received with evident satisfaction. This is not like a real rejection of allegiance.

May the writer of these pages be allowed, in taking leave of his readers, to utter a heartfelt desire, not unmixed with hope, that among them may be those, who, regarding with some approbation the views he has expressed, will have the power and feel the disposition to help them into life. He trusts it will appear that the deep interest he takes in the material prosperity and political importance of the native race is perfectly consistent with a hearty patriotic interest in the welfare of New Zealand as a British colony. What he feels is that England has

now the noblest opportunity for founding a great nation within the shores of New Zealand, and that that nation will be far greater, more generous, and happier by taking pains to give due dignity and weight to the ancient lords and possessors of the land, than by suffering them either purposely or through neglect to sink down into a despised class and at last disappear.

Oh that England would give this example to mankind! She stands prominently forward as the great philanthropic nation of the world. She would go to war rather than hand over a fugitive slave to the tender mercies of an enraged master. She regards with fixed displeasure the conduct of her transatlantic sons in carrying the ancient people of their continent further and still further from the pale of civilization, while they still hem them within narrower and narrower boundaries. Why will she not befriend her New Zealanders with something more than negative benevolence? A people too so like herself! who have shown themselves, with all their natural ferocity and pride, so very submissive to her pleasure, so very desirous and susceptible of civilization! Who have of themselves thrown off half their savage power and importance, by following her example in giving freedom to every slave within their shores! Let them not, through our apathy, be sufferers for their good deeds!

THE END.

GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, PRINTERS, ST. JOHN'S SQUARE, LONDON.

33 New Zealand Examiner, Dec 17th, 1860.

34 Thomson's "Story of New Zealand," vol. ii. p. 274. – The writer cannot make this reference without quoting the following notice which he has just read with deep pain in the New Zealand Examiner of Feb. 14th, 1861: –
"It is with profound regret that we have to announce the death of Surgeon-Major Thomson, M.D., formerly of the 56th regiment, and the distinguished author of the 'Story of New Zealand,' a review of which appeared in the first number of the New Zealand Examiner. Dr. Thomson died suddenly at Tien-sin in consequence of the bursting of an abscess in the stomach. In Dr. Thomson we have lost a warm friend to the cause of New Zealand; and we may here be allowed to state that he was among the very first who wished us God-speed in our endeavours to promote the interests of the colony."

35 Thomson, vol. i. p. 94.

36 Parliamentary Papers, May 11, 1841, p. 102.

37 Thomson, vol. i. p. 86.

38 If this should appear too exclusive a term, I may remind my readers of our own – knights of the shire.

Ridentem dicere verum
Quid vetat?

39 The Native Circuits Court Act, and the Native Districts Regulation Act.

40 Thomson, vol. ii. p. 272.

41 "We are allowed to fight and kill each other as we please." See p. 22.

42 Mr. Brodie's Letter in the "Times" of Dec 25th.

43 The Second Article of the Treaty is as follows: "Her Majesty the Queen of England confirms and guarantees to the chiefs and tribes of New Zealand, and to the respective families and individuals thereof, the full, exclusive, and undisturbed possession of their lands and estates, forests, fisheries, and other properties which they may collectively or individually possess, so long as it is their wish or desire to retain the same in their possession. But the chiefs of the united tribes and the individual chiefs yield to Her Majesty the exclusive right of pre-emption over such lands as the proprietors thereof may be disposed to alienate, at such prices as may be agreed upon between the respective proprietors and persons appointed by Her Majesty to treat with them on that behalf."

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