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SEIZURE OF THE SETTLERS' LANDS

as these were invested with the powers of legislation and government? In 1858 the General Legislature passed another Act to enlarge the powers of the Commissioner who had been appointed under the Act of 1856; but this brought no relief to the mass of the sufferers. On the whole, in the course of twenty-five years, during which the colony has been in a state of agitation and rebellion, owing to the dealings of the Government with the land, eight Ordinances have been passed under the first charter, including one disallowed by the Queen, and two Acts of Assembly, under the present Constitution, in the vain attempt "to settle or stifle" these claims, and six other bills were brought in between 1854 and 1863, which did not pass. And to crown all, in the same session in which an Act was passed to change the aboriginal title over 19 millions of acres into a legal title, thus, by enabling the Maories to sell land to individuals, increasing its value fivefold, a Committee of the House of Representatives recommended that 204,243 acres, which the Government declared to be demesne of the Crown, should be transferred to the provincial authorities for sale, after a Commissioner had reported that the land in question had cost those who purchased it from the natives, before New Zealand became a British settlement, 5s. 6d. an acre. The following are the passages from the report referred to:-"The total amount of money or money's worth which their purchases cost the claimants was, in round numbers, 131,000l.; the total area their claims were found to contain was 474,000 acres. Looking, therefore, at the transactions in the gross, it may be said that the land cost the claimants at the rate of 5s. 6d. per acre up to the point when the Government should either make them grants or purchase their interest. I have often heard it said that it would have been far better for the claimants to have thrown up all their land at once, and bought what they wanted from the Crown; and I think the facts I have just mentioned go far to justify that saying.' In another part of the Report (page 18) the Commissioner states that "in 1862 you may buy finely grassed land from the Crown for 5s. an acre." "In the return will be found the acreage awarded or granted in each case. This, including the survey allowances granted under the Act, amounts in the whole to 292,475 acres, and will, probably, reach the total quantity of about 315,000 acres, if no alteration be made in the principle of the Acts." "It will be seen that

* Appendix to the Proceedings of the House of Representatives for 1862, D, No. 10, p. 6. † Ibid.

DENOUNCED BY THE NATIVES.

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the total number of acres reverting to the Crown upon the settlement of the land claims is 204,243, of which the greater portion is situated in the vicinity of the Bay of Islands."*

It seems a strange fatuity which should lead men thus to persist in attempting to rob their countrymen, under the forms of law, of the property which, under the provisions of the same law, was proved to have been purchased from the rightful owners at its full value, or at more than its full value; and it seems the more inconceivable seeing that the Government have never dared to attempt to take possession of a single acre, unless in one or two instances in which they bribed the natives to be quiet by giving them money under the pretence of a second payment for the land; for the natives have invariably told their Commissioners that if it was left to the original purchasers they would be satisfied; but as the Government had no claim to it they should not be allowed to take possession of it.

Mr. John White, of the Native Secretary's Department, now a Resident Magistrate at Wanganui, was sent to Hokianga in 1856 to persuade the natives of that district to abstain from taking any part in a dispute at Kaipara, which was likely to lead to a native war, a mission in which he perfectly succeeded. All the influential natives of the district were assembled on the occasion; and when the decision was arrived at that they should take no part in the Kaipara dispute, they introduced the question of the lands which had been exchanged by the settlers with the Government for land near Auckland. They said they wished the boundaries of those lands to be pointed out before all the old people died off, in order to avoid disputes between the Government and their children. But they wished also to know what was to be done with the land which they had sold, but which the Government would not allow the buyers to possess. "If," said they, "these pieces of land are left in the possession of those who bought them, it is right; but if the Government thinks to possess them, we tell you plainly that they shall not be allowed to possess them."

The facts related in the foregoing narrative have, for the first time, been brought together and made public. They are a selection, only, from voluminous details of proceedings, many of which, singly, were sufficient to destroy the confidence of the natives in the intentions of the Government towards them; but, taken together, they were calculated to make confidence impossible.

It will doubtless be supposed by many that such proceedings

* Appendix to the proceedings of the House of Representatives for 1862, D, No. 10, p. 8.

156 SEIZURE OF LAND NEVER ATTEMPTED WHILE

affecting the Queen's native-born subjects, alone, were insufficient to drive the Maories to revolt unless the conduct of the Government towards themselves had been unjust and oppressive. But there is a singular absence of any grounds for such a supposition.

In no case, unless in that of the Widow Meurant before referred to, did the Government attempt to seize into its possession any land which the Maories had not sold. It was doubtless a grievance that the local Government was not prepared to purchase the land which the Maories were desirous to sell. But before Heke's rebellion broke out the natives of his part of the country had formed themselves into a league to prevent any more land from being sold. Of this league Heke was the head, and the punishment of death was threatened against any person who should so much as make an offer of land for sale. There can be no doubt that Heke was, in part, moved by ambition to place himself at the head of his countrymen, and to take the initiative by cutting down the flagstaff, but in this he had no other design than to protest against the encroachments which evil-minded and inconsiderate persons had led him to expect; and had the confidence of the natives in the Government not been destroyed, Heke's ambition and the influence he possessed over his countrymen might have easily been turned into a beneficial channel. So far from having any ill-feeling towards the settlers, it has been shown already that he led an expedition to resist any interference with the rights to land which his tribe or their connections had sold to the settlers, when this right was disputed by a tribe which had, at an earlier period, been in possession of the district. The first two men who fell in the action which ensued were shot down by Heke with his double-barrelled Those of the settlers who remained upon their land were not treated by the natives as enemies, and the rights of property were respected in a degree which it is to be feared is seldom the case in countries which are the seat of war.

gun.

These are facts which have been unknown to, or ignored by, most persons who have given opinions as to the causes of the Maori outbreaks. There has always been a singular unwillingness in the colonists to discuss any matter connected with the first transactions of the Government. The subject was hateful to some from complicity with those transactions; to others, from an unwillingness to encounter the labour necessary to understand them; to a few, perhaps, from a sense of shame; and to some, from having become, probably without any fault

IN POSSESSION OF THE NATIVES.

157

of their own, possessed of property of which the rightful title is in another.

That the missionary body should sympathise with the natives was to have been expected from the relations which subsisted between them. The missionaries were necessarily best acquainted with the best side of the Maori character, and were willing to look upon their election of a King, and other proceedings connected with it, as an endeavour after a more improved social state, which it no doubt was, in the best of them, rather than as the result of ambition in the leading chiefs, and the pride of enterprise and hope of plunder in the younger men.

In a lecture, delivered in Auckland in 1861, by an old Wesleyan missionary-after alluding to the difficulties which lie in the way of a just estimate of the Maori character as affected by the teachings of Christianity-he says:

66

"I bear in mind that those who are related to our native people as their Christian teachers, and others whose philanthropy and Christian benevolence have led them to feel deeply interested in their welfare, may occasionally be in danger of regarding with too sanguine feelings the state of our native Churches, and of over-estimating the position they are entitled to hold in the family of Christianity; yet I believe those who fall into this error are very few, and that a much greater number of our countrymen are in danger of being led, by their prejudices, altogether to undervalue the infantile Christianity of the natives, and to reject their claim to the humblest place in the Christian brotherhood."

As an instance of the power of Christianity over the minds of the Maories, he alludes to "the signal homage they render to Christian law by the renunciation of polygamy, and the manumission of their slaves." "I believe," he says, "there are very few, beyond the circle of those who have lived among them as missionaries, who can properly estimate the high value which the chiefs of New Zealand set upon the Gospel when they surrendered these institutions in obedience to its dictates. I need not say that slavery existed in England long after its reception of Christianity, and even to a very late period; and we know by what a struggle, and at what a cost, she extinguished it in the colonies." "Still, is it too much to say that the Christian chiefs of New Zealand laid on God's altar a costlier offering when they restored their slaves to liberty, and rendered it necessary that thenceforward themselves and their families should take up the menial and laborious employments that had been hitherto performed by their slaves?"

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APOLOGY FOR THE NATIVES IN

"When Europeans increased in the land, and the natives beheld numbers of men, the countrymen of the missionaries, and their equals in intelligence, who'slighted the institutions of Christianity and ignored its laws; who neither coveted its rewards nor feared its threatenings,' was it wonderful that these facts, which appeared to overturn the whole foundation on which their faith rested, should unsettle their faith and leave them an easy prey, not only to their former corruptions, but also to the many new and powerful temptations to which they had become exposed ?"

It was not the part of a missionary, nor was it necessary to his case, to refer to the Newgate morality which distinguished the conduct of the Government in its first transactions, which so nearly concerned the natives.

Under the influence of feelings such as these, the Bishop and many of the missionaries have striven to make out a case in favour of the natives, by showing that their endeavours to establish a separate nationality was the natural result of the neglect by the Government of the duty which it owes to them as subjects, and by its dealings in respect to their lands.

A letter which was addressed by the Bishop of New Zealand, .with two archdeacons and several other clergymen of his Church, to Governor George Browne, may, however, be considered rather in the light of an intercession on their behalf than as a justification. It is stated in that letter

"1. That at the time of the breaking out of the war at Taranaki, there was no part of Her Majesty's dominions in which life or property was more secure than in the districts bordering on the Waikato River.

"2. That the native inhabitants of those districts, and especially those on the Lower Waikato, have always maintained friendly relations with the colonists.

"3. That the native inhabitants of those districts have shown a remarkable aptitude and willingness to receive English institutions, under the guidance of officers appointed by the Govern

ment.

“4. That Potatau, the so-called native King, was the firm friend of the English Government from the time of Governor Hobson to the day of his death.

"5. That neither he nor his son ever encouraged their people to take any part in the war at Taranaki, nor have participated in any plunder from English settlers.

"6. That the same statement applies to William Thompson, Tarapipipi, who is commonly reputed to be the chief supporter