Fatal Necessity : British Intervention in New Zealand, 1830–1847 [1 ed.] 9781927277218

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JAMES STEPHEN, Bust by C. Marochetti, © National Portrait Gallery, London (reproduced with permission)

2

Fatal Necessity British Intervention in New Zealand

1830–1847

PETER ADAMS

Bridget Williams Books

To my parents

If we really are in that situation that we must do something, … it is only another proof of the fatal necessity by which a nation that once begins to colonize is led step by step over the whole globe. Lord Melbourne, December 1837

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Contents

Title Page Dedication Preface 9 Introduction 11 Map Part I — The Making of a British Colony 1830–1840 1 The New Zealand Frontier 19 2 The British Response to the Frontier 51 3 Pressures for Change 74 4 Colonial Office Policy-Making 103 5 The Annexation of New Zealand 134 Part II — The Meaning of the Treaty of Waitangi 1840–1847 6 Land and Colonization 175 7 Law and Custom 210 8 The Obligations of Good Faith 238 Appendixes 1 Trade statistics 249 2 Note on the problem of retrospective diagnosis of disease in relation to Maori health in the 1830s 250 3 The New Zealand Company of 1825, the New Zealand Association Committee of 1837, and the New Zealand Company Directorates of May and November 1839. Composition and biographical material. 252 4 Note on the November 1840 Agreement between the New Zealand Company and the Colonial Office 256 5 The Treaty of Waitangi, 1840. Official English Text. 258 Abbreviations 290 Bibliography 291 vii

Contents

Index 304 Copyright

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Preface

The colonization of New Zealand in the 1830s and the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 brought New Zealand into the British Empire and began the process of transforming it from a Maori country to a predominantly European one. In this transformation many of the attitudes and values introduced by the Anglo-Saxon colonizers confronted a substantially different set of values and attitudes in indigenous Maori society. Fundamental questions were raised by this confrontation, concerning the ownership and division of land, the use of natural resources, the pattern of social relationships and the structure of society, the application of law and the exercise of governmental power, and the nature of the relationship between two different races in the same nation. These questions have not, by any means, been resolved by the passage of time. This book does not examine all of these matters, but it does attempt to elucidate the intentions and motives underlying the British intervention in New Zealand and their translation into practice in the early years of the colony. It has been written partly because the colonization of New Zealand is interesting in its own right for what it reveals about the dynamics of British imperial expansion in the mid-nineteenth century, but also from the belief that patterns were established and myths created during this period which persist today and which narrow our vision and blinker us to the new directions we must seek if New Zealand is ever to become a truly multi-cultural nation. My interest in the beginnings of New Zealand’s recent history was first stimulated by Professor David McIntyre of the University of Canterbury, to whom I am deeply indebted for the guidance and friendship with which he supervised an initial study in 1970, and for his continuing interest and encouragement thereafter. Subsequently, from 1971 to 1974, the Rhodes Trust provided the opportunity for study in greater depth at Oxford. This book is a direct product of the doctoral thesis completed there under the gentle, persuasive, and knowledgeable supervision of Dr Freddie Madden of Nuffield College. I also thank other colleagues and friends at Oxford, as well as the staffs of a number of libraries and archival collections throughout the United Kingdom. ix

Preface

More broadly, I have long felt grateful to those who first stimulated my curiosity in history as an adventure and a discipline and who provided much basic training. Among them I wish to mention particularly Phil May, Ian Catanach, and the late John Saunders, all of the University of Canterbury. The inspiration of their enthusiastic and professional approach to the study of history fired and fuelled my own interest in the subject, and in that I am fortunate. I should like to refer to a number of people who have helped me directly with criticism and advice at various stages in the preparation of this work, particularly Ormond Wilson of Wellington and John Milligan of Christchurch. To the friends, and especially to Ginny Blakey, who bore with, supported and encouraged me in the preparation of this book, I express my most heartfelt thanks. PETER ADAMS Wellington 1976

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Introduction

In 1840 Britain annexed New Zealand to New South Wales and the following year erected it into a separate Crown colony of the British Empire. There is no doubt, as Secretary of State Lord Normanby told Captain Hobson on his departure to seek a cession of sovereignty from the Maoris in August 1839, that the expansion of the British Empire to include New Zealand was undertaken with ‘extreme reluctance’. It therefore becomes necessary to examine the various pressures — whether from the imperial frontier or from within the metropolitan power, whether international or domestic, whether economic, humanitarian, strategic, or political — which persuaded the Colonial Office to authorize an act of imperial expansion contrary to its general belief that the Empire was quite large enough already. Once these pressures have been identified and evaluated, conclusions can be drawn about the nature of Britain’s intervention in New Zealand and the motives for the annexation. The first part of this book, covering the 1830s, is devoted to a chronological and analytical examination of Colonial Office decision-making with the purpose of discovering why Britain annexed New Zealand. The Treaty of Waitangi, in which Maori chiefs ceded sovereignty to Queen Victoria in February 1840, was the indispensable political preliminary to the peaceful British occupation of New Zealand, despite its invalidity according to international law at the time. However, the treaty did not merely transfer sovereignty from the Maoris to the British; it contained a provision giving the Crown a monopoly right to purchase Maori land, in return for which the Maoris were guaranteed possession of all their lands and estates and accorded the rights and privileges of British subjects. Since the proper interpretation of the treaty, with regard to the ownership of land and the application of law, became a matter of contention both in Britain and New Zealand during the early years of the Crown colony, the second part of this book analyses thematically the meaning of the second and third articles of the treaty from the point of view of the Maoris, the New Zealand Company, the New Zealand Government, and the Colonial Office. From such an analysis it becomes apparent how far the motives and aims of Britxi

Introduction

ish intervention were expressed in the treaty, how far they remained constant or changed during the first six years of the Crown colony, and how far they were translated into practice by the New Zealand Government. This book is not, therefore, primarily a history of New Zealand during the 1830s and the early years of the Crown colony. Rather, it is a case-study of Colonial Office decision-making and of imperial expansion. In examining the formation and expression of official policy, the main primary source material has of course been the Colonial Office file series on New Zealand and New South Wales, underpinned by Admiralty, Treasury, Foreign Office and Customs correspondence and supplemented with relevant parliamentary papers and debates. But, as James Stephen once wrote, ‘to know the motives of past measures … the student must look further than to our Despatch and Entry Books’. Thus the private papers of Stephen himself, and of various key politicians in the story — Russell, Hope, Stanley, Gladstone, the third Earl Grey, and the first Earl of Durham — provide some useful material. Much more valuable on the whole, however, are the archives of the Church and Wesleyan missionary societies and the papers of the New Zealand Association and its successor companies. The annexation has generally been treated either in learned articles dealing with particular aspects such as Stephen’s role in the formulation of policy, in larger works devoted primarily to examining the activities of Wakefield and the New Zealand Company, or as introductory background to histories of the Crown colony period or New Zealand in general. Nowhere has the process by which New Zealand became part of the British Empire been treated as a subject in its own right. There has been considerable disagreement over the causes and the motives for British intervention in New Zealand: Stephen’s personal power at the Colonial Office, the precipitant action of the New Zealand Company, and fear of French intervention have all been suggested as prime causes, while explanations of motive have ranged from unbalanced humanitarian idealism to the complete absence of any humanitarian idealism whatsoever. Similarly, references to the Treaty of Waitangi in general historical works are legion, while the legality, the various texts and translations, and the history of the signing of the treaty have all received detailed examination. The treaty has been praised by its supporters as the Magna Carta of the Maori people, vilified by its opponents as ‘a praiseworthy device for amusing and pacifying savages for the moment’, and, by their own accounts, scrupulously honoured by successive New Zealand Governments from 1840 to the present; the anniversary of the signing of the treaty has become New Zealand’s National Day. Yet little attention has been paid by historians to what the treaty actually meant and what it was supposed to mean by the parties who signed it, by the settlers and the New Zealand Company who opposed it, and by the Colonial Office who chose to uphold it. It is justifiable, therefore, to identify the reasons for the annexation of New Zealand and the meaning of the Treaty of Waitangi as interesting and important landmarks in their own right, and to set a direct course for them across ground xii

Introduction

admittedly well-trodden, but trodden by travellers going in different directions or hurrying to more distant destinations. Indeed, the vantage point gained provides a clearer view of the country ahead, for the interpretation put upon the annexation and the treaty certainly affects one’s picture of the Crown colony period, the Anglo-Maori wars, Maori attempts at religious and political adaptation, and the whole history of Maori-pakeha relations to the present day. The expansion of the British Empire to include New Zealand resulted from an interaction of pressures generated from New Zealand itself and pressures exerted by various interested groups in Britain. During the 1830s the haphazard growth of an ungoverned and uncontrolled colony of about 2,000 British subjects in New Zealand, coupled with the impact of their commercial activities, technology, diseases, religion, and ideas upon Maori population and society, set the British Government a law and order problem on the imperial frontier. To that problem the politicians and civil servants in the Colonial Office brought two particular attitudes. First, Britain had at least a theoretical duty, arising out of the legal bond between subject and State, to control and protect British subjects who had chosen to go to New Zealand. This duty, admitted with regard to New Zealand as early as a statute of 1817, predisposed Britain towards intervention there. Secondly, increasing humanitarian concern for the fate of aboriginal peoples on the borders of the Empire led to the recognition of a duty to protect the Maoris from the crimes and exploitation of British subjects. This admission of a dual duty to protect and control both British subjects and Maoris made some form of British intervention inevitable, given the growth of an anarchic imperial frontier in New Zealand. Various methods of informal control were tried and found wanting, but it took the pressure of Gibbon Wakefield and the New Zealand Association to force the Colonial Office to make a policy decision in December 1837. A combination of circumstances, including the influence of Lord Durham, chairman of the New Zealand Association, and the coincidental arrival of a grim and graphic description of the worsening frontier situation in New Zealand, persuaded the Secretary of State for Colonies, Lord Glenelg, to offer the association a charter to colonize and govern New Zealand. Though the offer subsequently lapsed, the admission of the necessity for intervention to protect both Maoris and British subjects still stood. The Colonial Office was now committed to some form of intervention by the logic of its own arguments. This logic led eventually to the adoption of a plan to gain the sovereignty of parts of New Zealand only, but the sudden action of the New Zealand Company in despatching emigrants for the first systematic colony in mid-1839 forced the Colonial Office to accept that perhaps the whole country should be annexed and that the Government itself should undertake colonizing measures. Wakefield’s belief in benefits of colonization to the colonizing country was widely shared by politicians and civil servants who were, nevertheless, reluctant to contemplate the expense and the involvement which was required on the part of the Government. xiii

Introduction

However, in February 1840, Captain Hobson treated for the cession of sovereignty at Waitangi and a few months later proclaimed British dominion over New Zealand, actions subsequently ratified by the British Government. Thus, the establishment of an imperial frontier in New Zealand by individual British subjects set the problem, but the Colonial Office became committed to solving it by its recognition of a dual duty to protect both those subjects and the Maoris. Though Hobson was instructed to tell the Maoris that their protection was the main reason for British intervention, the annexation and the treaty’s provisions did not follow wholly or predominantly from a humanitarian desire to benefit them, but to protect both Maoris and British subjects equally, by establishing law and order and regular government. Indeed, a study of land policy in the early years of the Crown colony shows that the Colonial Office regretted the treaty’s guarantee of protection for all Maori land and was prepared to neutralize it by using the pre-emption provision, which had been inserted in the treaty not to protect the Maoris from land speculators, but to finance systematic colonization by government profits on land bought from the Maoris. On the question of the application of British law, the third article of the treaty expressed the ultimate goal of British Maori policy, the assimilation and eventual amalgamation of the Maoris with the settlers, but omitted the Colonial Office’s recognition that some Maori customs should be protected in the interim. Nevertheless, the third article — in according the Maoris all the rights and privileges of British subjects — did express a high ideal of early Victorian humanitarianism in one sense, racial equality between Maoris and British settlers, but strictly on British terms. Under the idealism lay feelings of cultural and racial superiority which were shared by the most enlightened humanists of the time and which, amongst the settlers, showed forth as rabid racial prejudice. Yet the Treaty of Waitangi is commonly regarded as a symbol of racial equality and as a witness to the relatively harmonious race relations which have developed in this country. The disparity between the truth of the matter, that the treaty was intended to protect the Maoris only insofar as their rights were compatible with British dominance, and the belief prevalent today that the treaty enshrined a true equality between the races, powerfully illustrates the degree to which a historical myth can serve as a cloak against the cold wind of reality.

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NEW ZEALAND: LOCALITY MAP

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PART I The Making of a British Colony 1830–1840

1 The New Zealand Frontier During the sixty odd years from the earliest European contacts in the late-eighteenth century to the early 1830s, New Zealand had been gradually but surely drawn out of its sea-surrounded isolation into the orbit of the Australian colonies and, by extension, into that of the British Empire. It had become an imperial frontier, increasingly inhabited by British subjects but just beyond the control of colonial or metropolitan governments. Yet New Zealand was not a typical land frontier — a more or less even line of encroachment on territory — such as the settlers’ frontier in North America, the Cape Colony, or New South Wales. On the contrary, aside from a few early settler and missionary purchases, European land-buying, or land-grabbing, only became a major feature as the 1830s drew to a close. Before then, the New Zealand frontier was more a series of coastal enclaves than a line, and more in the nature of commercial and cultural penetration than territorial encroachment. It embraced the Bay of Islands, Hokianga, and their shared hinterland — a small area of today’s province of Northland — and various other points on the coasts of the three islands where whalers and traders called and the odd European settled for commercial purposes. The interior of the country was little known to Europeans, apart from a few pakeha-Maoris, until missionaries and traders expanded their operations and explorers paved the way for agricultural and pastoral settlement by Europeans. In 1830 only beachheads had been established. The beachhead frontier in New Zealand nevertheless shared common features with territorial frontiers elsewhere. There was no effective government over the Europeans there; Maori society and tribal polity, although affecting their lives, did not and could not provide it.1 Nor were Europeans in New Zealand able to set up their own government, for legally most of them were still subject to the British Crown and in practice they were divided by sectional interests. The Kororareka Association of the later 1830s represented one such interest — the ‘respectable’ traders — and smacked more of a frontier vigilante group than an embryonic government. As elsewhere on the borders of the British Empire, the nearest established government tried to control the frontier in the interests both of European commercial prospects and of the indigenous inhabitants. Various 3

Fatal Necessity

governors of New South Wales forbade some of the more undesirable practices of captains trading to New Zealand, while the British Government empowered Australian courts to try crimes committed there. Failure was certain without an authority in New Zealand to carry out such measures. As far as westerners were concerned, New Zealand was in a state of anarchy. There were no effective laws and no crimes were punished, at least not until 1837 when one man was hanged in Sydney for breaking into a store in New Zealand. Survival and prosperity on the frontier depended on a combination of the relative number of one’s European friends and enemies, and one’s profitability to the Maoris. Thus Joel Polack, a small trader, alienated many Europeans in the Bay of Islands and could count on few supporters; he was beaten up and driven out by ex-convict Benjamin Turner and his gang in March 1837. Most traders survived because they got along with their fellow Europeans and because their continued existence was valuable to the Maoris, while many ex-convicts, unlike the astute Turner, were worth only the price upon their heads. Minor violence, brawls, and assaults were a fact of life on the New Zealand frontier as on others, but the despatches of James Busby, British Resident from 1833–9, do not contain many reports of murder or major violence.2 Crimes against property, from petty pilfering to robbery, were much more common and contributed to a general insecurity of business interests. Hence the resolutions of the Kororareka Association were concerned almost solely with property and hardly at all with personal security. Livelihood, rather than life itself, needed protection. To make a living, or a profit, most Europeans with any capital dealt in flax, timber, pork, or general goods, sometimes building their own trading vessels as well. During the 1830s the group of respectable and prosperous traders grew. Along with the Protestant missionaries, a few retired ships’ captains, and any distinguished visitors, they formed the apex of the social pyramid which developed on the New Zealand frontier. A step beneath them were the tradesmen who worked in the ‘building industry’ — in the ship yards and saw-pits at Hokianga or the Bay — or in service trades such as cobbling, smithying and the like. Some were drawn off by the temptations of entrepreneurship into owning grogshops. Below again came the clientele of the grogshops: ships’ deserters, escaped convicts, beachcombers and drifters. The respectable settlers bought land for their trading stations, shops, and living quarters, but not for farms, for the whole basis of the frontier in northern New Zealand and along its other coasts was commercial enterprise or the servicing of such enterprise. The raw materials to be exploited were flax, timber, pigs, and whales; not yet the land itself, only that which grew upon it and the sea which lapped its shores. As the missionary William Yate noted: ‘Flax and timber are the staple commodities of the country. Cultivation may do much …; but it is these two articles that have drawn so many Europeans to visit this people, and to settle amongst them.’3 The number of westerners in New Zealand at the beginning of the decade was comparatively small. The missionary personnel at the three Church Mission4

1 The New Zealand Frontier

ary Society stations, Rangihoua, Kerikeri, and Pahia, rose from twenty adults and forty children in 1827 to eighty-three Europeans (fifty-four of whom were children) by early 1831,4 when a fourth station, Waimate, had been added. Settlers and traders are more difficult to enumerate. The Church Missionary Society missionaries provided some estimates, though on the whole they had little communication with, and less interest in, their fellow settlers. Thomas Chapman, who arrived in 1830, recalled that there were then no Europeans living at Kororareka ‘save a few sawyers, and sailors who had left their ships’, though Richard Davis wrote in the same year that ‘a considerable number’ of Europeans monopolized the timber trade in the Bay, purchasing from the Maoris for muskets and powder.5 It appears that, after the Hansen family of seven who came to the area as early as 1819, the first permanent non-missionary Europeans settled at Kororareka in the mid-1820s. Henry Williams recorded that there were around twenty ships’ deserters or convicts there from 1824 onwards.6 Six convicts were never recaptured from the ship Wellington when it was taken over by its cargo of prisoners at the Bay of Islands. A few of the first organized expedition sent to establish a colony in New Zealand, that despatched by the 1825 New Zealand Company, stayed on after the rest had found the place too inhospitable. Alexander Gray, a blacksmith, was one of them and the title deeds to the land he bought at Kororareka are the first officially recorded non-missionary deeds. But he was living next door to an escaped convict, John Poyner, who had already purchased land but not paid for it. By the late 1820s there were several sawyers, blacksmiths, carpenters, and other artisans living in the Bay as well as two ships’ captains, Duke and Brind. At this time, too, traders began to set up along the Bay between Kororareka and Otuihu, the headquarters from 1830 of the well-known chief Pomare. Gilbert Mair, sometime builder and captain of the wrecked C.M.S. schooner Herald, bought land on Te Wahapu promontory in 1830 and established himself as a general importer, ship repairer, and coastal trader.7 By 1831 he had a partner in William Powditch; by August 1832 a rival in James Clendon, who left the sea to settle at Okiato and become one of the Bay’s most prominent figures during the decade.8 Gordon Browne, a Sydney entrepreneur who was about to form an extensive establishment in New Zealand and who apparently knew the country well, reported to Governor Darling of New South Wales in April 1831 that the European population of the Bay of Islands, including missionaries and their families, ‘must exceed one hundred’.9 Given an estimate of eighty-three for the missionaries two months before, this left twenty or so others. William Wade recorded twenty to thirty non-missionary Europeans at the beginning of 1833, some of whom had capital for there were two or three weatherboard houses other than missionary dwellings in the Bay.10 Browne noted that after the Girls’ War of March 1830, a tribal battle provoked by the amatory affairs of Captain Brind,11 in which several houses at Kororareka were burnt, the Europeans there dispersed. Possibly they went with Pomare to Otuihu, because Wade found about forty runaway con5

Fatal Necessity

victs and sailors living at one of the pa, who mostly disappeared when the British Resident arrived in 1833. All these scraps of evidence suggest that the European population of the Bay of Islands in the early years of the 1830s numbered between 100 and 130. Across the hinterland on the Hokianga River there were several European establishments. The Wesleyan Mission station at Mangungu, twenty-five miles up-river, had a European staff of three and their families. The dock and timberyard at Te Horeke, established by Messrs Raine and Ramsay in 1827, employed about thirty Europeans and forty Maoris in ship-building, the largest vessel produced being the Sir George Murray of 392 tons. Some of the tradesmen from the 1825 New Zealand Company expedition took work there.12 In 1830 Te Horeke covered a square mile and included buildings worth over £400, ten times the cost of the land. There were two smaller timber stations attached to Te Horeke further up-river and the white population of the three stations totalled thirty-five.13 When the establishment went bankrupt in 1830 a retired naval lieutenant, Thomas McDonnell, bought it for a song and took a dozen workmen there in March 1831, but he had to close the dockyard and in April that year was employing only twenty artisans. With his own family, however, the total number of Europeans cannot have dropped much below thirty. Elsewhere on the Hokianga River there were several smaller establishments as well as a number of traders, agents, sawyers, and carpenters. Browne estimated the total white population of the district at fifty-two.14 At the beginning of the 1830s small numbers of Europeans, mostly agents for flax and timber traders, were scattered around the coasts of the North Island. Browne reported three or four at Tauranga, four at Richard Jones’s establishment at Maketu, where Phillip Tapsell also settled in 1830, five or six under Henry Donnison at Turanga, and an establishment belonging to John McLaren at Port Nicholson.15 James Cowan in A Trader in Cannibal Land mentions that there were Europeans at Te Tumu, Matata, Whakatane, and Ohiwa in the Bay of Plenty as well as at Tauranga and Maketu. J. S. Polack, (New Zealand: Being a Narrative …, v. II, pp. 117, 288–9), mentions a couple of flax traders at Uawa or Tolaga Bay on the East Coast and also refers to Richard Jones’s activities. At Kapiti, the general depot for Cook Strait flax, Browne found about thirty Europeans of whom a few were agents for Sydney merchants but most were ‘idlers of bad character’.16 In the Taranaki region, chiefly at Mokau and Moturoa (now part of New Plymouth), there were ten to a dozen whites in the flax trade, including Dicky Barrett who became interpreter for Colonel Wakefield during the New Zealand Company’s purchases in 1839.17 Further up the west coast at Kawhia there were twelve agents for Sydney firms and others at several small flax depots, and at the mouth of the Waikato the earliest settler was Charles Marshall in 1829.18 Rotorua and Matamata were also important flax markets.19 Some agents were itinerant, however, for Lamb and Montefiore of Sydney sent six to New Zealand apparently without intending to set up a permanent station.20 6

1 The New Zealand Frontier

Browne was a well-informed man and his estimates, many of which can be corroborated from other evidence, may be taken as a safe guide. If anything, he may have understated the situation since he would not have known of every single European in the country. Adding up his totals for the various enclaves, it appears that the white population of the North Island in 1830–1 was of the order of 225 to 250. The main reason for the increase in the non-missionary European population between 1827, when there were only a handful, and 1831, lay in the growth of the flax trade. An attempt had been made by a New South Wales company in 1814 and by the Colonial Government in the mid-1820s to promote the flax business, but it was not until after the turmoil of Hongi Hika’s wars in the north that the trade boomed. From a very small export in 1828 it rose to a value of £26,000 (1,240 tons) in 1831 when the Royal Navy contracted for 800 tons at £41 15s a ton (see appendix 1(a)). Thereafter the trade declined, partly due to a mixed reception by the Navy and the London market and partly due to production difficulties with inland tribes, whose demand for European goods had been satisfied and who now turned to using the muskets they had gained on each other.21 Nevertheless, as New Zealand’s first boom industry, flax had stimulated a ripple of immigration between 1827 and 1831 and probably most of the influx remained for the flax trade did not die completely. Henry Williams’s comment that there was ‘scarcely a part of the coast where Europeans are not settled, for the purpose of procuring flax’, was written in 1833.22 Besides the flax agents there were also the pakeha-Maoris, a term which was variously applied to Europeans ‘gone native’, non-missionary or ordinary Europeans, or, simply petty traders. However, pakeha-Maori did seem to imply a man who was no longer completely ‘European’, who had some sympathy, understanding, or intimate connexion with Maori society and who was partly bicultural. Such men as F. E. Maning, Jacky Marmon, and Barnet Burns — worlds apart as individuals — played similar roles as cultural and commercial go-betweens for their adopted tribes. This made them both filters and fifth columnists for western culture and technology. Among ‘respectable’ Europeans they were looked down upon as quasi-Maoris, while to the Maoris they were valued chiefly for their European-ness and for their contacts with the European world. Whatever the precise definition of a pakeha-Maori it is impossible to estimate their numbers since they left fewer traces in the European world. No doubt some of the heads which Browne counted were those of pakeha-Maoris, but it is unlikely that those he missed would make any significant difference to his overall estimate. European impact on the South Island differed in nature as the exploitable resources differed. The seals had been heavily harvested between 1809 and 1816 and the trade was in decline, although Browne noted that the ‘great number of lawless Europeans’ at Stewart Island lived mainly by sealing.23 Black whaling largely took its place. John Guard of Sydney established himself at Te Awaiti in Tory Channel in 1827, and George Bunn and Company’s Preservation Inlet sta7

Fatal Necessity

tion at the opposite end of the South Island followed three years later.24 By 1831 Cloudy Bay had become the chief black whaling base with establishments belonging to Messrs Bell, Ring, Mossman and Company, and John Guard, as well as ships moored in the various bays with try-works on board. In April 1831 there were several whaling stations in the planning stage, heralding the considerable expansion of South Island shore whaling during the decade.25 At a reasonable estimate the stations in Tory Channel and Preservation Inlet employed fifteen or so Europeans each during the May to October winter season, and Cloudy Bay perhaps twice as many since there were two stations there. Allowing for Browne’s ‘great number’ of Europeans on Stewart Island — probably no more than fifteen or twenty — the South Island had a European population in 1830–1 of no more than eighty, and even this figure may be slightly exaggerated. It does not take into account whalers working off ships rather than shore works, nor is it possible to discover how many men returned to Sydney or Hobart during the off-season. Shore whaling and trading in general received a stimulus after 1830 when New Zealand produce was exempted from colonial duty in Hobart, as it had been in Sydney for some time, and with the expansion of the industry whalemen tended to stay in New Zealand in the summer to hunt pigs, grow potatoes, or collect flax.26 The whaling stations became more permanent. It is equally difficult to measure the effect of seasonal fluctuations on the European population of the North Island. The importance of the Bay of Islands to sea-captains, chiefly during the months January to April, lay in its use as a haven for repairs, food and water, and in the charms of Maori women. In 1830 there were, on occasions, thirty vessels anchored at one time, a ‘floating’ population approaching 1,000.27 Not all came ashore at any one time, but Sunday at the height of the rest and recreation season might see 200 or 300 seamen enjoying the sights and delights of Kororareka.28 This very temporary influx at the Bay probably doubled New Zealand’s on-shore European population for, adding the North Island figures based on Browne’s estimates to those for the South Island, it seems probable that there were residing in New Zealand in 1830–1 roughly between 300 and 330 westerners. The commercial activities of this population amounted in the fifteen months from 1 January 1830 to 12 April 1831 to an export trade worth £37,960 carried on sixty ships of a total tonnage of 6,700, and imports valued at £23,350 on seventy-three vessels of 8,530 tonnage.29 New Zealand had a healthy balance of payments. Colonel Torrens, a prominent economist and one of the founders of South Australia, stated that the ‘commercial marine of the Australian colonies is built, equipped, and in part provisioned from the produce of New Zealand …’ and that seventeen ships manned by 200 seamen were regularly employed in carrying the trans-Tasman trade,30 apart from the more irregular visits of whalers and Pacific Islands traders. The New South Wales Government was increasingly aware of the importance and magnitude of this trade and did not fail to inform the 8

1 The New Zealand Frontier

metropolitan government. The extension of British commercial interests in New Zealand, and the increase in the British population which created and sustained those interests, were to be major factors drawing Britain into deeper political involvement in the country as the 1830s advanced. To gauge the importance of these factors in the formation of British policy, it is necessary to compare the nature and extent of the frontier at the beginning of the 1830s with that at the end. The missionaries often commented on the increasing numbers of Europeans. Davis and Chapman reported an influx following the arrival of the British Resident in 1833.31 Three years later James Busby himself counted 517 known British subjects in the Bay of Islands and northwards, with probably an additional 100 unaccounted for and a shifting population of between 100 and 300 seamen.32 In 1837 George Clarke reported Europeans scattered over almost the whole of the northern part of the island and estimated in March 1838 that they numbered more than 1,000.33 By 1839 an immigration of ‘spring-tide violence’ had set in and ‘every fortnight or week’ brought a vessel with settlers and men of capital, both from the colony and from Britain.34 Henry Williams correctly prophesied in April 1839 that ‘in less than a year … emigration to this country will become general’.35 By January 1839 Robert Maunsell reported that there were 2,000 Europeans in the country.36 Almost simultaneously in his office on the other side of the world, James Stephen, Permanent Under-Secretary at the Colonial Office, quoted the figure of 2,000 settlers as an indication of the seriousness of the frontier problem in New Zealand and as a reason justifying British interference.37 How accurate was the figure? Henry Williams provided the most detailed breakdown of the European population in January 1839. He estimated that there were 1,100 excluding half-castes and missionaries, all British except for 20 French and 50 or so Americans. With a total missionary complement of 169 Anglicans and 37 Wesleyans, Williams’s estimate for the North Island white population comes to about 1,300.38 This figure is supported by two other commentators,39 and seems a plausible progression from Busby’s 1836 estimate of about 600 and Clarke’s 1838 reckoning of over 1,000. Although perhaps 500 to 600 Europeans lived in the Bay of Islands or its immediate hinterland, Kororareka itself seems to have contained only a small proportion of these. Benjamin Turner suggested 70 in 1839, and Busby 102 including half-castes; neither confirmed the figure of 50 grog-sellers given by Henry Williams, who probably saw one behind every barrel. Kororareka’s population rose to between 400 and 500 after Governor Hobson’s arrival, but in 1839 it probably housed only a quarter of that and was merely one of a number of places along the shores of the Bay where Europeans lived. For Kororareka, Te Wahapu, Otuihu, Okiato, and Waikare, Busby listed 550 whites and 50 half-castes. Gilbert Mair employed between fifteen and twenty European tradesmen and labourers at Te Wahapu during the decade and when he rented the property in 1840 there were 9

Fatal Necessity

fifty-six men, women, and children on the station. James Clendon probably had at least as many at Okiato. There were many other smaller establishments too, for by this time whites apparently owned all the shores of the Bay of Islands.40 Across the island on the Hokianga River the European population had increased steadily from fifty-odd in 1831 to 100 in 1836 and over twice that in 1839.41 The discrepancy between Henry Williams’s 1,300 and Maunsell’s 2,000 whites in New Zealand at the end of the 1830s stems from Williams’s omission of the South Island shore whaling population, which increased markedly during the decade. From four established and several putative stations in 1831 the industry comprised twenty to thirty try-works by 1839. John Jones, Sydney’s chief whaling entrepreneur, owned seven stations: at Preservation, Aparima (Jacob’s River), Waikouaiti, Moeraki, and three at Awarua (Bluff), and employed 280 men in 1839.42 Weller had two stations, at Taieri and Otakou (Otago Heads). On Banks Peninsula, Piraki was established by Hempleman in 1837 after a trial run at Port Cooper, and by 1839 with some smaller stations there may have been about 100 Europeans on the Peninsula.43 In Cloudy Bay there were five stations and there and in Queen Charlotte Sound the Anglican missionary Alfred Brown noted ‘upwards of 100 Europeans’ by 1837.44 The following year a visiting naval captain found 90 to 100 at Te Awaiti alone.45 Bell established himself at Mana Island in 1834, to grow food for passing whalers rather than to catch whales, and Kapiti had at least two stations. In addition, it appears that at one time or another during the decade there were whaling establishments at the mouths of the Omaui, Mataura, Waikawa, Matau and Tautuku Rivers and at Purakanui, Onekarara, Timaru, Porirua and as far north as Turanga.46 Davidson reckons that by 1838 these twenty-five or more stations employed about 500 Europeans during the season.47 This may be rather a low estimate. The white population of the South Island during the whaling season may have been nearer 700 by 1839. Certainly, shore whaling became New Zealand’s biggest industry in terms of employees and earnings during the 1830s, though it declined rapidly thereafter through overfishing.48 An essentially seaward-looking activity, whaling followed the pattern of the New Zealand frontier in requiring land mainly for commercial reasons. Only towards the end of the 1830s did men like Jones and Weller, perhaps foreseeing the coming decline, invest in land for purely agricultural purposes rather than as a support for their whaling establishments. Partly because the industry looked seaward and partly because the Maoris were fewer, whaling did not have such a far-reaching impact on Maori society as did the flax, timber, and general trading of the North Island.49 The whalemen were not totally disreputable as they have been represented. Yate recognized that the flax traders were generally much worse.50 Whalemen and Maoris were dependent on each other, the whalemen for Maori labour and food supplies, the Maoris for the goods and skills which they increasingly desired as they became integrated into a European economy, an integration which did not apparently disrupt the tribal basis of society. If the whalemen were less disreputable than represented, the South Island 10

1 The New Zealand Frontier

Maoris were less barbaric and stupid than the Colonial Office believed when it despatched Captain Hobson in 1839, as his deputy, Major Bunbury, soon pointed out in 1840.51 With 500 to 700 whalemen and others in the South Island and 1,300 or so Europeans in the North Island, the total white population of New Zealand in 1839 numbered between 1,800 and 2,000. James Stephen’s information was therefore fairly accurate. It must be remembered, too, that during 1839 there was a steady influx of settlers, and that seasonal fluctuations in the sperm-whaling industry could boost the northern population temporarily with perhaps ‘a thousand seamen in the Bay at one time’.52 The significance of the rise in population is clear when one considers that an increase from 300 to 330 Europeans settled more or less permanently in New Zealand in 1831 to 1,800 to 2,000 in 1839 represents a six-fold increase in eight years. The totals may have been small, but the rate of increase was extremely rapid. The trade figures did not quite keep pace: exports to the eastern Australian colonies more than doubled from £34,000 in 1831 to £83,000 in 1839. The following year, though the figure dropped to £73,000, New Zealand was the third largest exporter to New South Wales and Tasmania after Great Britain and the Pacific whale fisheries. (See appendix 1(b)) The New Zealand trade was undoubtedly important to the eastern Australian colonies. The flax boom had brought a nucleus of Europeans to New Zealand at the beginning of the decade and, although the peak had passed by 1832, flax continued to provide a livelihood for some and a useful article of trade. However, timber succeeded it as the North Island’s most valuable primary product. It had already attracted some Europeans to Hokianga in the late 1820s and a cargo was sent to England in the Harmony in 1827. Mair, Clendon, and others developed timber interests at the Bay. Gordon Browne finally set himself up at Whitianga in Mercury Bay where, in 1838, he employed at least twelve Europeans. There were eight or nine others building ships in Coromandel Harbour in the same year.53 Browne’s one-time employee, William Webster, became the biggest timber merchant on the Coromandel peninsula by 1840, when there may have been as many as 200 whites there. Thomas Dacre, who claimed to have established himself at Kaiaho on the Thames with twenty carpenters between 1830 and 1834, also stated that he helped Browne to begin at Mercury Bay and that there were thirty Europeans working there.54 Sawyers could also be found at Mangonui, Whangaroa, Whangarei, Hauraki, Mangakahia, Kaipara, Otawao, and in the Waikato by the end of the decade when the industry supported ‘some hundreds’ of Europeans and employed many Maoris.55 Besides timber, trade in pork, potatoes, maize, wheat, and other foodstuffs also increased to meet growing demand both in New Zealand and in the Australian colonies. Grog-selling became a profitable speculation at the Bay of Islands from about 1834 onwards, when Chapman noticed six houses being erected solely for this purpose and William Yate regretted that the Maoris had ‘lately’ taken to drinking in a big way. There were half a dozen grogshops 11

Fatal Necessity

at Otuihu by 1836, where the trade remained focused for the rest of the 1830s.56 A temperance movement on the voluntary principle was founded by the Church missionaries and respectable settlers, but failed to convert others. Grog-selling and grog-drinking, mainly by Europeans, continued to be a characteristic of the New Zealand frontier as of others before and since. The increasing economic potentiality of New Zealand is not only shown by the fact that exports more than doubled in the eight years 1831–9. Annual shipping to the Bay of Islands increased from 89 in 1833 to 151 in 1836, dropping to 109 the following year and rising to a peak of 155 in 1839. Curiously, the British and colonial share, well over half until 1837, dropped to less than fifty per cent in 1838 and 1839, due apparently to a decline in colonial sperm-whaling.57 However, in 1837 Busby computed British assets in buildings and ships in New Zealand to be worth £750,000.58 There is no way of assessing the accuracy of this estimate, and perhaps its chief importance lies in the fact that it was the only official one made in the 1830s. It is sometimes assumed that the influence which the missionaries established, particularly as peacemakers, paved the way for the expansion of commercial interests in New Zealand. Clendon said that were it not for the missionaries, no European could live in the land.59 This was not entirely so. Nathaniel Turner, head of the Wesleyan Mission, noted that whites were peaceably settled on the eastern and southern coasts of the North Island and in the South and Stewart Islands where there was no direct missionary influence. This he attributed to both the Maoris’ fear of reprisals if Europeans were molested and their desire for the benefits of trade, factors which did not operate so strongly in the interior which was therefore less safe.60 Even taking into account the indirect spread of missionary influence through Maori converts and teachers, it appears that commerce opened up southern coastal areas of New Zealand to Europeans just as effectively as did Christianity in the north and perhaps, in some senses, paved the way for the missionaries. If Turner’s argument applied in 1838 how much more true it was in 1830 when missionary activity was confined to a small area of today’s Northland. Here, certainly, their influence and peace-making role from the late 1820s could not but benefit the Europeans who began to increase in the area at the same time. Elsewhere ‘flax had been brought to the coast and muskets taken inland before the first copy of the Scriptures was seen’,61 and whaling stations were long established before the first missionary visited the South Island. Other than in the north, the expansion of trade paralleled or preceded that of religion. However, the expansion of the missions was equally marked and of great importance. In 1830 the Church Missionary Society ran three stations in the Bay of Islands staffed by about twenty-five missionaries. In 1839 there were ten C.M.S. stations, divided equally between northern and southern districts of the North Island and run by thirty-four European and twenty-three Maori missionaries and teachers.62 The Wesleyans increased from three men on one station in 1830 to sixteen on eleven stations in 1840.63 12

1 The New Zealand Frontier

Despite the temptation of the ‘never better’ syndrome, the unanimity among the Church missionaries in 1830 that ‘The mission has certainly never been in so prosperous a state as at present’ did indicate a real turning point in the fortunes of the mission and its prospects among the Maoris.64 Behind this increased optimism lay subtle changes of direction achieved in the 1820s: from teaching ‘civilization’ to preaching Christianity; from reliance on Hongi’s patronage to economic independence after his death; and most of all from the periphery of Maori society to the beginnings of a more central role as peacemakers following Henry Williams’s successful prevention of a war between certain Bay and Hokianga Maoris in 1828.65 This role was markedly confirmed when the missionaries negotiated the peace after the Girls’ War of 1830, the first occasion on which the Maoris found them indispensable in preventing further bloodshed. Samuel Marsden, William Williams, Davis, Yate and others all considered that missionary influence would be extended thereby.66 Other signs that the mission was beginning to gather momentum were not wanting. Virtually the first baptisms — eight adults and five children — were made in 1830.67 The schools, a major area of mission work since the arrival of Henry Williams in 1823, flourished and the missionaries remarked a new eagerness among some Maoris for the skills of reading and writing. This was fed by Yate’s return from Sydney in 1830 with 550 copies of translations from scripture, liturgy, catechism and hymnal — ‘Nothing could exceed the gratification with which these books were received’ by Maori readers.68 Some Maoris had now reached the point where they could become teachers and lay preachers themselves, and often their possession of a mission-taught trade — carpentry, brick-laying, forging — made Christianity more acceptable in the village. They not only helped spread the Word themselves, but allowed the Europeans to scatter more widely and use their numbers more effectively at a time when the number of missionaries sent from Britain was increasing.69 Finally, in addition to all these signs of God’s favour, the missionaries thought they detected a general improvement in Maori behaviour — less theft, stricter keeping of the sabbath — and a genuine eagerness for scriptural instruction.70 One of the Wesleyans remarked that God seemed to be working among the Maoris independently of the missionaries.71 Thus, the Church Missionary Society mission, with support from the society in England, began to expand geographically. The missionaries no longer feared losing contact with the coast. Marsden advised them in April 1830 that with the improvement in the general conduct and attitudes of the Maoris they would be just as safe in the interior. More importantly, the Maoris were willing to allow them inland.72 In February 1831 Clarke opened up Waimate, chosen for its agricultural potential and large local Maori population. After a breathing space Joseph Mathews began a station at Kaitaia to meet a request from the Rarawa tribe. Following a reconnaissance of Tauranga and Rotorua in October 1831 and of the Thames in October 1833 — where knowledge of Christianity preceded 13

Fatal Necessity

them through the agency of three returned mission pupils — James Preece and William Fairburn went to Puriri in December 1833. Two similar exploratory journeys into the Waikato and Bay of Plenty in February and July 1834 led to the establishment of Mangapouri, Matamata, Tauranga, and Rotorua in 1835 and the planning of an East Cape station.73 Between 1830 and the end of 1835 the number of Church Missionary Society stations had risen from three to ten. This rapid expansion was soon halted by a fierce war between Tauranga, Waikato, and Rotorua Maoris which led to the abandonment of the Matamata station in October 1836, as well as the temporary suspension of Rotorua and Tauranga. They were resumed later in 1838. Puriri proved to be an unhealthy site and was replaced by stations at Kaweranga and Maraetai in the Hauraki Gulf in 1837. The Mangapouri station followed a Maori migration to Manukau in 1836 and to Manukau Heads in 1839. Stations were also established at the Waikato Heads and at Whangaroa in that year. The groundwork for expansion into the populous East Coast was laid by visits there in 1834, 1838 (when six Maori teachers were taken there), and 1839, but it was not until 1840 that William Williams fulfilled his dream by going to Turanga. Opotiki and Wanganui were set up in 1840 and further south Octavius Hadfield began work at Otaki/Waikanae in late 1839.74 The Wesleyan Mission expanded almost simultaneously from Mangungu, partly for similar reasons and partly in response to Church Missionary Society activity. William White thought the prospects in 1830 encouraging and in 1833 advocated a station further to the south.75 His suspicions of the Anglican expansion and the inherent competitiveness of the situation produced an acrimonious dispute between the two missions about the boundaries of their respective ‘parishes’. This held up the Wesleyan expansion, but by the end of the decade they had established eleven stations, mostly on the west coast of the North Island. Through the schools established at most of the new stations orthography and scriptural knowledge could be disseminated and future Christian teachers trained — schools were ‘the pivots & springs of missionary success’.76 Printed translations provided the material for the schools. In 1833 Yate brought from Sydney 3,300 copies of a 170-page book of scriptural extracts and an 88-page prayer book. By 1836 both missions had printing presses and in the five years from January 1835 to January 1840 the Pahia press produced 74,000 copies, in Maori, of books of four or more pages. Even this was insufficient to meet the demand created by the missionaries’ work in spreading the skills of reading and writing in the Maori language over much of the North Island.77 With the spread of these skills went the spread of missionary influence. The number of baptisms provides a crude index of how the missionaries saw their own progress, although it tells us nothing about the superficiality or depth of Maori ‘conversion’. Up till the end of June 1831 the Church missionaries had baptised 30 Maoris. (Six of the adults had died by 1836.)78 By February 1839 the number had risen to 838, with 213 communicants and a total congregation of about 4,000.79 By 1841 600 had been 14

1 The New Zealand Frontier

confirmed and more than 2,000 baptised. The Wesleyans paralleled these developments: in 1831 they baptised their first convert and ten years later they had 1,565 members.80 The expansion of the missions geographically and the spread of missionary influence through preaching, teaching, and conversion was one of the most profoundly far-reaching developments on the New Zealand frontier in the 1830s. Its implications for Maori society and for British involvement with New Zealand were to be as important in the transformation of New Zealand from a Maori country to a British colony as the rapid increase in the non-missionary European population and the resulting commerce. Indeed, missionary and commercial expansion were but two facets of a larger whole: the creation by individual British subjects of a new, unofficial, imperial frontier beyond the bounds of the existing Empire. Not only were the numbers and the interests of British subjects in New Zealand increasing, but the nature of their relationship with the land and its inhabitants was changing. At the beginning of the 1830s the Europeans who came to New Zealand did not desire Maori land for settlement, only for trading stations such as Mair’s Te Wahapu or Clendon’s Okiato, and for the natural produce which grew upon the land, chiefly flax and timber. But by the end of the decade land had become an object desirable in itself. The Protestant missionary societies were of course the first land-buyers, needing land for their stations, and in 1835 Clarke urged the Church Missionary Society to make good its claims as ‘a number of settlers are coming out to New Zealand and making purchases of land …’.81 Despite their own society’s holdings, which no doubt they viewed as being beneficial for the Maoris, the Church missionaries felt able to appoint themselves defenders of Maori lands. In 1835 Henry Williams sent to the Sydney Church Missionary Society committee a deed of trust for some Maori land near Pahia; such protectionist measures were necessary, he argued, because of the influx of Europeans.82 While the Sydney committee opposed the idea of missionary trusteeship — and they were asked to reconsider by the Home committee — it did encourage the missionaries to promote anti-selling combinations among the Maoris and requested Governor Bourke to recommend the formation of such ‘friendly associations’ to James Busby and to Thomas McDonnell, who had been appointed Additional British Resident.83 Davis remarked on the existence of such a ‘confederacy’ among the Kaikohi Maoris in 1839.84 How much land the missionaries had accepted in trust by then it is difficult to tell, but William Williams advocated the purchase of land at every harbour where settlers were likely, including the whole of the Coromandel peninsula from Cape Colville to Tauranga; £4,000 to £5,000 would be sufficient to pre-empt any settlement, he thought, and well worth it. Indeed, when he went to the East Coast Williams claimed to have purchased the whole of the Poverty Bay for about £200 on account of the Maoris, though he was rightly doubtful of the validity of this act.85 15

Fatal Necessity

Certainly, as the Maori population decreased and that of the Europeans grew, there was cause for the missionaries’ fear that if the trend continued one would eventually displace the other and the country pass to the hands of strangers.86 Among some northern Maoris a ‘mania’ for land-selling did develop and by 1840, apparently, the littoral of the Bay of Islands and the banks of the Hokianga River were in European hands,87 while in the Cook Strait region the New Zealand Company, in 1839, began acquiring land by degrees of latitude. However, Davis thought that the land sold in the north was still ‘but a small portion’ and that of poor quality.88 Suffice to say that as the decade grew older more Europeans came with the intention of settling permanently and therefore bought land on which to support themselves. And, paradoxically, the clearest indication that land was becoming the major issue of the frontier lay in the fact of increased private purchase by the very defenders of Maori land-ownership, the Church Missionary Society missionaries. In addition to the official society purchases of land for mission stations, individual missionaries bought about 166,000 acres before 1840.89 The morality and wisdom of such purchases have been debated from that day to this. The justification which the missionaries offered was that they had to support their families and provide a heritage for their children. In other words they were settled in New Zealand permanently and their children, many of whom were first-generation New Zealanders, would be members of the colony whose irregular formation in New Zealand they so vehemently deprecated. The nature of the frontier was changing in another way. Although the missionaries had little truck with the Europeans in the Bay who were connected with the shipping or with the vessels themselves — except to hold the occasional service on board — they had good relations with the Mairs and Clendons of the frontier society. They discriminated between non-missionary Europeans therefore. Clarke, for instance, thought that whites in New Zealand were generally ‘respectable industrious and useful settlers’ with some ‘honest working men’, though there were ‘doubtless many prisoners’ and other desperadoes as well.90 But a new distinction crept in, too. Charles Baker thought that there were some very decent families in the Bay, but that most of the visitors and settlers were vile.91 Henry Williams would also have admitted the respectability of local families, but adopted an uncompromising attitude to recently arrived Europeans in general ‘as declared enemies of the natives.’92 It was Maunsell, however, who distinguished most clearly between the settlers who had arrived during the 1830s and the colonists whom he now expected. He agreed that of the 2,000 settlers in the land many were respectable men who sought peace because their mercantile fortunes depended on it. They differed from the new colonists in that ‘instead of their subjecting, they are subject to the natives’. The Maoris had been able to maintain their rights against settler encroachment and this explained their ‘forebearing demeanour’ so far. If the new settlers brought force to back them, things would change for the worse and the murders and massacres of the New South Wales frontier would pale by comparison.93 16

1 The New Zealand Frontier

As Maunsell so clearly saw, whereas the Europeans who came to New Zealand early in the 1830s for chiefly commercial reasons quickly reached a modus vivendi with the Maoris, those who came later in search of land for settlement rather than trade for their livelihood were less likely to feel the need for such an accommodation, or to admit that the Maoris had rights too. The stake in such an inherently competitive situation was no less than the political control of the country. There are two sides to every frontier and New Zealand was no exception. To the Maoris, just as much as to the Europeans, the New Zealand frontier was a series of points of commercial, cultural, and racial contact and exploitation. Yet there was an important difference. To western civilization New Zealand was at the very edge of the known world, 1,200 miles beyond the nearest European settlement and 12,000 from the centre of the Empire. Individual westerners rarely remained totally unaffected by Maori society. Many were more or less assimilated by it, such as the pakeha-Maoris and some of the traders and whalers who married Maori women, employed Maoris as flax-cutters, sawyers, seamen, and who were in daily contact with Maori ways of thinking and behaving. But whatever the experience of the individual westerner, the basis of his culture in Europe or America remained untouched. The Maoris had contact only with the few hundred westerners who came to New Zealand, not with the political, social, and cultural milieu from which they came. They were therefore at a disadvantage in dealing with the encroachment of pakeha numbers and pakeha ways. They were at the receiving end of a cultural and racial invasion whose outrunners they might influence, but whose source they could not touch. This limited the range and power of their reaction since the Maoris could control neither the influx of Europeans, nor the nature of the cultural baggage they brought with them. To some extent the Maoris could accept, reject, or modify what was brought, but not choose what it was. The increase in European numbers provides one measurement of the invasion of New Zealand during the 1830s. Unfortunately, while numerous guesses were made by European observers, there are no reliable estimates of the size of the Maori population. In the 1830s Europeans, whether missionary or otherwise, were not well enough acquainted with Maori society over the whole country to be able to estimate the total population with any show of accuracy. Consequently guesses varied widely: William Yate suggested a figure of 160,000 for the North Island in 1835; William Williams, 106,000 for the North Island in 1834; Orton, 75–100,000 for the whole country in 1833; Maunsell, 80,000 odd and Turner, 60,000 for the North Island in 1838.94 A variation of 100,000 between Yate and Turner indicates the arbitrary character of these estimates. Even the assumption that at the time of Cook’s visits to New Zealand there were about 200,000 Maoris has no more validity than later guesses, despite its widespread acceptance in popular history. 17

Fatal Necessity

There is no doubt, however, that in areas which were known to European observers the Maori population suffered a marked and visible decline under the impact of western diseases and the disruption of Maori society induced by western technology and commerce. During the 1830s the missionaries and the British Resident frequently emphasized the dramatic decline in Maori numbers which they saw taking place around them. This reported decline was noted with concern by civil servants and politicians in England and influenced Colonial Office policy-making towards New Zealand.95 Tribal warfare was a more or less institutionalized Maori activity before the Europeans came to New Zealand and probably had no marked effect on the population other than as a stabilizing factor; casualties from the hand-to-hand style of fighting were not usually high. In the early nineteenth century this changed. Warfare, in conjunction with other influences, became a major cause of population decline. One historian has estimated that, from accounts of battles between the beginning of the century and 1840, there may have been a loss of a fifth to a quarter of the male fighting population.96 The missionary, Richard Davis, asserted that in 1834 not more than two-thirds of the Bay of Islands population remained from ten years previously; and if that population numbered about 12,000 in 1820 as has been suggested,97 then there were fewer than 8,000 left. Even if Davis’s belief was an exaggeration and the decline was nearer a fifth or a quarter than a third, the population loss would still be a frightful 2,500–3,000 in ten to fifteen years. He attributed much of the decline to warfare and disease.98 Obviously, warfare was not attributable to European contact, nor should it be assumed because warfare increased that the Maoris were now fighting for European reasons. War was still the consequence of traditional aims, such as the possession of land, the control of economic resources, revenge for former affronts, or an increase in personal mana. There is little doubt, however, that the pre-contact situation was exacerbated by the impact of European ideas, the creation of new material and status needs in Maori society, and the erosion of Maori social customs and norms. Competition for the control of raw materials, trading outlets, and pakeha traders themselves became fiercer. Everyday contact with Europeans and European things could accidentally fuel inter-tribal antagonisms,99 while there are certainly examples of Europeans provoking or aiding and abetting war between Maori tribes — the Girls’ War of 1830 and Te Rauparaha’s raid on Akaroa the following year are two cases in point. Thus, while Hongi Hika was not a proto-King George III creating a new role for himself on a European model, but a Maori chief furthering his position in traditional Maori terms, the old balance had been disturbed by European penetration. Moreover, the old fighting tools were now supplemented by a new and fearsome weapon. The musket was one of the first products of European technology to affect the Maoris. Cook, de Surville, and Marion du Fresne’s avenger Crozet, all found occasion to use firearms with fatal effect between 1769 and 1772. The Maoris could no doubt readily appreciate the musket’s superiority over traditional 18

1 The New Zealand Frontier

weapons in individual fighting but may not have seen its implications for intertribal warfare as quickly. Despite contacts with traders and whalers after 1800, firearms did not become the stock-in-trade of commerce with New Zealand until after the missionaries arrived in 1814, and were not acquired on a large scale until Hongi’s return from England in 1821. But neither numbers nor accuracy were required initially, since the psychological effect of one war-party possessing a few muskets was usually sufficient to rout another which had none.100 Demand certainly escalated once muskets were used in inter-tribal warfare and did not cease until a rough balance of arms had been created. Even the missionaries were forced into the trade in order to survive, though they probably sold only a small number of arms. However, many of the articles they preferred to distribute as aids to civilization, such as axes, hatchets, hoes, and knives, also doubled as weapons.101 The story has often been told of Hongi’s devastating exploits in killing numerous of his countrymen and enslaving many others between 1821 and 1828, and the repercussions which led to the rise of Te Rauparaha as the scourge of the South Island ending finally at the Auckland Islands in 1842. As Sinclair so aptly expresses it, ‘murder spread out like waves from a stone dropped in the pool of tribal society’.102 The stone was the musket, and Hongi first developed the ability to use it effectively by combining his allies into larger armies than had been seen before in New Zealand.103 Southern tribes only acquired muskets later in the 1820s, being at a disadvantage in their fewer contacts with Europeans until the flax boom enabled them to satisfy their needs. Once firearms were acquired, the southern Maoris emulated in the 1830s the devastation and desolation wreaked by their northern brethren in the previous decade.104 Where the waves first started, there they first died down — in the north. Peace followed Hongi’s death, a peace of exhaustion perhaps, but also arising from the fact that muskets were more or less evenly distributed among the surviving Ngapuhi and had been acquired by their enemies.105 The Girls’ War at Kororareka in March 1830, in which about thirty Maoris were killed and seventy wounded,106 was the last major battle in the Bay of Islands until 1837 when a number of deaths resulted from a dispute between Pomare and Titore. Otherwise the 1830s were peaceful years in the Bay compared with the previous decade, although there were two Ngapuhi expeditions to the south; that in 1830 suffered a very high casualty rate while the 1832 foray ended inconclusively, a result which the Maoris apparently attributed to the interference of the Christian god.107 Blankets began to replace muskets as the stock-in-trade. While increased tribal warfare undoubtedly contributed much to the Maori population decline, the missionaries tended to over-stress it. Chapman thought that firearms had ‘more than half depopulated’ the country,108 but except for a few specific localities where major massacres had taken place, this is an exaggeration. Indeed the missionaries generally mentioned war as the major reason for population decline, even when the Bay of Islands was at peace. It became a stock explanation. Even a few casualties, such as those in the 1837 skirmish, were 19

Fatal Necessity

considered to be very serious because of the already thin population.109 While it may have been true that ‘The flower of New Zealand [had] undoubtedly been cut off in war …’, it was certainly not true of the north in the 1830s that warfare was ‘the principal cause’ of population decrease.110 Clarke virtually admitted as much when he suggested that God was visiting the continuing population decrease on the Maoris as vengeance for the ‘cruel barbarities’ perpetrated in ‘the late wars’.111 If, from the missionaries’ point of view, musket warfare created a central role for them in Maori society as peace-makers, for the Maoris it created the corollary, an increased dependence on foreigners as arbiters of their disputes. Apart from the two cases in the north in 1828 and 1830 when missionaries were allowed, indeed requested, to reconcile opposing parties, there is evidence that the desire for missionaries among the southern Maoris, at Putiki, Matamata, Tauranga, Rotorua, and in the Wanganui district, was partly a function of the desire for peace.112 Marsden mentioned some chiefs telling him that ‘wars would never cease amongst them unless they had some missionaries’.113 Paradoxically therefore, European firearms and the social disruption resulting from their use by the Maoris contributed to the spread of missionary influence and of the religion with which peace came to be associated as a major element, Christianity. It is an indication of the pressure which Maori society faced that the antidote to a destructive element of western technology was found not in traditional peace-making institutions but in an infusion of the ideals, or modification of them, of a western religion.114 Unfortunately, the antidote to introduced diseases did not lie in traditional Maori society either. Little information is available on Maori health before the late 1820s, but it appears that there were bad epidemics of some sort in the 1790s and again not long before the arrival of the first missionaries.115 In 1828 whooping cough was first introduced to New Zealand on a brig from Sydney and many Maoris died, as did two of the white children, most of whom caught it as well.116 Some Maoris apparently attributed the disease to the Christian god or to the missionaries’ sorcery, though they were unsure whether it was directed against those who believed or those who did not; but most, according to Davis, believed that it was a punishment for ‘the white people they murdered and robbed years ago’, perhaps a reference to the Boyd massacre of 1809.117 The whooping cough epidemic certainly prefaced a decade of despairing reports from missionaries and others about the rapid decrease of the Maori population through disease. Both the introduction of different strains of illness, and an increased awareness of their effects on the part of European observers created a much blacker picture of Maori health in the 1830s than in the 1820s. In 1830 Brown reported that the local Maoris were dying fast. In 1833 Clarke bewailed the ‘appalling depopulation’ and thought that two-thirds of Maori children died from want of proper food after being weaned and that the mothers suffered from suckling too long in an attempt to save them from starvation. Davis 20

1 The New Zealand Frontier

agreed, adding that want of proper clothing and consequent exposure contributed to the dangers facing young children along with the prevalence of scrofula and consumption. The Maoris were aware of the decrease in their own numbers but were apathetic, according to Clarke. Even after hearing the Christian message ‘they very often with the most unaccountable apathy … tell us they shall leave their country to us and our children’, from which he drew the extraordinary moral that they were ‘without natural affection either for their country or their families’.118 Decimation by disease was beginning to sap the Maoris’ faith in their own society and its future. A pattern of ill-health established itself in the 1830s. Influenza epidemics generally occurred twice a year, in spring and autumn. In the wet, cold spring of 1834 and in early 1835 there was much sickness and many deaths.119 Epidemics occurred again in the spring and autumn of 1837–8 and 1838–9. The last of these appears to have been a particularly severe form of ’flu affecting the head and chest and leading to a cold and intermittent fever. The Europeans generally caught it too, so it may have been an unusually virulent strain. According to one comment, ‘It seemed almost at one time as if a plague had been abroad so few either of ourselves or natives were capable of moving out & such general stillness prevailed in the stations.’120 However, the Maoris were beginning to develop resistance to influenza by the end of the decade and after the middle of 1839 the missionaries began reporting better health among them.121 The bi-annual pattern was broken. Influenza was not a major killer itself, although in the early years it was probably responsible for some deaths among children and the aged. But its debilitating effect paved the way for other sicknesses and for consumption, the most fatal illness of all for the Maoris.122 Samuel Ford, the new missionary surgeon, reported in 1837 that he had at least 800 Maoris under his care during the six-week spring epidemic that year. Besides having the ’flu, four-fifths were scrofulous and many suffered from abcesses. Nineteen patients died, fourteen of consumption or other lung infections, three from bowel disease, and none apparently from the ’flu itself. Ford was discouraged by ‘the universal extent’ of disease and the despair amongst the Maoris which accompanied it; many thought it was due to the wrath of the missionaries’ god with their sins. Ford’s figures do not accord with his statement that there were a ‘very great’ number of deaths and that the Maoris would soon become extinct. His evidence must be taken with caution as he refused to go to the mission’s southern station for which he had been engaged. He therefore had an interest in exaggerating the bad state of Maori health in the north generally, while returning good figures for the cures he effected. However, Ford’s medical reports are the only ones extant for this period by a trained medical man, and are corroborated by his missionary colleagues in the general picture they give.123 Woven into the major pattern of influenza/consumption were other diseases. Scrofula — the King’s Evil — was widespread and tended to develop into 21

Fatal Necessity

glandular swellings and consumption.124 In 1838 a new infectious epidemic, somewhat resembling ’flu, made a first appearance. It afflicted the stomach and bowels, leading to distension, difficulty in breathing and sometimes death by suffocation although it could generally be cured by emetics and purgatives. The Maoris called it ‘clover’ from the resemblance it bore to the effects on cattle of eating too much clover. Another disease Ford described as beginning with an erysipelitic inflammation, spreading to the throat, ears and eyes and generally causing death; Ashwell described these symptoms, probably wrongly, as a species of typhus which carried off many including his only child and one of the Baker children.125 Whether smallpox and cholera hit New Zealand before 1840 is doubtful, though Davis attributed his wife’s death to ‘common cholera’.126 Measles were certainly present in the South Island, but may not have reached the north before the end of the decade. And of course there were venereal diseases.127 (See appendix 2) These diseases spread rapidly over the north of New Zealand, carried by peripatetic Maoris and white traders. At Kaitaia, influenza was a regular visitor, killing those who were constitutionally weak or suffering from other ailments already. Scrofula was common. Dropsy caused at least one death. The ‘clover’ epidemic reached the Rarawa in 1838.128 In the Thames, Tauranga, and Rotorua areas Henry Williams noted a population decrease from sickness in the early 1830s, but it was in the later years that the Maoris were hit more severely. The erysipelitic disease reached Matamata and Tauranga in July and August 1838 from its starting point in the Bay in the previous autumn. The severe ’flu of late 1838 and early 1839 killed about thirty Maoris and debilitated many more at Rotorua, where there had been a steady seven months of sicknesses of one sort or another. From Tauranga Stack reported in 1841 that the previous three or four years had been characterized by much sickness.129 Overall, the missionaries believed that they were witnessing the prevalence of a greater amount of disease among the Maoris than had existed at any previous stage of their history, that it was making ‘fearful inroads’ into an already diminished population, and that it would eventually, along with war and an ‘apathetic indifference’ to their fate, wipe out the Maori race.130 For this trend they offered varying explanations. At the most simple level, the Maoris were being chastised by ‘Him whose visitations are sent in mercy’, and William Williams hoped that they would recognize this.131 His brother Henry took the opposite line; he thought that it was the devil, ‘the Great Adversary’, who was deluding them into thinking that God was chastising them.132 William Williams also believed that the alleged homosexual activities of William Yate had caused several hundred deaths.133 Visiting ships were blamed for introducing venereal diseases and fostering prostitution. The former may have had severe initial effects in the Bay of Islands and other ports of call, but in the 1830s was not a major factor in population decline, although it may have affected the fertility of some Maori women, and caused congenital defects in some children.134 Similarly, prostitution without doubt affected 22

1 The New Zealand Frontier

pre-European marriage and childbearing patterns where it was rife, but its effects were limited to a few coastal localities. However, it appears to have increased the traditional Maori practice of abortion and occasional infanticide in these places, where half-castes were not particularly welcome when fathers did not support them.* In general European sexual habits and diseases had only a marginal influence on the population of defined localities by lowering resistance or affecting reproduction rates; beyond these coastal areas their effects did not reach.135 Most missionaries and other observers realized that it was the more serious diseases — whooping cough, influenza, streptococcal infections, scrofula, dropsy, consumption and others — which had such a marked impact on Maori population, and that their rapid and fatal effects resulted not only from low bodily resistance to such introductions, but from social factors which facilitated contagion and inhibited recovery. Dirty bodies, houses, and villages; communality in eating, defecating, sleeping and social habits; travel in peace or war over long distances; some traditional Maori cures, like that of bathing in cold water to kill a fever;* the isolation, exposure, and virtual starvation of those who were apparently dying; all these factors helped spread disease or prevent recovery.136 They were harmless enough habits in a society with no serious diseases, but could be dangerous ones in the face of contagious epidemics. Other habits and traditions changed and brought new perils for Maori health. Trade and the desire for European goods brought the Maoris down from their hilltop pa to live and work in the more unhealthy flax swamps and riverain timber country where damp, insects, and poor drainage and sanitation increased susceptibility to consumption and other pulmonary ailments. Scraping flax and cutting timber required so much time that food cultivations and fishing were neglected and traditional foods gave way to the easily grown potato and maize, left to soften and rot in stagnant water before being eaten. Potatoes and pork were often reserved for trading purposes, while the Maoris ate the rotten corn supplemented with fernroot. But the pigs ate the fernroot too, while other European animal imports, generally not eaten by the Maoris, drove out edible indigenous species. In this way the more hardy pakeha dog replaced the native dog and attacked ground birds and whatever poultry there was, and the Norwegian rat exterminated the edible Maori rat and also attacked potato and corn supplies as well. For all these reasons nutritional food was in short supply for adults and children and many infants died soon after weaning, or else mothers died prematurely from breastfeeding them too long to save them from starvation.137 Aside from the demands of a new commercial economy which affected Maori eating habits and food supply, the articles of trade themselves created * *

Half-caste children were by no means always killed; see this section and Mrs. Ford, 26 July 1838, CN/041, proposing a school for the half-castes in the Bay. For one case where the cold water cure worked see Davis, 2 Feb. 1835, quoted in Coleman, Memoir, pp. 183–4.

23

Fatal Necessity

their own problems. The fatal use to which muskets and iron tools doubling as weapons could be put has already been noticed, and the increase in warfare inevitably affected the time spent in cultivating food and the survival of crops.138 European clothing and blankets seem to have had a lethal effect too. Not only did blankets become exceedingly dirty, since they were worn continuously, but because they lacked the natural waterproofing of traditional Maori cloaks they also induced chills, colds and contributed to the onset of consumption. Moreover, to acquire blankets and other articles as well as try and grow their own food, Maoris had to overwork and were generally poorly paid by European employers.139 Turner, head of the Wesleyan Mission, attributed the decline in Maori population not only to disease but to ‘a sudden transition of habits’. He recalled old chiefs saying that the Maoris were much healthier when living on fern root and fish, and wearing native clothes than nowadays when they wore blankets and ate potatoes and corn.140 Other missionaries realized that Maori depopulation was a direct result of the coming of Europeans to New Zealand. Ford thought it ‘humiliating’ that ‘almost in proportion to their intercourse with Europeans is the prevalence of disease amongst them’.141 However, Clarke was reluctant to attribute the rapid depopulation solely to introduced disease, clothing, or to dietary changes, for even among the missionaries ‘where every possible attention within reach has been paid the natives, they are still fast disappearing’, whole families being removed with ‘awful rapidity’. He was loath to admit that the missionaries were as responsible as any other group of Europeans in New Zealand for many of the factors that were decimating the Maori population and decided that the hand of God must be punishing them for former barbarities.142 It is impossible to estimate the decline in Maori population arising from disease and from changes in economic and social habits which affected health. Geographical variation probably occurred because, although diseases, plants and animals spread over the whole country, social changes induced by the requirements of trade, and the articles traded, were confined more to the coastal enclaves of the frontier and only reached the Maoris in the interior more slowly and later. In the south warfare continued during the period of contagious epidemics, but in the north the peace generally prevailing in the 1830s suggests that the decline in population there was largely attributable to disease, nutritional deficiency, inadequate clothing, poor housing and so on. Missionary estimates of the local decline at the Bay of Islands vary between a third and a half. Davis, who reported a decrease of over a third in the ten years to 1834, raised his estimate to a half in the fourteen years to 1838.143 The accuracy of such fractions is unverifiable and they may have been distorted by local migrations of Maoris to other food grounds. Nevertheless, their magnitude gives some indication of the substantial impact of European diseases on the local Maori population. Just as the acquisition of European weapons upset the existing balance of power in Maori society and created a need for missionary peacemakers, so too introduced diseases created a need for healers. This mantle also settled on the 24

1 The New Zealand Frontier

missionaries. Although the Bay of Islands was at times well-served with medical men — three on shore and as many on vessels in the harbour in 1838144 — it is doubtful whether they practised much among the Maoris and it is certain that, beyond the Bay, missionaries were the only dispensers of medicine apart from the odd traveller or pakeha-Maori. Few had any training, William Williams being the exception until Ford arrived, but most acquired some basic knowledge. Turton, a Methodist missionary, commented in 1840 that the missionaries had to pay constant attention to the subject of medicine and that ‘a great part of their existing influence amongst the natives had been derived from this source’.145 Nor were the missionaries slow to realize that sickness could be turned to God’s account through the increased readiness of sick Maoris to accept Christian teaching and be saved in soul, if not in body.146 Disease consolidated the missionaries’ growing indispensability to the Maoris by creating the role of healer and providing opportunities for sick-bed conversions. The new demands created among the Maoris for western material wealth also furthered the missionaries’ cause. As employers, storekeepers and traders in their own right their stations, as well as the secular trading establishments, were sources of wealth and were recognized as such by the Maoris. This partly explains the initial success of the missionaries in establishing themselves in New Zealand and their later expansion. Of course they were wanted for the temporal advantages they brought, for how could the Maoris desire their presence for the gospel’s sake when they were as yet largely unacquainted with it? So at least thought some of the missionaries themselves.147 And trade goods were not the only temporal advantages either. The schools and the increasing supply of printed material both reflected and fostered a desire for the skills of reading and writing. Literacy had novelty for a people whose tradition was oral, and was even regarded by some with superstitious reverence. Bibles were sometimes used as protective charms in battle or employed as personal ornaments by the illiterate and literate alike.148 By others literacy was valued for itself or thought to be the key to European material wealth and technological superiority.149 Scriptural texts were in demand partly as religious books per se, but also because they were the only available reading material in Maori. The missionaries not only filled an increasing number of indispensable roles in a changing Maori society — peacemaker, healer, trader and store-keeper, teacher — but they deliberately set out to bring about those changes that furthered their influence and that of their God. They undermined social and religious institutions such as the tapu, the power of the tohunga, the sanctity of burial grounds and other sacred places, the ceremonies accompanying all sorts of social activities, and the authorities from which these institutions and practices drew their legitimacy, stressing the inferiority of Maori and the superiority of European culture.150 They refused to allow their children to associate with Maori children, because ‘the principles imbibed from infancy by every native, are of so gross a nature …’.151 Yate mentions the deliberate breaking of a tapu by the missionar25

Fatal Necessity

ies and Baker recounts how the accidental burning of the burial ground which held the bones of a wife and daughter of Hongi could be paid for in blankets, axes, hoes, and tobacco instead of the death of those who dared to commit such a desecration of so holy a place.152 Nopera Panakareao, the great Rarawa chief, was praised by the missionaries in proportion to his adoption of European habits, and there was no regret that the clash of cultural and moral values produced four Maori suicides in eighteen months apparently because ‘the gospel has caused them to feel they are doing wrong when they steal’.153 The authority of some of the chiefs was severely sapped by missionary attacks on warfare, slavery and polygamy, and occasional encouragement of tribes to defy their chiefs, but it was sometimes replaced by new forms of prestige acquired if the missionaries chose to deal through a chief or use him as a channel for western ideas, techniques, and policies.154 The missionaries’ letters and journals abound with stories and details of how Maori cultural and religious forms were weakening, breaking down, and dying out in the face of Christianity and western civilization. The crusade to destroy, as it has been called, was part of evangelical policy towards Maori culture.155 The expansion of the Protestant missions and the ‘conversion’* of increasing numbers of Maoris to Christianity in the 1830s was partly due to an improved ability to meet the logistics of such an exercise through more personnel, finance, and general support from the parent missionary societies in Britain, combined with a much better capability in communicating with the Maoris in Maori and disseminating the scriptures through the printed word. However, to argue that these technical pre-requisites, once fulfilled, were a sufficient or sole cause of the missionary success in the 1830s156 is to ignore what was happening in Maori society and to pretend that Maori religion and culture could be subverted at will without a change in Maori attitudes. This is too simple a view of cultural change. At the least, it fails to take account of the missionaries’ own view of the case: that they needed deliberately to destroy certain elements of Maori society to improve their chances of success, that they were able to expand after 1830 because of a change in Maori attitudes towards them, and that this change resulted from the creation of new needs and demands in Maori society through the introduction of western technology, western disease, and western ideas. Some of the missionaries themselves recognized that they were appreciated as traders, teachers, healers, and peacemakers before they were appreciated as ministers of a new religion and bearers of the gospel. Success depended more on their increasing indispensability in these secular roles than it did on their work as religious proselytizers. *

The superficiality or profundity of the conversion is impossible to measure. The important point is that increasing numbers thought of themselves as ‘mihanere’ Maoris and identified themselves with Christian codes of behaviour. (Binney, N.Z.J.H. article, p. 159.)

26

1 The New Zealand Frontier

Moreover, the creation of these new roles, or at least the performance of certain key functions by the missionaries, indicates the extent to which the European invasion stimulated demands and needs in Maori society which traditional resources could not meet. Trade fostered a desire for western goods; these could only be supplied by westerners, and the missionaries were traders along with the non-missionaries. Firearms and the internecine struggles they facilitated required peacemaking machinery; the missionaries, as the only reasonably impartial observers and with good peace records, filled that need. Western diseases called for cures; the missionaries were the healers. Western secular and religious culture required a degree of literacy to understand and master it; the missionaries taught the necessary skills of reading and writing and provided the only books for those who wished to learn. Western and Christian ideas, introduced largely by the missionaries, were certainly novel and exciting in their own right and did not fail to stimulate curiosity, discussion, and evaluation by the Maoris; but acceptance of these ideas, usually with some adaptation to the Maori frame of reference, also promised benefit and conferred prestige in a way which traditional beliefs could no longer match. Undoubtedly some Maoris turned to Christianity because it appealed to them as a religion and a way of life, or because its ideas were new and intellectually exciting.157 On the other hand M. Winiata in Maori Society (pp. 44–45, 50), notes certain similarities between Maori religion and society and British Christianity which may have predisposed a conversion. For others, however, the failure of traditional Maori society to cope with disease, depopulation, and the invasion of an alien culture led to the adoption of Christianity as a last resort. William Yate records an old chief saying: ‘Believing, what will it do? it will not kill us, for the white people do not die; it will not make us ill, for the white people are not ill; it will not make us ashamed, for the white people are not ashamed; therefore let us all, all, all, believe.’158 What was necessary for an extensive Maori ‘conversion’ to Christianity was not only the appeal of the religion itself and the missionaries’ improved ability to communicate it in Maori, but also some loss of faith in the old ways and beliefs and a growing conviction that, apparently, the future lay with the new. This conviction grew on the Maori side of the frontier in the decade before annexation. Other Europeans besides the missionaries, if they were shrewd, made themselves indispensable to the Maoris. The traders were obvious examples, supplying the great demand for muskets and other articles. The timber and flax merchants were employers. The pakeha-Maoris acted as interpreters and gobetweens. Generally, only those who fulfilled no use whatsoever, convicts and seamen with no resources of character or capital, were vulnerable. As Gordon Browne remarked, Europeans had ‘no hold upon the affections of the New Zealanders’ and were safe ‘only because at present it is to their interests that we should be so’; that is, Europeans fulfilled Maori needs. If the benefits should cease, or be balanced by ‘evils’, then the westerners would suffer for past exploitation.159 27

Fatal Necessity

Violent clashes between the races had always been an occasional feature of the New Zealand frontier from the coming of Tasman and Cook to the Boyd massacre of 1809 and other equally bloody but less well-known episodes in the early nineteenth century. The booming trade in flax and timber in the 1820s and 1830s provided further occasion for misunderstanding and opportunity for deliberate exploitation. Browne considered that plundering from the Maoris or seducing other flax agents with liquor were more common than honest practices on the New Zealand coast. The kidnapping of Maoris to be sold as slaves to hostile tribes, the defrauding of Maori seamen of their wages and their abandonment at Sydney with no resources, the employment of Maori women as prostitutes there: these characterized ‘the rapacious and brutal system upon which the trade is now most commonly conducted’. The Sydney merchants were not always responsible, but their employees in the trade were often men who thought ‘a difference of complexion sufficient warrant for any cruelty they may please in their pride and superiority to exercise over their coloured brethren’. Browne, who had a high regard for Maori society, appears to have been an exception in believing that in the Maoris the European met his equal.160 Woon noted that many Europeans treated the Maoris ‘more like brutes than rational creatures…’.161 The worst of the recorded crimes committed by Europeans in New Zealand occurred in 1831 when Captain Stewart of the Elizabeth transported Te Rauparaha and his war party to Akaroa and abetted the treacherous slaughter of almost all the Ngaitahu inhabitants, the capture of the chief, Tamariharanui, with his wife and daughter, and their subsequent brutal deaths — all for the promise of a cargo of flax. So atrocious and outrageous was this deed considered by church dignatories and sections of public opinion in New South Wales that Governor Darling, who believed that ‘the character of the nation was implicated’, initiated the appointment of a British Resident to assure the Maoris and well-disposed British subjects that the Government was concerned for their mutual protection. The imperial frontier in New Zealand changed significantly between the beginning and the end of a single decade. European numbers, though small, increased very rapidly. The location of missionary and non-missionary westerners expanded from a few coastal enclaves to embrace many more of the harbours and bays and several points inland. The value of the import-export trade more than doubled. The missionaries attracted a growing number of Maoris to their churches and schools. European interests in New Zealand began the transition from superficial commercial exploitation to permanent occupation of the land. On the Maori side of the frontier warfare continued to reverberate through the society, except in the exhausted north. Contagious diseases swept most of the country. Population appears to have declined rapidly overall. The alienation of land to the European began. Social changes induced by the impact of western religion and civilization vitiated not only Maori health, but Maori value-systems and social institutions. Control of their own destiny seemed, to many European 28

1 The New Zealand Frontier

observers, to be slipping from the Maoris’ grasp and apathy or assimilation to European ways appeared to be the only avenues open to them. It has recently been argued, however, that there was a considerable degree of intellectual curiosity and willingness to innovate among many Maoris who had contact with European ways and ideas.162 Maori society was adaptive and flexible rather than rigidly traditional, and the new competitive element introduced by European contact stimulated adventurousness and willingness for change in the interests of increased personal mana or the control of economic resources. Maori participation in trade, selective adoption of western goods, and acceptance of Europeans in a variety of roles reflect this. A degree of economic and social experimentation on the part of the Maoris augured well for the future development of relations between the races, provided that it was met with a degree of toleration and perhaps encouragement from the European settlers. However, in the 1830s it was generally the population decline and social dislocation which captured the attention of the Colonial Office and pressure groups in England, each of which drew its own conclusions. The qualitative and quantitative expansion of the New Zealand frontier was to have much influence, indeed virtually determine, the nature of British policy towards New Zealand during the decade. But in 1830 all this was in the future. The seeds were only just being sown. It required the most obvious and immediate aspect of the frontier situation — the lack of law and government and the occurrence of such crimes as that committed by the captain and crew of the Elizabeth — to jolt the British Government into the first step on the road to annexation by confirming Darling’s decision to appoint a representative in New Zealand.

29

2 The British Response to the Frontier In 1830 New Zealand was an independent territory. True, it was not regarded as a member of the comity of nations, for it displayed neither of the two essential contemporary prerequisites: Christianity and ‘civilization’. Maori tribes were settled agriculturists rather than nomads, an important distinction in nineteenth-century international law,* but each tribe was a separate entity whose relations with other tribes were basically diplomatic matters of alliance or enmity, war or peace. The tribe, insofar as it could withstand conquest or encroachment, was the sovereign body and Maori society as a whole was composed of numerous such sovereignties. There was lacking any unified polity or state as the western powers conceived it. Nor was New Zealand Christian, despite the efforts of the Church Missionary Society since 1814 and the Wesleyans since 1823. The baptisms which were to increase throughout the decade were only just beginning in 1830. From a Eurocentric point of view, therefore, New Zealand was part of the ‘barbarous’ or ‘uncivilized’ world. The Colonial Office variously, and inaccurately, referred to the Maoris as ignorant, helpless, feeble, and barbarous, though by the time Hobson departed to negotiate the cession they had, curiously, become ‘numerous and inoffensive’.1 The country’s independence was viewed in negative rather than positive terms: not so much a sovereign nation in its own right, as a country not within the dominion of any European power. Britain, in particular, took this view. Despite greater involvement with New Zealand than any other power, Britain did not assert any claims to New Zealand before 1840. Captain Cook’s proclamations of sovereignty in defiance of his instructions to claim only ‘such islands … that have not hitherto been discover’d by any Europeans’, were never confirmed or followed by effective occupation, a step which had been increasingly regarded by international lawyers as giving a superior right to mere discovery.2 Barrow of the Admiralty argued, with reference to Western Australia, that the

*

The Colonial Office often referred to it. For example, Stephen, minute to Vernon Smith, 28 July 1839, C.O. 209/4:343–4; Russell to Hobson, 9 Dec. 1840, 209/8:480.

30

2 The British Response to the Frontier

‘law of nations’ dictated that ‘priority of discovery must give way to priority of occupancy’.3 The most fundamental of all British governmental attitudes to New Zealand was a reluctance to intervene there at all. This reluctance remained constant throughout the 1830s right up until the time of the annexation. Early proposals for the establishment of a convict colony at Botany Bay saw New Zealand, with its flax and timber resources, as a prospective economic satellite.4 This, though, was an additional rationalization for choosing Botany Bay rather than a positive policy towards New Zealand. Though the 1786 commission of the first Lieutenant-Governor, Captain Arthur Phillip, included islands ‘adjacent’ to the mainland in his jurisdiction, it was not intended to embrace New Zealand since the latitudinal limits of the commission cut arbitrarily through the middle of the South Island and were reduced in the time of Governor Darling to bisect the North Island. Nor was the much nearer Norfolk Island initially included in New South Wales jursidiction.5 Nevertheless, some early New South Wales’ Governors were interested in New Zealand and chose to consider it within their jurisdiction. In 1813 Governor Macquarie issued a Government Order stating that the Maoris were under British protection6 and the following year he appointed Thomas Kendall, one of the early Church Missionary Society missionaries, to be Resident Magistrate at the Bay of Islands as part of a measure to control the recruitment of Maoris as seamen on British ships and the debarkation of sailors and others at New Zealand.7 New Zealand was not exceptional in attracting the attention of the New South Wales Government: Governor King claimed Tahiti as a dependency, Bligh considered Fiji ‘within the limits of the Territory’, and Macquarie appointed magistrates at Tahiti as well as in New Zealand.8 The metropolitan government endorsed none of these legally dubious and ineffective measures.9 The first clear British definition of New Zealand’s international status occurred in the 1817 Act (57 Geo. III c.53) ‘for the more effectual punishment of murders and manslaughters committed in places not within His Majesty’s dominions’. New Zealand was specifically mentioned, along with Honduras and Tahiti. No proper commissions were issued to courts in Australia to try these offences10 until an 1823 Act (4 Geo. IV c.96, sec.3) set up supreme courts in New South Wales and Tasmania, increased the number of indictable offences, and prescribed the same penalties as would apply in similar cases in Britain. This arrangement was made permanent in 1828 (9 Geo. IV c.83 sec.4). These three statutes recognized that, as far as Britain was concerned, New Zealand was independent territory. They also admitted that Britain had a responsibility to punish crimes committed there by British subjects. Both the admission of responsibility and the repudiation of sovereignty were vitally important for the mechanics of imperial expansion into New Zealand in 1840. The one contributed to reluctant intervention, the other dictated the form that intervention would take, a negotiated cession. It had been a principle of English law since feudal days that ‘the bond which 31

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exists between a state and its subjects is not severed when the latter issue from the national territory’.11 Since that bond involved the duty of obedience to the liege lord, subjects could not escape their theoretical liability to their sovereign’s laws by going abroad. Generally, crimes committed overseas by British nationals were left to the discretion of the local sovereign. If the country was uninhabited or ‘savage’ then the doctrine of the travelling common law stated that an Englishman took with him English law as far as it was applicable.12 However, theoretical liability does not necessarily carry with it a legitimate jurisdiction and, since the English court system rests on local as opposed to personal jurisdiction, the trial of subjects for crimes committed outside the realm is contrary to the normal practice and, to some extent, to the theory of English common law.13 Thus, crimes for which British subjects abroad might be actually as well as theoretically liable were exceptional, being limited to ‘common crimes recognized by all civilized peoples’ such as treason and murder, triable in Britain if committed outside the country since Henry VIII’s day (33 Hen. VIII cap. 23). Statutes which laid down liability for such exceptional crimes were defended on the ground of the continuing allegiance owed by the subject and therefore his continuing duty to obey English law.14 The 1817 Act was one such exceptional law. It applied to those who sailed in, belonged to, or quitted a British ship and who then committed a crime, thereby raising ‘a general scandal and prejudice … against the name and character of British and other European traders …’. The 1823 and 1828 Acts were needed to give permanent jurisdiction to the New South Wales and Tasmanian courts to try offences designated in the 1817 Act.15 All three statutes embodied the general principle that British nationals could escape neither their subjecthood nor the consequences of their actions in English law by residing beyond the bounds of the Empire. If foreign jurisdiction is defined as ‘the civil & criminal jurisdiction which the Queen has power to exercise over British subjects in certain foreign countries, by treaty, usage or sufferance’,16 these statutes were not, strictly speaking, foreign jurisdiction acts. No local jurisdiction in New Zealand was claimed or obtained; that of the Australian courts was merely extended to cover British subjects there. Indeed, the lack of a lawfully constituted magisterial jurisdiction was to render the appointment of a British Resident in New Zealand completely ineffective. But in the 1820s and 1830s the Crown’s powers of foreign jurisdiction were thought to depend upon the consent of the sovereign in whose territory they were to be exercised.17 Thus, an attempt in 1832 to give the Governor of New South Wales power to legislate for the prevention of crimes committed in New Zealand failed because it was thought that Parliament could not legislate for foreign territories in this way.18 The Cape of Good Hope Punishment Act of 1836 appeared to contradict this belief. But although the Act allowed the appointment of magistrates with powers over the voortrekkers north of the Cape Colony, and although no assent 32

2 The British Response to the Frontier

was sought or gained from the Zulus, the Punishment Act did not in fact legislate for a foreign territory. It was essentially similar to the Acts concerning New Zealand, for it did not claim a local jurisdiction over British subjects but merely gave already constituted courts within the Empire the power to try crimes committed outside it.19 It was not until the Pacific Islanders Protection Act of 1875 that Britain first claimed a local jurisdiction of the sort which Busby had wanted in New Zealand in the 1830s without basing it on an agreement with the local sovereign.20 By that time New Zealand had long since ceased to be a problem of ‘foreign’ jurisdiction. If the subject had duties when abroad, so did he have rights. James Stephen once wrote: ‘British subjects, so long as they retain that character, have an indisputable right to the protection of their sovereign; and, at whatever cost, that protection must be afforded them’.21 Obviously this was an extremely theoretical formulation which could be interpreted to suit political circumstances. In 1839 Stephen himself denied that some British subjects living in the Cocos Islands had a right to protection because they did not form ‘a recognised British settlement’ and were not within the jurisdiction of any British court.22 But this argument could not be applied to New Zealand after 1817 and 1823. Therefore the corollary pertained, that the British Government owed its subjects there protection. The Colonial Office recognized this. During the 1830s they drew a distinction between the criminal element in New Zealand and the ‘well-disposed’ settlers. However much Stephen might regret the presence of any British subjects in New Zealand,23 both he and contemporary opinion maintained that, provided they were law-abiding, they had every right to be there. Evacuation was never considered practicable or desirable.24 Such a step would have undermined the whole free enterprise ethic which permitted British subjects to trade and settle where they would in the interests of the British economy and world power, and which underlay the Victorian age of prosperity and progress. The traders and settlers in New Zealand understood this well and more than once during the 1830s requested the protection and security for their commercial endeavours which they considered their due. Gilbert Mair wrote into the title deed for his land at Te Wahapu that he acknowledged William IV as his sovereign and that therefore he had ‘the right to call upon the said King William … to protect the said Gilbert Mair with all his power and might in the possession of the said lands …’ against allcomers, whether British or Maori.25 From the beginning of the 1830s and throughout the decade, the Colonial Office almost invariably coupled the Crown’s duty to hold its criminal subjects responsible for the deeds they committed in New Zealand with the Crown’s other duty, to protect its law-abiding subjects in their legitimate endeavours. This meant, in effect, that the Maoris had the right to be protected from British criminals, and that well-disposed British subjects had the right to be protected from the Maoris. Both Maoris and settlers deserved protection. The dual emphasis is of immense importance in understanding the annexation of New Zealand. 33

Fatal Necessity

It suggests, first of all, that the purely legal connexion between British subjects and the British Crown, involving mutual obligations of obedience and protection, was the predisposing factor for British intervention in New Zealand, aside from any other considerations. The mere residence of British subjects in New Zealand entailed upon the Crown duties which, if admitted, made some governmental interference there inevitable. This of course leaves open the question of why successive British Governments actually decided to try and carry out the Crown’s obligations to its subjects on the frontier. To assume that they did so purely because those duties existed would be to reduce all other motives to mere rationalizations. The fact that Britain was predisposed to intervene in New Zealand because of a continuing legal relationship with British subjects who established themselves there does not necessarily lessen the importance of other motives — economic, political, humanitarian, or whatever — for that intervention. But it does suggest, prima facie, that those motives were at least partly selfinterested. British interference in New Zealand cannot be attributed solely or even predominantly to a humanitarian concern for the Maoris, if the protection of emigrant British subjects was placed on a par with that of the indigenous inhabitants and if the British Government was fulfilling a duty to its own nationals, as well as admitting a duty to the people among whom they settled. One strand in British attitudes towards New Zealand in the first thirty years of the nineteenth century emphasized that country’s independence of any European power in negative terms, but admitted the continuing obligations of obedience and protection between British subjects in New Zealand and the Crown. Intertwined with this thread, however, there was another, more positive, attitude: the recognition that the Maoris were the legitimate sovereigns of New Zealand and that they had a right to be protected from the worst consequences of the invasion of their country by white men. The idea that non-Christian ‘native’ peoples were owners and perhaps even sovereigns of the soil on which they lived had been a matter of debate among legal theorists in the preceding centuries. In the Middle Ages non-Christian peoples were generally thought not to have sovereign rights. From the sixteenth century onwards a number of publicists of varying European nationalities began to argue that ‘backward’ peoples who were held together by some political organization, however crude, did have a title to their territory which was good against civilized nations; such a title could only be abrogated by conquest and the question was reduced to that of whether the conquest was just or not. Others, such as Vattel in 1758, admitted a restricted or conditional sovereignty only over land that was cultivated; this was the view that generally prevailed among English colonizers. In the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries others, such as Westlake in England, denied any sovereignty to ‘native’ peoples unless they fulfilled certain conditions of ‘civilization’. However, the general preponderance 34

2 The British Response to the Frontier

of juristic opinion before 1840 favoured the view that the land of ‘backward’ peoples who were in some way politically organized — that is, belonged to a society with certain recognized standards and relationships between its members — was not territorius nullius or uninhabited land. Nor was it necessary, apparently, that in order to possess sovereign powers the possessor must understand the nature of sovereignty as a political concept. Increasingly, international law recognized in theory the sovereignty which governments began to accord ‘backward’ peoples in practice.26 Reinforcing the opinion of many jurists were concepts of trusteeship and humanitarianism which gathered adherents in the late eighteenth century and became a powerful political ideology in the first half of the nineteenth. From Burke’s celebrated axiom of 1783, that every species of political dominance and commercial privilege was in the strictest sense a trust, and it was an essential characteristic of every trust that it should be rendered accountable, there is an intellectual connexion to the Colonial Office’s recognition that the Maoris possessed rights which should be respected. Mellor has described the eighteenth century as an ‘age of partial release’, from mercantilism and monopoly towards the laissez faire and free trade ideas of Adam Smith; from despotism towards the concept of a more responsible government adumbrated by Thomas Paine, the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of Rights; from the strictures of literary classicism to the unfettered romanticism of Blake, Coleridge, and Wordsworth; from intellectual theology to the missionary evangelism of Wesley; from Hobbes’s state of nature, to Locke’s natural rights, and Rousseau’s ideas of the sovereignty of the people and the noble savage. From this ‘seedplot of charity’, as Mellor has called it, grew the evangelical campaign against slavery which in turn provided a training ground in inspiration and technique for other humanitarian programmes; the new household god of the middle class liberal was Responsibility.27 Vague and diffuse though the origins of humanitarianism may be, it can scarcely be denied that a movement which produced in one decade the emancipation of the slaves, the abolition of apprenticeship, and the House of Commons Aborigines Report, had some influence on the annexation of New Zealand in 1840. The problem is to measure the extent of that influence. In the antipodes it was manifested in small, specific ways. The attempts of Governors King and Macquarie to control certain abuses which crept into the maritime trade with New Zealand were an example of humanitarian concern.28 In 1814 a public meeting in Sydney petitioned Macquarie to allow a New South Wales company exclusive trade in New Zealand timber and flax. Secretary of State Earl Bathurst refused the monopoly and permitted the erection of factories there only if Maori consent was obtained;29 the inclusion of this proviso was significant. The 1817 Act itself resulted not just from a desire to control those who were bringing ‘a general scandal and prejudice’ against the national honour, but also from Church Missionary Society representations on the numerous outrages 35

Fatal Necessity

committed against the Maoris by trading captains and the impossibility of convicting the perpetrators and preventing ‘similar enormities’.30 Concern for the Maoris and concern for the national honour could be served by the same measure. By 1831 when Darling, shocked at the then fashionable trade in preserved Maori heads and the recent Elizabeth affair, decided to appoint a British Resident to uphold authority on the New Zealand frontier, it is clear that among other attitudes there was a considerable element of humanitarian concern for the Maoris in the minds of some officials in the New South Wales Government and the Colonial Office. These officials recognized that the Maoris were not just barbarians beyond the pale, but a sovereign people with legitimate rights, deserving of protection from the excesses of British subjects who settled in their country. Since those British subjects also had the right to settle there, the Colonial Office was forced in the short space of eight years to the paradoxical conclusion that if Maori rights were to be preserved, Maori sovereignty would have to be taken away. There were, however, differences of approach between humanitarians. Evangelical humanitarianism, chiefly represented by the missionaries in the field, the missionary societies in Britain, and Secretary of State Lord Glenelg at the time of his resignation in 1839, was totally opposed to the European colonization of New Zealand. Others, who were just as concerned for the Maoris, nevertheless approved the introduction of settlers provided it was controlled. Some of the missionaries began with this opinion, but hardened into total opposition to organized colonization when they heard of the New Zealand Association scheme. In the Government, men like Stephen, Howick, Normanby, and Russell favoured British emigration to New Zealand provided it was sufficiently controlled so as to safeguard both Maoris and emigrants. However, the difference between these attitudes was of little practical importance at the end of the 1830s because both haphazard and organized colonization were in progress; by 1839 humanitarian concern for the Maoris, whether opposed to colonization or not, had become an argument for official imperial expansion into New Zealand. As a substitute for lost independence the Maoris were offered protection from settler encroachment on their rights under an impartial British administration. This humanitarian concern for the Maoris was balanced by the recognition that it was the Crown’s duty to protect British subjects as well; the corollary of full protection for the Maoris from the settlers was full protection of the settlers from the Maoris. Humanitarians, both in the Colonial Office and the missions, accepted the corollary. Yet because of their sympathies they sometimes tended to emphasize that Britain should intervene in New Zealand first and foremost to protect the Maoris and that British law and government should be established mainly to safeguard them. To the humanitarians this emphasis was not inconsistent with the idea of impartial government because in their opinion the Maoris were the exploited party and in greater need of protection from the settlers than the reverse. The national duty of protecting British settlers and their assets required less emphasis simply because the settlers did not appear to be so threatened. But, in fact, 36

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British intervention was intended to protect British subjects just as much as the Maoris if the need arose. The humanitarian motive was only half the story, but it was the half which Captain Hobson was instructed to emphasize and explain most carefully to the Maoris when he negotiated the cession of sovereignty in 1840. The dual duty of protecting both British subjects and Maoris was the dominating concept in Colonial Office thinking about New Zealand in the 1820s and 1830s. On the one hand, the 1817 Act implied that no encouragement would be given to schemes for colonizing New Zealand31 and that some attempt would be made to control British settlers already there. On the other, trade with New Zealand and the commercial exploitation of its natural resources was legitimate, beneficial to Britain, and should be allowed free rein. For example, the Lords Committee of the Privy Council for Trade and Plantations agreed with Earl Bathurst, after examining a memorial from fifteen firms with interests in the south Pacific, that ‘every possible protection should be afforded to His Majesty’s subjects’ who were capitalizing on New Zealand’s resources. A warship and a small detachment of marines should be sent out for this purpose.32 Though the Admiralty obliged only to the extent of ordering the commander of the East India station to send a ship to New Zealand occasionally and ignored the suggestion about marines,33 the Privy Council Committee’s recommendation illustrates the temptation to ignore Maori sovereignty in the interests of trade. On the other hand, it was extremely difficult to control British subjects involved in such a trade or in less legitimate pursuits. When H.M.S. Satellite visited Tahiti in 1829, the most the captain could do to meet complaints of the local people about the conduct of some resident British nationals was to leave copies of the Acts 46 and 57 Geo. III and explain that if the wrong-doers were reported to the British Government they would be punished on their return to Britain.34 Leaving copies of the 1817 statute lying around the Pacific proved insufficient to control British subjects. The practical difficulties of catching offenders, procuring witnesses or getting jury convictions on written evidence alone, and paying for these procedures, were formidable and demanded more far-reaching measures. The basic problem was that there was no recognized authority either in New Zealand or elsewhere in the south Pacific to undertake these tasks. The Colonial Office turned to the Admiralty again in the early 1830s, both for the protection of ‘the very considerable and rapidly increasing trade between New South Wales and New Zealand’, and in the hope that a warship stationed permanently on the New Zealand coast would help provide such an authority.35 The Admiralty, short of ships on the East Indian station and doubtless unimpressed with the importance of New Zealand, argued that much of the trade there was in American hands and that it had no power to instruct its captains to interfere on shore in a foreign territory with which Britain had no treaty of commerce or alliance. The most that could be provided was protection for British subjects on 37

Fatal Necessity

board ship; nothing could be done to control them on shore.36 In 1831 Governor Bourke of New South Wales remarked upon the futility of brief annual visits to New Zealand by British cruisers37 and throughout the decade such calls served only to show the flag and provide fleeting moral support for British subjects there. The Royal Navy did little to help solve the frontier problem in New Zealand. The main obstacle to setting up an authority in New Zealand was that Britain defined it as a place ‘not within His Majesty’s dominions’. This negative tone became increasingly modified during the 1830s by the more positive recognition from those with humanitarian sympathies that New Zealand was not merely ‘not European’; it was in fact Maori. Within the Colonial Office at the beginning of the decade there were, therefore, both negative and positive rationalizations for non-involvement. Robert Hay, Permanent Head of the Colonial Office, emphasized domestic, political reasons: lack of troops, ships, money, and an already over-large Empire.38 James Stephen, his successor, put forward legal, humanitarian, and diplomatic reasons for non-intervention: New Zealand was a foreign country and the King could not invest anyone with civil or military authority there, troops would be used against ‘the owners & sovereigns of the soil’, foreign powers would object to such an extension of British power in the Pacific.39 Lord Goderich turned down a proposal for a flax factory in New Zealand because it was ‘contrary to all principle and propriety’ to encourage a speculative commercial venture in a country that did not belong to the Crown,40 surely an uncharacteristically self-effacing doctrine when the general history of British imperial expansion is considered. While Hay was content to leave New Zealand alone for expediency’s sake, with the implied rider that when it was in Britain’s interests intervention would follow, Stephen and Goderich seemed to respect the inherent right of the Maoris to their own country. But whatever the differences in their attitudes, it was recognized by all that any partial step would inevitably lead to further involvement, expense, and ‘the assumption of a permanent dominion’.41 It was left to a man much closer to the New Zealand frontier and its problems to take that partial step. In New South Wales Governor Darling approved of the establishment of successful commercial ventures across the Tasman and considered that ‘in a political point of view’ others should be encouraged because they would help to civilize the Maoris, a friendly understanding with whom might be useful in the future.42 Yet it was not the possible commercial and political dividends which provoked him to initiate British intervention in New Zealand, but the particularly nasty Elizabeth affair which revealed the palpable inadequacy of parliamentary statutes and visiting warships as measures of frontier control. Darling decided that the appointment of a British Resident was urgently necessary.43 His first candidate for the job, Captain Barker, was killed by Aborigines and Captain Sturt had not been confirmed in his stead when Darling himself was recalled and matters left for Colonial Office decision.44 In the first instance, then, a specific atrocity on the uncontrolled imperial 38

2 The British Response to the Frontier

frontier provoked official British intervention in New Zealand. Darling’s fundamental concern was with the lack of law and order and the dual duty of protecting the Maoris from European outrages and the Europeans from Maori retaliation. However, the commercial and political benefits which Darling envisaged served to strengthen his case for the appointment of a Resident. These priorities — legal, commercial, and vaguely political — reflect more or less accurately the concerns of pressure groups and public opinions in New South Wales which were urging him to intervene in New Zealand. Samuel Marsden had long been aware of the anarchy on the New Zealand frontier.45 During 1830–1 he urged Darling to send a vessel or a Resident there, and provided information for the Church Missionary Society in England to use in exerting similar pressure on the Colonial Office.46 Merchants such as Thomas Raine, Gordon Browne, Thomas McDonnell, John Maclaren, Henry Donnison, and Richard Jones all pleaded the importance of the New Zealand trade,47 and apparently Darling and his successor, Governor Richard Bourke, were the recipients of a good many other official and unofficial representations from commercial interests than those for which there are full records.48 Some authority on the New Zealand frontier could only benefit legitimate and honest trading firms. In addition there were merchants, churchmen, and others who believed New Zealand to have a possible strategic and political importance for the eastern Australian colonies and who feared foreign (usually French), interference. New South Wales newspapers voiced such fears and were generally critical of what they considered to be New Zealand’s anomalous status. When Darling forbade the curio trade in preserved Maori heads, the Sydney Herald opined that New Zealand was ‘neither a colony nor a dependency of the Crown, but is considered, with very little propriety, as a sovereign and independent state’.49 Pressures in New South Wales were duplicated in Britain by the small number of individuals and groups interested in the problem. Dandeson Coates, Lay Secretary of the Church Missionary Society, referred information he received from Marsden and the missionaries in New Zealand to the Colonial Office and urged that something be done about the Elizabeth affair.50 Various merchants, manufacturers, and shipowners interested in the New Zealand trade made representations to the Colonial Office, one group suggesting that a Resident be financed from a tonnage duty on trading vessels and recommending its own candidate for the job.51 Individuals applied for positions which they hoped would be created in New Zealand.52 Finally, there were the direct channels of communication from New South Wales to the Colonial Office: Darling sent home information on the New Zealand situation given him by Marsden, Henry Williams, and Yate, as well as the representations made to him by merchants on the value of the trans-Tasman trade, while there were individuals in New South Wales who wrote directly to the Colonial Office to point out the importance of New Zealand and suggest solutions to the frontier problem there.53 39

Fatal Necessity

The Colonial Office, as usual, listened with most attention to its representative ‘on the spot’. Darling argued that the Elizabeth affair was ‘a case in which the character of the [British] nation was implicated’ and that a Resident must be appointed ‘to assure the Maoris of the desire of His Majesty’s Government to afford them protection and to tranquillize the minds of the settlers’ who feared reprisals.54 Goderich replied in kind: ‘There can be no more sacred duty than that of using every possible method to rescue the natives of those extensive islands from further evils which impend over them, and to deliver our own country from the disgrace and crime of having either occasioned or tolerated such enormities.’55 Apart from the crimes of Europeans, he referred specifically to the rapid depopulation reported by Henry Williams. The Treasury, too, showed considerable concern over the Elizabeth affair.56 Goderich, therefore, approved Darling’s decision to appoint a Resident and, in writing to certain Maori chiefs shortly afterwards, he promised them that if they supported the appointee they would receive ‘friendship and alliance with Great Britain’.57 Such a promise was no more than a vague expression of goodwill, but combined with the actual appointment of a Resident, it indicated a further step towards a more positive interpretation of New Zealand’s independent status and Maori rights. Davidson in his thesis,58 regards the letter to the chiefs as marking ‘not the abandonment of earlier claims but the birth of a positive attitude towards relations with the country’. From the definition of New Zealand as merely a place that did not belong to any European power, attitudes had changed to the extent that the Maori chiefs were to be dealt with on the basis of diplomatic equality. If, in terms of the realities of international power politics such diplomatic recognition was no more than a pretence, nevertheless a profession of principle had been made and future practice might be required to live up to it. The appointment of a Resident was by no means due solely to a more positive attitude towards the duty of protecting the Maoris from the crimes of British subjects living in their country. Another equally ‘sacred duty’ was the protection of British interests, notably trade. Goderich’s high-flown humanitarian declarations were tempered by a consideration for the market-place: he hoped that there would be no further disturbance of New Zealand’s internal tranquillity ‘so necessary to the maintenance of a close commercial intercourse between its inhabitants and those of Great Britain’.59 Darling had always maintained that a government establishment was as desirable on commercial as on humanitarian grounds but feared that the recent atrocities would stop trade.60 Bourke instructed James Busby, appointed to the position of Resident, that the Elizabeth affair had shown that it was ‘no less a sacred duty, than a measure of necessary policy’ to rescue the Maoris and to protect the well-disposed British subjects from the consequences of such outrages. It was sacred because it salved the humanitarian conscience; it was politic because Maori goodwill, understanding, and confidence were ‘important to the interests of Great Britain and of this colony’.61 40

2 The British Response to the Frontier

Thus, all interests appeared to be served by the appointment of a Resident: those of the missionaries and humanitarians, of the merchants, of the New South Wales and British Governments and, it was thought, those of the Maoris. All concerned could draw their own comfort, whether they sympathized most with the Maoris or were predominantly interested in commerce, for all were agreed that law and order must be established on the New Zealand frontier. The appointment was neither predominantly altruistic and humanitarian, nor predominantly selfinterested and exploitative, but a combination of both. James Busby arrived in England from New South Wales and applied for the job of Resident in New Zealand at almost the same time as the Colonial Office received news of Darling’s decision to appoint such an officer.62 He possessed some useful credentials for getting a government post in early Victorian times: a patron in Lord Haddington, a claim upon the Government from having held two civil service posts in New South Wales without security of tenure, and a father in the employ of the New South Wales Government.63 Darling considered Busby to have been ‘a zealous and useful servant of the Government’64 — he had been Collector of Internal Revenue and a member of the Land Board — and Busby impressed the Colonial Office with papers on the jury system, the treatment of convicts, the disposal of Crown lands, and New Zealand.65 Hay thought him a clever man, and the Colonial Office was prepared from the start to give him employment or compensation.66 After the arrival in February 1832 of Darling’s announcement that he had held over the Resident appointment for his successor, and the Colonial Office’s decision to select a civilian rather than an army officer, Busby was offered and accepted the position.67 Neither in looking for the most suitable candidate for such a difficult pioneering task, nor in the manner of his appointment, did the Colonial Office show much care. Consequently, the Resident appointment was compromised from the beginning. Part of the reason was Busby’s own personality. A small-minded man when it came to his own prestige and the trappings of his newly acquired position, he alienated the Colonial Office and Bourke by quarrelling over the date from which his full salary should be paid, over the size and lavishness of his house, and by harping on the sacrifices he had already made in the public service. After his arrival back in Sydney in October 1832 his relations with Bourke deteriorated to the extent that he appealed over Bourke’s head directly to the Colonial Office, virtually accusing him of misinterpreting the intentions of the Secretary of State for Colonies. The Colonial Office gave him short shrift; he had ‘no business’ corresponding with them.68 Bourke was undoubtedly prejudiced against Busby because of his father, whom Bourke disliked, and because Busby had been appointed without any consultation with the New South Wales Government who were to pay his salary.69 But Busby did his cause no good by his pedantry and pomposity and seems to have successfully confirmed Bourke’s prejudice for the duration of that Governor’s term. 41

Fatal Necessity

However, there were more substantial reasons why Busby’s position was vitiated from the beginning than those arising from the Resident’s personality defects. Darling had planned to support his Resident with a warship stationed permanently at New Zealand, but the Admiralty refused to provide one. Darling’s original selection of a military officer as Resident also implied that some troops would be sent as well and the Colonial Office, although having rejected such an idea in 1829 and 1830, did apply to the Commander-in-Chief to increase the regiment in New South Wales so that a small force could be provided for New Zealand.70 But Somerset argued that there were no more troops available for Australia and that sending a detachment to New Zealand would deplete the present complement, as well as being very expensive because of the need to provide barracks and a fort. He touched a Colonial Office sore point when he suggested that a Resident and troops in New Zealand would amount to ‘a new colony, for the protection of which a military force would be permanently required’.71 The last thing the civil servants wished to do was to acquire a new possession overseas, particularly if it were to cost a lot of money. Consequently Bourke was told that it was too expensive and also impolitic to support the Resident with troops, ‘at any rate, until they can be more easily spared from other duties, and until the feelings of the New Zealand chiefs, in regard to their appearance amongst them, can be correctly ascertained’.72 Bourke also refused Busby the help of a few constables on the ground that they would cost an additional £80 a year each.73 However, any supporting force — naval, military, or civil — would have been useless without the sanction of some judicial authority behind it, and judicial power was precisely what Busby lacked. The statutes of 1817, 1823, and 1828 had failed to improve the frontier situation because there was no authority in New Zealand capable of compelling criminals and witnesses to attend courts in Australia. Busby was appointed to provide this authority, but the Colonial Office’s Bill to give Busby judicial power under the New South Wales Government was thrown out of Parliament because New Zealand was a foreign country for which Britain could not legislate. According to the New South Wales Chief Justice it was not even possible to issue warrants in the colony for the arrest of offenders in New Zealand.74 Legally, therefore, the position relating to the control of British subjects in New Zealand remained exactly the same as before Busby’s appointment. Governor Bourke had no alternative but to instruct Busby to rely on the moral influence which he might gain among the Maoris through his personality and through co-operation with the missionaries. He was to try and prevent crimes by members of either race, to act as a peacemaker in Maori wars if possible, to persuade Maoris to live near him and provide a guard for his family and property, to encourage trade, and to keep in mind the objective of inducing the Maoris to adopt a settled political and legal system — all this through the force of his own personality.75 It is a measure of Busby’s naïve optimism that he was quite pleased with these instructions, as far as they went, because they gave him ‘a large dis42

2 The British Response to the Frontier

cretion’.76 In fact, Britain had succeeded only in sending a powerless imperial representative to the New Zealand frontier. Nevertheless, the representative had a consciously imperialist conception of his role. Busby certainly believed that law and order would benefit both races, but that any advantages the Maoris would gain from his presence would be incidental to his main task which was to serve British interests. Britain should take the opportunity of civilizing the Maoris, but only because it was created by ‘circumstances upon which it has become necessary to act from considerations of a more interested character’.77 Busby was to write later that his chief aim in New Zealand had been to ‘open a way for acquisition and settlement’ by Britain,78 and his despatches during the 1830s bear out this self-confessed expansionism. James Busby finally arrived at the Bay of Islands on 5 May 1833, a little over two years after Darling’s initial decision to appoint a Resident. The normal communications lag between the antipodes and Britain, Darling’s recall, and seven months in Sydney waiting for the Resident’s prefabricated house to be completed and Parliament to provide him with power had all contributed to the delay. The following year Thomas McDonnell was appointed Additional British Resident without salary but, after many quarrels with Busby, he was forced to resign because of his ‘sanguine and hasty temperament’.79 Busby made a quick start. He held a meeting on 17 May at which he read William IV’s letter to the chiefs, several of whom pointed out that he should have brought some soldiers for protection.80 He agreed to settle at Waitangi, but was unable to recruit a Maori guard. The missionaries seemed pleased with him,81 and Busby himself was optimistic and expected to establish through the Maoris an influence giving him ‘almost entire authority over the northern part of the island’.82 The reality was to be rather different. Sent chiefly as an arbiter of frontier disputes and a peacemaker, Busby found both tasks beyond his powers within a year of his arrival. Bourke approved his first mediation in a land dispute between Mair and Poyner, but a debt case between Poyner and Clendon was beyond Busby’s ‘jurisdiction’ and need not have been referred to the New South Wales authorities.83 Bourke severely criticized Busby’s pursuit of some Maoris who had robbed Polack’s house, because he had been forced to retreat ignominiously in the face of Maori rifle fire.84 Not long afterwards Busby jumped to the wrong conclusion in threatening Pomare’s pa with the guns of the visiting H.M.S. Alligator because a boat had been stolen from some European traders; the subsequent investigation proved Pomare to have been in the right.85 Early in 1836, Bourke thought Powditch’s complaint at the lack of an effective authority in New Zealand for resolving disputes quite unremarkable.86 Busby’s failure as a mediator resulted partly from Bourke’s lack of support, partly from his own rashness and partiality, but mostly because he lacked legitimate authority and the means to enforce it. To threaten the use of force without the sure knowledge that the threat could be carried out was not only idle, but an 43

Fatal Necessity

admission that his character alone could not gain respect. Moreover, to threaten force was to invite, and perhaps excuse, the use of force in return. Indeed, Busby’s storeroom was raided and he himself nearly shot by some Maoris in April 1834.87 The New South Wales Government did not share his view that it was ‘the crisis of British affairs at this place’, and the leading culprit was mildly punished by his fellow chiefs. Some of the traders in the Bay suggested that Busby was not able to look after his own affairs let alone theirs, and petitioned the British Government for more protection.88 Busby was forced to do the same when, in January 1836, shooting broke out in front of the Residency between two groups of local Maoris who had come to Busby for arbitration in a dispute over land and timber rights. With his hopes of a role as mediator finally and irrevocably destroyed before his eyes and with the New South Wales Government’s refusal to intervene in a wholly Maori affair, Busby decided that to all intents and purposes his office was ‘in abeyance’.89 Busby had also been sent to encourage trade as well as to protect the traders, and to promote ‘civilization’ among the Maoris as well as to mediate between them. He hoped that the adoption of a national flag would serve both ends by allowing the proper registration of ships built in New Zealand — which it did — and by inducing the chiefs to act in a collective capacity and so qualify for further diplomatic and governmental transactions — which it failed to do.90 However, Britain’s approval of the flag was another positive, if somewhat unrealistic, recognition of New Zealand’s sovereign and independent status.91 This status was further reinforced in 1835. Provoked by the news that a Frenchman, Baron de Thierry, was coming as self-proclaimed Independent Sovereign of New Zealand, Busby persuaded thirty-four northern chiefs to approve a declaration of independence asking William IV to be ‘the parent of their infant state, and its protector from all attempts upon its independence’. The signatories formed themselves into a body called the United Tribes of New Zealand which was to meet in annual congress and legislate in the interests of justice, peace, and commerce; southern tribes were invited to join.92 The Colonial Office approved the Declaration as such, and again promised the chiefs British support and protection as long as it was consistent with the just rights of others and the interests of His Majesty’s subjects.93 This approval was in line with previous positive recognitions of New Zealand’s independence by Britain and involved no new departure;* New Zealand chiefs, in this case a particular group of them, were to be treated as diplomatic equals. But the protection promised was significantly qualified: the dual duty was again made explicit, but the protection of the Maoris *

For a different view see I. Wards, The Shadow of the Land, p. 14. The Colonial Office never subsequently considered that New Zealand’s sovereignty resided specifically in the United Tribes, nor were they even mentioned in the instructions to Hobson about procuring a cession of that sovereignty. See also McLintock, Crown Colony, p. 25.

44

2 The British Response to the Frontier

was now made conditional upon the protection of British subjects. The Congress of the United Tribes never met and the superficiality of Busby’s creation was soon exposed when, after the fracas in front of Busby’s house, he admitted that to call the chiefs together for further mediation would precipitate ‘a general war’.94 Most of Busby’s other proposals for improving the frontier, such as a system of passports and the deportation of unwanted Europeans, or a pilot for the Hokianga River, did not even achieve the degree of superficial success granted the Declaration of Independence. Bourke rejected them outright.95 Perhaps the clearest evidence that the Resident appointment was a failure occurred when, eighteen months after Busby’s arrival, the New South Wales Government authorized what amounted to an act of war against New Zealand sovereignty by sending H.M.S. Alligator to rescue the remainder of the crew of the barque Harriet, wrecked at Cape Egmont and held to ransom by the local Maoris.96 No effort was made to hear the Maori side of the case, nor were Busby or the missionaries consulted or used as intermediaries. Captain Lambert of the Alligator refused to pay the keg of gunpowder promised by John Guard as ransom for his wife and children. He bombarded three pa, burnt several canoes, and killed a number of Maoris in a vicious exercise of gunboat diplomacy. These actions were subsequently approved by the Colonial Office despite obvious irregularities and a quite excessive use of force.97 The expedition made mockery of the notion that the Maoris were to be treated as diplomatic equals and exposed the differential in value accorded Maori and European lives. The captain and crew of the Elizabeth, accessories before the fact to the slaughter of the Ngaitahu at Akaroa, went scot-free because of legal quibbles. The Taranaki Maoris, involved in a dispute with the crew of the Harriet in which some of the Europeans were killed and some detained, were savagely punished without an investigation and without regard, therefore, for justice or morality. It seemed that in fulfilling her self-appointed dual duty of safeguarding the interests of both Maoris and British subjects in New Zealand, Britain tolerated half measures for the protection of the Maoris but took drastic action on behalf of her own nationals. Finally, the Alligator expedition demonstrated the inadequacy of the Resident appointment. Both in authorizing and reporting the expedition, the New South Wales Government recommended Busby’s withdrawal unless he was supported by a warship permanently stationed on the coast or provided with judicial authority. Bourke noted that Busby was disregarded by Europeans and Maoris alike and that his appointment had so far proved ‘ineffectual’.98 The Colonial Office agreed that Busby had failed, but could not make up its mind whether this was due mainly to the man or to the weakness of his position.99 The Secretary of State, Lord Glenelg, gave Bourke permission to replace Busby if he thought it would help, but decided to persist with the role of Resident because the initial and predominant reason for it still remained: the need for some authority in New Zealand to protect both the peaceable traders and the valuable trade 45

Fatal Necessity

with New South Wales from the Maoris, and the Maoris from lawless and violent Europeans. He could not provide troops or a warship because of policy considerations and expense, so Glenelg authorized an additional £300 for the employment of Maori retainers, despite Busby’s inability to recruit any so far, and decided to appeal again to Parliament for extra-territorial jurisdiction in New Zealand and wherever British subjects were brought into contact with aboriginal peoples.100 Two years later a clerk in the Colonial Office, Gordon Gairdner, minuted that he could see no prospect of improvement in the state of affairs in New Zealand until Glenelg’s long-promised Bill was introduced and passed by Parliament.101 Such a Bill had been drafted in 1836,102 but it does not seem to have been laid before Parliament. There is no apparent reason why Busby could not have been given magisterial authority at least, for the 1836 Cape of Good Hope Punishment Act allowed the appointment of magistrates north of the Cape Colony.* Perhaps formal recognition of Maori sovereignty was regarded as a barrier as it had been in 1832, but the relative unimportance of the New Zealand frontier in 1836 and Glenelg’s slow and indecisive administration of the Colonial Office also militated against an antipodean punishment Act. Whether Busby would have succeeded in pacifying the New Zealand frontier had he possessed judicial authority and real force to back it is a moot point. Captain Allen Gardiner in Natal was given a magisterial commission under the Cape Punishment Act in 1837, a commission similar to that which Busby was to have had, and was expected to conduct a court and maintain order. Without force, funds, or staff Gardiner found it an impossible task, particularly as only British subjects came under his jurisdiction and he could not punish Africans. When the Natal whites repudiated his treaty of ‘protection’ with Dingaan, Gardiner gave up and left Natal early in 1838.103 If Gardiner had legal authority but no money or troops, George McLean on the Gold Coast had money, £3,500 to £4,000† a year, and local troops, but no legal authority to support his efforts to promote peace and trade during the 1830s.104 McLean was undoubtedly one of the most successful British ‘frontiersmen’ during the nineteenth century, but to what extent this was due to his superior resources or to his forceful and inventive personality it is difficult to say. Perhaps a man of McLean’s stamp would have made something of Busby’s powerless position, for one contemporary described Busby as lacking ‘devil enough for the situation. It requires a man of some nous’.105 Another criticized him for not getting out among people more, both European and Maori.106

*

†

Indeed, it is possible that the Cape Act grew directly out of Glenelg’s desire to pass such a measure for New Zealand, as the C.M.S. sent a deputation to Glenelg to ask him to put Natal on the same footing as the South Seas in the proposed Bill for extra-territorial control. In the Cape Act, of course, Natal was included but New Zealand and the Pacific left out (Minutes, 10 May 1836, C.M.S. G/C1 v. 15, p. 168). For the annual expenditure on the New Zealand Resident see McLintock, Crown Colony, p. 20, n. 3. It varied between £500 and £1,000.

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2 The British Response to the Frontier

On the other hand perhaps Gordon Gairdner was right when he suggested that ‘it would be impossible under present circumstances for any officer to act with success in that position’.107 Certainly, Busby was never ‘fairly supported by the British Government’ nor by Governor Bourke.108 Fifty years later Salisbury accurately described the limitations of Busby’s position when discussing the position of a consul to the Nyasa District in 1888: ‘To please the missionaries we send a representative of the Government; to spare the taxpayers we make him understand that he will in no case be supported by an armed force. The only weapon left him is bluster …’.109 Busby was sent to please both missionaries and merchants. He was not supported by any force; indeed, the Alligator expedition only undermined the position of moral suasion — bluster — which he had perforce to adopt. Busby got the worst of all worlds. Glenelg’s feeble response to the failure of the Resident appointment served to delay the radical change of policy necessary if the situation on the New Zealand frontier was to be improved. Three years after Busby was first adjudged a failure, despite the ‘lamentably bad’ state of society and Busby’s unfitness to improve it,110 James Stephen could not perceive ‘the possibility or rather the utility’ of doing anything about New Zealand at that stage.111 But a month later pressures from various sources had prodded even the dilatory Glenelg into action. Frontiers of empire have rarely drawn coherent or comprehensive policies from metropolitan governments. Nor can they, perhaps, for events on a frontier are usually unpredictable and contingent problems require contingent solutions. ‘Policy’ is no more than a series of expedients, reactions to events and pressures rather than anticipations of them. Yet certain attitudes may underlie these expedients and give them an air of consistency, coherence, and momentum. This was the case with New Zealand. British attitudes to the New Zealand frontier between 1817 and 1837 were polarized around two concepts. The first was of ancient origin for it was basic to western political theory: the idea that the relationship between the State and its subjects, involving the duty of protection on the part of the one and of obedience on the part of the other, continued even when the subject was in foreign territory. British nationals in New Zealand, where there was no government capable of protecting or controlling them, still owed obedience to the British Crown in return for the right to be protected. These legal obligations were strongly reinforced by self-interest. British subjects committing crimes in foreign territories brought disgrace to the British name and perhaps retaliation against their fellows; therefore exacting obedience from them was demanded by the national honour. On the other hand, if they were peaceful and well-disposed their activities — commercial, maritime, or missionary — contributed to the spread of the national religion and the accumulation of national wealth; therefore they deserved protection in the national interest. The second concept was of more recent origin, being the fruit of several 47

Fatal Necessity

trends in thought which had begun in the second half of the eighteenth century and developed into the humanitarian movement of the 1820s and 1830s: the recognition that indigenous peoples had rights, including those of sovereignty and independence, which European powers should respect. Such recognition implied non-intervention. If, from one early Victorian viewpoint, British subjects had every right to go to New Zealand to trade and settle, from another the Maoris had every right to remain undisturbed in their own land. But the dominant fact of the situation was that British subjects insisted on trading and settling in New Zealand anyway. Therefore the case for intervention won the day. The legal connexions of obedience and allegiance presupposed it. British religious and economic vested interests in New Zealand supported it. And humanitarianism could be persuaded to approve it because the Maoris deserved protection as well as British subjects. The 1830s saw the evolution of the dual duty as a rationale for intervention in New Zealand. No particular priority was given to the protection of either race, except in Glenelg’s approval of the Declaration of Independence which made British protection of the Maoris conditional on the rights and interests of British subjects, a condition with which Busby no doubt agreed. Generally speaking, however, the dual duty implied impartial protection. Yet, the dual duty was only a theoretical formula. The real problem of what would happen when a direct clash of interests occurred between those to whom the Colonial Office accorded an equal right to protection had yet to be faced. So far, British intervention in New Zealand had been undertaken with reluctance and kept to a minimum, partly because it involved expense and because civil servants like Stephen and Hay considered the Empire big enough already, partly because the Maoris were still sovereign and independent and might yet work out their problems by themselves with some guidance. Statutes and visiting warships were the first hints of intervention, but their failure either to control or protect British subjects led to the appointment of Busby. Although it signified a slightly more positive approach, the appointment of a Resident was not qualitatively different from what had gone before. It was merely a new measure designed to render effective prior measures that had so far failed, and it was the minimum advance possible consistent with the aim in view. Yet Busby’s appointment, although neither significantly new nor noticeably successful, was a vitally important step in the process of imperial expansion with regard to New Zealand. Once the reluctance of the Colonial Office to intervene had been modified, even if only by sending a powerless imperial representative to New Zealand, then Britain was on the slippery slope leading ultimately to annexation, with the man appointed as Resident trying to guide her down as fast as he could. For, if the first tentative intervention fails, further involvement is generally required to retrieve the situation. Cutting losses has never come easily to empires.

48

3 Pressures for Change The appointment of a Resident in 1832 arose directly from an event on the New Zealand frontier, the Elizabeth affair, though it required the New South Wales Government, supported by interested individuals and pressure groups, to persuade the Colonial Office that the event, and the situation underlying it, demanded British intervention. When the Resident failed, pressure from interested parties for a change in Colonial Office policy and the adoption of some more successful measure was, naturally, renewed. Pressure groups differed on what this change should be, and by the end of 1837 there developed a fierce political struggle between missionary societies and would-be colonizers to gain government support for their own proposals. Before turning to this domestic rivalry a brief glance at the international scene is warranted. Great power rivalry for the possession of New Zealand did not exist at all until after Britain had decided to annex at least part of the country. But fears, groundless though they were until late 1839, of French and also American designs upon New Zealand were expressed in various quarters throughout the 1830s with such regularity that some historians have been convinced that the Colonial Office itself subscribed to such fears and annexed New Zealand to forestall foreign rivals.1 And groundless fears may be just as potent as those based on reality. Suspicion of French expansionism appears to have been almost a British national habit after the Napoleonic Wars, even after the death of Napoleon in 1821, and after the French Navy had ceased for a time to be an instrument of imperial expansion.2 But whether this suspicion was strong enough to provoke pre-emptive action by Britain depended on the particular circumstances of each case. For example, the founding of a settlement on the north coast of Australia, first at Melville Island and then at Raffles Bay between 1824 and 1829, was partly due to fears of a possible French (or Dutch) settlement in the region. But the prime motive was commercial, the creation of a second Singapore to draw the trade of the eastern Indonesian archipelago and to provide an entrepôt for the East India Company and private trade to China. When this object failed, fears of French or Dutch expansion were insufficient to ensure the survival of the north49

Fatal Necessity

ern settlements. On the other hand, the occupation of King George’s Sound and Western Port in 1826 and, finally, Swan River in 1829, were largely due to fears that the French were interested in settling the area.3 Robert Hay, the Permanent Head, was the Colonial Office civil servant most interested in the strategy of the Australian area, and he regretted the recent retreats. Expansion should depend on what was required to ensure ‘the future security and prosperity’ of Britain’s Australian possessions.4 However, though Hay was quite aware of the strategic position of New Zealand, he never referred to any specific foreign threat to the country and in 1830–1 did not consider its occupation important compared with the need to avoid straining the resources of an already large Empire.5 It was only when Darling suggested a British presence in New Zealand that Hay commended the idea, and then because of the escaped convicts there and the crimes they were committing rather than because of strategic considerations. At the beginning of the 1830s officials did not consider that there was any threat of foreign interference in New Zealand sufficient to override the need to avoid unnecessary expense. Non-governmental interests were more concerned. The 1826 petition from fifteen city firms mentioned supposed French interest in New Zealand as a reason for British intervention there; individuals such as Dumaresq, Torrens, and McDonnell, emphasized the dangers of foreign power interference;6 and of course New South Wales newspapers were quite paranoiac on the subject. The vague nature of these fears makes it difficult to tell how far they were genuinely felt and how far they were merely used as an additional lever to tip Britain into New Zealand for other, quite different, reasons. In 1831, however, there was a definite ‘scare’ over a supposedly imminent French annexation of New Zealand. William Yate reported from Sydney to his Church Missionary Society brethren across the Tasman that there was a French warship on its way to the Bay of Islands, and when Yate returned there on the missionary vessel Active on 19 September 1831, there returned with him a rumour that the warship intended annexing New Zealand for France.7 William Williams wrote that, at the suggestion of the Governor of New South Wales, the missionaries mentioned the rumour to the local Maori chiefs who all seemed willing to accept the idea that they should request British protection.8 The petition, drawn up by the missionaries, mentioned that the ‘tribe of Marion’ was coming to take the land away from the Maoris. The day after it was signed the French warship La Favourite dropped anchor in the Bay of Islands, or so Yate reported.9 The story is riddled with inconsistencies. La Favourite had been at Sydney for over a month and Captain Laplace and his officers had received a very generous reception from both Government and society in New South Wales, so generous in fact that it partly explained the long stay. Darling’s hospitality suggests that he did not suspect that the French captain had been sent to take possession of New Zealand, nor is it probable that Laplace gave him any grounds for suspicion, as it appears that the French captain did not decide to call and refresh at 50

3 Pressures for Change

New Zealand until after he had left Sydney.10 William Williams’s story that the missionaries acted at the suggestion of the New South Wales Governor does not ring true. Possibly Yate, or someone else on board the Active, got it into his head that the French ship had designs on New Zealand and persuaded the missionaries to take urgent action; either that, or the missionaries merely used the French ship as an excuse to put pressure on the British Government by getting the Maoris to ask for British protection. The latter alternative seems more likely. Dramatic though it sounds, La Favourite did not arrive the very day after the petition was signed. It arrived the day before. Laplace’s letters and Henry Williams’s journal confirm that the ship anchored on 4 October.11 The petition was certainly not completed on 3 October as several chiefs signed on the 4th and Yate dated the Maori version of the chiefs’ letter which he sent to Bourke as 5 October.12 Thus, the French warship was in the harbour when the petition was signed. But the missionaries did not wait to see what happened; they continued to canvass Maori signatures on the basis of a rumour which was completely invalidated the next day. For on 6 October the missionaries knew that the French captain had no intention of annexing New Zealand,13 and La Favourite departed for Chile five days later. Yet the petition was not withdrawn. Rumour had a further part to play in the story. The trading sloop Fairy carried back to New South Wales at the end of October a report that the French warship had indeed taken possession of New Zealand on 4 October and hoisted the French flag at the Bay of Islands. ‘Notwithstanding the vague nature of this information’, Acting-Governor Lindesay thought the importance of preventing New Zealand falling to a foreign power sufficient to despatch H.M.S. Zebra to discover the truth. The New South Wales Executive Council also entertained ‘considerable doubts’ about the rumour, but approved Lindesay’s orders to Captain De Sausmarez to make a strong protest against any French annexation because New Zealand was under British protection ‘according to the expressed wish of the inhabitants’.14 The Zebra promptly ascertained that the French had made no attempt to annex New Zealand,15 and Governor Bourke’s first major despatch on New Zealand reported that the affair was merely unfounded rumour, though he enclosed the chiefs’ letter to William IV and Yate’s covering letter.16 In England, the first report to reach the Colonial Office arrived via the Church Missionary Society in March 1832.17 It was immediately sent to the Foreign Office for verification, followed three days later by Lindesay’s report.18 In those three days, however, the British Ambassador in Paris, Granville, had discovered from the French Government that La Favourite had sailed before the July Revolution with no instructions to form a settlement in New Zealand.19 Indeed, in neither of the two drafts of his instructions was Laplace told to even call at New Zealand.20 Laplace’s instructions call into question the report in H. Carleton, The Life of Henry Williams,21 that Laplace had told Mrs Williams that La Favourite was to have brought a Roman Catholic bishop but was prevented by the 51

Fatal Necessity

July Revolution. Nor does there appear to be any evidence in the French Marine archives to support Dillon’s assertion that the French Government were prepared to advance a million francs for an experimental colony in New Zealand in January 1830 but were stopped by the Revolution.22 The French scare of 1831 was of wholly antipodean manufacture. It had no effect whatsoever on Colonial Office policy-making with regard to New Zealand.23 The appointment of a Resident had been approved in January 1832 and Busby selected in March,24 two days before the first word of the affair arrived from the other side of the world. The British Government wasted no time and in less than a week the Colonial Office knew that it was all a storm in a teacup. By the time the chiefs’ letter arrived in May 1832 the rumour of French annexation which had given rise to it had long since been scotched as far as the civil servants and politicians were concerned. They merely returned a friendly reply from William IV to the Maori chiefs, though they were a good deal more non-committal than Lindesay had been when he stated that New Zealand was under Britain’s protection according to the Maoris’ wish. The episode reveals no scrap of evidence that the French Government had any intention of annexing New Zealand at this time. It also shows that the missionaries were quite willing to jump to the opposite conclusion. Perhaps Dumont D’Urville, the French explorer, divined their conscious or unconscious motives most accurately when he said that ‘le bruit qui y avait donné lieu n’était probablement qu’un ruse de ces dignes serviteurs de Dieu pour déterminer les chefs de la Nouvelle-Zélande à réclamer officiellement la protection du roi d’Angleterre’.25 In 1835 Baron Charles de Thierry sparked off the next antipodean panic about French interference when he announced his forthcoming arrival as Independent Sovereign of the Maoris. Believing he owned 40,000 acres of Hokianga land purchased for him by Thomas Kendall in 1822, Thierry planned to govern humanely in the interests of both races and to promote trade by means of a shipping line from Australasia to the Panama canal which he hoped to build.26 Henry Williams described himself as too much of ‘an old soldier’ to be worried by Thierry’s ‘high sounding words’.27 The same cannot be said of James Busby. Perturbed at the apparent danger to British interests, Busby encouraged the British settlers to arouse Maori opposition to Thierry and himself persuaded local chiefs to sign the 1835 Declaration of Independence.28 Glenelg accepted this at face value and concurred that ‘Every motive of humanity and of national policy’ supported Busby, for Thierry’s advent with numerous settlers would not only have introduced ‘a new and dangerous power’ into the region but would have wiped out the Maoris.29 The Colonial Office did not feel the need to take any further action, but 213 British subjects in New Zealand used Thierry’s ‘threat’ as an excuse to ask the British Government for more protection in April 1837.30 The Baron finally arrived in New South Wales late the same year. Bourke, who seems never to have taken him seriously, told him that the British Government ‘desired and would maintain the independence’ of New Zealand.31 On the 52

3 Pressures for Change

very day that Thierry left for New Zealand with about twenty-five retainers, Gordon Gairdner minuted to his superior in Downing Street that the Baron was ‘a scheming visionary of not very sound mind’, and implied that he was little to be feared.32 The Anglican missionary Davis, on the other hand, believed that although his pretensions had subsided, Thierry was still ‘the lion in his lair, only waiting for means & opportunity to devour’.33 A more inappropriate metaphor for the mild, well-intentioned Frenchman it would be difficult to imagine. Busby was closer to the truth when, at last perceiving the hollowness of Thierry’s ‘crown’, he realized that Thierry would be sovereign only ‘as far as the shadow of his hat covers …’.34 Stephen initially thought that the news about Thierry was important because Thierry was a Frenchman and would probably have already enlisted the support of the French Government for his claims; Glenelg, who was to meet a deputation on New Zealand that day, must be informed.35 Glenelg cannot have taken the matter seriously because no directives or any policy development resulted, nor was there any mention of a French threat during a Commons debate on New Zealand a month later.36 Stephen’s worries evaporated in August 1838 when a report from Busby arrived stating that Thierry had no prospect of establishing any authority, since his land claim was disputed by the Maoris and his supporters had drifted away to better jobs.37 In the dying days of 1838 the Colonial Office heard a rumour that the French Government might appoint Thierry as their consul in New Zealand. Officials were not disturbed by the appointment of a French consul as such, but were concerned that a man ‘so constant in his attempts to assume an undue authority’ in New Zealand might be selected. They asked the Foreign Office whether the French Government might, with propriety, be dissuaded from choosing Thierry.38 Granville, the Ambassador in Paris, was told to inform the French that if the rumour were true, such a step might lead to ‘embarrassing questions and disagreeable discussions’ between the two governments. He was also to explain the nature of the connexion between New Zealand and Great Britain; in other words, to give friendly notice that New Zealand was a British sphere.39 Granville does not appear to have replied to the Foreign Office on this subject and there is no way of knowing whether he spoke to the French Government or not.40 However, Colonial Office officials did receive a private intimation via the Foreign Office that there was ‘no ground for the report that the French Government intend to establish a colony at New Zealand’.41 This must have set their minds at rest for they did not again ask Palmerston about Thierry. Nor did Palmerston bother to inform the Colonial Office that he had had an interview with McDonnell, sometime Additional British Resident at Hokianga, about French interest in New Zealand, though the papers were kept in the Foreign Office in case the subject came up again ‘as connected with French projects’.42 In May, when a Busby despatch expressing fears of a French settlement arrived, Stephen merely remarked that if he were right there was nothing to be done about it.43 Busby was 53

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wrong, as his next despatch admitted.44 And that appears to be the last mention of French interest in New Zealand in the Colonial Office files before Hobson departed. The French ‘threat’, real or imagined, was simply not worrying the civil servants and politicians involved in deciding British policy on New Zealand.* The Americans were also credited with expansionist designs in the antipodes, though to a lesser extent than the French. United States whalers were plentiful in New Zealand waters and there were more Americans on shore than Frenchmen, so much so that Washington appointed James Clendon American Consul at the Bay of Islands in October 1838. This elicited from James Stephen the comment: ‘We shall certainly not assume the sovereignty of [New Zealand] without a violent remonstrance from the United States.’ Parliamentary UnderSecretary Vernon Smith thought that France would join in too because they had a bishop there.45 These remarks illustrate the real attitude of the Colonial Office to foreign power interest in New Zealand. Apart from Stephen’s uncharacteristically anxious minute of May 1838, the civil servants just did not believe, before August 1839, that the French or the Americans planned to take possession of, and colonize, New Zealand.† But they did believe that France and the United States would object to British intervention there. Consequently, foreign power attitudes did not provoke Britain to annex New Zealand; if anything they provided a disincentive for doing so. There was no race for New Zealand because Britain was the only runner, but Britain was a little embarrassed at running alone in case the spectators threw bottles at her. As far as the pressure groups were concerned, apart from some initial mention by the New Zealand Association in 1837, there is no evidence that Wakefield and his supporters were seriously concerned about French interference in New Zealand until as late as September 1839.46 The Church Missionary Society was similarly unable to find any indication that other powers wished to colonize New Zealand.47 Most of the paranoia about French and American designs upon New Zealand was generated in the heady climate of a rapidly expanding antipodean frontier,

*

†

As a measure of the lack of influence of fears of French interest in New Zealand on British policy in 1839, a search of the P.R.O. records reveals that there was no communication on the subject between the Colonial Office and the Foreign Office after 4 Feb., nor between the Foreign Office and the British ambassador in Paris after 25 Jan. 1839. Throughout the crucial six months of policy formation, February to August 1839, there was no incoming information (apart from Busby’s despatches), nor any record of interdepartmental discussion on the subject. I have discussed here only British concern, or lack of concern, about French interest in New Zealand until Hobson’s departure in August 1839. For an examination of actual French attitudes to New Zealand and British reactions after 1839 see J.-P. Faivre, L’Expansion Francaise Dans La Pacifique, 1800–1842, Paris 1953, passim and J. S. Marais, The Colonization of New Zealand, pp. 92–97.

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where fears easily became rumours, and rumours certainties. The missionaries and the Resident most often indulged themselves in this way, though lack of settler records may distort the picture slightly. The Church Missionary Society organized the chiefs’ letter of 1831 solely on the basis of a flimsy rumour brought from New South Wales in their own ship. They made an unsupported connexion between Thierry and the French Government and, after the arrival of the Roman Catholic Bishop Pompallier in early 1838, between all three, adding in any visiting French vessel for good measure as evidence of a grand French design upon New Zealand.48 Their insistence that Britain intervene to forestall it revealed not only their anti-Catholic, anti-French prejudice, but also their secular role as ambassadors of the British Empire and advocates of its expansion. Busby was just as quick at jumping to conclusions and more than once had to withdraw his prognostications of imminent French settlement in New Zealand. Neither the Admiralty,49 which might have been expected to show concern at a French naval presence in New Zealand waters, nor successive Governors of New South Wales gave credence to his fears or recommended action based upon his information. Fear of French or American intervention was confined chiefly to those in New South Wales and New Zealand who felt they had most to lose by it, and who favoured British involvement for a variety of reasons other than their suspicion of foreign power interest. The missionary societies were foremost amongst them. The very existence of British-based missions in New Zealand constituted a pressure for British intervention there.50 Missionary families were the first-established and most identifiable element in the permanently settled British population in New Zealand before 1840, and as British subjects they were theoretically entitled to protection. Indeed, as a factor contributing to British political interference in New Zealand the permanence of the mission establishments was more important than the actual work of the missionaries in evangelizing and pacifying the Maoris, although their achievement was no doubt regarded by supporters at home as adding glory to Britain and to English protestantism. There had to be a permanent British vested interest in New Zealand before that country attracted more than cursory attention. The protestant missions were the first to create such a vested interest, followed by the traders and settlers. The missionaries played an actively pro-imperial role as well. They channelled information to Marsden and Coates, who put it to good use in making representations to the New South Wales Government and the Colonial Office about the need for British control in New Zealand. The chiefs’ letter of 1831, begging for British protection, was the work of the Church Missionary Society missionaries. They, in conjunction with their Wesleyan brethren, organized the 1837 petition of 213 British nationals in New Zealand praying for more protection from a reluctant British Government. Though the petition did not specify what form this protection should take, it contributed to the Colonial Office’s 55

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growing awareness of the extent to which British subjects were settling on the lawless New Zealand frontier.51 Yet, apart from feeding back information and organizing the occasional pro-imperial demonstration from either the Maoris or the British settlers, the missionaries appear to have had no direct impact on Colonial Office thinking commensurate with their long and intimate involvement with and knowledge of the New Zealand situation. Partly this was because they did not write directly to the Colonial Office, but only to the Church Missionary Society; if their opinions reached the civil servants at all, they did so only through the filter of the society’s Lay Secretary, Dandeson Coates, and in support of his own views. Partly also, Stephen and possibly his colleagues had a healthy suspicion of both missionary societies and missionaries. Of the societies, excellent though they were where there was no more regular system, one of the chief faults was ‘distortion of the truth’.52 Of individual missionaries Stephen had a similar opinion: ‘One and all they seem to me too solicitous to produce a striking effect; and to have too large an infusion of dramatic nature for persons of their high calling.’53 It is not surprising, then, that there is little evidence that the individual or collective opinions of the missionaries in New Zealand had much direct influence on the formation of Colonial Office policy. Nevertheless, these opinions are worth examining as an index to the increasingly chaotic state of the New Zealand frontier and an interesting comparison with the views of Dandeson Coates and the Church Missionary Society in England. Although Davis, Baker, and Clarke had earlier voiced their hopes that the British Government would establish order on the frontier and perhaps legislate for the Maoris,54 it was not until 1838 that the missionaries, stimulated by news of the formation of the New Zealand Association and by the deteriorating situation around them, began to express their opinions on the political future of New Zealand with some urgency. Henry Williams, who had admitted in 1830 that small numbers of selected emigrant families might ‘tend to the civilization of the land’,55 strongly opposed planned colonization and its likely consequences for the Maoris and their society. He agreed with Coates’s anti-colonization views, though he pointed out Coates’s failure to realize how easy it had lately become for Europeans to acquire land from the Maoris, and he had less faith than Coates in the purity of the systematic colonizers’ motives. George Clarke’s views on planned colonization were almost exactly similar to those of Williams, and he thought Coates’s suggestion of a warship quite inadequate to meet the problem of the frontier. Both Clarke and Williams advocated a British protectorate or ‘guardianship’ over the Maoris, who would nevertheless retain their sovereignty; chiefs would legislate in a general assembly or congress with British advice, under a British governor, and with British troops to maintain the law. Both Williams and Clarke denied that the missionary-organized settler petition had been intended to encourage colonization on New Zealand Association principles, an interpretation to which it was open, as Coates did not fail to point out. The petition had sought 56

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the intervention of the British Government only.56 Davis, Baker, Ford, Chapman, Maunsell, and William Williams were all similarly antagonistic to the New Zealand Association and planned colonization, and supported purely governmental intervention. Davis suggested that the Government, rather than a group of profit-seekers, should control colonization and adopt the role of ‘a fostering power’, establishing and enforcing law with Maori self-government as the ultimate aim. By 1839, however, he felt that New Zealand could no longer maintain its independence and that the Maoris should cede sovereignty but retain possession of their lands.57 Baker and Ford were in complete agreement with Coates on remedies for the frontier situation.58 Chapman favoured a combination of a warship, a Resident, and an offensive-defensive alliance with each tribe based on a simple set of laws which could lead to ‘more extended arrangements’. If colonization could not be halted, perhaps it could be directed to the South Island alone and the few Maoris there moved north.59 Maunsell agreed, since it was ridiculous to think that the New Zealand Association’s emigrants could settle peacefully among the Maoris, or that the Maoris could understand an agreement with the association or form an executive government of their own. Moral suasion had failed through lack of a sanctioning force and through the deficiencies of Busby’s personality. The choice lay between foreign interference and continuing anarchy. Something must be done or the door would be left open for the New Zealand Association. A warship would help, but Maunsell60 favoured Busby’s protectorate plan.* William Williams advocated government interference to benefit the Maoris, with the missionaries acting as intermediaries between Maoris and settlers. To forestall the association, likely areas of settlement should be bought by the missionary societies in advance.61 Only Taylor, who had not yet arrived in New Zealand, and Cowper, the secretary of the Church Missionary Society Corresponding Committee in New South Wales, had any sympathy with systematic colonization. Taylor believed that the Church Missionary Society should conclude an amicable and advantageous agreement with the New Zealand Association.62 But if most of the Anglican missionaries in New Zealand agreed with Lay Secretary Coates’s opposition to the New Zealand Association, they parted company with him on the form that purely governmental intervention should take. By 1838 and 1839 the missionaries were extremely worried because New Zealand was being colonized willy-nilly by individuals from New South Wales and Britain who were buying Maori land and settling permanently. Coates, in their opinion, had failed to realize the extent of this irregular colonization and proposed measures that were ‘inapplicable to the urgency … of the New Zealand question’. The Maoris could not form a government by themselves: they were too divided, too ‘ignorant’, and possessed no revenue, law, or controlling force. A

*

For Busby’s plan see this section.

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warship stationed at New Zealand would probably encourage emigration rather than hinder it. To send an agent to draw up a code of laws would take too long and was unnecessary as Glenelg had, ‘through the British Resident, a vast deal of valuable information’ containing all that was necessary for a solution to the New Zealand problem. The only prospect of saving the Maoris from destructive colonization lay in the British Government taking them entirely under its protection as ‘Minors’ or ‘Wards in Chancery’63 but it must be prepared to control not only British subjects in New Zealand but also the Maoris themselves.64 Some of the collectively expressed opinions of the missionaries contradict their individual views, but this is not surprising as the situation on the frontier was worsening so rapidly that opinions easily became outdated. What is noticeable is that the missionaries were united in their opposition to the New Zealand Association and to organized colonization, and unanimously in favour of intervention by the British Government alone to preserve Maori lands and Maori sovereignty. In this they agreed with the stand taken by Dandeson Coates in Britain. Where they disagreed with their lay secretary was over the methods and the degree of intervention required. Coates, far from the frontier, had failed to realize just how fast New Zealand was being inexorably colonized and how British subjects were already virtually ‘the sovereigns of the country’; he was still thinking in terms of an intervention which would respect the principles of international law and preserve Maori national rights.65 The missionaries in New Zealand pointed out that this was no longer possible, but the difference between their view and that of Coates was one of detail, the agreement one of principle.66 The opinions of the Wesleyan missionaries differed a little in emphasis. William Woon wrote in June 1838 that some of them thought that a chartered New Zealand Association would prove a blessing for the Maoris in the long run.67 By 1839, however, Woon was opposed to private speculative colonization, though a company of pious individuals who paid the Maoris fair wages and were subject to ‘the government of the missionary societies, with the missionaries to counsel and advise’, might do much good.68 Turner, the head of the Wesleyan Mission, was definitely opposed to the New Zealand Association and convinced that the British Government must intervene because of the presence of British subjects. If the Maoris alone were considered, then an experienced Resident with a moderate amount of power and a warship might achieve much in conjunction with the chiefs. But if European interests were put first, then other measures would be needed. He feared the introduction of soldiers, preferring the training of a native militia. Turner, too, felt obliged to deny that the missionary-organized petition of British settlers had been designed to encourage large-scale emigration: it had merely been a request for some kind of protection.69 The petition did show, however, that the protestant missionaries were not the only group on the New Zealand frontier demanding British intervention. The establishment of order and good government was also favoured by the ‘respectable’ traders and settlers, particularly after Busby’s palpable failure. 58

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In New South Wales, too, merchants with interests in New Zealand lobbied both Darling and Bourke early in the 1830s. Yet there is little evidence of further commercial pressure for intervention later in the decade. Perhaps profits held up in spite of the lack of law and government. Perhaps, indeed, some merchants did not want government intervention because of the possibility that it would involve restrictions on doubtful trading practices and the imposition of customs and port duties. Whatever the case, it seems that New South Wales merchants, along with general public opinion in the colony, considered New Zealand as unquestionably a British sphere of influence. They were content to wait and see whether the metropolitan power converted influence into formal control. The attitude of Governor Bourke bears this out. Much less interested in New Zealand than Darling had been, he was criticized in the Colonial Office for being ‘rather sparing’ in his reports on the country.70 Bourke took some trouble over drafting Busby’s instructions, but gave him little support or encouragement in practice. By 1834, after the Alligator expedition, Bourke had come to the conclusion that unless either a warship or a foreign jurisdiction Act were forthcoming, the Resident should be withdrawn. He did include a section on New Zealand in his draft Bill for the replacement of the existing New South Wales Act, but nothing came of it as the old Act was merely renewed. Apart from this Bourke did not make any attempt to alter or improve the situation in New Zealand or show the sort of initiative displayed by Darling earlier in the decade. Nor did he make any original proposals of his own about how the New Zealand frontier might be brought under control. Yet it can be argued that Bourke had an important influence on New Zealand’s early colonial history for, when he finally realized that the situation there was so bad that something must be done, he commissioned Captain William Hobson of H.M.S. Rattlesnake to make a report on New Zealand. Hobson’s report greatly impressed the Colonial Office and led to his appointment as New Zealand’s first Governor. Hobson visited New Zealand from May to July 1837 and drew upon his knowledge of India — he was attached to the Admiralty’s station there — to suggest the establishment of trading factories at the Bay of Islands, Hokianga, Cloudy Bay, and possibly elsewhere. The sovereignty of the factory sites would be obtained by cession from the chiefs, who would also undertake to protect British subjects and their property. The Factors were to preside over magistrates’ courts and the Chief Factor would be accredited as consul to the United Tribes of New Zealand. British nationals would be required to register themselves and their assets at one of the factories, paying fees which would help cover the cost of the system. An Act of Parliament must provide the necessary authority for the scheme. Hobson argued that his plan would not amount to an occupation, would arouse neither foreign power nor Maori jealousy, and yet would solve the problem of lawlessness on the frontier and produce political benefits from the introduction of civil government among the Maoris.71 Governor Bourke thought highly of the plan* because it was unlikely to of59

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fend either foreign powers or the humanitarians in Britain. He presumed, ‘as an inflexible condition’, that the British Government would consent to no establishment in New Zealand ‘which is not cheerfully conceded on terms of clear mutual interest by the natives’72 The weakness of Hobson’s proposal appears to have escaped him, perhaps because the lesson of British Indian experience was less clear than it is now. Factories on the coast generally lead to involvement in the hinterland and, as in India’s case, occupation by conquest. There is no reason to suppose that the establishment of factories in New Zealand would not have led to a similar process,73 or that authority emanating from a few coastal enclaves would have been able to control the activity of Europeans and the contact between the races in the interior without such an occupation. The most indefatigable antipodean voice, however, was that of James Busby himself. If he failed as Resident in almost every other respect, he succeeded admirably as a commentator on the New Zealand scene. Long-winded and often tedious, nevertheless Busby left few important events unrecorded and few trends unnoticed in his prolific despatches to the New South Wales Government and through it to the Colonial Office.† His most detailed report on the frontier situation, coupled with his own proposals for alleviating it, was to have a critical influence on Colonial Office attitudes to New Zealand. Busby had pre-empted the essence of Hobson’s factory plan as early as 1831, when he suggested in his ‘Memoir’ on New Zealand that a Resident with magisterial powers should, first, treat with the Maori chiefs for reciprocal security in European-Maori commercial dealings and secondly ‘for the cession of a tract of country’ at various places for government stations, to be financed by duties on those dealings.74 From 1836 onwards, however, Busby proposed the establishment of an Ionian-type protectorate over New Zealand, for already ‘the ruling influence’ was British and the choice simply one of whether Britain would leave the country to ‘the evil ascendancy of its own unprincipled subjects’ or impose law and government in the interests of ‘the peaceable and well-disposed inhabitants, whether Native or European’75 Busby thought his position so useless by mid-1836 that he requested permission to go to England and put the situation to the Government directly, but Bourke refused.76 The following year, at Bourke’s suggestion, Busby wrote his most comprehensive despatch on the state of northern New Zealand and his ideas for its improvement.77 What the frontier needed was ‘a paramount authority’ backed by

*

†

Hobson was not the only naval officer to report on New Zealand in the 1830s, but his was the most original contribution and appears to have been the only one to reach the Colonial Office. See, for another example, Bethune to Maitland (24 July 1838, F.O. 58/1:102–5). See this section for the missionaries’ opinion of Busby as a reporter. However, Bourke did not always forward Busby’s suggestions to the Colonial Office, and rarely did so with unqualified approval.

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sufficient force. But Busby realized that Britain’s responsibility to her subjects and to the Maoris had to be reconciled with British recognition of Maori sovereignty, and in a way that would not arouse foreign power jealousy. He tried to balance these factors in his proposals. Busby first laid major stress on the decline in the Maori population. He refused to blame it all on the coming of the Europeans, but he thought the nature of much of their impact, even aside from the evils resulting from land sales to Europeans, gave the Maoris ‘at least some claim of justice upon the protection of the British Government’ in the light of ‘the present humane policy’ towards indigenous peoples. Disease and death prevailed even among Maori families on mission stations to an extent that, in Busby’s view, promised ‘at no very distant period, to leave the country destitute of a single aboriginal inhabitant’. Besides the probable destruction of the Maoris, however, the general frontier situation had worsened to the extent that British interests were suffering ‘the accumulating evils of a permanent anarchy’. Thus, Busby simultaneously appealed both to the national conscience and the national interest. In doing so he astutely hoist the Colonial Office with its own petard, the dual duty to Maoris and Europeans. The duty had been admitted once, when Busby was appointed; how could it be denied now, when the situation on the frontier was so much worse? The solution, according to Busby, was for Britain to adopt the role of ‘protecting state’, administering affairs in trust for the Maoris who would remain sovereign. ‘In theory’ Government would be in the hands of a confederation of Maori chiefs; ‘in reality’ it would be conducted by Britain’s representative and in the interests of British settlers, for Busby no longer trusted the chiefs. Schools and periodical newspapers would help keep the population under control, and the support of the missionaries gained by giving them a share in the government. Land claims must be adjudicated and permanent Maori districts created. The whole would be financed by duties on tonnage and trade. Finally, as a first step towards improving the frontier situation, Britain should grant a charter of government to the ‘colony’ of British subjects already settled in New Zealand.78 The common assumption underlying all these antipodean proposals, whether from protestant missionaries, naval captains, or government officials, was that Maori sovereignty must be respected. Busby and many of the missionaries thought that this could be done under some form of British protectorate, precisely as happened later in African protectorates where Britain administered, but did not claim territorial sovereignty. Hobson, with strong support from Bourke, advocated the acquisition of some sovereignty, but only over specific areas where British subjects were already congregated and only with the free consent and full understanding of the Maoris. The acceptance of the fact of Maori sovereignty, and of the need to gain Maori consent to any derogation from it, were to be two of the parameters within which Colonial Office policy towards New Zealand evolved in the last years of the 1830s. The missionaries and settlers in New Zealand were not so important as pres61

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sure groups because of what they said; missionary opinions rarely reached the Colonial Office and the settlers did not make specific proposals but merely asked for a general protection. They were important more for the fact of their permanent existence on the frontier. They were at once the ‘British interests’ that warranted protection from the Maoris, and the ‘Europeans’ from whom the Maoris deserved justice. The mere presence of British mission stations and trading establishments in a country where there was no government capable of controlling them or their relations with the indigenous inhabitants was a pressure on Britain towards intervention there. Busby and Hobson, on the other hand, were influential through what they wrote. When the Colonial Office realized that its attempts to control the frontier so far had failed, it was to radically new ideas that the civil servants and politicians turned. Hobson’s plan was neater, more logical, and consistent. Busby’s despatch was self-contradictory and his proposals unworkable. Yet both had a profound effect on official thinking about New Zealand from the time they were received in late 1837 and early 1838. They did not exist in a vacuum, however. Part of the influence of Hobson’s plan and Busby’s proposals derived from the coincidence of their arrival with the exertion of other pressures on the Colonial Office for intervention in New Zealand. It is these metropolitan pressure groups and opinions which must now be examined. Pressure groups which accept and operate within a particular political system generally try and develop a range of contacts among the governing circle of politicians and civil servants. Through such contacts they may supplement official channels of communication, receive a more sympathetic hearing than if their aims and members were not personally known, and try to influence policy decisions in their favour. Politicians and bureaucrats often respond by communicating informally, listening sympathetically, and taking account of pressure group views in making such decisions. Nor was it prima facie reprehensible to apply or respond to personal, informal pressure in early Victorian politics. Only if corruption was involved, if officials or politicians perverted or suppressed information, or if they allowed sympathy for a cause to destroy their objectivity, did the convention of supplementing official channels of communication with personal contacts become dangerous. It has been argued, both by contemporaries and modern historians, that the convention became dangerous in New Zealand’s case, that the Colonial Office and particularly the Permanent Under-Secretary, James Stephen, were so partial to Church Missionary Society views and responsive to Dandeson Coates’s personal pressure that they could not be objective about the New Zealand Association and its plans.79 The unhappy history of the association, the New Zealand Company, and the early years of the colony in New Zealand has been explained by official endorsement of the views of the evangelicals and humanitarians to the neglect of a more balanced approach which admitted that the colonizers and set62

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tlers had rights as well as the Maoris. Such an interpretation can only be tested through a detailed examination of the decision-making process with regard to New Zealand. Three general points may be made at the outset. First, not only the Church Missionary Society but also the New Zealand Association operated within the convention of personal, informal contacts with government and both, at one time or another, were to receive sympathetic attention as a result. Secondly, it is not sufficient to take an individual’s sympathy or antipathy to a cause as evidence that he has lost objectivity on the subject. There are ways of offsetting such a danger. On more than one occasion Stephen doubted his impartiality towards Wakefield and the New Zealand Company and said so.80 By admitting such a doubt he allowed his superiors to take account of it. Finally, while there were no doubt times when Stephen let his prejudices get the better of him, it is by no means clear that his prejudices ran the same way all the time. On the whole Stephen supported the evangelical cause and was humanitarian in outlook, but his views on the accuracy of representations from missionaries and missionary societies were sometimes distinctly uncomplimentary, just as his general views on the energy and purpose of colonizers and colonizing companies were sometimes favourable.81It would be wrong, therefore, to assume that his underlying attitudes necessarily compromised his objectivity in dealing with particular issues on a day-to-day basis. Besides administering the New Zealand mission the Church Missionary Society, under Dandeson Coates’s guidance, acted as a pressure group on antipodean affairs and as watchdog to the Government’s conscience. On the advice of Stephen,82 who was at that time a member of the society’s Corresponding Committee, Coates made representations to the Colonial Office about the Elizabeth outrage and the need to bring the criminals to justice. When he heard about the Alligator expedition, Coates protested to Glenelg about the excessive use of force and called for an investigation.83 Glenelg refused, so Coates gathered more information and sent a comprehensive indictment of the expedition based on official papers to the celebrated humanitarian, Thomas Fowell Buxton, whom he then persuaded to expose the ‘iniquitous transaction’ in the 1837 Aborigines Committee Report.84 Nothing further came of it and no investigation was granted, but Coates deserves credit for standing virtually alone for more than two years against what he considered an injustice to the Maoris. The other main pressure group function of the Church Missionary Society was that of keeping its own views and objects before the eyes of the Colonial Office whenever a new appointment or a change of policy was likely. In 1835, when the Colonial Office asked for the society’s views on the continuation of Busby as Resident, Lay Secretary Coates strongly supported the appointment because the Maoris deserved justice against British crews, because British trade needed protection, and because of the political importance of ‘the Great Britain of the Southern Hemisphere’ and the possibility of French or American interference there. Colonization must be prevented, Busby supported, and a friendly 63

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protective relationship with New Zealand cultivated to further the gradual spread of Christianity and civilization among the Maoris.85 Coates was out of touch if he thought that any of these aims were being served by Busby, but his letter may have influenced the Colonial Office.* Though Hay had told Coates in May 1835 that the Government did not intend to continue Busby’s appointment,86 Charles Grant, shortly to become Lord Glenelg, had only just taken the seals of the Colonial Office at that point.* By October Glenelg had reversed the May announcement and decided to strengthen the Resident’s position with money for hiring Maori retainers and with a foreign jurisdiction Act. It may be that Glenelg, who had strong evangelical sympathies and was at one time a vice-president of the Church Missionary Society, was influenced by Coates’s arguments, or it may be that on reflection he decided that he could make the Residency policy work where his predecessors had failed. Certainly his decision must have pleased Coates, though the following year Coates had to complain to Buxton that the Colonial Office’s Bill for renewing the New South Wales Act did nothing to bring British subjects in New Zealand under Australian court jurisdiction as promised. The only reason Coates had heard for the omission was that New Zealand was too far from Port Jackson.87 Thomas Fowell Buxton was one of Coates’s main contacts in the mid-1830s and Buxton was the driving force behind the 1837 Report of the Aborigines Committee which in turn drew heavily upon evidence provided by Coates, Beecham, and other protagonists of the missionary societies. Hence the Report highlighted those aspects of the New Zealand problem which had concerned the missionaries and the societies since the beginning of the decade: murders, anarchy, and the contamination of the Maoris by runaway convicts and sailors, and by trading and whaling crews, leading to the probable extermination of the race.88 The Aborigines Committee recommended that the executive Government, rather than Parliament, should adopt a distinct policy towards indigenous peoples. Alcohol sales should be prohibited. Religious instruction and education should be provided and the missionaries supported, as long as they were not merely pious, but also socially and politically sensitive. British subjects beyond the imperial frontier should be controlled through treaties with indigenous chiefs, but treat*

*

The society also strongly urged their missionaries in New Zealand to support Busby and suggested the formation of a ‘Native Guard’ for his protection (Coates to Clarke, 13 Feb. 1836, C.M.S. CN/L3:35–36, 177). The missionaries thought the suggestion impracticable (Minutes, 30 Aug. 1836, CN/04). Charles Grant, 1st Baron Glenelg, 1778–1866, came to the Colonial Office from positions as Chief Secretary for Ireland (1819–1823), Vice-President of the Board of Trade (1823), President (1827), and President of the Board of Control (1830–1834) where he took a leading part in the renegotiation of the East India Company’s Charter in 1833. Most of his policies both before and after he became Secretary of State for Colonies were characterized by a conciliatory, reformist spirit. (D.N.B. v. 8, pp. 380–1.)

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ies in general were frowned upon as more ‘the preparatives and the apology for disputes than securities for peace’.89 On the Pacific area the report agreed wholeheartedly with the missionary approach. The sovereignty of indigenous peoples should be recognized. Consular agents, supported by judicial authority and visiting warships, should be appointed to mitigate the dangers to the local inhabitants of contact with Europeans. Colonization schemes — and the committee understood that there was one such project afoot for New Zealand — must be opposed, at least until Parliament had considered the matter.90 The Aborigines Report has been regarded by many historians as the highest expression of nineteenth-century humanitarian idealism towards indigenous peoples. Perhaps, as a statement of principles, it was. But in terms of practical reality the report was a dismal failure as far as New Zealand was concerned. The Colonial Office had heard all its recommendations before. Indeed, they had been trying to put into effect the recommendation about judicial authority since 1817, the suggestion about visiting warships since 1826, and the appointment of a consular agent since 1832. Granted, the Colonial Office had never managed to combine all three provisions in an effective way, partly owing to lack of parliamentary and Admiralty support. Nevertheless, the civil servants were on the point of realizing that the theory was faulty. Without effective foreign jurisdiction, which included the establishment of courts and probably some permanent force, the visiting warships and the consular agent were powerless. Yet any effective foreign jurisdiction would derogate from Maori sovereignty and almost certainly encourage increased European colonization. The Aborigines Report merely reiterated the sentiments and ideas of the missionary societies without offering any new proposals. While Lord Glenelg, his Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Sir George Grey, and James Stephen sympathized with the report’s aims and quoted it as a reason for their reluctance to intervene in New Zealand, they could draw no practical comfort from it when it came to dealing with the realities of the frontier there. One outcome of the report was the formation of the Aborigines Protection Society by five members of the 1837 committee, ‘to watch over and protect the interests of the natives’.91 Lack of funds and an inability to mobilize much public support hindered the society, but perhaps the chief reason why it remained uninfluential as a pressure group in the early years was its belief that colonization and native welfare could be reconciled and its consequent support for the New Zealand Company and its native reserve scheme. The society relied on legislation as a safeguard against exploitation and suggested a ‘Bill of Aboriginal Rights’ in January 1838 and a legislative programme based on trusteeship principles in 1840; coupled with native reserves, this was thought to be adequate. By 1842, however, the Aborigines Protection Society had become disillusioned with the attitudes of the settlers and the motives of the New Zealand Company and joined the ranks of anti-settler, humanitarian opinion, although still remaining firmly pro-imperial.92 65

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The New Zealand Association, like the Aborigines Protection Society, was founded by several members of a parliamentary select committee, that on Colonial Lands in 1836. Chief among the founders was Francis Baring, M.P., head of a branch of the Baring family interested in Far East trade and a Treasury Secretary in Melbourne’s second Government until he became Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1839. Edward Gibbon Wakefield provided the philosophical inspiration and indefatigable administrative ability, and chaired the inaugural meeting on 22 May 1837.93 Not long before, he had written to his brother-in-law, the Reverend Charles Torlesse, that the projected association* would be more influential than the South Australian founders and already comprised a ‘considerable’ body of capitalists willing to emigrate in the first colony. One of the main objects of the project, he claimed, would be to induce the Maoris, ‘not savages properly speaking, but a people capable of civilization … to embrace the language, customs, religion, and social ties of the superior race’. The missionaries had already achieved something, despite the hindrance of English settlers and visitors. Wakefield wanted ‘a missionary, at heart, to be placed at the head of a system for operating on the minds of the natives …’.94 At a second meeting of the association on 31 May 1837, when many new members were present, it was explained that the association recognized the rights of the Maoris and the duties owing to them. They were independent for purposes of ceding land for settlement, but Cook’s proclamation of sovereignty was ‘a sufficient bar to the pretensions of all foreign powers’, and interlopers like Thierry. The general aim of the association was to replace irregular colonization on an anarchical frontier with systematic colonization accompanied by government and law to protect the lives and property of both Maoris and Europeans.† The approval of Parliament was to be obtained before a treaty was signed with the Maoris.95 From the moment the New Zealand Association was founded, in mid-1837, the Church Missionary Society concentrated its activities as a pressure group in opposing the association’s plans. Indeed, the fortunes of the society and the association became so inextricably linked through their tug-of-war for the Government’s approval, that their activities must be examined together. There were ideas common to both organizations. Both viewed New Zealand as independent as far as Britain was concerned, but British (by Cook’s proclamation) against foreign powers. Both the society and the association agreed that the situation in New Zealand was bad and that something needed to be done about it. Where they differed, of course, was over what to do. The New Zealand Association had scarcely drawn breath before the Church Missionary Society thundered out its first salvo of opposition. On 31 May 1837

* †

For the composition of the association, see appendix 3. For detailed, and contrasting, treatment of the ideas of the New Zealand Association, see Marais, Colonization, and M. Turnbull, The New Zealand Bubble.

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Coates called on Parliamentary Under-Secretary Grey at the Colonial Office and elicited a promise that the society would be given every opportunity to raise objections if the association laid its plans before the Government. On 3 June Coates also assured himself of Buxton’s opposition to the association’s plans if they were brought into Parliament. On 6 June a Church Missionary Society meeting recorded that Captain Wakefield R.N. and Dr Samuel Evans had called on the secretaries to ‘engage the countenance of the Society to the Association’. The meeting passed four resolutions. Far from countenancing the New Zealand Association, the Church Missionary Society found it ‘highly objectionable’ because it proposed to get Parliament to sanction the disposal of parts of a foreign country over which Britain possessed no sovereignty or jurisdiction. The association was ‘further objectionable’ because it intended to colonize New Zealand when the experience of Britain and other countries had shown that European colonization invariably inflicted grave injuries and injustices upon the indigenous inhabitants. Thirdly, the association’s colonization plans would interrupt or even defeat missionary efforts for the religious improvement and civilization of the Maoris. Therefore, the Church Missionary Society resolved to use ‘all suitable means’ to defeat the New Zealand Association.96 Wakefield was inclined to admire some aspects of missionary work and had obviously hoped to enlist, if not the active support, at least the friendly neutrality, of the society. In this he was perhaps a little naïve, though he may be forgiven for failing to anticipate the sudden vehemence with which the society reacted. The New Zealand Association, undaunted, had a highly satisfactory interview with the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, and the Secretary at War, Lord Howick, in mid-June. It mentioned settlement and trade as the chief motives for its interest in New Zealand, and was recompensed with Melbourne’s ‘general approbation’ and Howick’s willingness to examine its proposals in detail.97 A week later, having heard nothing, Baring urged Melbourne to make some decision because of the possibility of French interest in New Zealand and because of the approaching dissolution of Parliament.98 The Prime Minister had been approached apparently because the New Zealand Association felt that Secretary of State Glenelg and the Colonial Office were too much under the thumb of the missionary societies and liable to be hostile.99 However, Melbourne naturally sent Glenelg the association’s draft Bill as soon as he got it and James Stephen registered ‘two conclusive objections’ to it as it stood: ‘the acquisition of a sovereignty in New Zealand would infallibly issue in the conquest and the extermination of the present inhabitants’, and the proposals were ‘so vague and so obscure as to defy all interpretation’.100 Stephen’s first objection was in line with orthodox humanitarian and evangelical thinking; his second was merely accurate. The death of William IV on 20 June 1837 dashed the New Zealand Association’s hopes of bringing a measure before Parliament during that session and enabled Melbourne, who probably did not wish to alienate influential members of the association, to return a non-committal reply.101 67

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Meanwhile, Howick had completed his criticisms of the draft Bill and ascertained that Melbourne had no objection to them, but only to pledging himself beforehand to absolute support of the Bill.102 Howick then sent them to H. G. Ward, one of the association’s leading members. Howick remarked that a colony formed ‘at the expense of private individuals’ could hardly expect direct governmental assistance, but that, if certain safeguards were introduced, he saw no reason why the Government should oppose such a project. Provided that security was offered against the defrauding of emigrants and due respect shown to the rights and interest of both Maoris and settlers, the projectors might proceed ‘at their own risk’. Howick found it hard to understand whether all the founders named in the Bill were to be investors or only a few, and what division of authority was to operate between those ‘speculators’ who remained in England and those who emigrated. If there was to be a board of management in England its constitution and powers should be clearly laid down and it should certainly not be self-electing and irresponsible.103 Howick was personally sympathetic to the general aims of the New Zealand Association project, but critical of the ill-defined and irresponsible nature of the authority which the founders proposed to exercise. Stephen, who seems to have opposed the project as a whole, was in complete agreement with Howick’s criticism. In a scathing attack on the association’s ‘loose, ambiguous, & indistinct’ document he remarked that, since the founders were to be neither incorporated nor personally liable, there was ‘no effectual security, nor even an attempt to secure the public’ against mismanagement or misconduct of what was to be in effect a public trust. To enshrine the proposals in a statute would make an irresponsible power irremediable, obliging Parliament to bail the colony out with money and protection if the projectors failed, as appeared to be happening in the South Australian case. Indeed, South Australia was the only precedent for creating a colony by parliamentary authority rather than by Royal prerogative, conquest, or cession; Stephen did not think that it had yet justified itself. He also seriously questioned the practicality of taxing and governing Englishmen in New Zealand by ‘a Board of Gentlemen living in London’; he feared the probable extermination of the Maoris, according to all historical precedents of European colonization; and he pointed out the novelty of authorizing ‘a body of private men to determine, by purchases to be hereafter made by them, what should be the limits of the British Empire’. Stephen noted that the Church Missionary Society and the Aborigines Report strongly opposed any such plan of colonization.104 Only Howick’s criticisms were sent to the New Zealand Association. It was agreed that none of his proposed changes would prejudice the colonization of New Zealand, ‘without cost to the public’, which the founders were prepared to undertake ‘discarding all notion of private speculation and from public motives alone …’. Both Baring and Ward requested a definite answer from Howick as to whether a Bill so modified would receive the Government’s toleration in the next session.105 68

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Relations between the association and Howick thereupon deteriorated. Howick, from the beginning, had carefully disclaimed any authority to commit the Government and had emphasized that the advice he gave was purely his own opinion. He now suggested that the altered Bill be sent to Melbourne or Glenelg, whose attitude would depend entirely on the way in which the clauses were framed; he would of course recommend it to them and expected they would approve.106 Ward expostulated that they had wasted enough time already — in fact only two or three weeks — and that the whole matter could be settled in ten minutes if Howick had a word to the Prime Minister or the Secretary of State. Ward had been encouraging hopes among ‘many individuals’ interested in the New Zealand scheme because he had relied on Howick for something more than a mere expression of his personal opinion.107 Despite Melbourne’s non-committal reply, the assumed opposition of Glenelg and the Colonial Office, and Howick’s refusal to approve officially a Bill which had not yet been properly drawn up, the New Zealand Association committee expressed satisfaction at the progress of the negotiations and determination to see their Bill through the next session of Parliament.108 Wakefield attributed failure so far solely to the death of William IV.109 Certainly this had let the Government off the hook, but there is no evidence on the government side to warrant the degree of satisfaction which the association felt. Meanwhile, Coates had reminded Sir George Grey at the Colonial Office that the Church Missionary Society was watching the New Zealand Association with ‘much anxiety’,110 but it was not until late August that Coates heard — whether from Grey is not apparent — that the association intended to secure parliamentary sanction for its scheme. He wrote immediately to Buxton, who had lost his seat in the election following the King’s death, to ask his advice on defeating the Bill. Who was the best man to take it up in Parliament? What preparatory steps should be taken? ‘Could anything be done at the Colonial Office?’ Coates had heard, mistakenly, that Melbourne had pledged support for the Bill and feared that there would be influential Tory supporters too. Coates’s own suggestion was ‘a good, biting, forcible pamphlet on the subject’ and so he wrote one in short order and sent it straight to Glenelg.111 On 5 December 1837 the society’s committee appointed a deputation to see Glenelg about the prevention or punishment of crimes committed in New Zealand by escaped convicts, runaway seamen, and other immoral and criminal British nationals. A letter from Marsden, written during his last visit to New Zealand, may have stimulated the society into lobbying Glenelg at this particular point; Marsden remarked on the chiefs’ desire for a king, and pointed out the Resident’s powerless position and the crying need for law and government on the frontier.112 But when Coates wrote to Glenelg to arrange the interview fifteen days later, he defined its purpose more specifically ‘to represent the injurious consequences both to the mission and the natives which they anticipate from the projected plan for colonizing’ New Zealand.113 (The Wesleyan Missionary Soci69

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ety also opposed the association and requested an interview which took place on 27 December 1837.114 ) Originally appointed to make general representations on the state of the New Zealand frontier, the Church Missionary Society deputation was now aimed primarily at defeating the objects of the New Zealand Association and only secondarily at suggesting alternative forms of intervention. Coates had obviously heard of the extent to which the association had been lobbying the Government.115 The association had, indeed, been hard at work. During the autumn of 1837 it published several books and pamphlets on its plans and, to gather more support, publicly declared its satisfaction over the June negotiations with the Government.116 However, the association had also to come to terms with its ill-fated predecessor, the New Zealand Company of 1825, whose backing came from city merchants and bankers with interests in the Far East. The New Zealand Association committee, on the other hand, consisted largely of Members of Parliament and could only boast the Baring brothers and Charles Enderby, head of a large, long-established South Pacific whaling firm, as representatives of powerful commercial interests. Time was to show that Wakefield’s idea of a national enterprise with no individual investment was not possible and that the support of city bankers and shipping magnates was vitally necessary. In September 1837, however, the New Zealand Association was making the running. Wakefield managed to recruit the chairman of the 1825 New Zealand Company, Lord Durham, as a member of the association’s committee, on condition that the rights of the earlier company were reserved for future negotiation and compensation.* It appears that by early December a rough agreement had been reached.117 Thus the association could go ahead and an abstract of the draft Bill incorporating Howick’s criticisms was sent to Melbourne on 21 November 1837. Baring urged haste because of the considerable amount of public interest in the scheme, the impatience of the prospective emigrants, and the inevitable increase in the haphazard colonization of New Zealand from New South Wales which would follow the announcement of the planned colony.118 To the association ‘there appeared reason to believe that the Government was favourable’ to the project.119 In the surviving documents there appears to be no warrant for such a belief. Certainly, there had been no further official communication on the subject since the middle of the year, although Durham may have been lobbying privately for approval. Wakefield suggested to him that ‘active measures’ were necessary against those who were trying to prevent the colonization of New Zealand altogether, an obvious reference to Dandeson Coates and the missionary societies.120 Be that *

The 1825 company had apparently tried to resurrect its scheme under Durham’s leadership in 1834, to the extent of printing a plan for a New Zealand Land Company and arranging an interview with the Secretary of State for Colonies. The matter was ‘suspended’ however. (See ms., undated and unsigned, on the colonization of New Zealand, in the Lambton Papers.)

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as it may, a New Zealand Association deputation was granted an interview with Lord Melbourne on 13 December 1837. However, Lord Glenelg was also present. Considerable passion was aroused at this meeting, according to Wakefield. Instead of a favourable government reaction to the association, the Prime Minister appeared to have forgotten the June interview altogether and Glenelg tore the delegation’s proposals to shreds ‘on every possible ground almost’. Glenelg’s disapproval appeared to end the matter until members of the deputation lost their tempers and castigated the Government for allowing them ‘to proceed as they had done, in encouraging the public to prepare a colony for emigration to New Zealand’. This was blatantly misrepresenting the facts of the matter, but in the face of the storm Melbourne and Glenelg felt obliged to promise the New Zealand Association another interview and a final answer in a few days’ time.121 Before that took place Glenelg summarized his objections to the association’s plan. He based his opposition on the fact that ‘Great Britain has no legal or moral right to establish a colony in New Zealand, without the free consent of the natives, deliberately given, without compulsion, and without fraud.’122 To authorize a settlement without Maori agreement, and without ensuring that such agreement was ‘freely and fairly’ given, would be unjust. Granted that there was a need for controlling escaped convicts and others in New Zealand, was it necessary to go to the lengths of colonizing the place? The Aborigines Committee had opposed the idea, Glenelg pointed out. Moreover, American citizens and ships would no doubt object to paying taxes for a British colony, and the American Government would hardly be indifferent to such an extension of British commerce, naval power, and influence. How could Britain prevent United States encroachment elsewhere in the Pacific if she allowed her own subjects to colonize New Zealand? Far from the Colonial Office hastening to intervene in New Zealand to forestall America, Glenelg regarded American interest as a reason for not intervening there; he listed it among the general difficulties which seemed to him to ‘impede’ the adoption of the New Zealand Association’s scheme. He also thought it impolitic to disperse British emigration still further when Australia was so sparsely settled, and noted the probable ‘violent opposition’ of the missionary societies and their influence in Parliament and the country. This last objection was omitted from the final memorandum, presumably because the Colonial Office did not wish to be accused, out of its own mouth, of truckling to missionary pressure. Apart from political objections, Glenelg also criticized the idea of founding a colony by parliamentary authority as well as several other procedural details, but he admitted that his remarks were not the final word on the subject. Nor could they be, since the association had been promised another interview, though on 16 December Glenelg requested a deferral of that meeting, noting that he wanted to talk to Durham on the subject.123 In the intervening period New Zealand Association pressure was beginning to tell. Melbourne wrote to Howick the day after the stormy interview to tell him 71

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that they had seen ‘these people … about this New Zealand Bill’ and — with nice ambiguity — that they were ‘quite mad to go there’. He asked Howick to see Glenelg about it and settle what was to be done.124 Wakefield called on the Prime Minister on 15 December125 and again on the following day, when he gave him a copy of a memorial from forty ship-owners and merchants in the South Seas trade. It urged British colonization as the only security for the vast British, American, and colonial whaling fleets in the South Pacific and the 2,000 or so Europeans and Americans settled in New Zealand, whose numbers were ‘daily increasing’; otherwise drunkenness, disease, mutiny and buccaneering would rule unchecked.126 It is likely that the interests of the petitioners could have been safeguarded by measures short of colonization, as Charles Enderby, the organizer of the memorial, virtually admitted on a later occasion.127 But Enderby was a committee member of the New Zealand Association and the petition was got up to support the association’s case. The petition seems to have done its job, for after his interview with Wakefield on 16 December Melbourne again wrote to Howick: ‘So many people are engaged in this New Zealand business, that they have a right to an answer & I hope you will make up Glenelg’s mind upon the subject.’ Wakefield had told him that the Church Missionary Society had a direct interest in stopping the association, but that the society itself had ‘a plan of colonization’ which had none of the advantages but all the defects of his plan. ‘If we really are in that situation that we must do something,’ wrote Melbourne, ‘… it is only another proof of the fatal necessity by which a nation that once begins to colonize is led step by step over the whole globe.’128 Although the Colonial Office had realized by May 1835 that the appointment of a Resident two years before had not improved conditions on the New Zealand frontier in any way, the Secretary of State decided to persist with the policy in the hope of eventually making it effective. By late 1837 it was clear that he had failed. Matters were at a standstill. During almost the whole of this period the only groups in Britain sufficiently interested in New Zealand to make representations to the Government about British policy there were the Church and Wesleyan Missionary Societies and the humanitarians in Parliament who produced the Aborigines Committee Report. Their proposals accepted the framework of the Residency policy and merely advocated precisely what Glenelg attempted, supplementary measures to make it efficient. However, in mid-1837 a new pressure group appeared on the scene and the tableau began to change. The New Zealand Association failed in its initial bid to gain tacit government support for the systematic colonization of New Zealand, but it galvanized the Church Missionary Society into open opposition to its plans and into searching for alternative solutions to New Zealand’s problems. Thenceforth the two groups were competing in fierce antagonism for the Government’s ear and for official 72

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acceptance of their respective ideologies. The war of pamphlets gave way to the war of deputations. By mid-December 1837 the Church Missionary Society had an interview with Glenelg pending, while the New Zealand Association were awaiting a final answer from the Government, having been severely rebuffed in their first encounter. The Colonial Office was being forced to make up its mind about the situation on an imperial frontier by pressure groups in Britain. For a few crucial days in the winter of 1837 the immediate future of New Zealand hung in the balance.

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4 Colonial Office Policy-Making The Secretary of State for Colonies, Lord Glenelg, delivered his promised final answer to the New Zealand Association deputation on 20 December 1837. Now, at last, the association had forced the Melbourne Government into a corner from which the only escape lay through an official statement of policy towards their project for colonizing New Zealand. Yet the outcome must have appeared far from certain to the members of the deputation as they filed into the Secretary of State’s room in number 14 Downing Street on that winter’s morning. Only a week earlier their optimism, sustained by faith and naïvete from the first contact with the Government the previous June, had received a severe setback from the indifference of Lord Melbourne and the outright and righteous opposition of Lord Glenelg. There must have been some doubt that the Government could now approve that which, a week before, it had comprehensively rejected. Glenelg was in no hurry to get to the point. In deliberate, measured, language he justified the Government’s policy, before he stated what it was, in the following terms: ‘The intelligence which Her Majesty’s Government have received from the most recent and authentic sources justifies the conclusion that it is an indispensable duty, in reference both to the natives and to British interests, to interpose by some effective authority to put a stop to the evils and dangers to which all those interests are exposed, in consequence of the manner in which the intercourse of foreigners with those islands is now carried on.’ This might have prefaced an announcement that Busby was to be replaced and the Resident’s position strengthened effectively, but Glenelg discounted the suggestions of the Aborigines Report as inadequate to repress crimes committed against the Maoris. He then stated that, although the Government was fully aware of the dangers of European settlement to indigenous peoples and would have preferred to leave the situation to gradual amelioration by the missions, it was clear that New Zealand was being haphazardly colonized ‘to no small extent’ anyway. ‘The only question therefore is between a colonization, desultory, without law, and fatal to the natives, and a colonization organised and salutary …. Her Majesty’s Government are therefore disposed to entertain the proposal of establishing such a colony.’ The New Zealand Association was offered a Crown charter modelled on sixteenth74

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and seventeenth-century North American precedents.* The New Zealand Association appeared to have won a decisive victory. Wakefield’s evidence before the Colonial Lands Committee in 1836, that New Zealand was being colonized in an uncontrolled and shameful way, was vindicated. The association’s solution of further colonization, systematically organized and accompanied by government and law, was accepted. The opposition of the missionary societies to curing a disease by introducing a different strain of the same germ was set aside. Yet, not long before, any sort of colonization on the New Zealand frontier had been anathema to Secretary of State Glenelg. What had caused him to change his mind in less than a week? Wakefield asserted a few years later that, after the angry passions of the 13 December meeting had died down, Melbourne assured the New Zealand Association deputation that the matter would be reconsidered and that it would get an answer more to its satisfaction; therefore Melbourne must have persuaded Glenelg to reverse his opposition.1 Glenelg may have been shaken by the amount of hostility he had encountered and he admitted, in his summary of the meeting, that his objections were not the final word.2 Perhaps the Prime Minister contributed to this indecision by pointing out that the New Zealand Association did have a case, but it does not appear that he was mainly responsible for persuading Glenelg to abandon his opposition to the association. Melbourne accepted that the association had ‘a right to an answer’, but contented himself with suggesting to Howick that he should make up Glenelg’s mind on the subject; Melbourne did not suggest which way it should be made up.3 How far did Howick influence Glenelg? The Secretary at War was interested in and well-informed on colonial matters and had handled the initial negotiations with the New Zealand Association in June 1837. Although these had come to nothing, Howick had supported the association’s proposals, including the idea of a Bill, provided they offered sufficient security for the British public and the New Zealand Maoris. However, he had received from James Stephen, whom he much admired, a paper criticizing the scheme severely on several grounds, one of which was that if the New Zealand colony was established by an Act of Parliament it would be difficult to ensure the responsibility of the founders in the way *

There is no Colonial Office record of the interview other than the official summary in Glenelg to Durham, 29 Dec. 1837 (CO. 209/2:423–32). Stephen drafted the first version on 21 Dec. (209/3:274–83). He had not been at the interview and must have been coached in what to write. He left corrections to Grey, who had been there, and Grey made some significant changes. He made the ‘indispensable duty’ apply to both British interests and the Maoris, not just the Maoris as Stephen wrote; he eliminated Stephen’s expression of the Government’s reluctance to encroach on the territories of savage tribes; and he made the subscribed capital clause more specific (209/3:274–5, 283; see also 1840 Report, p. 3). Interestingly, Governor Gipps used a very similar form of words to those quoted above to describe the problem of the N.S.W. land frontier in 1839 (Gipps to Glenelg, 6 Apr. 1839, C.O. 201/285:312).

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that Howick wished; Stephen preferred a charter to an Act. Perhaps Howick decided that a charter was a more suitable mode of proceeding in the light of this criticism. Glenelg’s conduct of colonial policy was regarded as weak by most of his Cabinet colleagues, and by no one more than Lord Howick. By late November 1837 Glenelg was apparently ‘very sore & jealous’ at Howick’s continual interference on colonial matters.4 Most of this interference concerned Canada where the impending crisis had received, to Howick’s mind, weak and dilatory attention from Glenelg. But this was not the only colonial issue on which Howick disagreed with Glenelg and he would no doubt have seconded Stephen’s view of the state of affairs in the Colonial Office: ‘Such puttings off, such dawdlings, such panics, such endless & unprofitable talkings, such a paralysis … I never before saw or imagined, much less partook of. But the story is untellable, & if told would be unreadable & intolerable.’5 By late December 1837, when rebellion had actually broken out in both provinces of Canada, Howick was suggesting to Melbourne that despite their common regard for Glenelg as a man, he was unequal to the crisis and should be given the Privy Seal to make way for Lord John Russell at the Colonial Office. Melbourne refused to make Glenelg a scapegoat for the whole Government, which would be incriminated for having kept an incompetent minister in his job until the danger was at its greatest.6 There was, however, a yet more subtle connexion between Howick, Glenelg, Canada, and New Zealand. Lord Durham, ‘Radical Jack’ of the Reform Bill, had returned from the Ambassadorship at St Petersburg in the summer of 1837, at a time when the Melbourne Government faced possible defeat at the hands of a combination of its own Radicals and the Tories on the Canadian issue. Durham was the only man who could ensure continued Radical support of the Whig Government and the Prime Minister, therefore, offered him the Governorship of Canada. Durham refused, and his decision to remain in England was of vital political significance to the Melbourne Government. But Durham was also, by December 1837, at the head of the New Zealand Association.7 It seems probable, therefore, that Howick did try to make up Glenelg’s mind in favour of the New Zealand Association. He had no qualms about interfering in what he regarded as a badly administered colonial policy and on this occasion had been specifically asked to do so by Melbourne. Howick approved of the New Zealand Association’s plan, with modifications, although by late 1837 he probably agreed with Stephen that a charter of incorporation would be a more satisfactory method of carrying it into effect than legislation. Moreover, the head of the New Zealand Association was a man whose continued political support was very important to the Government and, indeed, the association as a whole possessed a good deal of political influence with eleven Members of Parliament and two peers on the committee.8 Although there is no concrete evidence, it is highly probable that Howick pointed out these considerations to Glenelg sometime between 16 and 20 December 1837.* 76

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The likelihood that Howick and perhaps others of his colleagues encouraged Glenelg to charter the New Zealand Association was by no means the only, or even the most important reason why Glenelg changed his mind and consented to do so. There was also ‘The intelligence which Her Majesty’s Government have received from the most recent and authentic sources …’. On 18 December, two days before the final interview with the New Zealand Association, a set of Busby’s despatches arrived at the Colonial Office. Stephen described them as having ‘a very important bearing upon the New Zealand question now under discussion’ as well as being of ‘great interest on their own account’.9 Among the despatches was Busby’s comprehensive 16 June 1837 report on the situation in New Zealand.10 Several historians have assumed that Hobson’s report on the same subject also arrived at this time and was influential in the subsequent volte face by the Colonial Office.11 This was not so. Governor Bourke’s despatch of 9 September 1837, with which it was enclosed, arrived only on 1 February 1838.12 It was Busby’s mid-1837 report alone which arrived at the vital moment and exerted a significant influence on colonial policy towards New Zealand. Indeed, the evidence it contained was probably the most important factor in Glenelg’s complete abandonment of his opposition to the New Zealand Association and his offer of a charter. He described the despatch to the association’s deputation as ‘containing very important information respecting the natives in connection with the settlement & crimes of runaway convicts’,13 and the particular information to which he was referring is plain from the heavy underlinings and marginalia in the copy received at the Colonial Office on 18 December 1837. Stephen and Gairdner already understood the realities well,14 but now Glenelg, who had been dithering about trying to patch up the set of outworn expedients which constituted the Residency policy, was finally faced with the urgency of the situation in New Zealand. British subjects were settling there in increasing numbers. Some were criminals and desperadoes. Others were buying Maori land. A permanent British colony was forming. On the other hand, introduced diseases were ravaging the Maori population and, if the decline continued, the race would become extinct. Even Maori families who lived on the mission stations and under missionary care were being wiped out as rapidly as those in the villages who continued to pursue traditional ways.* 15 Up until the middle of December 1837, Glenelg had favoured the argument

*

*

News of the Canadian rebellion did not reach London until 22 Dec. 1837 and Melbourne’s second and successful offer of the Governorship of Canada to Durham was not made until some time during the following week (New, Durham, pp. 317–9). The rebellion itself cannot therefore have affected Glenelg’s answer to the New Zealand Association on 20 December. These passages were particularly heavily underlined in the Colonial Office copy of Busby’s despatch.

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of the protestant missionary societies: that colonization by whites invariably destroyed indigenous races; that this could be prevented in New Zealand if the country was left to the missions, backed by the Government; and that therefore the New Zealand Association must be opposed. At a stroke Busby’s report destroyed the middle term of this argument. Haphazard white colonization of New Zealand was already occurring, accompanied by disastrous results for the Maoris. More important, the missions had failed to lessen the impact of this colonization, for the disastrous results were just as apparent among the Maori population under their immediate influence as elsewhere. The implication that somehow they were partly responsible along with the other Europeans in New Zealand was not lost on Dandeson Coates,† nor perhaps on the Colonial Office. Busby’s description of the New Zealand situation gravely weakened the missionary societies’ case. His own solution was for a British protectorate, under which sovereignty would be retained by the chiefs who would govern in trust for the Maoris as a whole. British interests, at present endangered by frontier anarchy and insecurity, would be safeguarded. But Busby realized that the real political power would reside with the British advisers who administered the laws behind the facade of a Maori puppet government. The Colonial Office was rightly sceptical of a proposal to govern through the chiefs when Busby admitted that ‘the present race of chiefs could not be entrusted with any discretion whatever …’. One civil servant wrote in the margin beside this statement ‘A pretty Govt.’16 Busby’s plan meant no more nor less than a British government, whatever façade was erected to hide it. These ideas were impractical and unworkable and received scant attention from the Colonial Office, but, as a step towards carrying them out, Busby put forward a proposal of timely significance. The British Government must realize that the frontier situation and the march of events had made New Zealand — not for the last time — a special case, so changing that country’s relations with the world ‘as to demand the application of a different principle from that, which in an abstract view of its previous condition, may have been considered expedient and just, and that His Majesty may be advised to grant a charter of government to the colony of British subjects who are established in it*…’.17 Two days after he received this suggestion, Glenelg offered a charter of government to the New Zealand Association. The missionary societies had lost the battle for the Government’s endorsement. Dandeson Coates had two lengthy interviews with Glenelg on 19 and 20 December from which he learnt that the New Zealand Association was to be granted a charter. The Government, though, drew the sting of immediate protest by adopting that time-worn expedient of many governments, claiming that nothing

† *

See this section. The underlining was done by a Colonial Office official.

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would be ‘finally’ decided until everyone had been fully consulted. The Church Missionary Society decided not to take legal proceedings before its deputation had met Glenelg, though if the interview did not lead to a satisfactory result it would follow the advice of its lawyer.18 The Wesleyan Missionary Society’s meeting with Glenelg on 27 December had no effect in changing the Government’s policy towards the New Zealand Association. In reviewing the formation of this policy three elements must be weighed. First, the New Zealand Association was responsible for bringing the subject of colonizing New Zealand before the public and the Government with such force and persistence that the Government eventually had to decide its attitude towards the association’s proposals and, by extension, towards the future of New Zealand itself. Secondly, the decision was forced on the Government at a time when Lord Howick, who was sympathetic towards the association’s plans, was constantly interfering in Glenelg’s administration of colonial policy and when Lord Durham, head of the New Zealand Association, held the key to the Government’s survival. Thirdly, at the critical moment, Busby’s most comprehensive report on the situation in New Zealand arrived in the Colonial Office. It not only destroyed the missionary societies’ illusion that colonization could be prevented and the Maoris ‘saved’ under their aegis, but suggested that immediate steps be taken to control frontier anarchy by granting a charter of government to the British subjects already in New Zealand. As is so often the case with political decisions, the line taken was the line of least resistance. Faced by the New Zealand Association’s demands, the Government offered it not the full measure of what it asked — an Act of Parliament enshrining the association’s principles of colonization — but an apparently palatable substitute in the form of a Crown charter. This would keep Howick happy, appease Durham and ensure his continued support, avoid the problem of legislating for a foreign country, and meet the problem of anarchy on the New Zealand frontier by adopting in modified form the suggestion of the ‘man on the spot’, Busby. So many birds were killed with one stone that it is difficult to decide which one the Government wanted to hit most or whether, indeed, it was not aiming at all of them at once. The decision to intervene in New Zealand was forced upon the Government by the combined pressure of a deteriorating frontier situation, and a metropolitan interest group which could use that situation as a lever to gain its own ends. Without the New Zealand Association’s pressure, it is safe to say that the Government would not have decided to act at that particular time or, probably, in that particular way. But the sine qua non of the decision to sanction planned colonization in New Zealand was the fact that unplanned colonization was already occurring. The realization that the worst sort of colonization was under way gave a certain plausibility to the association’s arguments that the only way to counteract it was by the best form — Wakefieldian colonization. Thus, given the Colonial Office’s admission of a dual duty to protect both Maoris and British sub79

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jects in New Zealand, the combination of peripheral and metropolitan pressure in December 1837 left the Government with almost no freedom of movement at the moment of making a decision. Lord Melbourne went to the heart of the matter when he wrote tiredly that the New Zealand problem was ‘only another proof of the fatal necessity by which a nation that once begins to colonize is led step by step over the the whole globe’.19 The apparently inevitable and inexorable movement of increasing numbers of British subjects to New Zealand created a situation for which the British Government admitted responsibility. It had become ‘an indispensable duty, in reference both to the natives and to British interests’ to intervene in New Zealand. In offering the New Zealand Association a charter, however, Glenelg and the Colonial Office were determined to take the most effectual precautions to ensure that neither Maoris nor emigrants were exploited and that the association was held responsible for its actions. The corporation and its officers were to have charge of all aspects of the government of the new colony: legislative, judicial, administrative, and financial. The British Government would have the right to veto nominations to the governing body and to all major official and judicial positions, and the right to disallow laws. Reports on the company’s affairs were to be published periodically as a check upon its activities. The colony could be established only with the free consent of the Maoris or their chiefs and contracts with the Maoris for land for the colony would be vetted by officers appointed especially for that purpose by the Crown, which retained the right to disallow such contracts within a certain period. A fixed portion of the land fund would be appropriated to religious and educational purposes and to the support of government protectors, who would be provided with sufficient power to guard the interests of the Maoris. The colony was not to be co-extensive with New Zealand; the possibility of chartering another company was mentioned. Finally, the company was to obtain ‘a certain subscribed capital, of which some definite portion should be paid up’ before the charter could take effect.20 Durham immediately took exception to this provision.21 He pointed out that most of the committee members had ‘expressly stipulated that they shall neither run any pecuniary risk, nor reap any pecuniary advantage’ from the colonization project and that they were especially opposed to holding shares liable to stock market fluctuations. He maintained that if members put up their own money, their private interests might clash with their public duties as governors of the colony in which they had invested. Moreover, the colony must be allowed to extend over the whole of New Zealand, for the existence of rival corporations or a noman’s-land would create grave problems.22 But a private company with such an extensive field would be open to charges of monopoly and privilege, and therefore the proposed corporation should be public. Other areas of disagreement between the Government and the New Zealand 80

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Association were also apparent after the first exchange of views on the proposed charter, but none were more fundamental than the Government’s insistence on a financial investment by the founder members, a demand which could only be met by the creation of a joint-stock company. Meanwhile, the Church Missionary Society was preparing for its longawaited meeting with Glenelg. Coates wrote a special background pamphlet for the deputation to Lord Glenelg, outlining the arguments against the New Zealand Association. He also borrowed the Busby despatch on which the Secretary of State placed so much importance.23 Coates agreed with Busby that while Maori sovereignty and independence must be preserved, the evils of the New Zealand frontier demanded effective British intervention; but he regarded Busby’s scheme as far too complex and likely to cause a collision with the Maoris. Moreover, Coates took exception to Busby’s ‘exceedingly overcharged’ picture of Maori population decline, particularly when it included Maoris on the mission stations.24 In his pamphlet for the deputation Coates had rightly refused to attribute the decrease in Maori population mainly to European immorality, but had blamed it more on warfare and famine. Since he had gone on to maintain that the mission had diminished the influence of both these factors by promoting peace, agriculture, and the introduction of new foodstuffs such as maize, wheat and cattle,25 Coates was bound to oppose Busby’s assertion that Maori population decline was as bad as ever and possibly worse. He also vehemently denied Busby’s implication that, since the Maoris on the mission stations were dying as fast as those elsewhere, the missionaries were not only failing to halt the trend but may even have been contributing to it along with other Europeans in New Zealand.26 The lay secretary was either forgetting, or else deliberately ignoring, the insistent reports from the missionaries in New Zealand about the bewildering extent of Maori population decline. Indeed, a few months later he went so far as to admit to Clarke that the ‘alleged mortality’ among the Maoris connected with the mission might be accounted for by their being in a transitional state from barbarism to civilization.27 Coates’s own evidence on the population question before the 1838 select committee was, not surprisingly, confused and inconsistent.28 He seemed unable to square the incontrovertible facts with his own idealized conception of the missionaries as saviours of the Maoris in this world, as well as in the next. The Church Missionary Society admitted the New Zealand Association’s basic premise that irregular colonization had increased crime and anarchy in New Zealand, though Coates thought the association exaggerated the picture to serve its own purposes. But colonization on the principles of the New Zealand Association was, in the society’s view, ‘utterly powerless to correct existing evils’. The colonists’ end was gain and their means would include coercive power. Whereas the ordinary immigrant went to a foreign country unsupported by an organized force, and accepted the associated risks, the colonist would be backed by force and conflicts with the Maoris would be inevitable. The Government, and the 81

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Government alone, must intervene to control the New Zealand frontier on the grounds of humanity, of economic policy — the valuable trade between New Zealand and New South Wales — and of the duty to restrain British subjects from violence and crime against the Maoris. There were measures short of colonization which could achieve these purposes.29 If New Zealand’s independence was to be respected as it should be, then such measures must rest on moral influence exercised through a well-chosen consular agent receiving adequate support from the Colonial Office and the New South Wales Government. He might be given two or three subordinates to help, and a ship of war should be available to remove criminal British subjects, though the Maori chiefs should be persuaded to adopt laws and institutions to prevent such crimes. Coates also put forward an idea rather similar to Busby’s earlier suggestion of a government station: the establishment of a ‘court of judicature’ on a small portion of land ceded in sovereignty by the Maoris. The first such court must be in the Bay of Islands, but possibly another judicial station would be required further south as well.30 Apart from this last suggestion, Coates’s ideas about controlling the New Zealand frontier had not moved far from those which he had urged upon Glenelg in 1835. The Resident was still the lynchpin of the society’s proposals, but by now the Colonial Office had finally realized that something more extensive and effective was required. The Church Missionary Society deputation eventually met Lord Glenelg, Sir George Grey, and James Stephen on 4 January 1838. The deputation added to its other proposals the suggestions that the Government should appoint a special commission to visit New Zealand and report on the situation, and should also await the considered views of the missionaries in the field. Glenelg avoided giving a final answer, but the deputation received the distinct impression that the Government was going to grant the New Zealand Association a charter, ‘with such limitations and restrictions as might render the arrangement beneficial to the natives’.31 And well it might, for that was precisely what the Colonial Office had decided to do two weeks before. Sensing which way the wind was blowing, the society set about planning to bring the matter up in the House of Commons; the secretaries were to consult members sympathetic to their cause, notably a society vice-president, J. Plumptre. When the Colonial Office did finally inform the society that a charter had been offered to the New Zealand Association on conditions that would satisfy missionary society objections, Coates returned a frosty reply: conditions were of no consequence when it was the principle of colonization to which the Church Missionary Society was opposed.32 Ironically, the Government’s negotiations with the New Zealand Association foundered on those very conditions shortly afterwards: Durham’s arguments failed to induce Glenelg to withdraw his demands for a direct investment by the founders, and for the territorial limitation of the proposed colony.33 Durham was ‘much hurt’ at this refusal and blamed Colonial Office intransigence on Stephen, 82

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against whom Wakefield had no doubt prejudiced him. Durham went so far as to hint that he might have to resign his Canadian appointment over the issue.34 Howick records that at this point Glenelg, ‘with his usual weakness’, was prepared to give in to Durham and abandon the safeguards, but the Cabinet decided that this was impossible; no doubt Howick was one of those urging its impossibility most strongly.35 Durham calmed down, however, and contented himself with firmly requesting that the New Zealand Association have the opportunity of a free and fair discussion of its objects in the House of Commons.36 Glenelg had no objection to the introduction of a Bill to establish a colony in New Zealand, but reserved the Government’s right to treat it on its merits. The charter offer was, of course, withdrawn.37 With, no doubt, a considerable amount of relief, the Church Missionary Society promptly set up a sub-committee to keep an eye on the New Zealand question in the intervals between general committee meetings. Coates was to find out from Glenelg what the Government proposed to do next and to offer the assistance of the society if the Government’s intentions were ‘consistent with the national rights and moral & religious welfare’ of the Maoris.38 Wakefield’s interpretation of the breakdown of the charter negotiations implied that, since Glenelg and the Colonial Office were firmly under the influence of the Church Missionary Society, the joint-stock condition was inserted deliberately because it was known that the New Zealand Association would fail to meet it; if by chance it had, then presumably Glenelg would have pitched the stakes higher still until the negotiations broke down.39 The evidence does not bear out such an interpretation. As far as Glenelg was concerned, Howick’s account is conclusive: far from trying to obstruct the New Zealand Association, Glenelg was prepared in the last resort to give way to Durham all along the line but was prevented from doing so by the Cabinet. Nor did the Colonial Office, in making the charter offer and in subsequently withdrawing it, obey the wishes — let alone the dictates — of the Church Missionary Society and its energetic lay secretary. Coates had long interviews with Glenelg on the day before and on the very day the charter offer was made, and yet it was made. He wrote pamphlets and organized a society deputation to oppose the association, yet still the Government approved the association’s plans in principle. He expressed regret and disappointment to no avail, and when the charter offer was withdrawn it was through no pressure of his, but purely because the association failed to meet the Government’s conditions. Nor were these conditions framed, except in the most general sense, with a ‘due regard’ for Church Missionary Society views. The society was neither consulted beforehand nor informed afterwards about their content,40 and Coates himself scotched any idea that they were introduced at the behest of the society by pointing out that it would have no truck with colonization on New Zealand Association lines, however hedged with safeguards it might be. Indeed, the Church Missionary Society was treated in a rather off-hand man83

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ner by the Colonial Office. The society’s deputation was kept waiting, probably deliberately, until after the Government had come to an arrangement with the New Zealand Association. It was then fobbed off with claims that its views were being taken into account and that no final decision had been reached. Another three weeks elapsed before the Colonial Office bothered to inform the society that an offer of a charter had definitely been made. It does not appear, therefore, that the Colonial Office paid more than cursory attention to the wishes of the Church Missionary Society once it had decided to employ the New Zealand Association as a vehicle for intervention in the antipodes. Such treatment reveals the Colonial Office’s dislike of amateur advice and interference, even from a body for which Glenelg, Grey, and Stephen had some sympathy. Though Glenelg was at one time a vice-president of the society and both Grey and Stephen were on the committee for a period, nine years in Stephen’s case (though he rarely attended meetings),41 they were all wary of Dandeson Coates, who was by no means on the intimate terms* with them or with the Colonial Office files that has sometimes been supposed.42 Nor is there any doubt that the heads of the Colonial Office were generally able to distinguish between their private inclinations and public policies and to maintain a normal degree of objectivity in evolving the latter. Nevertheless, it is equally true that Glenelg, Grey, and Stephen all shared the Church Missionary Society’s concern for the protection of the Maori people and their rights, and in this sense the conditions attached to the charter were designed to meet Church Missionary Society objections. Certainly, the principles on which the society took its stand concerning the New Zealand question were generally approved by the Colonial Office chiefs. The basic reason why the Church Missionary Society received scant attention from men who had some sympathy with its ideology was due simply to the inadequacy of the society’s practical proposals for controlling the New Zealand frontier. The Colonial Office knew now that haphazard colonization had begun and could not be stopped; yet the society continued to insist that all colonization must be prevented, while at the same time excusing the introduction of ‘a valuable class of settlers — the offspring of the missionaries’.43 The civil servants also knew that the Maori population, both on and off the mission stations, was declining rapidly; yet the society maintained that such reports were exaggerated and was reluctant to admit that missionary Maoris died as fast as others. The Colonial Office had tried off and on for several years to strengthen the Resident’s position with naval support and extra-territorial jurisdiction, but had failed to get Parliament or the Admiralty to agree; yet the Church Missionary Society advoc-

*

See this section, where Coates asks Buxton whether anything can be done at the Colonial Office, a curious question if he was himself on intimate terms with the heads of the office.

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ated precisely these measures as the best solution for the New Zealand frontier. The society’s case was out-dated and, in some respects, blatantly self-interested. The Colonial Office realized that the urgency of the situation in New Zealand, as described by Busby in his June 1837 despatch, demanded a more comprehensive and far-reaching intervention. It seized upon the instrument nearest to hand, the New Zealand Association. The association was, of course, just as self-interested as the society. While the Church Missionary Society wished to preserve a virgin field for missionary endeavour in order to ‘civilise’ and Christianize the Maoris in its own way and its own time, the association aimed to buy land from the Maoris for a song, resell it to the colonists at a much higher price, use the proceeds to introduce thousands of emigrants, and establish a government which would operate primarily in the interests of the newcomers. While the association was composed not of businessmen and capitalists but largely of parliamentarians and public men who prided themselves on their philanthropy, and while it is true that as far as the founders were concerned the colony was to be non-profit-making except insofar as they invested in New Zealand land in their private capacity, the association planned to borrow on the public market on the security of a supposed ‘right’ to a million acres which it had bought from the New Zealand Company of 1825. As Durham himself pointed out, however, the 1825 company’s right arose from nothing more than the expenditure of a lot of money with the intention of purchasing a million acres;44 yet on this insubstantial security the association would use borrowed money to float its scheme. If the association cannot be accused of seeking a profit for its members, it can certainly be charged with planning considerable financial irresponsibility. From the point of view of the emigrant, of course, ‘gain’ was the mainspring of the whole scheme.45 To guard against such irresponsibility, and to protect the Exchequer against the possibility that the New Zealand Association might fail, leaving the Government to pick up the pieces, the Colonial Office insisted that the association become an incorporated company with proper liability and that the members subscribe some of their own capital to it. If this capital was regarded as a loan to the colony to be repaid out of the future revenues, then the interests of the shareholders and subscribers would coincide with those of the emigrants in furthering the general prosperity of the colony upon which the dividend would depend.46 Wakefield accused the Government of introducing this joint-stock requirement at the last minute.47 Whether it was mentioned at the 20 December 1837 meeting is not clear, but it was certainly included in Glenelg’s summary of the discussion.48 It seems probable that until then the New Zealand Association and the Government had misunderstood each other completely on the question of finance. Personal investment in the capital of the proposed colony had always been eschewed by the association and it was with genuine shock that it discovered that the charter depended upon it. Yet the Government appears to have believed from the beginning that such was the basis of the association’s project. Howick, in his 85

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dealings with the association in mid-1837, had spoken of a colony formed ‘at the expense of private individuals’, of the projectors proceeding ‘at their own risk’, of ‘investors’ and ‘speculators’. The association, in reply, had discussed the same colony as being founded ‘without cost to the public’ and yet by men who had discarded ‘all notion of private speculation’. One could be forgiven for wondering who was going to pay for it. The Government and the association were talking at cross-purposes without either apparently realizing it.49 The New Zealand Association’s draft Bill had contained no provision for the liability of the founders and governors of the proposed colony against mismanagement, incompetence, or fraud. Emigrants who suffered or Maoris who were exploited had no possibility of redress because those who organized the emigration or committed the exploitation refused all legal and financial liability for their actions. It is hardly surprising that the Government baulked at allowing a private body to borrow large sums of other people’s money and risk it in a scheme in which its own members were not prepared to invest and for which they offered no other security than that of their good name. The New Zealand Association declined to dilute its self-confessed philanthropy and humanitarianism with the common profit motive. The negotiations broke down. The wisdom of the Government’s insistence on a joint-stock was, as Stephen admitted at the time, ‘fairly open to debate’.50 Some historians have accepted the association’s honourable protestations at face value and blamed the Government for destroying them with its insistence on a joint-stock;51 others have doubted the association’s motives.52 Having refused to establish a colony in New Zealand by Act of Parliament, the Government had no alternative but to offer a charter. Yet the idea of chartering a private association to administer a public project with no security of personal interest or corporate responsibility and without sufficient external control was probably beyond the grasp of men like Howick, Stephen and Glenelg. Such an arrogation of powers to a private body, particularly an unfettered power of extending the Empire by treaties with the Maoris, was ‘shocking to all nineteenth century ideas of decorum and proper procedure’.53 Therefore the association must turn itself into a company. The Government was limited by the attitudes of its time. In a longer view of New Zealand’s history it may be that the colonization of the country would have been better in the hands of a non-profit-making organization; yet such a view can only be hypothetical. In January 1838 the Government’s insistence on proper liability from the New Zealand Association exacted through the accepted methods of the day was based on sound reasoning from past experience. It cannot be said that New Zealand, even in December 1837, was regarded as an issue of major importance or urgency in the Colonial Office. The New Zealand frontier was at that time the ‘last frontier’ of the Empire, the most distant and probably the least significant in terms of Britain’s world power. In March 86

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1838 Stephen described the preceding two months as among the busiest and most anxious of his career, but he was referring to the Canadian rebellions, the struggle with the West Indian colonies over the emancipation of slaves, and Sir William Molesworth’s motion of no confidence in Lord Glenelg; New Zealand was not mentioned.54 Nevertheless, the combined pressure of the situation on the frontier and the New Zealand Association at home had forced the Melbourne Government to admit that intervention in New Zealand was necessary. The failure of the association to meet the Government’s conditions for a charter did not affect the validity of the reasons which had led the Government to offer the charter in the first place. The logic of the Colonial Office’s interpretation of the worsening situation in New Zealand remained. The decision to intervene still stood. Now the Colonial Office had to find an alternative method of carrying out that decision. This search, pursued with neither energy nor haste, occupied almost the whole of 1838. Following the collapse of negotiations with the New Zealand Association, Lord Glenelg planned to include some provision concerning New Zealand in the forthcoming Bill for restructuring the Government of New South Wales. The appointment of a House of Lords select committee to look into the New Zealand question provided a convenient reason for delay, though Glenelg said that he hoped that the committee’s report would be ready in time to allow the adoption of some measure during that parliamentary session. The Government was not biased towards any particular scheme and a Bill which protected Maoris and British settlers alike would be welcome.55 The Colonial Office thereupon sat back and waited. The New Zealand Association also lapsed into inactivity. There was insufficient time to present a Bill before Parliament recessed, and Wakefield and Durham were preparing to go to Canada. Only Coates and the Church Missionary Society were active, relatively speaking.56 Coates lobbied seven out of the twenty-one members of the Lords select committee* and felt encouraged to hope that the committee would recommend measures beneficial to the Maoris and the missions.57 By the beginning of May 1838 Coates believed that Glenelg was disposed to deal with the New Zealand question on Church Missionary Society principles. By itself such a disposition was not new, as Glenelg had always been sympathetic to the society’s principles, as opposed to its practical suggestions. But Glenelg had been studying Hobson’s report on New Zealand which had arrived early in Febru-

*

The Earl of Ripon and the Duke of Wellington were firmly opposed to the New Zealand Association; Lord Aberdeen did not commit himself but was thought to be sympathetic to the C.M.S.; the opinions of Lord Bexley, the Earl of Devon and the Bishop of London are not recorded but were probably similar; Glenelg was the seventh member lobbied. The President of the C.M.S., the Earl of Chichester, and two other bishops were also on the committee.

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ary 1838. He and Coates had discussed the selection of an individual to carry out any measures evolved for New Zealand. Coates had suggested Robert FitzRoy,58 who had captained H.M.S. Beagle on a world voyage with the young Charles Darwin and who had praised the Church Missionary Society’s work in New Zealand on his return. Stephen merely commented that the idea was not yet developed enough to appoint anybody.59 But one of the other advantages of Hobson’s plan, according to a Colonial Office memorandum of 4 May 1838, was that it did not provide for organized colonization.60 Thus, when Coates interpreted Glenelg’s attitude to the New Zealand question as ‘encouraging’ it may have been that Glenelg was moving not so much nearer to a wholesale acceptance of the society’s position as away from his earlier reluctant approval of the colonization of New Zealand on Wakefieldian lines. This change of mind, if it can be described so definitely at this stage, was to develop into a vital element of Glenelg’s subsequent policy towards New Zealand. Coates also put forward a new idea, that the Government should collect sufficient information to compile a code of laws suitable and acceptable to the Maoris and also applicable to foreigners. Such an arrangement would have great advantages for, as Coates argued, ‘Let an effective Native Government once be established & there would no longer remain a shadow of pretence for foreign interference.’61 While the idea was interesting in itself and showed the strength of Coates’s commitment to preserving Maori ‘national rights and liberties’, his proposal was never taken seriously either by the missionaries in New Zealand or the Government in Britain. Late in May 1838 the New Zealand Association made one last effort to convince the Government that its insistence on a joint-stock company would ruin its scheme: paying a dividend would reduce the emigration fund, while if the directors were also shareholders they would be open to charges of corruption, justifiable or otherwise. Baring was impatient to see the ‘anxious and protracted negotiation’ ended.62 The Government remained unmoved.63 The association, therefore, brought down its ‘Bill for the provisional government of British settlements in the islands of New Zealand’ on 1 June 1838. The Church Missionary Society, forewarned, presented its petition against the Bill at the second reading nineteen days later.64 The effort proved to be unnecessary. The Government opposed the Bill. Lord Howick pointed out that the defects of the original draft had not been eliminated and that the Bill provided no security against injustice either to the emigrants or to the Maoris. Even The Spectator, normally an ardent supporter of the New Zealand Association, was unhappy with the irresponsibility of the proposed corporation. In Howick’s words, ‘we in the end threw out the most monstrous proposition I ever knew made to the house by 92 to 32.’65 The New Zealand Association and the body of emigrants who were to compose the first colony were now stumped. First the charter and now the Bill had failed. Dr Samuel Evans, spokesman for the emigrants, complained that he and 88

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upwards of 500 others had been led ‘as much as twelve months ago, to believe that the principle of the Bill had received the sanction of Her Majesty’s Government’. The Government denied misleading anybody when all along it had disagreed with the main clauses of the Bill.66 H. G. Ward, after an interview with Glenelg, believed that the Government still admitted the need for colonization in New Zealand, and the advantage of using an intermediate body. He tried to divide Glenelg, who insisted on a paid-up capital, from Melbourne and Howick, whom he considered as only requiring a borrowed capital as security for the New Zealand Association’s activities. The association fully intended to borrow on the strength of a prospective revenue from future land sales, but objected to paying any money itself.67 The distinction between Glenelg and Melbourne or Howick was, however, false; the Government was determined not to repeat the South Australian mistake and allow an all-powerful public body to amass debts which the Exchequer then had to liquidate. The New Zealand Association, despite a despairing effort to keep its spirits up by regarding the failure of the Bill as only ‘temporary’, was moribund. A resolution reaffirming the association’s determination to persevere proved to be its last recorded action.68 A transformation was required. Any judgement on the New Zealand Association as a pressure group has to reconcile its success in forcing the Government to admit the need for intervention in New Zealand with its failure to achieve its own objects. The success came from a calculated application of political and personal pressure at a time when, coincidentally, the Government received a grave report on the situation in New Zealand. The failure resulted from an extraordinary degree of political naïveté. With eleven members of Parliament and two lords on the committee, it might have been expected that the New Zealand Association would realize that converting the Government to a scheme, including as it did the extension of the Empire, would require time and care. Instead, Ward alienated some of Howick’s valuable goodwill by pushing too hard for a decision which it was obvious Howick was in no position to make. The association then squandered the offer of a charter by refusing to meet the joint-stock condition; yet five of its most energetic committee members joined the successor New Zealand Company, a joint-stock body.69 Further, in mid-1838 the association brought down a Bill which palpably failed to fulfil the requirements of security for the Maoris and emigrants on which its success clearly depended. Throughout these proceedings New Zealand Association members encouraged prospective emigrants and the public to think that they were within an ace of receiving government approval for their scheme as a whole, when the only ground for such a course was their own over-sanguine interpretation of the Government’s approval in principle. And, as the association and Dr Evans failed to realize, approval in principle is often vitiated or nullified by disagreement over practice. It was so in the case of the New Zealand Association. Yet the association’s opponent, the Church Missionary Society, made the same mistake. As 1838 wore on Glenelg seemed to be increasingly attracted 89

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by the society’s view of the New Zealand question, and opposed to that of the New Zealand Association. In June he gave the president of the society the impression that their views coincided ‘upon all the more important particulars …’. Chichester’s recommendations emphasized the extension of effective court jurisdiction to New Zealand, either from Australia or by setting up a court in New Zealand.70 A few weeks later Glenelg asked Howick for his opinion on the inclusion of some such provision in the draft New South Wales Bill.71 Another of Chichester’s proposals was that Busby should be replaced, either by a naval captain with a roving commission in the Pacific or by a civil or diplomatic agent. When Thomas McDonnell applied for such a position in mid-July, the comments of Stephen and Gairdner show that the possibility of replacing Busby had certainly been discussed in the Colonial Office. Two months later, in September, Glenelg remarked that McDonnell’s bad relations with the missionaries in New Zealand disqualified him from being considered for the position of Resident, ‘whoever else is’.72 Finally, in July Coates sent the Colonial Office another letter reiterating the society’s proposals for New Zealand and obtained an interview for a Church Missionary Society deputation a few days later. At that meeting Glenelg, without pledging the Government, was ‘disposed to try and remedy the existing evils in New Zealand on the principles laid down in the Committee’s letter’ and promised that no steps would be taken to charter any colonization company before the next session of Parliament.73 It appears from this statement that the society had converted the Colonial Office to its views as decisively in mid-1838 as the New Zealand Association had done in December 1837. Yet, though Glenelg might agree with the society’s principles, the Colonial Office continued to criticize its practical proposals. Stephen found it difficult to reconcile Coates’s insistence that British intervention in New Zealand must be limited to ‘moral influence’ alone with his demand that the frontier be controlled by a visiting court of assize and a specially designed code of laws; aside from the impracticality of such an idea, the establishment of a court would require the interference of either the Crown or Parliament and would therefore extend beyond moral suasion.74 Gairdner, too, noted that there was some danger in the society’s desire for a new consular agent with more power; other interested groups would regard him as a tool of the missionary societies. Gairdner found Hobson’s plan for factories and courts of justice ‘infinitely preferable’ to the society’s proposals.75 Glenelg himself could agree with the society’s principles and in the same breath imply that the possibility of chartering a colonization company was still open.76 The Government had avoided shipwreck on the Scylla of the New Zealand Association and was now trying to pull clear of the Church Missionary Society Charybdis. Stephen and Gairdner were rowing hard enough, but Glenelg was steering with all the irresolution of an indecisive politician. He had approved the views of both the New Zealand Association and the Church Missionary Society in principle, without accepting the practical schemes of either. Since the two or90

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ganizations were diametrically opposed over the nature and extent of prospective British intervention in New Zealand, Glenelg had managed to put the Government into a difficult position. An alternative solution must be found. New Zealand was not the only imperial problem suffering from Glenelg’s weak-minded policy direction. In mid-1838 Stephen was in a state of despair about Colonial Office business generally during this time of ‘peculiar emergency’, and asked Howick to stay in town because ‘nothing would be done if Lord Glenelg was left to himself during the recess’.77 Howick refused, but promised to help if papers were sent to him. The foundation for an alternative policy was provided by Captain Hobson’s celebrated report on the state of New Zealand. Busby’s Ionian-type protectorate scheme had not received much attention in the Colonial Office, though his suggestion that British subjects already in New Zealand should be given a charter had probably influenced Glenelg in deciding to encharter the New Zealand Association. Hobson’s report arrived early in February 1838, just as the charter negotiations failed. Its proposals were neat, consistent, and apparently practicable and during the next few months the Colonial Office kept turning the plan over in its collective mind as a possible solution. Glenelg emphasized the report’s significance when writing to Durham in February.78 In May, a Colonial Office memorandum suggested that the New Zealand question would be easily solved if Hobson’s proposals were adopted: the trading factories might be declared dependencies of New South Wales in the proposed New South Wales Bill and the Colonial Government authorized to establish courts and legislate for New Zealand; the colonies which would form around each factory would be preferable to the present unregulated and scattered settlement, and the plan also had the advantage of not providing for organized colonization at all.79 In August Gairdner commented that he found Hobson’s proposals ‘infinitely preferable’ to those of the Church Missionary Society. Thus, by August 1838 Hobson’s report had been praised in the Colonial Office both because it avoided the issue of organized colonization and because it was superior to the programme of the missionary societies. The alternative solution was in the making, but it was to be another three months before the first tentative step was taken. While the Colonial Office apparently slumbered over the New Zealand question from August to December 1838 during the parliamentary recess, the balance between the two major pressure groups was undergoing another subtle change. The Church Missionary Society had made the running since the defeat of the New Zealand Association’s Bill in June, and in August the society appeared to be on top. The Lords select committee reported in that month that the extension of the Empire was ‘a question of public policy which belongs to the decision of Her Majesty’s Government’, but that support for the missionary societies afforded the best prospect for the Maoris.80 Coates had done his lobbying well, and the report came out firmly against private enterprise of the New Zealand Asso91

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ciation kind as an instrument of imperial expansion. For the second time in two years a parliamentary select committee had vindicated the activities of the missionaries and advocated their continuance. The report was quite inadequate as a solution to the New Zealand frontier situation but it may have stiffened Glenelg’s resolve against organized colonization. The Church Missionary Society sat back to await the renewed efforts which it expected the colonizers to make in the next parliamentary session.81 Between August and the end of November New Zealand received hardly a mention in the society’s minutes. Meanwhile, phoenix-like, the New Zealand Association was rising from its own ashes. On 29 August 1838 some members of the old association and a leavening of new men formed a private joint-stock body, with a subscribed capital of £25,000, called the New Zealand Colonization Association.* After negotiations for purchasing Thomas McDonnell’s land at Kaipara and Hokianga had been completed, a sub-committee was formed on 31 October to investigate the cost of a preliminary expedition to New Zealand. A month later, after much shopping around, the vessel Tory was bought for £5,250 from Joseph Somes, the largest shipowner in England and himself a member of the Colonization Association.82 The Tory, soon to earn itself a lasting niche in New Zealand’s history, was certainly not bought, even if it was dispatched, at the last minute. Thus, while the Church Missionary Society was quiescent the New Zealand Association transformed itself and began concrete preparations for the establishment of a colony in New Zealand. By August-September Glenelg still seemed at a loss to know what to do. After the attention paid to Hobson’s report in the Colonial Office it was obvious that, at the very least, Busby would have to be replaced; Glenelg indicated this when he turned down McDonnell’s application in September. But beyond that the only action taken was a further, and by now rather hackneyed, request that the Admiralty send warships to visit New Zealand as frequently as possible for the mutual protection of the British subjects and Maoris. The Admiralty replied favourably on the same day on which it received the Colonial Office’s letter, 15 August 1838. Curiously, however, the reply was not registered in the Colonial Office until 30 November.83 On that day, too, Coates sent Glenelg a copy of a letter from George Clarke expressing the missionaries’ considerable concern about the New Zealand Association and its plans. Coates hoped that any such scheme would be rejected, but urged the Government to do something about the frontier situation in New Zealand without delay.84 Suddenly, the day after receiving

*

Entry for 29 Aug. 1838, C.O. 208/185:86–87. There was a certain looseness in referring to the new body and the full title, the ‘New Zealand Land and Colonization Company’, did not appear in the minutes. Later ‘the Association’ and ‘the Company’ were used almost interchangeably. I am indebted to Mr Peter Crisp, formerly of the Alexander Turnbull Library, for this information. I shall call the new body the ‘Colonization Association’ to distinguish it from the old ‘Association’.

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these two communications, Glenelg announced to Governor Gipps of New South Wales that he intended to appoint a consul to New Zealand.85 The first step had been taken. The decision to appoint somebody to replace Busby seems to have been taken sometime in June or July, after the failure of the New Zealand Association Bill. It was obvious that increased powers would have to be provided for the new man and the Admiralty was therefore approached again, in August. But nobody had been found for the job by the middle of September and nothing further was done until the sudden official announcement of the appointment of a consul at the beginning of December. It is unlikely that Coates’s letter stimulated the announcement, since it contained nothing very new. The arrival of the Admiralty’s long-delayed letter the day before the consular appointment appears to be more than merely coincidental, particularly when Glenelg included copies of the Admiralty correspondence in his despatch to Governor Gipps. The Colonial Office probably wished to couple increased naval support with the consular appointment and may have been galvanized into action by the tardy arrival of the Admiralty’s letter. The consular appointment appeared at first sight to fit firmly into the Glenelg ‘tradition’ of trying to strengthen the Resident’s position with naval support and civil authority. The Colonial Office files were strewn with the debris of his good intentions and as recently as July 1838 Glenelg had been toying with the idea of providing for the establishment of courts in New Zealand in the New South Wales Bill. That this was still his intention in December 1838 is shown by a passage, subsequently omitted, in the draft letter seeking the Foreign Office’s approval: provision would be made in the Bill for establishing ‘some more effectual control over British subjects’ similar to that envisaged when Busby was appointed.86 The passage may have been omitted in order not to frighten the Foreign Office with the prospect of greater involvement and expense than a consular appointment alone would entail, particularly when, ‘as the object [was] one of a national character and not limited to any interest connected with New South Wales’, the consul’s salary should go on the Foreign Office estimates. Palmerston approved the appointment.87 However, there had been a new influence on Colonial Office thinking about New Zealand since February 1838: Hobson’s report. On 28 December 1838 Hobson was offered the position of consul in New Zealand.88 Whatever Glenelg’s underlying intentions in appointing a consul therefore, and they may have been only half-formed when the decision was made, it is obvious that Hobson’s ideas were a vital element. Hobson hesitated over whether to leave the sea for an arduous and isolated shore appointment but, failing to get the naval job he had been hoping for, he accepted the consulship in February 1839.89 He had requested an assurance that he would have sufficient power to carry out the task properly and wanted to know 93

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how the repression of crime and the settlement of disputes were to be effected and whether Britain’s relations with the Maoris would change.90 During January 1839 he put forward his own suggestions, probably at the invitation of the Colonial Office. Hobson insisted that the factory plan was ‘the only measure short of the actual assumption of sovereignty’ that would provide sufficient protection on the frontier, but he now maintained that he had suggested it only as a minimum step, because he knew that the British Government wished to preserve New Zealand’s independence. It was a measure of ‘expediency rather than of choice’, because it would leave much of New Zealand exposed to foreign power interference, shady land deals, and consequent confusion and violence. From 1837 he had thought it inevitable that emigration would force the establishment of British law and order and that the real remedy was for Britain to assume the sovereignty of the whole of New Zealand. If this proved unacceptable, then an extended form of the factory plan should be adopted, and Hobson proceeded to discuss the details of such a scheme.91 On the same day that Hobson’s suggestions were received in the Colonial Office, Permanent Secretary Stephen drew up the first official exposition of the intentions underlying the consular appointment. He agreed that the colonization of New Zealand was no longer a question at issue, since there were already 2,000 British subjects living there and the number would increase. The expansion of the frontier which had occurred during the 1830s could not be ignored, nor the tide of emigration turned back. The establishment of order was now the problem and, learning from the South Australian experiment, the solution of it should lie exclusively with the executive power, not with Parliament. A government representative should therefore negotiate the cession from the Maoris of the sovereignty of ‘such parts’ of New Zealand as might be best adapted for a colony, becoming governor of the ceded parts with power to establish the administration of justice and instructions to protect the Maoris ‘by every method which can be devised for that end’. Parliament would provide the authority, make provision for the trial of offenders who committed crimes outside the precincts of the colony, and forbid future land purchases by British subjects except through the Crown. A charter of incorporation might still be granted to certain projectors, under the name of ‘the New Zealand Company’, who would raise a joint-stock to finance loans to the Government, to float banks and other capital ventures, and to sell Crown lands on a commission basis and apply the proceeds to emigration. Thus the ancient prerogative and legitimate authority of the Crown would be preserved, while the scheme would go far to meet the wishes of the New Zealand projectors. Stephen summed up the question as ‘not one of expense, but rather of humanity and justice towards the aborigines and of national policy’. He advised haste.92 Here was a scheme which met the minimum demands of the missionary societies by limiting intervention and leaving the Maoris essentially independent, 94

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and yet which allowed substantial scope to a colonizing body. Moreover, the establishment of executive government would precede the beginnings of organized colonization and therefore have more control over it. Stephen’s plan was not exactly a compromise from the Church Missionary Society point of view because it included provision for some colonization, but the society would probably not have had the political influence to defeat it had the Government decided to try and harness the energies of both the missionaries and the colonizers under such a scheme. But Glenelg interfered. In the first draft of the consular instructions drawn up by Stephen three days later, there was no mention of chartering a company to handle finance, emigration, and land sales. Glenelg’s covering note for the Cabinet argued that intervention was necessary ‘for the protection, both of the British settlers, and of the natives …’. But the dual duty went no further. The plan was ‘not one for the encouragement of an extended system of colonization, but for the establishment of a regular form of government, urgently demanded by existing circumstances’.93 The draft instructions went on to expand and develop the governmental side of Stephen’s proposals of 21 January. Whatever the wisdom of extending the Empire to include New Zealand or of increasing the Maoris’ contact with Europeans, the growing numbers of settlers, their acquisition of Maori land, and the associated crimes and disorders demanded firm measures ‘for the protection of the natives and the benefit of the settlers themselves’. But, as Stephen pointed out, any action must be based on the fact that ‘Her Majesty recognises the right of the native chiefs in New Zealand to the sovereignty of those islands … and a title to that dominion can be legitimately acquired in no other method than that of the voluntary cession of it by the chiefs in whom it is at present vested’.94 Stephen did not indicate whether he thought the chiefs possessed this sovereignty individually or collectively, though Grey questioned whether unanimity or a majority decision would be required for such a cession. Hobson was not advised on this point, but the Colonial Office did not regard any particular group of chiefs, such as Busby’s United Tribes, as possessing the sovereignty which Britian had recognized.95 Sovereignty belonged simply to ‘the native chiefs in New Zealand’, by ‘the common consent’ of the inhabitants. Since it was considered neither necessary nor practicable to obtain dominion over the whole of New Zealand, Hobson was to choose ‘some few districts’ where British shipping and settlement were already important and where courts and other institutions could be set up ‘for the good government of the existing settlers, for the promotion of trade, and for the protection of the natives’.96 In order to induce the chiefs to cede sovereignty at the chosen places, Hobson was permitted to promise them help in protecting their unceded territory from external enemies.* But ‘more immediate and palpable advantages’ might also be necessary and Hobson was authorized to distribute presents as ‘the price’ of sovereignty. On the other hand, he was to observe ‘the utmost possible openness and sincer95

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ity’ in explaining the real motives for British intervention, and endeavouring to convince the chiefs that ‘the first and most important’ of them was to rescue the Maoris from the crimes of lawless Europeans.97 Glenelg’s minute for the Cabinet emphasized above all that the scheme was limited in nature: colonization on any scale was not encouraged and the negotiated cession would be restricted to areas where British subjects were already settled.98 By February 1839, therefore, the heads of the Colonial Office had evolved a reasonably well-developed plan of intervention based firmly on the ideas contained in Hobson’s 1837 report. Hobson was to go as consul, with a warship at his disposal, to negotiate a fair and open cession of the sovereignty of those parts of New Zealand where British interests and British subjects were mainly located. In return for this cession, the Maori chiefs would receive protection for their unceded territory and presents. If the negotiations were successful, the ceded parts would become a Crown Colony. Future land purchases by British subjects were to be regarded as invalid unless confirmed by a Crown title, a stipulation that foreshadowed the pre-emption clause in the Treaty of Waitangi. All that was required to set the policy in motion was Admiralty co-operation, Cabinet approval, and the working out of a number of details. However, Glenelg’s forced resignation on 8 February 1839 threw matters back into the melting-pot where they were left simmering for his successor, the Marquis of Normanby. If Hobson’s report provided the framework of the policy, Glenelg — rather than Stephen — was responsible for its anti-colonization bias.99 Stephen had suggested in his 21 January minute that a company should be chartered to handle finance, land sales, and emigration. In the draft instructions of three days later there was no mention of this proposal, a significant omission and one that could scarcely be accidental in view of the importance of the management of such affairs to the success of the whole undertaking. Glenelg not only failed to mention chartering a company in his outline for the Cabinet, but explicitly denied any intention of encouraging colonization. Nor did he adopt Stephen’s suggestion that the various projectors of colonization schemes for New Zealand be encouraged to form one plan for the Government’s consideration.100 The clearest evidence that it was Glenelg, and not Stephen, who opposed the chartering of a company can be found in the first important minute which Stephen wrote after Glenelg left office. Summarizing earlier thinking on the New Zealand question, Stephen favoured Glenelg’s first idea of a colony ‘formed on the model of the old New England constitutions’ with a joint-stock company managing the settlement and government. If the opposition of the missionary societies could be overcome, this would be ‘the best practicable course’. If not, then ‘the next best

*

Grey noted in the margin that such a guarantee might be ‘hazardous’ in committing Britain to resist any attempt by the French or Americans to settle in the unceded parts of New Zealand.

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course’ would be ‘Lord Glenelg’s second or substituted scheme’, that of a consulate, a partial cession and an Act of Parliament. Stephen again proposed that somebody from the Government should meet a deputation from all the different colonization projectors to decide on one mode of proceeding and report to Lord Normanby.101 Stephen, by his own account, favoured a chartered company as a means of controlling the situation in New Zealand. Glenelg had discarded this idea for that of a consulship. The fact that the Colonial Office was intending to despatch a consul and refusing to charter a company shows that Glenelg had his way until he was forced out of office. The expansion of the British frontier in New Zealand and the consequent impact on Maori population and society forced the British Government to admit the necessity of intervention there. But the timing of the decision and the method of intervention initially selected were dictated by the skilful pressure which the New Zealand Association brought to bear upon the Melbourne Government during a time of impending crisis in colonial affairs in December 1837. The association failed to capitalize on its advantage and after June 1838 the Government had to find a new method of intervention. A new method only, because the Colonial Office was committed to the principle of interference by its own analysis of the situation. Indeed, the reasons for it could only grow stronger with time as unregulated emigration aggravated the problems of an ungoverned frontier. The problem of what to do after the New Zealand Association refused to accept the charter was treated cautiously, even lackadaisically, under Glenelg’s administration of the Colonial Office. New Zealand was not particularly important compared with the progress of Durham’s mission in Canada, the termination of apprenticeship in the West Indies, the problems of jurisdiction and race relations created by the Boers trekking northwards from the Cape Colony, the demands for self-government and an end to transportation in New South Wales, and the financial and economic difficulties which faced both West and South Australia. But even these major problems did not receive noticeably competent or decisive handling from Glenelg, so it was hardly surprising that the New Zealand question was not regarded with much urgency. Nor, during 1838, was there any particular pressure that demanded immediate satisfaction. There was no foreign rivalry for New Zealand and although Stephen was initially worried by Thierry’s arrival there, it was clear by August 1838 that he presented no threat. New South Wales economic involvement in New Zealand continued to grow during 1838, stimulated by droughts in the colony, a shortage of both labour and immediately accessible pasture land, and fears of a rise in the upset price of agricultural land.102 Yet there is no evidence in the Colonial Office files that either commercial interests or the New South Wales Government itself lobbied for official intervention in New Zealand.103 In Britain the only expression of opinion on New Zealand from Parliament merely 97

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stated that the question was for the Government to solve. Only the New Zealand Association and the Church Missionary Society pressed for intervention, but the association was moribund by July 1838 and the society’s opinions were so well known to the Colonial Office that they were not accorded urgent attention. Glenelg was therefore under no pressure to decide on an alternative policy in a hurry. Secretary of State Glenelg, despite his earlier promising career, was not a success at the Colonial Office and did not have the confidence of his Cabinet colleagues. Lord Howick, impetuous and hasty himself, could not abide procrastination and indecision and suggested Glenelg’s removal in December 1837 and again in August 1838.104 Lord John Russell was of similar opinion and there were discussions about a Cabinet reshuffle in October.105 Melbourne, though inclined to agree, was not prepared to rock the rather waterlogged Whig boat and it was not until early February 1839 that the threatened resignation of both Howick and Russell and the general dissatisfaction in the Cabinet forced him to express lack of confidence in Glenelg and leave the Secretary of State no other course but to resign.106 In the Colonial Office, too, Glenelg lacked respect as an administrator. Stephen certainly admired his character as ‘the most laborious, the most conscientious, and the most enlightened’ of the ten Secretaries of State he had so far served, but regarded him as unsuited to the ways of Downing Street bureaucracy.107 On several occasions during the last eighteen months of Glenelg’s time at the Colonial Office, Stephen expressed frustration and despair at the inactivity to which his chief was prone. In Parliament the story was similar. Glenelg only narrowly survived what amounted to a motion of no confidence in March 1838, with his reputation ‘greatly injured’.108 Brougham’s witticism that the Canadian rebellions had given Glenelg ‘many a sleepless day’ and Molesworth’s description of his policy as ‘doing nothing reduced to a system’ typify the sort of regard in which Glenelg was held as a Cabinet Minister. As a man Glenelg was generally respected for scrupulous integrity and enlightened humanity. His father was an energetic member of the Clapham Sect and a supporter of the Church Missionary Society. Glenelg, too, was an evangelical humanitarian and much of his colonial policy was imbued with a warm and sincere concern for the unfortunate and the oppressed. Buxton commented that there was not another Secretary of State ‘of whose anxiety to do justice to Negroes, Caffres, Hottentots, and Indians [he felt] more assurance than Lord Glenelg’.109 Indeed, Glenelg’s very integrity partly explained his failure as a politician for he was too ‘scrupulous’ ever to get much done.110 Indecisive though he was, Glenelg was not entirely ruled by others. He was certainly forced into the December 1837 decision to intervene in New Zealand by the powerful combination of Howick, the New Zealand Association, and Busby, but the slow evolution of an alternative policy based on Hobson’s plan was largely his own doing. Indeed, Stephen later complained that if he and Sir George Grey had had their own way New Zealand would have been ‘colonised’ before the New Zealand Company even existed, but ‘Lord Glenelg hesitated’; 98

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which goes to show that Glenelg’s hesitations could on occasion be more influential in the making of colonial policy than Stephen’s advice.111 Moreover, by the time Glenelg’s plan was prepared for the Cabinet in February 1839 his antipathy to organized colonization had triumphed over Stephen’s rather more sympathetic approach. The main feature of Glenelg’s policy towards New Zealand as it developed during 1838 and early 1839 was his reversion to the anti-colonization position which he had maintained in the first interview with the New Zealand Association on 13 December 1837. Hints of this reaction show in Glenelg’s dealings with Coates and Chichester in May and June 1838 and in the odd Colonial Office memorandum on Hobson’s report, but it was not until February 1839 that it became clear that Glenelg’s alternative policy had no room for organized colonization, even though the New Zealand Association had turned itself into a joint-stock body and there were several other projects offering. The reason for this change of mind lay in the basic sympathy which Glenelg had always had for the evangelical humanitarian argument that European colonization debilitates, demoralizes, and destroys indigenous peoples and their societies, an argument which had been constantly urged by the Church Missionary Society against the New Zealand Association. Consequently, Glenelg’s offer of a charter to the association must be seen as a deviation from his own principles, an aberration forced on him by the peculiar combination of circumstances which existed between 13 and 20 December 1837. Once he was freed from the charter offer by the breakdown of the negotiations and once the New Zealand Association was out of the way after the defeat of its Bill, Glenelg could return to his earlier view of the question. He may also have been influenced by the report of the Lords committee in August 1838, supporting as it did the contention of the Aborigines Report of the year before, that intervention in New Zealand should not be left to private enterprise. In short, Glenelg gave in to the political pressure exerted by the New Zealand Association in December 1837, but once that pressure was neutralized he reverted to his basic sympathy with the anti-colonization principles of the evangelical humanitarians in general and the Church Missionary Society in particular. The alternative method of intervention in New Zealand which he adopted was therefore bound to favour the society rather than the would-be colonizers. Nevertheless, if Glenelg was in sympathy with the society’s principles, neither he nor his advisers were taken in by the inconsistency, self-interest, and plain inadequacy of the society’s practical proposals. The Government would have to intervene to a much greater extent than the society wished to provide any effective control over the frontier. Hobson’s plan, though still in the Colonial Office tradition of minimum intervention, provided a suitable framework within which this could be done. It had the additional merit of not providing for organized colonization at all. While in December 1837 it appeared as if the New Zealand Association 99

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had won a decisive government endorsement for its plans, by February 1839 the pendulum had swung back and the Church Missionary Society seemed to have triumphed over the systematic colonizers, though Coates was by no means uncritical of the governmental lethargy which had allowed the frontier problem to deteriorate during the interval.112 Evangelical humanitarianism appeared to have saved the Maoris, if not from the haphazard colonization which was well underway by 1839, at least from large-scale organized colonization. But in the very hour of victory for the evangelical humanitarians lay the seeds of defeat. Glenelg’s complete capitulation to the anti-colonization lobby was, in retrospect, a political mistake. Stephen evolved a plan which might just have worked because, although it gave some scope to the colonizers, it provided for their control. Glenelg, by shutting the door on them, lost that chance of control and drove Wakefield and his supporters one step nearer to taking matters into their own hands and beginning the systematic colonization of New Zealand prematurely. When this happened the static situation which Glenelg’s limited intervention policy was designed to meet would change, making the annexation of the whole of New Zealand imperative.

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5 The Annexation of New Zealand The final development of British policy towards New Zealand during the six months from mid-February to mid-August 1839 took place against a background of considerable imperial activity in other areas of the world, and in an atmosphere of uncertainty and lack of leadership in colonial affairs and the Government generally. Lord Glenelg’s resignation brought the first Marquis of Normanby to the Colonial Office on 20 February 1839. Normanby had been on the fringe of those who supported ‘Radical Jack’ Durham during the 1830s and had espoused the cause of parliamentary and bureaucratic reform. Throughout much of his brief tenure at 14 Downing Street he was preoccupied with defending his recent, proCatholic administration of Ireland and was further distracted from colonial affairs by his wife’s central involvement in the Bedchamber crisis as one of the Queen’s favourites. Normanby’s colleagues soon decided that he was quite unable to run the Colonial Office efficiently and decisively. Howick found his procrastination and vacillation as bad as Glenelg’s while in all the other qualities required in a minister, including the sorely needed ability to defend the Government effectively in the House of Lords, he was, by far, Glenelg’s inferior.1 By July 1839 Lord John Russell was suggesting to Melbourne that Normanby would be at a complete loss if it were not for Henry Labouchere, Sir George Grey’s replacement as Parliamentary Under-Secretary, and that he should be moved.2 After a good deal of hesitation, and to the horror of Normanby’s critics, Melbourne gave him the Home Office and Russell took over the Colonial Department on 7 September 1839. Lord Melbourne’s Government had resigned in May 1839, after failing to get sufficient support for its Jamaica Bill, but was fortuitously returned to the Treasury benches on the Bedchamber issue. The reprieved administration seemed dedicated to doing little more than clinging to power and the weakness of the Whig position in the House of Commons caused the deferral of a controversial measure to implement parts of Durham’s Canadian report.3 Fowell Buxton was able to exploit the same weakness to force a potentially expansionist policy in West Africa in an effort to replace the local African slave trade with more legit.

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imate commerce.4 Besides the West Indies, Canada, and West Africa, there were other ‘smouldering fires’ elsewhere in the Empire. Normanby listed Malta, the Ionian Islands, Gibraltar, the Cape, Ceylon, and the Australian colonies in a summary of imperial problems he provided for Lord John Russell on leaving office, and the Government was also under some pressure to annex Natal.5 In Asia a war threatened with Burma, Aden was annexed in January 1839, and the following month Lord Auckland forced a protectorate on Sind to open another route to India’s perennially troubled north-west frontier. However, most of these imperial problems were minor compared with the main foreign policy preoccupation of the Melbourne Government during 1839: the prospect of a serious clash with France over her support for Mehemet Ali’s activities in the Persian Gulf and the possibility that he might succeed in building a Syrian-Egyptian Empire across the Euphrates and Red Sea roads to India.6 A good deal was happening within and on the borders of both the formal and informal Empire during 1839 and it is not surprising that Stephen complained in September that he had been ‘living for the last six months in a tornado’.7 New Zealand was only a minor eddy in that tornado and there is no evidence that the winds of change elsewhere hastened, slowed, or otherwise affected the development of Colonial Office policy towards the New Zealand frontier.* Policy-making, then as now, is a process which easily lends itself to compartmentalization. New Zealand was in a compartment of its own. Fortunately for Normanby, Glenelg had evolved a coherent and reasonably complete plan of action for New Zealand and Stephen and Gairdner were on hand to explain it.8 The new Secretary of State at once accepted the general outlines of Glenelg’s policy. In a despatch to Governor Gipps on 3 March 1839 he decided that Busby’s report of the trial and execution of a Maori slave by European settlers provided further, pressing, evidence of the need to adopt the measures which Glenelg had delineated on 1 December 1838.9 Before that could be done however, Normanby, like his predecessor, came under pressure from the systematic colonizers. The failure of the New Zealand Association’s Bill in June 1838 had broken the temporary compact patched up in late 1837 between the association and the New Zealand Company of 1825. Towards the end of 1838 Robert Torrens and George Lyall made a separate approach to the Colonial Office on behalf of the latter body.10 The objects of the company were to colonize such parts of New Zealand as the Maoris were willing to cede, without any public expenditure. The powers they required depended on the degree to which the Government wished *

However, the proposed expansion into New Zealand was one of the reasons put forward by Stephen for Britain’s refusal to accept a protectorate over Tahiti (Stephen, minute to Labouchere, 25 July 1839, C.O. 201/290:302). Attitudes to expansion into Natal may have been similarly affected.

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to retain control. If no local government was to be established then the 1825 company, incorporated and chartered as The New Zealand Society of Christian Civilization, should be empowered to set up an independent ‘Native Government’ under British protection. Various safeguards would ensure that the Maoris received equal rights and equal participation but, apart from the suggestion of a provisional criminal code to ease the transition from Maori customs to British laws, they were little more than window-dressing for the humanitarians. The independent Maori government would be dominated by Britons. The Society of Christian Civilization would have a virtual monopoly of ‘waste lands’ and of purchases from the Maoris, apparently to prevent exploitation, but in reality to sell to settlers at a high fixed price and to provide a security for raising a public revenue.11 Torrens tried to enlist the co-operation of the Church Missionary Society by providing for mission representation on the proposed incorporated company.12 Coates demurred because, although the plan professed to recognize New Zealand’s independence, it would in fact subvert it and lead to ‘a sort of Republic in the country’.13 Lyall renewed the 1825 company’s unsuccessful application when Normanby took over and managed to secure an interview with the new Secretary of State.14 What transpired is not known, but there is no further discussion of the proposed Society of Christian Civilization in the Colonial Office papers. The strength of the 1825 company as a separate political pressure group had been vitiated when its leader, Lord Durham, consented to join the New Zealand Association in September 1837. As the negotiations then and in 1839 showed, now that Durham had changed horses men like Torrens and Lyall either had to merge with Wakefield’s group or accept a ‘golden handshake’. Lyall, at least, was reluctant to merge unless there was some assurance of government support15 and although both he and Torrens were listed as directors of the New Zealand Land Company in the prospectus of 2 May 1839, the union was short-lived and they had resigned by mid-June. Presumably they received their share of the £50,000 which the New Zealand Company paid for the interests of the 1825 company (not worth more than £5,000) and the goodwill of the city men associated with it.16 The real political power among the colonizers lay with Wakefield and Durham and the successor organization to the New Zealand Association of 1837. The months of March and April 1839 were to show whether this body, the New Zealand Colonization Association, carried enough weight to deflect the Government from the anti-colonization bias bequeathed by Glenelg. The New Zealand Colonization Association approached Normanby as soon as he took office.17 William Hutt, the secretary, asserted that it had fulfilled the necessary requirements for the charter which had been offered to the New Zealand Association, and requested an interview in the hope of obtaining it. His letter served fair warning that the colonizers had reached the end of their tether: they claimed they had purchased nearly a million acres in New Zealand, and a ship, and that the long-suffering prospective migrants were prepared to go to New Zea103

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land anyway, even without that protection ‘which was never, in former times, denied to Englishmen extending, at their own risk, the dominions of the Crown’. Stephen and Labouchere ignored this threat and concentrated on rejecting the argument that the Government was pledged to charter the Colonization Association if it met the conditions laid down for the New Zealand Association. The previous charter offer had been withdrawn, the personnel of the new body was quite different from that of the old, and ‘much additional information … bearing materially upon the question …’ had come to hand during the interval. If insistence upon a ‘pledge’ was waived, then an interview would be granted, but not otherwise.18 The Colonization Association hastily backed down and accepted an interview for 14 March 1839.19 The story of this interview is a curious one. Wakefield’s version was based on what he had been told later by those who had been present. He stated to the Select Committee on New Zealand in 1840 that the deputation from the Colonization Association had been received with cordiality by Normanby. The Secretary of State had expressed pleasure at the public duty they were undertaking and gave the impression that ‘all opposition to the measure had ceased, and that they should proceed with the full concurrence of the Government’. Then, two days later, the association received a letter from the Colonial Office condemning their proposals. Wakefield believed that Normanby had been sincere at the interview, but that he had been persuaded to change his mind by the civil servants in his department.20 Parliamentary Under-Secretary Labouchere, a member of the Select Committee of 1840, had been at the interview. He agreed with Wakefield that Normanby had favoured the objects of the Colonization Association in general. But Normanby had emphasized that New Zealand was not British, and that until he had fulfilled his intention of making it so ‘either wholly or in part’ he could neither encourage nor recognize the proceedings of the Colonization Association. Labouchere went further. He managed to get Wakefield to admit that the satisfaction of the deputation was ‘caused by Lord Normanby having assured them that he was about to take measures which … would probably promote the ultimate success of the views of the company’.21 Normanby did not expect them to act before then. Other evidence supports Labouchere’s interpretation. Normanby did not change his mind after the interview. He had already decided beforehand to adopt Glenelg’s measures, and they did not provide for chartering a colonization company nor envisage government support for the Bill to establish a British province in New Zealand, which Hutt proposed to introduce.22 Normanby had no intention of encouraging the Colonization Association to start colonizing at once. Secondly, although Stephen did try to persuade Normanby against the Colonization Association because he thought the leading members were Roman Catholics,23 his arguments were unlikely to have carried any weight with a man whose maiden speech in Parliament had favoured the emancipation of Roman Catholics and 104

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whose recent administration in Ireland had been criticized for its tolerance towards Catholic leaders. Normanby’s generally encouraging tone towards the Colonization Association’s future prospects, about which both Wakefield and Labouchere agree, suggests that he was not prejudiced against the association on sectarian grounds.24 Nor does it appear that Stephen’s more general point, that ‘the real difficulty’ in chartering a colonization company lay in the need to disarm the opposition of the missionary societies, influenced Normanby. Indeed, Stephen himself still thought that the Government should go ahead and consult the various bodies of projectors with a view to ascertain the best way of establishing a Colonial Corporation, but Normanby ignored the idea.25 Normanby turned his back on the Colonization Association because, as Labouchere explained to the 1840 select committee, the Government had come to the conclusion since the offer of a charter to the New Zealand Association in 1837 that it could not, ‘consistently with the law of nations, exercise the rights of sovereignty in New Zealand without some previous arrangement with the inhabitants’.26 However, Wakefield and the deputation chose to interpret Normanby’s general, long-term, encouragement to mean that they could proceed with safety at once.27 Then, according to Wakefield, the association received a letter within forty-eight hours withdrawing Normanby’s approval. There is no trace in either the Colonial Office or the Colonization Association files of this letter, but it does seem that there was a private, possibly verbal, communication on a rather different matter. Hutt had sent the Colonial Office a draft of his Bill on 12 March 1839 and proposed to introduce it the following week unless the Government promised to take up a similar measure during the current session.28 Labouchere apparently told Hutt that the Government would not support his Bill but would take whatever steps were necessary with regard to New Zealand.* It may have been this news to which Wakefield was referring. Whatever the case, according to Wakefield the Colonization Association knew within two days of the 14 March interview that its interpretation of what Normanby had said was invalid and that it did not have government approval to proceed. Yet five days later, on 21 March 1839, the Colonization Association’s minutebook recorded that the deputation’s report of the 14 March interview was ‘satisfactory’ and that immediate steps would be taken to form one or more settlements in New Zealand and to promote emigration.29 The Colonization Association claimed to be proceeding with government approval when in fact it knew its claim was false. Why? The reason was that it had now become vitally important for the company to purchase land in New Zealand before the Government’s authority was established there. Nothing was to be lost *

Labouchere must have told Hutt or written to him on the 12th or the following day, but no letter has survived. The House was counted out on 21 March before it reached Hutt’s notice of motion and though set down for introduction after Easter, nothing further came of it (ibid., 326, Stephen, minute to Labouchere, 15 Mar. 1839; Minutes, 26 Mar. 1839, C.M.S. G/C1 v. 17, p. 572).

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by flying in the face of the facts and claiming government approval for action which had become necessary anyway. When Labouchere told Hutt that the Government would take the necessary steps with regard to New Zealand he also mentioned that one of them would be to pre-empt all the land there; that is, to forbid the transfer of land from Maoris to Europeans except through the Government. This news came as a shock. Hutt reported it to a meeting of the Colonization Association on 20 March 1839.† He did not think that the Government would act on the New Zealand question during that parliamentary session because of the pressure of other business, but whenever it did so the proposed pre-emption would be ‘injurious’ to the Colonization Association because it would force it to buy land from the Crown at prices 500 per cent or more higher than those it would get from the Maoris. What was to be done? Wakefield urged action: send off your expedition immediately — acquire all the land you can — & then you will find that Govt. will see the absolute necessity of doing something. Untill something has been done by the Company or a Company the chances of success to Americans — the French or the Missionaries — are equal — either one or the other may colonize in their own way — there is no power to dispossess them. Possess yourselves of the soil & you are secure but if from delay you allow others to do it before you — they will succeed and you will fail.30 The Government was proposing to pre-empt land in New Zealand; Wakefield urged that the colonizers should act immediately to get the possession of the soil which is nine-tenths of the law. Yet the following year he told the parliamentary select committee that the preliminary expedition had been despatched ‘with very considerable reluctance’, and only because the association’s original proposal that all land should be acquired from the Maoris by a responsible government officer had not been accepted by the Government.31 Truth was a casualty in Wakefield’s haste to begin the colonization of New Zealand. Wakefield and the Colonization Association may have genuinely misunderstood Normanby’s attitude on 14 March 1839, but they chose to perpetuate that †

E. B. Hopper, Diary, 20 Mar., Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington. This entry has no year date in the original, but an annotator has pencilled in ‘1838’. This dating is accepted by Turnbull, Bubble, pp. 22–25, and P. Bloomfield, Edward Gibbon Wakefield — Builder of the British Commonwealth, London 1961, pp. 168–9. The dating is erroneous, as the meeting took place on 20 Mar. 1839. The internal evidence is clear, including a mention of the change at the headship of the Colonial Office to Normanby and Labouchere, which did not, of course, take place until February 1839. Hopper was a member of the New Zealand Association of 1837 and a committee member of the First Colony of New Zealand. He emigrated, arriving at Port Nicholson on 31 Jan. 1840.

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misunderstanding, when by their own account they knew it to be incorrect, as an excuse for acting for a quite different reason. Wakefield deliberately advised that a preliminary expedition set out to obtain plenty of cheap land from the Maoris and get secure possession of the soil before the Government pre-empted it. Then the Government would have to follow with courts and protection. The colonizers acted hastily not primarily to force the Government to intervene, but to grab Maori land before it did so. The 20 March meeting had been called specifically to decide whether to wind up the Colonization Association or not. The matter was very much in the balance until Wakefield spoke. Thereafter, the way was clear. The following day, 21 March 1839, the Colonization Association recorded its satisfaction with Normanby’s attitude at the 14 March interview. A committee of management was set up comprising Petre, Hutt, Somes, Gordon and Wakefield. They were given a limit of twelve months to complete the necessary preparations for a preliminary expedition. On 30 March 1839 they advertised publicly, though discreetly, for a captain for the Tory. On 10 April Somes announced that the ship could sail at forty-eight hours’ notice and 25 April was set down for her departure. Wakefield was to prepare plans to turn the Colonization Association into a public joint-stock company.32 Hutt wrote on 16 April that the subject of colonizing New Zealand had much public support and that he did not doubt that before autumn, whether an Act of Parliament was obtained or not, the operation would be undertaken ‘on a scale and in a manner which will secure the interposition of the country in its favour’.33 The Tory did not sail on 25 April, but Hutt advised the Colonial Office on 29 April 1839 that it was to depart the following Wednesday. Hutt enclosed a copy of the instructions for the leader of the preliminary expedition, Colonel William Wakefield, and requested letters of introduction for him to the Governors of New South Wales and Tasmania.34 The Colonial Office had been caught out. Normanby had done nothing. Labouchere told Coates on 5 April that the Government had not been able to consider the New Zealand question fully, but he thought it would take whatever measures were required during the course of the summer.35 Hutt’s letter must, therefore, have come as something of a bombshell. The Colonial Office pleaded ignorance of the intentions and objects of the colonizers and of the impending departure of an expedition to set up a government ‘independent of the authority of the British Crown’. The civil servants had obviously paid no attention to Hutt’s letter of 20 February and Motte’s of 4 March, for both mentioned the objects of the Colonization Association more or less fully and Hutt had referred to the imminent departure of an emigrant ship. Nevertheless, the Government had no desire nor any power to stop the Tory and contented itself with refusing any approval, direct or indirect. Labouchere warned that no pledge could be given that titles to land purchased from the Maoris would be recognized; such land would probably be subject to repurchase by the Crown.36 Unperturbed, Hutt merely cor107

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rected the misapprehension that they were intending to set up a government in New Zealand; the expedition was a purely commercial one.37 On 2 May 1839 the New Zealand Land Company issued its prospectus as a public subscription body ‘for the purpose of employing capital in the purchase and resale of lands in New Zealand, and the promotion of emigration to that country’.38 The Tory sailed from Plymouth ten days later on 12 May 1839. The First Colony of New Zealand was set up as a formal body by the leading prospective emigrants to prepare for departure during the following August.39 At an interview which Lord Durham requested to discuss the security and protection of the prospective colonists, Normanby stated that Captain Hobson was being sent to negotiate a cession of sovereignty from the Maoris and to set up a government. An inquiry into land titles would follow, though no bona fide or equitable purchases would be interfered with. ‘On the contrary’, Normanby ‘considered it desirable to encourage the investment of British capital in New Zealand’, but he still refused to recognize the company’s existence officially or approve its proceedings.40 This announcement of the Government’s intentions drew from the directors of the New Zealand Land Company a hasty reaction similar to that of the Colonization Association committee earlier. In March 1839 the problem had been to beat the Government to New Zealand before it pre-empted all the land there. In June, with the Government refusing to sanction the company to the exclusion of other parties,41 the directors felt it ‘highly important in order to prevent the best situations in New Zealand from being bought up by other speculators to the prejudice of the Company, — that steps should immediately be taken to extend the Company’s purchases by means of another expedition …’.42 The directors changed their minds and sent the first colony off instead, in September 1839, but the resolution is interesting in the light of the company’s indignant public denials of any speculation in land.43 Not long before the departure of the first shiploads of emigrants, Normanby refused the directors another interview on the ground that he had seen them once to tell them that he did not recognize their company, and that he could see no object in doing so again.44 There matters stood when Hobson left for New Zealand. The New Zealand Colonization Association and its successor company had not succeeded in deflecting the Colonial Office and the new Secretary of State from the firm disinclination to charter a colonization company which Glenelg had shown when he resigned in February 1839. Normanby certainly approved the colonizers’ long-term objectives and encouraged the investment of British capital in New Zealand, but only after the Government had come to some arrangement with the Maoris about the sovereignty of their country. However, the disadvantages to the Colonization Association of failing to obtain a charter and government approval were more apparent than real. In the light of the negotiations with the New Zealand Association in 1838, it was improbable that any subsequent offer of a charter would contain the powers which the col108

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onizers wanted, particularly that of complete control over land purchase and sale. Unless the Government had offered them the vast areas of cheap land which they hoped to acquire by sending the Tory, the colonizers would have gained nothing from a charter. Failure to obtain the Government’s approval did not stop the beginnings of systematic colonization in New Zealand. The story of the Government’s relations with the colonizers is full of irony. In December 1837 the New Zealand Association played a major part in forcing the Government to agree to intervene in New Zealand by enchartering a colonization company, but then refused to turn itself into a company to obtain the charter. In March 1839 the Government was instrumental in forcing the colonizers to begin their operations in New Zealand by refusing them a charter, although they had by then formed a company. Both parties were to regret this game of musical chairs45 and the early history of New Zealand as a Crown colony was to suffer for it. Yet the Government showed commendable caution in refusing the New Zealand Association a charter except on the most strict conditions, including financial responsibility. Indeed, even the conditions which Glenelg laid down would probably have been insufficient to protect the emigrants and the Maoris from mismanagement and exploitation. After the charter negotiations had broken down, the Government reverted to the traditional Colonial Office view of Maori sovereignty: that Britain should not exercise rights in New Zealand or grant them to others without consulting the Maoris. But the Colonial Office, under weak leadership, did not take sufficient trouble to explain to the colonizers why it had changed its mind about chartering a company by 1839, nor did it attempt to enlist their co-operation by offering them some more definite prospect for the future than Normanby’s general encouragement. Had sufficient thought been given to the role a land and emigration company might play after some arrangement had been reached with the Maoris, and had a combination of the carrot and the stick been used to induce the colonizers to accept a compromise proposition, there might have been some hope of controlling and channelling the colonization of New Zealand to avoid some of the problems which subsequently occurred. Stephen was most to blame here, for although he favoured such an idea in January and March 1839, his personal prejudice against the directors of the Colonization Association prevented him from considering an arrangement with them. As it was, the Government alienated the colonizers and forced them to take matters into their own hands. Nor was there any legitimate way, according to the precedents and precepts of the time, that the Government could stop them. The colonizers, for their part, effectively ignored their earlier insistence that Maori sovereignty must be recognized and rushed to buy huge areas of Maori land as cheaply as possible in order to finance large-scale emigration to a foreign country. Not only did they deliberately precede the Government in order to exploit the Maoris while the going was good: they risked the well-being of their own emigrants by sending them out to New Zealand before they knew whether 109

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they had any land on which to settle. The company’s precipitate actions contributed to many of the troubles of the early Crown colony and particularly to the strained and bitter race relations which soon developed in the company’s areas. In 1839 the Government was justified in refusing to charter the colonizers or to approve their proceedings before it had consulted the Maoris and safeguarded their rights. The sequel will show whether these self-imposed tasks had been carried out sufficiently well by the time the Government did charter the New Zealand Company in 1841. During the abortive negotiations between the colonizers and the Colonial Office, the anti-colonization interest had by no means slumbered. Since 1837 the fortunes of the colonizers and the missionary societies had been inextricably linked through their political struggle to force their opposing ideologies on the Government and, through the Government, on the future of New Zealand. In 1839, too, the activities of the Church Missionary Society provided a barometer of Colonization Association pressure. From December 1838 to February 1839 the special Church Missionary Society sub-committee on New Zealand watched affairs closely in order to act at once should the Colonization Association make a move.46 When Hutt gave notice of his Bill to establish a colony in New Zealand, the Church Missionary Society prepared to fight it and Coates had two interviews with Labouchere, on 8 March and 5 April, to make sure that the Government was ready to do so too. He stressed the urgency of the New Zealand situation and offered the usual co-operation with government measures provided they accorded with the society’s missionary purpose.47 Glenelg was still actively interested in the New Zealand question and arranged a meeting with Lay Secretary Coates to explain the state in which he left affairs.48 He sent Coates a copy of the January draft instructions to Hobson. Coates refused to commit himself to the proposition that ‘moral influence’ was no longer sufficient to correct the existing evils in New Zealand and that a British acquisition of sovereignty was necessary, but then proceeded to criticize the idea of a partial cession and recommend that the whole country should be secured as soon as practicable! He approved the rest of the plan, though he was still apprehensive for the Maoris. Coates hoped that Glenelg would continue to interest himself in the New Zealand question and use his influence to achieve a satisfactory solution as fast as possible, particularly since the departure of the Tory rendered government intervention ‘urgently necessary’.49 Coates had further interviews with Labouchere on 25 May and 18 June 1839 and with Hobson on 27 May, while the president of the Church Missionary Society was also in touch with Normanby.50 These meetings satisfied the society that it could approve the Government’s measures since their ‘special object’ was ‘to secure the interests of the natives and to promote their social and moral improvement’, and since the missions would receive government countenance and 110

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support but the New Zealand Land Company would not.51 With these assurances the Church Missionary Society decided that it had no need to express an opinion on the objects and plans of the company and merely snubbed Dr Evans’ request for the society’s views and suggestions on the company’s activities. The Church Missionary Society had won the ideological battle, but it was to prove a Pyrrhic victory. As a pressure group, supported by its Wesleyan counterpart, the Church Missionary Society had mounted a formidable campaign against the colonizers. Though its practical proposals for the control of the New Zealand frontier were never regarded as adequate after Busby’s failure as Resident, the society won Glenelg’s endorsement of its anti-colonization, pro-Maori principles and gained the healthy respect of Stephen, whose humanitarianism did not exclude the possibility of a chartered company and controlled colonization. Even the colonizers — the New Zealand Association, the 1825 company, the New Zealand Land Company, and the First Colony — all felt it necessary to try and conciliate the society and obtain its approval and co-operation. Moreover, the society and the missionaries in New Zealand secured the governmental intervention they desired, though perhaps to a greater extent than Coates thought necessary. But to what avail? The Maoris were not ‘saved’ from colonization. Indeed, in New Zealand the missionaries themselves had had a profound effect on Maori society, an effect which, whatever one’s judgement of its value, both prepared the way for European colonization and weakened the ability of traditional Maori society to cope with it. In Britain, the society helped persuade the Government to turn its back on organized colonization (for the time being anyway), but in doing so helped to force the colonizers to seize the initiative and begin the colonization of New Zealand on their own authority. The achievement of the anti-colonizers was, for all practical purposes, a hollow one. Yet the missionary societies can hardly have been expected to condone organized colonization, holding the views they did about the history of European colonization in other areas and seeing themselves — as they did — the self-appointed protectors of the Maoris.52 The most they might have done, and here Coates is largely to blame, was to realize the inevitability of European frontier expansion in New Zealand, to urge government intervention earlier and on a realistic scale, and perhaps to offer the colonizers qualified support if they waited until the Government had intervened. The missions did not serve the Maoris in any real way by opposing colonization totally; indeed, the missionaries and their families were themselves a colony. They might have achieved more if they had put their energy into persuading the Government and the colonizers that the process must be tightly controlled, since it could not be prevented. If the Church Missionary Society’s practical efforts as a pressure group were, in the end, unable to contain the powerful forces behind both haphazard and organized colonization in the early Victorian period, the society’s role as a guardian of humanitarian attitudes towards the Maoris was perhaps more influential. In this 111

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they were only one of a number of institutions and committees, the Aborigines Committee being the best known. But the Church Missionary Society, through its insistence on the sovereignty, independence, and rights of the Maoris, did contribute something to the humanitarian ethos of the late 1830s, an ethos powerful enough to oblige the colonizers to spend a good deal of their time developing and publicizing those aspects of their plans which were supposed to safeguard and benefit the Maoris rather than destroy them. In expounding humanitarian principles to the Colonial Office the society was to a large extent preaching to the converted in men like James Stephen, Lord Glenelg, Sir George Grey, and Henry Labouchere. But the society’s continual insistence on Maori rights helped to ensure that the protection of those rights was a major aim of British policy. Although the missionary societies and the missionaries are usually regarded as having been humanitarians par excellence in their concern for the Maoris, they were also well aware that British interests would be served by intervention in New Zealand. In 1835 Coates urged the continuation of Busby as Resident not only because the Maoris deserved protection from British subjects, but also because British trade with New Zealand needed fostering, and because of the political importance of New Zealand and the necessity of keeping it out of the hands of the French or the Americans. The missionaries in the field were a good deal more paranoiac about foreign interference than Coates, and advocated British intervention in New Zealand with an eye to British interests — which included their religious work and personal security — as well as to those of the Maoris. Within New Zealand, the Maoris must be controlled as well as the British settlers; that is, Maori interests must be protected, but so also must the commercial, economic, agricultural, and other activities of British subjects. More important, the social aims of evangelical humanitarianism in New Zealand were generally directed towards destroying those elements in Maori society which did not coincide with British habits, British morality, and British civilization. To the extent that this meant the promotion of peace and order, the elimination of crimes ‘against human nature’, the protection of property and land rights, the spread of literacy, education, medical knowledge and so on, the missions may have offered some benefit to the Maoris. But a good deal of effort went into destroying social customs and weakening social institutions which were neither harmful nor immoral (except in missionary eyes) and which contributed to the structure and cohesion of Maori society. The humanitarian concern of the missionary societies and the missionaries often involved replacing Maori values with Victorian values and Maori institutions with British institutions. They generally assumed that Maori rights and interests were, or would become, sufficiently identical to the interests of the British settlers for them both to be protected according to one set of standards, the standards of British law and British government. The ultimate aim of the evangelical humanitarians was to make the Maoris British.

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Colonial Office policy towards New Zealand was no nearer final definition when the Tory’s departure was announced at the end of April 1839 than it had been when Glenelg resigned in mid-February. Normanby had done nothing but generally approve Glenelg’s measures. Stephen widened the discussion in the outline of the case which he prepared for Parliamentary Under-Secretary Labouchere in mid-March. He stressed that ‘the two cardinal points to be kept in view’ were the protection of the Maoris and the introduction among the colonists of the principle of self-government. He favoured the chartering of a joint-stock company to found the colony, if the opposition of the missionary societies could be overcome. Otherwise, Glenelg’s second plan should be adopted and because the establishment of a representative assembly would, initially at least, make it more difficult to protect the Maoris, the formation of a Crown colony should be authorized by Parliament. If it were limited in area the problems of uncontrolled colonization might continue beyond the border, yet to include the whole of New Zealand would probably provoke ‘discussion’ with the United States and France, as well as add to the burden of government.* A middle course might be to limit the colony in area and obtain a protectorate over the rest of the country.53 Stephen’s analysis did not lead to any action and all was quiet in the New Zealand quarter in April, the beginning of ‘the hurricane season† in these Downing Street latitudes’.54 The sudden announcement of the imminent departure of the Tory created a flurry of activity. This has given rise to the legend that the New Zealand Land Company forced the Government’s hand and saved New Zealand for the Empire. The legend is palpably exaggerated. At most the company’s action goaded the Colonial Office into finalizing its own measures more quickly. Stephen commented that it showed ‘the importance of promptitude in the dispatch of this business’, and Labouchere drew attention to Hutt’s assertion that Normanby had promised a Bill on the New Zealand question.55 On 18 May 1839 Stephen pointed out that if Hobson was to be sent to New Zealand there were many things to be done and done quickly. First and most important, Cabinet approval must be obtained. The draft instructions and memorandum which Glenelg had left behind might be used for that purpose, since there was an advantage in retaining the words he had chosen to explain his own meaning and since Hobson had ‘generally approved’ the instructions.56 The Colonial Office then drew up another version incorporating, as Stephen suggested in his 18 May minute, a more detailed examination of the negotiation of treaties with the Maoris and the administration of justice prior to the establishment of a legislature in New Zealand.* The draft stated that Britain’s reluctance to intervene in New Zealand was not founded on the slightest doubt of its value * †

The minute provides another example of supposed foreign power interest, of a vague and general kind, being cited as an obstacle rather than a provocation to acquire sovereignty in New Zealand. The ‘season’ lasted until September and gave Stephen no leisure, ‘except by stealth’.

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but because the Aborigines Committee had opposed interference. However, ‘the same principles of humanity and justice’ which had prompted the committee’s opposition now required direct intervention, in order to control the expansion of the European frontier in New Zealand and its impact on the Maoris. Nevertheless the ‘independent national character’ of the Maoris, though qualified by the lack of a unified political system and though demanding international relations differing widely from those between nations ‘properly so called’, must be acknowledged in fact as well as in theory. Britain did not regard New Zealand as vacant territory. Stephen briefly discussed the possibility of a confederation of chiefs legislating for both races under British protection, but discarded it as impracticable and inadequate. There was no escape, if ‘the duties owing to the existing settlers and to the Aborigines’ were to be sufficiently discharged, from the ‘unwelcome necessity’ of gaining a cession of the sovereignty of ‘some part’ of New Zealand.57 Annexing the whole country would be an unnecessary invasion of Maori rights as well as burdensome to Britain, though it might prove advisable at some future stage. For the present those parts already owned by British subjects would do. Parliament would establish a Crown colony, give the courts extra-territorial jurisdiction over the rest of New Zealand, and forbid land purchases from the Maoris except through the Crown. A confederation of chiefs, while useless as a government, might help to make British authority co-extensive with New Zealand, prevent unauthorized settlement beyond the pale, and give most favoured nation treatment to British commerce and religion. In return, the chiefs would receive a guarantee of their rights, whether territorial or sovereign, recognition of their nationhood, and annual presents.† Though it might be doubted whether the Maoris understood the difference between proprietary and sovereign rights, rendering a cession superfluous since British-owned lands would already be British in dominion, no advantage was to be taken of the point. Hobson was to negotiate for sovereignty, ‘the most frank and open dealing’ being dictated by policy, if not by duty. The cession was sought, according to Stephen, ‘partly for the protection of the settlers of European origin, but chiefly in the hope that by a wise, humane, and firm administration of the local government, the natives may not only be rescued from the calamities impending over them, but may be gradually introduced

*

†

Draft instructions, undated (C.O. 209/4:221–42). I believe this internal evidence strongly suggests that the draft was written after 18 May 1839; moreover, had it been drawn up before, Stephen would surely have used it as a basis for the Cabinet submission, rather than the earlier draft done in Glenelg’s time. (Cf. Williams, J.M.H. article, p. 28, fn. 38.) The Colonial Office did not consider that some chiefs would cede sovereignty for presents and others would grant extra-territorial privileges for a guarantee of their territorial and sovereign rights. It did not distinguish between chiefs in this way. Cf. Wards, Shadow, p. 27.

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to the blessings of civilised society, and to the enjoyment of the advantages inseparable from it’.58 Colonization by British subjects and the sale of land in New Zealand were not to be encouraged. However, there were problems in setting up a government in New Zealand. Stephen pointed out that the Crown itself could only establish a legislature if it included a representative assembly. Since the representative principle would be unsuitable for New Zealand, with its large indigenous population, Parliament would have to provide the power to create a Crown colony with no representative body. To do this Parliament would either have to legislate before Hobson left for New Zealand and obtained any sovereignty there, which it was unlikely to do, or wait upon the outcome of Hobson’s mission. Given the communications delay of six months each way, this would leave New Zealand without a legal government and judicial system for eighteen months or more. In the second draft of the consular instructions Stephen decided that the inevitable delay could be ‘safely’ borne.59 Stephen’s analysis raises the question, much discussed later by constitutional historians, as to the exact basis on which New Zealand was annexed by Britain. In ceded colonies, as opposed to settled ones, the Crown possessed an absolute power of legislation by Orders-in-Council and the Royal prerogative could establish the authoritarian Crown colony system.60 The sovereignty of New Zealand was to be gained by cession. Why, therefore, did not Stephen treat the problem of creating a government there on the basis that it was a ceded colony, in which a legislature with no element of popular representation could be created by Royal fiat? It seems that despite his emphasis on the importance of a Maori cession of sovereignty as a political pre-requisite, Stephen did not regard a cession by indigenous tribes in the same light as a cession of territory by, say, France or Spain. As late as July 1840, when he knew of Hobson’s initial success at Waitangi and his intention to seek the progressive cession of the whole of the country, Stephen continued to maintain that the Crown could only create a legislature with a representative assembly and that Parliament would therefore be needed to grant the power to create a Crown colony system.61 In Stephen’s mind New Zealand was not a nation ‘properly so called’ and though politically it was acquired by the voluntary act of the Maoris, legally the country was acquired not by cession but by occupation and settlement.62 Therefore, the Crown’s prerogative power in ceded colonies could not be relied upon in New Zealand’s case. Be that as it may, Stephen’s suggestion in May 1839 that a delay in the establishment of a government in New Zealand could be safely borne was not accepted. This conclusion must have been reached before, or during, an interview which Hobson had with Normanby and Labouchere on Saturday, 25 May 1839.63 On Monday 27 May, George Wilder, the chief clerk in the Colonial Office, drafted letters patent extending the boundaries of New South Wales to include any territory gained in New Zealand.64 The Royal prerogative would be used 115

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to bring territory acquired in New Zealand under an established government, thereby avoiding the question of a representative assembly and the need to resort to Parliament. The Law Officers were consulted on 30 May and approved the plan on 6 June 1839.65 Treasury approval was the next priority. The Colonial Office suggested that the revenue of the prospective colony in New Zealand should come initially from ordinances passed in the New South Wales Legislative Council, but should be a first charge on New Zealand. Since the necessary expenditure could not yet be accurately computed Governor Gipps should be given a general authority. Though Stephen’s first letter to the Treasury omitted to mention that sovereignty was to be acquired by negotiation, he wrote again enclosing the correspondence with the Law Officers which specifically mentioned that sovereignty over territories already owned by British subjects was to be obtained by cession.66 The Treasury Lords agreed with Stephen that there was a need to control British subjects in New Zealand and were prepared to approve the suggested government and revenue arrangements. But they laid great stress on the need to negotiate for sovereignty: any annexation of New Zealand must be ‘strictly contingent upon the indispensible preliminary of the territorial cession having been obtained by amicable negotiation with, and free concurrence of, the native chiefs’.67 The Treasury took the ‘contemplated cession’ mentioned in the Colonial Office’s correspondence with the Law Officers and made its approval of the financial arrangements conditional upon its fulfilment. A month later the Treasury decided that it had better cover itself against another contingency, the possibility that Hobson’s mission might fail, leaving no New Zealand revenue from which to repay New South Wales for his expenses. Since the British Exchequer would then have to foot the bill, the Treasury thought Parliament should be informed of the proceedings with regard to New Zealand.68 Historians have been intrigued by the change from Stephen’s first idea of using Parliament to establish law and government in New Zealand to that of using the Crown’s power to expand the limits of New South Wales. Various reasons for it have been suggested: the activities of the French, the expedition of the New Zealand Land Company, and the qualms of the Treasury. They all depend on the assumption that the Colonial Office disliked publicity on the New Zealand question and wished to avoid a parliamentary debate.69 It is quite apparent, however, that the Colonial Office did not fear publicity, but courted it. Stephen recommended to Normanby in early June that the steps which the Government was taking should receive ‘at least equal publicity’ in Parliament or the London Gazette to that which the New Zealand Land Company was getting in London, in order to counter the company’s advertisements for land sales.70 Labouchere agreed. In an interview with Coates on 18 June 1839 he expressed surprise that no parliamentary question had been asked on New Zealand. Coates, with Labouchere’s concurrence, arranged for Sir Robert Inglis to raise the matter on 25 June and the Government’s proposals were duly explained.71 Nor did the Colonial Office 116

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make any objection to the Treasury’s presentation to Parliament of a detailed minute on the subject the following month. The real reason the idea of a Bill was discarded in favour of letters patent was simply that the change achieved the Colonial Office’s purpose more effectively. Parliament would probably refuse to legislate for New Zealand until Hobson’s mission had proved successful. The new colony would therefore have no legal government for the first eighteen months or so after its foundation. To avoid this obviously unsatisfactory situation it was expedient, if not ideal, to make New Zealand into a dependency of New South Wales, thus extending the authority of the Legislative Council there to New Zealand as soon as any annexation was made.72 The whole point of Hobson’s mission was to establish law and order on the New Zealand frontier as fast as possible; letters patent would allow this, whereas an Act of Parliament would not. There was nothing more devious or complicated about the change in procedure than that.73 Once the Law Officers and the Treasury had approved the Colonial Office plans, final arrangements could be completed. The Admiralty agreed to provide a warship to attend Captain Hobson during his negotiations with the Maori chiefs.74 Hobson had not been kept particularly well-informed and there was some correspondence on the details of his mission.75 He also addressed a list of policy questions to the Colonial Office, which necessitated supplementary instructions.76 On 20 August 1839 Hobson received these, along with various other necessary documents, and his final instructions from Lord Normanby.77 Four days later H.M.S. Druid, on which he was embarked, weighed anchor and sailed for New Zealand.78 The five months required to sail half-way round the world in 1839 allow the historian to catch Hobson’s mission in suspended animation, wherein intention and motive can be examined free from the modifications of subsequent action. In late 1839, British intervention in New Zealand waited upon the vagaries of wind and weather. Normanby’s final instructions were mainly Stephen’s work, though on at least two important aspects of New Zealand policy Stephen’s advice had not been accepted by the politicians: the chartering of a colonization company, and the use of Parliament to establish a government in New Zealand despite the delays and difficulties involved. It may be, therefore, that Normanby and Labouchere had more to do with the final drafting of Hobson’s instructions than appears at first sight. The instructions rehearsed the background to British intervention in New Zealand in terms very similar to those used in the first two drafts. The advantages of annexing New Zealand were off-set by the humanitarian argument of the Aborigines Committee: an increase in national wealth and power was nothing compared with the injury done Britain itself by an ‘essentially unjust’ interference and one certainly detrimental to the Maoris, whose title to the soil and sovereignty 117

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of New Zealand had received solemn British recognition. But by 1839 circumstances were different. A once ‘unjust’ interference had now become necessary and presumably just, or at least justifiable. The changed circumstances arose from the expansion of the imperial frontier in New Zealand. A colony of about 2,000 British subjects, many of whom were criminals or adventurers, had grown up. Large purchases of land had been made. Several hundred emigrants had just departed. There was no doubt, now, that an extensive settlement of British subjects would rapidly form in New Zealand. War, crime, and probable annihilation threatened the Maoris. ‘To mitigate and, if possible to avert these disasters, and to rescue the emigrants themselves from the evils of a lawless state of society’, a civil government was necessary. To establish this government was ‘the principle object’ of Hobson’s mission.79 There is a certain amount of myth-making in this explanation. The Colonial Office had not deferred to the advice of the Aborigines Committee for very long. On 20 December 1837, in announcing the Government’s decision to intervene in New Zealand through a chartered company, Glenelg had pointed out how inadequate the proposals of the committee were. It was, therefore, rather disingenuous on the part of the Colonial Office to explain its non-interference in New Zealand before August 1839 by reference to advice which it had rejected as early as December 1837. In fact, the twenty months delay which elapsed between the initial decision to intervene in New Zealand in December 1837 and Hobson’s departure had nothing to do with the Aborigines Committee, but a lot to do with abortive negotiations with a body of colonizers whose planned operations in New Zealand had been specifically condemned by that committee, and with political indecision. Normanby’s instructions then rehearsed Britain’s recognition of Maori sovereignty, qualified though it was, and her refusal to seize and govern New Zealand without ‘the free and intelligent consent of the natives expressed according to their established usages’. However, Normanby thought that New Zealand’s independence was now, in the face of the expansion of the frontier, ‘so precarious and little more than nominal’, that the Maoris would best serve themselves by giving it up. Hobson was to treat for sovereignty over ‘the whole or any parts’ of New Zealand which the Maoris wished to cede.80 This is the first official mention that the Colonial Office was prepared to accept the sovereignty of the whole of New Zealand. In the second draft of the instructions Stephen had discounted the idea, for the present anyway. The correspondence with the Law Officers and the Treasury mentioned only that certain parts of New Zealand would be sought and defined them as ‘territories which have been, or which may be, acquired by Her Majesty’s subjects by proprietary titles derived from the grants of the different chiefs’.81 Apparently, however, Labouchere mentioned to Coates informally on 18 June that Hobson was to acquire the whole or such parts as proved practical or expedient.82 What had led the Colonial Office suddenly to contemplate the annexation of the whole of New 118

5 The Annexation of New Zealand

Zealand? Dandeson Coates no doubt urged it, as he had done in his letter to Glenelg in May.* Hobson, too, was pressing for a wide discretion. The original idea of gaining sovereignty only over lands already owned by British subjects had been his, but in January 1839 he had pointed out that it was only a minimum solution; complete annexation would be preferable. In August 1839 he questioned Normanby as to whether he might claim the South Island by right of discovery, and by the time he arrived in the antipodes Hobson had every intention of annexing the whole country if possible.83 Such strong convictions probably influenced the Colonial Office when the finishing touches were put to the New Zealand policy, particularly as Hobson was exposing the weaknesses of his own highly-regarded plan in holding them. The weaknesses were fully discussed in the early draft instructions. Haphazard colonization, crime, and fraudulent land purchases would continue beyond the boundaries of a colony limited in area, while extra-territorial jurisdiction would be difficult to administer and inadequate against activities legal in letter but not in spirit. There was a much more important reason why the idea of a partial cession appeared to have too many disadvantages and why the Colonial Office was now prepared to contemplate annexing the whole of New Zealand. Sometime between the end of May and the middle of July 1839, officials began to realize more clearly the implications of the activities of the New Zealand Land Company. The sailing of the Tory in mid-May had galvanized the office into action, it is true, but policy-making had continued on the basis of the plan which Glenelg had left behind him. This plan had not given any encouragement to, nor made any provision for, colonizing or selling land in New Zealand. It was a static policy, designed only to meet the frontier situation arising from haphazard colonization. Yet the final instructions to Hobson, drawn up in mid-July, envisaged the creation of a land revenue by government land sales to settlers, and the application of much of that revenue to the introduction of emigrants to New Zealand.84 The instructions were revised to meet the new circumstances consequent upon the New Zealand Land Company’s proceedings, but the revision was scarcely adequate. No real reconciliation of the old basis of the policy with the new elements was attempted. Indeed, the remarkable change from a ‘no colonization’ to a ‘colonization’ policy appears to have been made without any discussion, either of the reasons behind it or of the implications for the future of the Maoris and New Zealand. Certainly, Stephen had always been more prepared than Glenelg to countenance planned colonization, though not through the directors of the New Zealand Land Company. Normanby, who was a friend of Durham’s, and probably

*

He particularly praised Hobson for assuming the sovereignty of the whole of New Zealand in 1840 (Coates to Hobson, private, 24 Oct. 1840, C.M.S. G/AC 19/2: 297–9).

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Labouchere generally favoured the future colonization of New Zealand after some arrangement had been reached with the Maoris. The inclusion in the instructions to Hobson of a plan for government-sponsored emigration was therefore perfectly consistent with, and acceptable to, the views of those at the head of the Colonial Office, who no doubt took the view that, since British intervention in New Zealand was necessary anyway, Britain may as well utilize the admitted potential of New Zealand as an area for European settlement. Yet, failing evidence of a sudden access of colonizing zeal, it seems that the Colonial Office made the change mainly because it finally realized that some provision was necessary for the rapid increase in the number of settlers going to New Zealand, particularly when the Crown was to be the only source of valid land titles. It was a reaction to a probable course of future events: the rapid establishment of an extensive British colony in New Zealand. The difficulties inherent in a partial cession would be compounded, so the Colonial Office was prepared to annex the whole of New Zealand. Nevertheless, the Colonial Office was feeling its way uncertainly. Although the final instructions did not discuss forms of extra-territorial control should sovereignty over a limited area only be obtained, Hobson was not definitely instructed to seek the cession of the whole country. According to Russell’s later account, Hobson was told to try and acquire the sovereignty of the lands where British subjects were already located first, but to accept the whole lot if the Maoris wished to cede it. The matter was left very much to his discretion.85 The South Island was a case in point. Hobson asked whether he could claim it on the ground of Cook’s discovery because he thought the Maoris there too few and backward to make a treaty of cession credible.86 Normanby reluctantly agreed that the process of European colonization which was already underway might ‘perhaps render the occupation of the Southern Island a matter of necessity, or of duty to the natives’. If so, it should be done ‘by treaty, if that be possible’, or else by right of discovery. Normanby stated that he intended his remarks about the independence of the Maoris to apply to the North Island tribes only, but he did not explain on what grounds he drew the distinction.87 Indeed, there were no valid grounds. Statutory definitions of New Zealand as outside British dominion made no differentiation, nor did British recognitions of the New Zealand flag or the 1835 Declaration of Independence, though strictly speaking they applied only to the northernmost North Island tribes. As to a claim arising from Cook’s ‘discovery’, Stephen pointed out that the Dutch had discovered New Zealand anyway, and that even if Cook did proclaim British sovereignty nothing had been done to keep the claim alive; indeed, the ‘most solemn Acts have been done in repudiation and disavowal of it’.88 Subsequently the Colonial Office reverted to this position.89 The reason for Normanby’s inconsistent lapse in August 1839 appears to have been mainly one of expediency, though given the change from a ‘no colonization’ to a ‘colonization’ policy in mid-1839, there may also have been a 120

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recognition that the South Island might be a useful acquisition. The Colonial Office simply did not know whether Hobson was right about the South Island Maoris. If cession was impracticable and yet at the same time it proved vitally necessary to procure the sovereignty of the South Island, there was no other course but to resurrect Cook’s so-called ‘discovery’ on which to base a spurious claim. Hobson took this course, but the subsequent negotiation of a cession with the main South Island chiefs gave British title a firmer base.* The lapse into expediency reinforced, by contrast, the Colonial Office adherence to the principle of Maori sovereignty. If a spurious claim based upon Cook’s proclamations could be made for the South Island, why not the North Island too? Yet this course does not appear to have been considered, even as an alternative should Hobson have failed to gain a cession. Except where the Maoris were thought too few to make a cession anything but a farce, Maori sovereignty must be scrupulously respected, particularly in the act of persuading them to give it up. Thus, Hobson was told to explain to the Maoris, ‘frankly and unreservedly’, the reasons why they should accept Britain’s proposals. He was ‘especially’ to point out the dangers to them of the presence of settlers who were subject to no laws or institutions of their own, and the impossibility of protecting them effectively from such dangers unless the Queen was acknowledged as sovereign of their country, or at least of those areas where British subjects were settled. Normanby realized that Britain’s motives were open to suspicion and that the Maoris might well distrust a proposal which appeared to be a humiliation for them and an extensive advance for Britain. They would be ignorant of many of the technical terms of the contemplated treaty and therefore unable to understand its exact meaning or probable results. The only way around this problem was for Hobson to display ‘mildness, justice, and perfect sincerity’, though presents or other financial inducements might help to smooth the way.90 Hobson arrived in Sydney on 24 December 1839 and departed for New Zealand on 19 January 1840. Governor Gipps provided him with a threadbare establishment of second-rate New South Wales civil servants, pointed out the limitations of his powers, and officially swore him in as Lieutenant-Governor over any territory which might be acquired in New Zealand.91 Hobson decided to prejudge the issue of territorial acquisition and on 30 January 1840, the day after H.M.S. Herald dropped anchor in the Bay of Islands, he proclaimed to the 300 Europeans and 100 or so Maoris gathered in the Kororareka church that he had commenced his duties as Lieutenant-Governor.92 Thus it was as Lieutenant-Governor that Hobson began negotiating with the

*

McLintock, Crown Colony, p. 7, ns. 4 and 5, notes that both Lord John Russell and Guizot, the French Prime Minister in 1844, thought claims based upon Cook’s proclamations dubious.

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northern Maori chiefs, both those of the United Tribes and others, on 5 February 1840. Amidst all the panoply that the British naval presence and the local respectable community could provide, he explained ‘in the fullest manner’ the objects and intentions of his mission and assured the chiefs ‘in the most fervent manner that they might rely implicitly on the good faith of Her Majesty’s Government …’. Hobson produced a treaty which had been hastily drawn up after his arrival, chiefly by himself with some help from James Busby and Henry Williams, for the Colonial Office had not provided him with a draft.* The Treaty was read and explained article by article and the chiefs began to debate it. Several of the early speakers were opposed, expressing fears of losing their land, their chiefly dignity, and of becoming mere slaves and labourers, but the debate was swung round by the Hokianga chiefs and ended on a more amicable note. Hobson suggested a clear day to think matters over.93 However, food supplies were apparently running low and the chiefs, the missionaries, and Busby all agreed that the meeting should continue on 6 February. The chiefs had decided to accept the Treaty and Hobson agreed to receive their signatures immediately. The Roman Catholic bishop, Pompallier, induced Hobson to affirm publicly that Protestantism, Catholicism, and Maori customs would all be equally protected by him. Curiously, Hobson did not mention this affirmation in his official account of the signing ceremony; perhaps he did not consider it significant, though he did later circularize the chiefs promising that their customs and possessions would be safeguarded.94 The chiefs appeared rather reluctant to step forward and sign when it came to the point, and William Colenso asked Hobson whether he thought they understood well enough. Hobson replied that if the chiefs did not know the contents of the Treaty it was, no fault of his; he had done all he could to make them understand. Forty-five chiefs signed on 6 February 1840, each receiving two blankets and some tobacco afterwards as a present. No doubt Protestant missionary influence combined with the material benefits of contact with Europeans over-rode opposition to the Treaty; collaboration offered returns. The missionaries had certainly been instructed by their Home Societies and by the Anglican Bishop of Australia to use their influence in persuading the chiefs to surrender sovereignty to Britain. Both they and Hobson believed that it was through missionary influence that a British colony was established in New Zealand.95 Hobson deemed the signatures he received on 6 February a clear recognition of the sovereignty of Britain over the northern parts of the North Island. However, he put the matter ‘beyond dispute’ by obtaining fifty-six or so more signatures on the Hokianga River on 12 February 1840, though the opposition was quite fierce at first. But there was no question that he would leave it at that: ‘As I proceed

*

For an excellent account of the drafting of the treaty see R. M. Ross, ‘Te Tiriti o Waitangi: Texts and Translations’, N.Z.J.H. 1972, 6(2): 129–57.

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southward and obtain the consent of the chiefs, I will extend these limits by proclamation until I can include the whole of the islands.’96 So Hobson announced his intention of seeking the cession of the whole of New Zealand. There was no explanation of why he chose to abandon the idea of a partial cession so quickly, but then the Colonial Office never questioned his decision either. However, on 1 March 1840 Hobson suffered a stroke and partial paralysis. Governor Gipps acted promptly when he received the news twenty-five days later, despatching Major Bunbury as military commander in New Zealand, and acting successor to Hobson if necessary, with ninety troops.97 In explaining his measures to Hobson, Gipps hoped that the New Zealand Company settlers at Port Nicholson would soon be brought under the Government, but considered that the annexation of the South Island was an even more urgent matter and that an assertion of sovereignty by right of discovery would be ‘the most advisable course of proceeding’.98 He did not give any reason for his concern, but he probably feared further unauthorized colonization and land speculation there. Hobson recovered reasonably rapidly, but not enough to allow him to continue negotiations with the Maoris himself. He therefore issued facsimiles of the Treaty of Waitangi to Willoughby Shortland, Captain William Symonds, and the missionaries Henry and William Williams, Brown, and Maunsell.99 They were to obtain the adherence of the chiefs throughout the North Island. When Major Bunbury arrived in April, Hobson sent him to claim the sovereignty of the South and Stewart Islands, by cession if possible but otherwise by right of discovery.100 By the middle of June, Shortland had covered Kaitaia, Symonds the Manukau, Maunsell the Waikato, Stack the Tauranga area, William Williams Poverty Bay, and Henry Williams the Cook Strait region including Port Nicholson, where he encountered some opposition from the Europeans.101 But before the canvassing of the North Island was complete, or any news of Bunbury’s proceedings in the south had reached him, Hobson officially proclaimed the whole of New Zealand British. The reason for this haste lay in certain goings-on at Port Nicholson, where the first New Zealand Company emigrants had landed in January 1840. Colonel Wakefield, aware that Hobson’s February negotiations did not apply to the company’s settlements, summoned a council of settlers on 2 March 1840 and persuaded the local chiefs to ratify its rules as a provisional constitution with the force of law in the Wellington district.102 Hobson learnt of this at 8 p.m. on 21 May 1840 from Captain Pearson of the barque Integrity; he had been imprisoned by the new ‘government’, and had escaped vowing vengeance on the ‘democrats’ as he called them. Before the night was out Hobson availed himself of the ‘universal adherence of the native chiefs to the treaty of Waitangi’ and, in view of the ‘emergency of the case arising out of events at Port Nicholson’, proclaimed British sovereignty over the North Island. ‘Similar motives and a perfect knowledge of the uncivilised state of the natives’, along with Gipps’s advice, enabled him to proclaim sovereignty over the South Island by right of discovery. Thus, his belief 123

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that the New Zealand Company’s ‘republic’ was an act of ‘high treason’ and a usurpation of the Crown’s power pushed Hobson into anticipating the complete cession of New Zealand and claiming the whole country for Britain.103 Aside from two minor errors,* Hobson’s proclamations were based on the incorrect assertions that the North Island chiefs had given their ‘universal adherence’ to the Treaty of Waitangi, and that the South Island chiefs were too uncivilized to do so. He went on to argue that since the Maoris had no sovereign rights over land which they had sold already, they could not have ceded sovereignty to the New Zealand Company. Cession to the Queen was apparently different because the Maoris were placing themselves and their lands under British dominion, while Britain needed no Maori permission to exercise sovereignty over British subjects and their possessions in New Zealand.104 Insofar as this argument is comprehensible, it denies totally the whole basis of Britain’s attitude to New Zealand over the previous decade: that the Maoris were sovereign and that Britain had no automatic right to exercise dominion over her own nationals residing in a foreign country such as New Zealand. It also invalidates the whole point of negotiating the Treaty of Waitangi and reduces it to no more than the sort of ‘shallow artifice’ that Hobson considered the Port Nicholson constitution to be. However, Hobson’s weak arguments in justification of his proceedings were of no importance. The fact remained that New Zealand was proclaimed British on 21 May 1840. That was the information which the Colonial Office wanted. Meanwhile Bunbury and Nias, Captain of the Herald, claimed Stewart Island by right of discovery on 5 June 1840, though subsequently they obtained the signature of Tuhawaiki, the principal chief of the area. They then moved up the east coast of the South Island gathering some signatures at Otago and finding the chiefs reluctant to sign at Cloudy Bay because of fears that their land would be taken. However it was there, in the hope of ending dissensions between local Maoris and Europeans and in order to have the crews of several foreign vessels as their witnesses, that Bunbury and Nias proclaimed sovereignty over the South Island by right of cession on 17 June 1840.105 Britain’s title to New Zealand was comprehensive: the North Island was claimed by cession, the South Island by both discovery and cession, and Stewart Island by a twice-proclaimed discovery and a cession. The Colonial Office took Hobson’s 21 May 1840 proclamations as definitive and their publication in the London Gazette on 2 October 1840 set the seal on British sovereignty over New Zealand. When informing Hobson of this, Secretary of State Russell warned him that New Zealand would soon be separated from New South Wales.106 Stephen seems to have been the first to suggest erecting

*

The latitudinal limits of New Zealand were given as ‘north’, placing them somewhere near Midway, and the Treaty of Waitangi was dated ‘5’ instead of 6 February (Proclamations, 21 May 1840, C.O. 209/7:61–62).

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New Zealand into a separate colony with a legislature of its own, by including the necessary power in the Bill which had to be brought down for continuing the New South Wales Act.107 Thus, the authority for establishing the Crown colony system in New Zealand came from this Act (3 & 4 Victoria cap 62), passed on 7 August 1840, but the separation of New Zealand waited upon news of Hobson’s recovery and the proclamations of sovereignty. By December 1840 the ‘Charter’ (more technically called Letters Patent), and Hobson’s commission and instructions as Governor had been drawn up.108 Hobson received these instruments and proclaimed the separation on 3 May 1841.109 New Zealand was now a Crown colony of the British Empire. The Treaty of Waitangi was the political act which led to New Zealand becoming a British colony. The first article ceding sovereignty to Queen Victoria was the operative element in the process and from it Hobson’s subsequent proceedings flowed, for the British Government had decided that the annexation must be ‘strictly contingent upon the indispensable preliminary’ of a cession by the Maoris.110 Stephen minuted on Hobson’s report of the Waitangi negotiations that it proved, ‘if proof were wanting, how much wiser was the course taken of negotiating for a cession of the sovereignty, than would have been the course of relying on the proceedings of Captain Cook, or the language of Vattel in opposition to our own Statute Book’.111 In 1842 he emphasized the point, that it was ‘in virtue of the treaty …, and on that basis alone, that Her Majesty’s title to sovereignty in New Zealand at this moment rests’.112 As Secretary of State Stanley told Governor FitzRoy in 1844, the Treaty of Waitangi had been ‘officially promulgated and laid before Parliament …’.113 Yet the Treaty of Waitangi was a constitutional and legal nullity. The cession by a certain number of chiefs did not make New Zealand British; it merely removed the chief political obstacle to its becoming so. Rather, it was the proclamations of 21 May 1840, issued by an authorized agent of the Crown, and the subsequent official gazetting of these proclamations on 2 October 1840, that made New Zealand British in terms of English constitutional procedure and international law. And since the proclamations themselves were based on a legally invalid treaty of cession and a non-existent ‘right’ of discovery, it follows that New Zealand became a colony by an Act of State of the British Crown and was confirmed so by occupation and settlement.114 The discrepancy between political reality and legal theory soon led the Colonial Office into a contradictory position. On the one hand stood the Treaty of Waitangi, apparently negotiated with the ‘free and intelligent consent’ of the Maoris and providing the essential political basis for British sovereignty. Yet when the first Attorney-General of New Zealand, William Swainson, questioned the ‘intelligence’ with which the chiefs had signed and wondered whether signatories could bind non-signatories,115 James Stephen abandoned the leaking political stopbank and retreated to the higher ground of constitutional law: ‘Admit for the sake of argument all his premises:-that the Queen was pledged not to 125

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assert her dominion unless the free & intelligent assent of the natives was first obtained:- that some of the natives gave no assent at all:-that others assented but not intelligently:- & that therefore, the pledge given is broken by the assertion of sovereignty:-’ nevertheless, no British subject and certainly not the AttorneyGeneral of New Zealand could lawfully dispute that sovereignty. ‘The Queen & Parliament have gravely & deliberately adjudged, that all that is necessary for constituting the royal dominion over New Zealand, has been done …. It was for the Queen, on the advice of her responsible ministers, to interpret her own pledges;-to say how far a perfectly unanimous consent of the native chiefs was necessary;- & to determine whether the assent actually given was or was not free & intelligent.’116 It seems that Britain had it both ways. If the conditions of a fair cession had not been fulfilled it did not matter: sovereignty had been asserted, and anyway it was up to the British Government to decide whether the conditions had been fulfilled! Thus Stanley wrote to FitzRoy that, despite Swainson’s opinion, the Government was ‘satisfied’ that the preliminary conditions had been met.117 The basis for this satisfaction is open to question. The Colonial Office had not given much thought to the matter of unanimity, but the idea that some chiefs might cede their sovereignty and some retain it should not have seemed so dangerous. It was, after all, the basis of Hobson’s plan of 1837 and of Colonial Office thinking until at least May 1839. But when it came to the point, the attempt of some chiefs to stay outside British sovereignty by not signing the Treaty of Waitangi proved unacceptable to the civil servants and politicians. The Colonial Office may have had a case on practical grounds, but could hardly claim correctly that all the Maori chiefs had given their free consent. Hobson’s negotiation of the treaty also left something to be desired. His apparent refusal to allow discussion on the second day,118 6 February 1840, casts doubt on whether he had done all he could to make the chiefs understand the treaty and the implications of signing it. Moreover, his attitude to opposition at Waitangi and Hokianga suggests that he was altogether too anxious to obtain the cession of New Zealand quickly and quietly rather than to encourage a really searching debate. By insisting that such opposition was inspired by the French bishop, Roman Catholics in general, ‘low ruffians’, and other scapegoats, he effectively cast a slur on genuine opposition and genuine doubt about his proposals.119 Thus he instructed those who undertook the negotiation of the treaty on his behalf that their patience would be taxed with long speeches ‘full of angry opposition, and very little to the purpose’; they should seek to obtain the friendship of a couple of the most influential chiefs who would soon persuade the rest to agree.120 In this cynical way ‘free and intelligent’ disagreement was disparaged and mere consent encouraged. What the Maori chiefs understood by the first article of the treaty is very much a matter of guesswork, for contemporary commentators, none of whom were Maori, disagreed among themselves. One historian, Ruth Ross, has sugges126

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ted that the omission of the word mana from the treaty leaving the transliterated word kawanatanga, or ‘governorship’, to stand on its own, made the treaty much less comprehensible than if the two words had been associated as they had been in certain missionary translations of scripture and in Busby’s 1835 Declaration of Independence.* 121 The inclusion of mana would have conveyed the idea that very considerable powers of authority and control were being ceded, which is no doubt why it was left out. This omission, coupled with the confirmation to the chiefs of their rangatiratanga, or ‘chieftainship’, rendered the meaning of the Maori version of the article considerably less extensive than the English phrase ‘all the rights and powers of Sovereignty’. Another recent commentator has argued that the Maoris were undoubtedly misled and that Hobson and his staff failed to understand that it was precisely the power to permit or forbid Maori activities that the chiefs had not conceded to the British.122 The political realities of an anarchic frontier situation were no doubt sufficiently apparent for some of the leading chiefs to realize that the cession meant the acceptance of some degree of control and authority over Maori-pakeha relations and over Maori activities which affected them; this some of them welcomed.123 Yet it is unlikely that the chiefs understood either the extent of the control and authority envisaged by the new British administration, or the longterm implications of the transfer of sovereignty; nor, of course, were any real attempts made to explain them. Without that understanding the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi was an act of trust. As Lord John Russell pointed out in approving Hobson’s conduct: ‘The English & Natives both rely on our good faith.’124 Only a study of the ways in which sovereignty was exercised in the early years of the Crown colony reveals whether the faith was kept or broken. Lord Normanby’s final instructions to Hobson comprise one of the fullest explanations of Britain’s motives for annexing New Zealand. They state that Britain had been reluctant to intervene earlier because the Maoris were a sovereign people and because interference would be ‘essentially unjust’ and detrimental to them. However, the expansion of the European frontier in New Zealand and its impact on Maori society forced a change of policy and a decision to intervene. The instructions implied that intervention could no longer be considered unjust, because the settlers had rendered Maori sovereignty ‘little more than nominal’ anyway and because the frontier situation itself was damaging Maori society. Hobson was therefore to set up a government to control it. The Maoris were to be told that this was the only way in which they could be effectively protected from the increasing number of British settlers and their activities. This emphasis on protecting the Maoris gave the final instructions their humanitarian character.125

*

In the Declaration the word Kingitanga was used but the meaning is very similar to kawanatanga.

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During the 1830s, humanitarian concern for the plight of West Indian slaves and the protection of aboriginal peoples within or on the borders of the Empire reached its peak. The evangelical missionary societies were at the height of their influence, the Aborigines Protection Society began its long career as a pressure group, and Buxton and his adherents possessed a considerable following in Parliament. Their tract for the times, the 1837 Aborigines Report, encapsulated in a way that few other parliamentary reports have ever done the mature development of an intellectual and emotional zeitgeist. In the Colonial Office the three men who administered the Empire during the latter half of the decade, Lord Glenelg, Sir George Grey, and James Stephen, all subscribed to the principles if not to the practical suggestions which the Aborigines Report contained. Their undoubtedly sincere concern showed itself in the making of Colonial Office policy towards New Zealand. There is no question that a humanitarian desire to protect the Maoris from the impact of the expanding European frontier in the antipodes was one of the major reasons why the Colonial Office reluctantly accepted that Britain should intervene in New Zealand. Had this concern become the dominant reason by 1839, and was the annexation undertaken mainly for the Maoris’ benefit? In the first draft of the consular instructions Hobson was told to explain to the Maori chiefs that their protection from lawless Europeans was ‘the first and most important’ motive of British intervention.126 In the second draft Stephen concluded that, while interference was necessary ‘partly’ to protect European settlers, it was undertaken ‘chiefly’ in order to save and civilize the Maoris.127 Normanby’s final instructions directed Hobson to ‘especially’ emphasize in his negotiations with the Maoris that Britain would find it impossible to protect them unless sovereignty was ceded to the Queen.128 On these statements alone, therefore, it would seem that the main aim of British intervention in New Zealand was indeed to protect the Maoris from the settlers. Yet throughout the same Colonial Office policy documents there runs the thread of another, equally important aim. In the first draft of Hobson’s instructions Stephen twice mentioned that Britain was intervening not only for the protection of the Maoris but also for ‘the benefit of the settlers themselves’, through the establishment of good government and the promotion of trade.129 Glenelg’s Cabinet memorandum stated that intervention was necessary ‘for the protection, both of the British settlers, and of the Natives’, and the second draft of the consular instructions recognized ‘duties owing to the existing settlers’ in New Zealand as well as to the Maoris.130 On the eve of his departure Hobson was told that his principal object was to establish a government in order to rescue both the Maoris and the settlers from frontier anarchy.131 Though the humanitarian desire to protect the Maoris stands out more clearly in the historical introduction and general tenor of Normanby’s final instructions to Hobson, the other part of the dual duty, the protection of the settlers and their interests, remained an equally important aim of British intervention in New Zealand. 128

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It had been so throughout the 1830s. The discussion of Busby’s appointment had revolved around protecting both Maoris and well-disposed British settlers without distinguishing one as more important than the other. The support and protection promised to the chiefs who formed the United Tribes in 1835 was linked with, and indeed made conditional upon, the preservation of the rights and interests of British subjects. In December 1837 Glenelg announced Britain’s proposed intervention through the New Zealand Association as ‘an indispensable duty, in reference both to the natives and to British interests’. There was in fact a difference between what Hobson was instructed to tell the Maoris and what the Colonial Office actually meant. Hobson was told to explain to the chiefs that Britain was intervening ‘especially’ on their behalf because there was no other way to protect them. The Colonial Office meant that Britain was intervening partly to protect the Maoris, but also to protect the British settlers in New Zealand and the interests they had created. Hobson was not directed to emphasize this, nor to explain the Government’s new willingness to promote the systematic colonization of New Zealand. The Maoris were to be told only half the story. Hobson carried out his instructions faithfully. James Busby noted that ‘the alleged grounds’ of the cession proposal were the impossibility of preventing or controlling the great influx of British subjects into New Zealand and of protecting the law-abiding members of both races from violent men.132 Willoughby Shortland believed that the preservation and civilization of the Maoris and the protection of their rights and privileges were the principles on which New Zealand was annexed.133 George Clarke believed that the Maoris would never have signed the Treaty of Waitangi had not Hobson assured them that Britain’s object in seeking the cession was ‘solely’ to protect the Maoris and punish criminal Europeans, and that the happiness and prosperity of all would probably be promoted thereby.134 The disparity between the explicit and the implicit was probably not due to deliberate deception on the part of the Colonial Office. Like most policy-making bodies, the Colonial Office varied the emphasis in its policy statements according to the audience to which they were addressed. Thus Coates and the Church Missionary Society, and Beecham and the Wesleyans, came away in mid-1839 convinced that Hobson’s ‘primary object’ would be to secure Maori interests and promote Maori welfare, especially their religious welfare.135 They did not receive the impression which had been conveyed to the representatives of the New Zealand Company of 1825 earlier in the year, that Britain was intervening ‘for the protection of British subjects’ and the establishment of regular government; nor were they aware of Normanby’s encouraging words to the New Zealand Company about its future prospects and the desirability of capital investment in New Zealand.136 The Maoris were an audience too, and it was obvious that the idea of a cession of sovereignty would have to be presented to them in attractive terms for 129

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it to be accepted. Normanby’s final instructions to Hobson were not just a general statement of Colonial Office attitudes to New Zealand; they were a working document, designed primarily to tell Hobson how to go about obtaining sovereignty and explaining his object to the Maoris. Naturally, then, they emphasized an argument that was likely to win the Maoris over to the idea of cession. The instructions were consciously oriented towards persuading the Maoris that their protection was the main object of intervention. Perhaps, also, Stephen felt that the Maoris’ need for protection was explicit, whereas the settlers’ need was less obvious. In the New Zealand frontier situation as the Colonial Office understood it in 1839, the settlers were doing all right comparatively speaking; they were on top of a situation in which the Maoris were, generally, the exploited party. It may be that in drafting Hobson’s instructions James Stephen emphasized Maori sufferings because he believed the Maoris were suffering more. But there is no doubt that the Colonial Office intended British intervention in New Zealand to protect and benefit well-disposed British subjects as well as the Maoris. Throughout the 1830s politicians and civil servants had accepted that Britain had a duty to protect her subjects living beyond the boundaries of the Empire in New Zealand, in return for insisting upon their continued allegiance and obedience to British laws and the British Crown. Though this duty might be carried out with extreme reluctance, with a minimum amount of expenditure and effort, and ineffectively, the recognition that it should be fulfilled was one of the main reasons for the statutes, the visiting warships, the appointment of a Resident, the decision to offer the New Zealand Association a charter, and the despatch of Captain Hobson. The mere residence of British subjects in New Zealand predisposed the British Government towards intervening to provide them with law and order. British settlers also created British interests on the imperial periphery. If their activities were criminal or outrageous they dishonoured the national character, as the 1817 Act stated. If their proceedings were legitimate they might contribute to the wealth, influence, and power of the Empire and its economy in however small a way. Thus the value of the New Zealand trade with New South Wales and, to a lesser extent, Tasmania had been recognized there and in the Colonial Office from Governor Darling’s time onwards. In 1831 British subjects in New Zealand exported £34,000 worth of raw materials to the two colonies, the third highest source of imports after the massive contribution of Britain and the whale fisheries. Throughout the decade New Zealand’s place varied between fourth and sixth, rising again to third with a total of £73,000 in 1840; along with Mauritius, British India, China, and Java, New Zealand was a useful second-rank trading partner for Britain’s colonies in eastern Australia.*

*

See appendix 1(b).

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To Britain itself, the economic importance of New Zealand was very small indeed. The Royal Navy showed interest in flax at the beginning of the 1830s and in kauri timber for masts and spars towards the end. These products, combined with those of the shore-whaling industry also interested a sizeable group of merchants, ship-owners, insurers, and bankers in the city. They did not apply constant or even very frequent pressure, but every now and then they petitioned the Government to do something to make New Zealand safer for commercial activity and capital investment: in 1826, in 1832 when the appointment of a Resident was in the air, in 1837 in support of the New Zealand Association, and in 1840 when their petition led to yet another investigation of the state of New Zealand by a parliamentary select committee. By then city interests were fully represented on the Board of Directors of the New Zealand Company and, indeed, the company embodied not only the Wakefieldian urge to colonize but also an element of the expansionist drive of British trade and shipping to the Far East which had begun in the previous century.137 In New Zealand the residence of an increasing number of British settlers and the work of the Protestant missionaries gave Britain a paramount political influence among those Maori tribes most in contact with Europeans. The missionaries’ most obvious contribution lay in spreading the British national religion, but Darling had realized that missionary prestige among the Maoris might be turned to ‘other purposes’. The missionaries were well aware of this. They deliberately influenced the Maoris in favour of accepting the friendship, alliance, and protection of Britain and fed Maori hostility to the French which had existed since the visit of Marion du Fresne in 1772. The missionaries made northern New Zealand a British sphere of influence politically long before Hobson arrived to build on their foundation. In doing so, they believed they were fostering the general interests of the Empire, as well as their own particular purposes. Though New Zealand was not the target of foreign power rivalry during the 1830s and involved no particular strategic consideration for Britain, it did have some geo-political importance in the Colonial Office’s general view of the future of the area. Robert Hay told Bourke that the expediency of a settlement in New Zealand would very much depend on what was required for ‘the future security and prosperity of our possessions in the Australian seas’.138 Certainly, the British Government was convinced of the ‘paramount importance’ of Britain’s possession of the entire coasts of Australia139 and it was obvious then, as it is now, that if New Zealand had any strategic importance it was in reference to that continent. Thus, when the New Zealand Company proposed to sell the Chatham Islands to the Hanseatic cities in the early 1840s, Stephen could think of no good reason why Britain should go out of its way to establish a foreign colony and a potentially neutral port in any maritime war in the neighbourhood of Australia. Stephen was all for having ‘the Australian world as completely and exclusively English as possible. It will be an accession to our national strength, wealth and glory, compared with which every other monument of national greatness, established by any 131

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European power (except that which we have founded on North American continent) will be insignificant …’.140 New Zealand was part of the Australian world and the heads of the Colonial Office realized that there would be a strategic benefit in possessing New Zealand while remaining sceptical, as they did throughout the 1830s, of rumours of foreign interference there. While it can scarcely be argued that New Zealand’s geo-political position, and the promotion of British trade, missionary endeavour, and political influence were sufficient motives for British intervention in New Zealand in themselves, they were undoubtedly considerations which would be furthered once the major duty of protecting British subjects and their property by the establishment of law and order had been accepted. The final instructions did, in fact, imply that this was so: the British Government had not been ‘insensible’ to New Zealand’s importance to British interests in Australia, to its great natural resources, to its geographic position, or to its suitability for colonization with ‘national advantage’. Such factors had been regarded as ‘a most inadequate compensation’ for the injustice and danger to the Maoris consequent on British intervention.141 However, now that the situation had changed, presumably ‘the increase of national wealth and power promised by the acquisition of New Zealand’ would provide at least some compensation for the obligation and burden of intervention on other grounds. The fact that Hobson’s instructions included specific directions on the creation of a land fund for financing organized colonization under government auspices suggests that the Colonial Office recognized that Britain might as well make the best of a reluctant bargain. Moreover, it seems improbable that Stephen would have listed in the instructions the prospective advantages which New Zealand offered only in order to heighten the impression of selfdenial which had actuated Britain in forebearing to intervene there earlier. It is more probable that the Colonial Office did envisage some advantages accruing to Britain from an annexation undertaken partly to protect British subjects and ‘British interests in the Southern Hemisphere’, as well as the Maoris.142 Even the most ardent humanitarians, of whom Dandeson Coates of the Church Missionary Society was the chief representative, did not intend British intervention to benefit the Maoris at the expense of the settlers. Insofar as he regarded the protection of the Maoris as a priority, it was because of their exploited position in the frontier situation of 1839. When that imbalance had been eliminated by the introduction of British laws to control criminals, Maoris and settlers would receive the same treatment and the same protection.* The annexation, although explained to the Maoris as resulting mainly from the duty to protect them, was in reality intended to put both races on an equal footing and then govern im-

*

See Coates’s statement to the 1840 select committee, that British law was ‘absolutely essential for the well-being of all parties’ in New Zealand (1840 Report, p. 83).

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partially between them. The dual duty rationale contained both imperialistic and humanitarian motives for intervention within a promise of equality and impartiality in the future government of the two races.

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PART II The Meaning of the Treaty of Waitangi 1840–1847

6 Land and Colonization Once Britain had annexed New Zealand, the most important policy questions facing the Colonial Office and the Colonial Government related to land and colonization and, inevitably, to race relations. New Zealand had only become a land frontier towards the close of the 1830s. Earlier, European settlers had acquired land for their trading establishments, building yards, homesteads, and mission stations, but not for farming on any scale, nor for speculation. There were exceptions of course. Richard Taylor and William Fairburn had acquired large estates amounting between them to 90,000 acres, over half the total claimed by all the Church Missionary Society missionaries together, while at the society’s headquarters station at Waimate there was an extensive farm. Generally speaking, however, it was not until 1838 that the prospect of private enterprise or governmental interference in New Zealand attracted increasing numbers of Europeans to invest in land. Within two years, according to one calculation, nine parties laid claim to 56,654,000 acres of the estimated 56 million acres in New Zealand, leaving the Maoris with ‘654,000 acres less than nothing’.1 Such jobbery, as well as the numerous little claims of ‘well-disposed’ settlers, demanded that all European claims to land in New Zealand be investigated and, if equitable, placed upon the firmer foundation of a Crown title. Aside from the retrospective adjustment of existing land claims there was the question of the future acquisition of land for settlement. Given the stated purpose behind British intervention — the provision of impartial protection for both races — what were the legitimate rights of settlers and Maoris with regard to land? Presumably, the Maoris were to be protected in their ownership while the settlers obtained enough land for settlement. Indeed, both aims were embodied in the second article of the Treaty of Waitangi, which guaranteed protection for Maori lands and also gave the New Zealand Government the sole right to buy those lands. Were these aims compatible? Certainly it would require constant arbitration and exceptional detachment on the part of the Colonial Government to ensure that there was no clash between them. More important, impartial protection would require a consensus between Maoris, settlers, and Government on the question of 137

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what lands were owned by the Maoris and what value should be accorded them. The achievement of such a consensus was not likely if the values and theories of one society were applied wholesale to the other; some common ground had to be found. The difference between European theories and ideas concerning land and actual Maori practice led to a prolonged and vehement debate in both Britain and New Zealand, about the proper interpretation of the second article of the Treaty of Waitangi. Here, in the core of the treaty, the Maori chiefs thought they found the permanent and secure safeguard which allowed them to sign. ‘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 and desire to retain the same in their possession.’* To the Maoris this meant all their land, of whatever sort. Little did they, or the missionaries, or Busby, or Hobson, realize that during the first seven years of the Crown colony, successive Secretaries of State at the Colonial Office would either fail to understand or else begrudge the extent of Maori land ownership, believing instead that the treaty guaranteed them little more than their potato patches, pa, and sacred places. The Colonial Office did not understand the purport of a treaty which its own representative had signed and which it had solemnly accepted. The painful process of learning what the land guarantee did mean, in terms of obligations to the Maoris, created a bitterness between the Colonial Office and the New Zealand Company and between the settlers and the Maoris in some parts of New Zealand which did not augur well for a peaceful future, or for the impartial protection of both races. The realities of Maori land ownership and land values were these: ‘It may be fairly stated that, in pre-European days, there was no area of land that was not claimed by some tribe.’2 ‘There is not an inch of land in the Islands which is not claimed, nor a hill, nor valley, stream, nor forest, which has not a name.’3 The Maoris ‘claim and exercise ownership over the whole surface of the country; and there is no part of it, however lonely, of which they do not know the owners. Forests in the wildest part of the country have their claimants. Land, apparently waste, is highly valued by them. Forests are preserved for birds; swamps and streams for eel-weirs and fisheries. Trees, rocks and stones are used to define the well-known boundaries.’4 ‘The value of land, therefore, not only for its produce, but also for dignity and rank that was attached to its ownership, was very great, *

This quotation is taken from the official English version of the treaty (see appendix 5). As Ross points out, the actual treaty signed by the chiefs was in Maori, and whether it included ‘forests’ and ‘fisheries’ is a matter of interpretation of the words taonga katoa, (all [other?] possessions). (N.Z.J.H. article, pp. 141–2.)

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and its possession was coveted beyond all other things …’.5 There is no doubt that in 1840 the Maoris claimed the ownership of the whole of the islands of New Zealand. In a country where the amount of habitable land was limited by climatic, geographic, and resource factors, competition between numerous tribes and subtribes had led, within the historical pattern of Maori settlement, to the establishment of more or less well-defined areas of tribal ownership. In these areas land was used both for cultivation and for the produce that lived and grew naturally upon it, or in the streams, lakes, and swamps which watered it: flax, timber, and fern root, rats, birds, eels, and fish. Partly because the Maoris practised shifting agriculture, but chiefly because the scarcity of edible flora and fauna demanded the full use of natural food resources to be found in the forests and swamps, any European distinction between ‘cultivated’ and ‘waste’ land was essentially inappropriate. Land and water, whether wild or tamed, provided the necessities of life. Beyond its economic utility, however, land had emotional and societal values. It conferred dignity and rank, providing the means for hospitality, the battlefield where prowess might be displayed and honour won, the resting place for the dead, and the heritage of future generations.6 It carried on its back the pa and the marae, the wahi tapu, or burial grounds, and the sacred places. Land was a giver of personal identity, a symbol of social stability, and a source of emotional and spiritual strength. It is perhaps understandable that to early Victorian Englishmen unacquainted with New Zealand, the economic, social, and emotional values which the Maoris attached to their lands and the extent of land they claimed would pale in the harsh light of capitalist economics. Yet there were people in New Zealand and in Britain who were acquainted with at least the basic facts. The missionaries and some of the old settlers, including Busby, were well aware that the Maoris claimed the whole country and derived food from the ‘waste’ as well as the cultivated land. In Britain the missionary societies and some witnesses before parliamentary select committees on New Zealand pointed out that the Maoris owned* the whole of New Zealand.7 More important, this fact was accepted by the first two Governors of New Zealand, by Willoughby Shortland† who acted as Governor between Hobson’s death in September 1842 and FitzRoy’s arrival in December 1843, and by George Clarke, the Chief Protector of Aborigines.8 It was therefore possible for the men at the Colonial Office between 1840 and 1847 to discover from the evid-

* †

Three out of five witnesses before the 1844 select committee believed that the Maoris claimed every inch of land in New Zealand (B.P.P. 1844, XIII, (556), pp. 17, 26–27, 71, 151, 226 — hereafter 1844 Report). Shortland defended his own and the Hobson Government’s interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi as guaranteeing the Maoris all their land and pointed out that the Maoris did value ‘unoccupied’ land (Shortland to Stanley, 18 Jan. 1845, C.O. 209/ 41:540–50.)

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ence available or by further enquiry what the Treaty of Waitangi land guarantee meant to the Maoris, to a good many Europeans in New Zealand, and to the Colonial Government. There is no doubt that whatever Stephen and Normanby intended Hobson to guarantee to the Maori chiefs, Normanby’s instructions implied that they had territorial or proprietary rights to the land in New Zealand without qualification. Their ‘title to the soil and to the sovereignty of New Zealand is indisputable, and has been solemnly recognised by the British Government’, Hobson was told. He was therefore to purchase fairly and equitably ‘such waste lands’ as were needed for settlement, eschewing those lands ‘essential, or highly conducive, to their own comfort, safety or subsistence’ and buying only those districts which the Maoris could alienate ‘without distress or serious inconvenience to themselves’. To what else could the pre-emption provision which Hobson was instructed to negotiate with the Maoris apply, than ‘the unsettled lands’, and on what other assumption could it be based than that the Maoris had the right to sell them? The emphasis on purchase, on ‘waste’ lands, on lands which the Maoris did not need for their livelihood, all indicate a presumption that the Maoris owned not just their cultivations, pa, and burial places, but the waste lands as well. Indeed, there was no suggestion in the instructions that Maori ownership of the soil of New Zealand was qualified in any way.‡ 9 Nevertheless, Normanby’s instructions did not provide a draft of the treaty which Hobson was to negotiate, nor even stipulate that a land guarantee form part of it. It is possible that the matter was discussed, however, for the earlier drafts had envisaged a territorial guarantee over unceded territory in return for the cession of sovereignty over land already bought by British subjects from the Maoris. Hobson may also have talked about the content of the proposed treaty with Governor Gipps, for shortly after Hobson’s departure for New Zealand Gipps attempted to bribe ten Maori chiefs, who were in Sydney at the behest of some land speculators, into signing a treaty he had drawn up. In return for a cession of sovereignty Gipps’s document would have guaranteed the chiefs and their tribes ‘such part of their said lands as may be requisite and necessary for their comfortable maintenance and residence’. The chiefs were persuaded by their sponsors not to sign.10 Whatever Hobson’s views on the content of a treaty before he arrived in New Zealand, he must have been immediately informed by Busby and the missionaries that a guarantee of their lands would be absolutely necessary if the Maoris were to be induced to cede their sovereignty. The speeches of many of the chiefs at the Waitangi and Hokianga ceremonies showed how correct this view was, and ‡

Howick, who favoured a very restrictive interpretation of the treaty’s land guarantee, nevertheless admitted in the 1845 Commons debate on New Zealand that Normanby’s instructions contained expressions inconsistent with it and which in fact supported the opposite view (B.P.D. 3rd Series, 1845, LXXXI, 824).

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how clearly the Maoris saw the protection of their lands as the crux of the matter. They had no doubt that all their lands, cultivated or otherwise, were confirmed to them by the treaty. Neither had William Hobson, who acted on that basis during the brief course of his administration till his death in September 1842. Across the Tasman Sea Governor Gipps was taking a different view of the subject. The language he used in his own abortive treaty showed that he had a restrictive approach to Maori needs and rights. He explained this view at great length in introducing before his Legislative Council a Bill for establishing the procedure and appointment of Commissioners to investigate the land claims of Europeans already settled in New Zealand. Gipps based his justification of the Bill on North American experience where European powers, international jurists, and the Supreme Court of the United States had all agreed that indigenous peoples, ‘uncivilised tribes’, of any country had merely ‘a qualified dominion over it, or a right of occupancy only’. Therefore the Maoris did not own the ‘waste’ land in New Zealand, but only that land which they ‘occupied’ in the sense of cultivated or lived upon. The Crown owned the waste land. This interpretation was directly contradictory to the Treaty of Waitangi as understood by the signatories. Yet the wording of the second article was sufficiently unspecific in the expression of its meaning for Gipps, who adhered to an entirely different principle to that on which it was based, to approve it. Lord John Russell, entirely unaware of any possible conflict between them, approved both the treaty and Gipps’s speech.11 G. W. Hope, Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the Colonial Office from 1841 to 1845, was right in believing that neither Gipps nor Russell understood the treaty as Hobson did, and that had they done so ‘there can be little doubt that it would have been at once disallowed by Her Majesty’s Government …’.12 Other evidence supports Hope in this opinion. Early in 1840, before the news of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi arrived in England, a debate took place in the House of Commons on the appointment of a select committee to enquire into the state of New Zealand. The mover, Lord Eliot, quoted a passage from Vattel to prove that indigenous peoples did not have territorial rights to land which they did not cultivate. Lord John Russell, far from disputing the application of Vattel’s theory to the Maoris, maintained that the Government had acted entirely in accordance with it.13 Later in 1840, when it was decided to separate New Zealand from New South Wales, the Charter drafted with Russell’s approval safeguarded the rights of the Maoris only ‘to the actual occupation or enjoyment … of any lands in the said colony now actually occupied or enjoyed by such Natives’.14 Thus, when discussing the setting aside of reserves for the Maoris, Russell took it for granted* that ‘in dividing public from private land, the lands now occupied & cultivated by the Aborigines will be left in their possession’.15 He apparently believed that the Maoris owned only their occupied land and nothing more, and that any reserves made for them would be taken from public, or Crown, land. This was not how James Stephen understood the matter. When Stephen, 141

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who had drafted Russell’s instructions to Hobson, referred therein to a Crown desmesne distinct from lands owned privately (by Europeans) and from those retained by the Maoris, he had in mind only land which would revert to the Crown when the proposed Land Claims Commission had investigated and, as it was bound to do, invalidated some of the purchases and claims made by private individuals before the annexation.16 Stephen thought it ‘scarcely possible that any Governor, or Commissioner, should so far mistake the meaning of those instructions, as to suppose that they authorise the dispossession of the Natives from so much as an acre of land, unless they first freely sold it to the Governor, or unless, antecedently to the proclamation of British sovereignty, they had sold it for an equivalent price, and according to their Native customs’. Stephen, therefore, understood Russell’s comments on reserves for the Maoris as referring to ‘lands hereafter to be acquired by the Govt. by purchase from the Natives’ with the intention of reselling them to the settlers.17 Such lands could only be ‘waste’ because, as Stephen had pointed out in Normanby’s instructions and as Russell himself admitted, the Maoris must retain the already occupied and cultivated land necessary for their livelihood. From the evidence available it seems clear, first of all, that Russell and Stephen held different views about the extent of Maori land-ownership without either of them really being aware of it. Lord John Russell either did not realize, or did not accept, that the Maoris claimed all the land in New Zealand and, while he had no very clear or consistent understanding of the problem, he adopted a limited interpretation of the land guarantee in the Treaty of Waitangi directly at variance with that of the Maoris, the missionaries, and Hobson. As he later maintained, he had not supposed that ‘any claim could be set up by the natives to the millions of acres of land which are to be found in New Zealand neither occupied nor cultivated, nor, in any fair sense, owned by any individual’.18 ‘Waste’ land belonged to the Crown. Stephen, on the other hand, was firmly convinced of ‘the great cardinal principle, that the lands are not ours, but [the Maoris’] — that we have no title to them except such as we derive from purchase’.19 ‘Waste’ land belonged to the Maoris until they sold it. It was fortunate for Russell that he had left the Colonial Office before it became necessary to decide between his own interpretation of the treaty *

Yet on another occasion, and though the Charter assumed the existence of a Crown desmesne, Russell commented that he was not aware that the Crown had any land to sell in New Zealand; he had no doubt that there would be some in the future but he found it curious that Hobson had not mentioned it (Russell, minutes, 2 and 22 Feb. 1841, C.O. 209/11:40 and 209/6:396). Only when news arrived of Hobson’s purchase of a whole tract of country around the Waitemata Harbour, did Russell accept Stephen’s contention that there was an ‘abundance’ of Crown land in New Zealand which the Land and Emigration Commissioners could proceed to advertise for sale (Stephen, minute to Vernon Smith, 9 Mar. 1841; Russell to Hobson, 17 Apr. 1841, C.O. 209/7:185–6, 196).

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and that of the chiefs who signed it; that problem was left to his successor, Lord Stanley. The issue arose in 1842, a year after Stanley became Secretary of State for Colonies, over the question of investigating the validity of the New Zealand Company’s 1839 purchases from the Maoris. In November 1840 the Colonial Office and the company had agreed to abandon their former hostility and put the company’s position on a regular basis. Until this occurred, Stephen wrote, nothing could be done to colonize and settle New Zealand.20 The Government undertook to give the company four acres of New Zealand land for every pound it had spent on purchasing land from the Maoris, on emigration, surveys, establishment, and so on. In return, the New Zealand Company waived all claim to the 20-million or so acres which it said it had purchased from the Maoris. The difficulty arose when Commissioner William Spain, who was sent out by Russell to conduct a more impartial investigation into land claims than it was thought could be achieved locally, began inquiring into the company’s purchases. Spain quickly discovered that these purchases had been made in an extremely shoddy fashion and that the sale of some of the land in the Port Nicholson, Wanganui, and New Plymouth districts which the company claimed to have bought, was denied by the Maori owners. Who was to compensate the Maoris for land which they had not sold, but which the New Zealand Company had occupied? The company maintained that the Crown must do so under the terms of the 1840 agreement. The Colonial Office, on the other hand, argued that Russell’s agreement had been based on the unstated assumption that the company’s claim to 20-million acres was a valid one; if the claim was defective, the company should shoulder the responsibility for having advanced it and compensate the Maoris itself. The meaning of the Treaty of Waitangi was germane to the issue because if the Maoris owned only occupied or cultivated land, then compensation would only have to be paid for very small amounts of land. If, however, they owned all the ‘waste’ land as well, both compensation and the future acquisition of land for settlement would be much more expensive. The row first blew up in October 1842 when the New Zealand Company in London received news that Commissioner Spain was casting serious doubt on the validity of its purchases from the Maoris. The directors maintained that Spain’s inquiry was based on ‘an entire misconception’ that the company’s title still rested, as it had before the 1840 agreement, on its purchases from the Maoris, when in fact it had renounced this title in favour of an award from the Crown of a much smaller area than it had claimed; its title now rested solely on a Crown grant as laid down in Russell’s agreement.21 The Colonial Office disagreed with the company’s interpretation of the agreement, but even if it were right, the antecedent recognition in Normanby’s instructions of the Maoris’ rights to the soil, and the land guarantee in the Treaty of Waitangi were paramount. The Crown had no intention of depriving the Maoris of their rights, though precisely what those rights 143

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were was not stated beyond a simple reference to the second article of the treaty.22 But the meaning of that article was still a matter of interpretation. The New Zealand Company thereupon pointed out, quite correctly, that Russell’s agreement did not actually say that the Crown grant had been made dependent on the validity of the company’s purchases from the Maoris, nor did it make any reference to Normanby’s instructions. The duty of extinguishing any remaining Maori title, therefore, lay with the Government. As far as Maori claims went, they would be impossibly large or manageably small according to one’s view of the Maoris’ right of ownership: If an interest in the land, never yet recognised by any Christian nation, as possessed by savages, is to be attributed to the natives of New Zealand; — if the aborigines are to be regarded as being … proprietors of the whole surface of New Zealand, ninety-nine hundredths of which are probably covered with the primeval forest; — then, doubtless, the claims of the natives would be co-extensive with those of the Company; … But the only interest in land which our law has ever recognised as possessed by savages, is that of “actual occupation or enjoyment”; … If the claims of the natives be limited to such lands, . . the question can, at the utmost, be one only of a few patches of potato-ground, and rude dwelling-places, and can involve no matter of greater moment than some few hundreds of acres. The company was prepared to accept that such small disputes should be decided by a governmental tribunal. The tone of its letter suggests that it did not expect that Stanley, faced with this clear statement of the problem, could do anything but opt for the narrow view of Maori land rights.23 The Colonial Office dodged the main issue. If the company had not, in fact, bought the land from the Maoris then, at the date of Russell’s agreement, it must either have belonged to the Maoris or been unoccupied; in either case the agreement had been based on a mis-statement of facts. The company’s assertion that savages had no property in land was particularly unfortunate, Stephen pointed out, when its present position and chartered status rested upon alleged land purchases from the very people whose right to sell they now disputed; it was, in addition, peculiarly inappropriate to make such an assertion to a government which derived all its authority in New Zealand from a treaty with the Maoris which distinctly recognized their proprietary rights.24 Yet the Colonial Office was still so far from understanding what the Treaty of Waitangi had actually guaranteed, as far as the Maoris were concerned, that it agreed with the probability of the company’s contention that much of the land in the Wellington area was ‘waste’ and unoccupied anyway. To the extent that it proved to be so, the Government would put the company in possession and grant a prima facie title to the settlers pending the outcome of Spain’s enquiry.25 The New Zealand Company saw red. It had always, Governor Somes insis144

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ted, had ‘very serious doubts whether the treaty of Waitangi — made with naked savages by a consul invested with no plenipotentiary powers, without ratification by the Crown — could be treated by lawyers as anything but a praiseworthy device for amusing and pacifying savages for the moment’. It had thought that whenever possession of New Zealand was obtained, Normanby’s excessive view of Maori rights would be abandoned and it assumed that Russell’s agreement with the company marked that abandonment. The company now objected to proving that all the Maoris with whom its agent had made contracts understood them and had a right of conveyance according to Maori custom, forgetting that this was precisely what it had instructed Colonel Wakefield to ensure in 1839!26 The Government was to blame for calling into being such a ‘gibberish of native notions of law’.27 Lord Stanley met the company’s vitriol with cold formality. The Crown was not prepared to despoil others of their property and intended to honour the Treaty of Waitangi.28 Again the issue came back to the basic point. ‘The only question,’ declared the company to Stanley, ‘is whether your Lordship asserts any other native title than that of occupancy.’ The company maintained, correctly, that Stanley had never really explained his position, but that it had received the impression that the Colonial Office did recognize more extensive Maori claims. If Maori title was limited to that of occupancy only, however, there would be no difference between the company and the Government, while common law, common sense, and the Charter of the colony would be satisfied. As for the Treaty of Waitangi which Stanley advanced against its claims, the company contended that it did not apply to the Cook Strait area, but only to the northern corner of the North Island. The later ‘alleged’ cession of the chiefs in the company’s area rested on slight evidence and certainly could not affect that part of the company’s claim which lay in the South Island, which had been annexed by right of discovery.29 The Colonial Office ignored this sophistry and merely restated its intention of protecting Maori and European rights. The extent of those rights was left for the decision of Commissioner Spain.30 It did seem, therefore, that for the first time the Colonial Office was publicly admitting, though it refused to say so outright, that Maori claims over unoccupied land would be protected should they exist. But the battle over the meaning of the Treaty of Waitangi was by no means over. The New Zealand Company could not yet afford to accept the implications of a broad interpretation of the land guarantee. In 1844 the company procured the appointment of a parliamentary select committee to examine its case. The Colonial Office took up the challenge and Parliamentary Under-Secretary Hope submitted a draft report which embodied Lord Stanley’s views. Hope stated that the Maoris had acquired exaggerated notions of the value of land (which meant no more than that they had acquired European ideas on the subject), and more definite ideas about ownership, but that they also had their own recognized cus145

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toms and usages on the subject. Hope was far from being of the opinion that the Maoris had rights to all wild lands in New Zealand, but he was not prepared to assert that they could not show a right to parts of them. Further investigation in New Zealand was necessary.31 Although the 1844 select committee was by no means packed with New Zealand Company men, the committee rejected Hope’s draft and adopted, by a narrow majority, that of Lord Howick. Howick’s report condemned the Treaty of Waitangi as ‘injudicious’, maintained that a correct interpretation of it did not depend on an admission of Maori claims to all the wild lands in New Zealand, and recommended that measures be taken to obtain for the Crown a title to all land not actually occupied or enjoyed by the Maoris.32 So hedged about with caution was this recommendation, however, and so far from unanimity was the select committee, that Stanley had no qualms about refusing to advise a course which he believed inconsistent with ‘justice, good faith, humanity, or policy’. Indeed, as he wrote to the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, even ‘setting aside considerations of justice and good faith, I dare not act on the principles laid down by the Company and apparently supported by the Committee.’33 Be that as it may, Stanley again admitted that he had thought there were bona fide waste lands in New Zealand, and Hope criticized Governor FitzRoy for pushing ‘the doctrine of property in natives … too far’ when he apparently assumed that even in the South Island there was no land which the Crown could claim as ‘waste’.34 The main difficulty with regard to the New Zealand Company was that of defining such waste lands, so that the company could select the amount to which it was ‘entitled’ under its Crown award. ‘There is no doubt’, Stanley told FitzRoy in 1844, ‘that at the time of entering the original undertaking, it was believed that there was an immense extent of territory the claims to which had been previously obtained by fair purchase on the part of the Company or to which no one could assert a valid claim. But subsequent experience seems to show that much more land in New Zealand than was supposed is owned according to titles well understood, either by some individuals, or at all events by some tribes …’35 That the Colonial Office had got itself into a difficult position on the land issue is obvious from Stanley’s disapproval of FitzRoy’s caution to Maori chiefs against lightly disposing of their lands,36 and from his willingness to adopt the select committee’s recommendation of a tax on all uncultivated land, including Maori land, with confiscation as the penalty for non-payment. Though it would be difficult to apply and would require the greatest caution, Stanley thought that such a tax would be ‘an easy mode’ of getting large amounts of land for settlement.37 Charles Buller, a prominent colonial reformer and company supporter, did not fail to expose with withering sarcasm the incompatibility of such a proposal to defraud the Maoris of their land with Stanley’s insistence that the promises in the Treaty of Waitangi must be honoured.38 Despite Stanley’s refusal to adopt openly the 1844 select committee’s report, the New Zealand Company did not abandon its campaign to win approval for 146

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its interpretation of Maori land rights. In June 1845 Buller initiated a swingeing attack on Colonial Office policy in the Commons. The debate, which lasted for three days and was the longest on a colonial subject for years, revolved largely around the meaning to be attached to the land guarantee in the Treaty of Waitangi. Though the opposition exposed the inconsistencies and misunderstandings of official policy during the previous five years, the Government survived the attack without difficulty.39 But the debate did force the Colonial Office to define publicly its attitude to the land guarantee. Stanley gave this definition when speaking in the House of Lords a few weeks after the Commons debate had finished. With reference to the extent of Maori landownership, he was not prepared to say that ‘there may not be some districts wholly waste and uncultivated — there are such in the northern island — but they are few in number’. Such lands belonged to the Crown. Over the greater part of New Zealand, however, ‘the limits and rights of tribes are known and decided upon by native law’. Stanley refused to estimate the extent of this land because it was a matter on which Maori law and custom would have to be consulted: ‘By them we have agreed to be bound, and by them we must abide.’40 It had taken five years after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi for the Colonial Office to recognize clearly and firmly that the correct interpretation of the land guarantee could only be decided by reference to Maori custom. Lord Stanley had at last created the possibility that the Treaty of Waitangi would be interpreted according to the sense in which the signatories understood it. The possibility was no more than precarious. Stanley’s successor at the Colonial Office for a brief six months in 1846, W. E. Gladstone, and Lord Howick, who became Secretary of State as the third Earl Grey in December of the same year, both attempted to ignore the lessons of the previous five years. Earl Grey had been chairman of the 1844 select committee and was now determined to put its principle recommendation into practice. The new Governor of New Zealand, George Grey, was instructed to undertake a registration of land titles, as his predecessors had been urged to do, on the basis that the Maoris owned only occupied and cultivated land. The remainder, the waste lands, would belong to the Crown.41 Governor Grey, who himself believed that there were very large districts to which contending Maori claimants had no ‘strictly valid’ right, nevertheless deferentially pointed out that such a course was not only likely to provoke a serious crisis, because the Maoris would object, but was unnecessary, since a careful purchase policy would provide enough land for settlement in the future.42 Supported by Bishop Selwyn, Chief Justice Martin, and the missionary societies in England, Grey’s view won the day. Henry Labouchere, now President of the Board of Trade, declared to the House of Commons that the Government would not interfere or act on the question of waste lands in New Zealand in a manner prejudicial to the rights of the Maoris as guaranteed by the Treaty of Waitangi.43 This might still have meant almost anything, depending on one’s view of those 147

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rights, but in fact, as the remainder of the Crown colony period showed, the broad interpretation of the land guarantee had triumphed. The Government would recognize and protect Maori ownership of ‘waste’ lands; it would not take them, but would buy them instead. Stanley had quietly provided Governor George Grey with £10,000 for this purpose,44 and Grey proceeded to purchase for a pittance the Wairau in 1847, the Waitohi district in 1848, much of the Wairarapa in 1853, and throughout these years some thirty-million acres in the South Island.45 That the land guarantee in the Treaty of Waitangi would be interpreted in the sense in which the Maori chiefs and Hobson had understood it was by no means the predictable outcome of the vehement debate on the subject between the New Zealand Company and the Colonial Office. Most of the politicians at the Colonial Office between 1839 and 1846 more or less favoured the company’s narrow interpretation of Maori land rights. Normanby probably never thought about the matter at all but Henry Labouchere, his Parliamentary Under-Secretary, supported the 1844 select committee’s restrictive view of the treaty.46 Russell interpreted the land guarantee to mean the protection of Maori rights to cultivated land only. Hope approved the minority report of the 1840 select committee which recommended that the Crown assert ownership over all the waste lands in New Zealand,47 though when in office he found himself having to modify his opinions. Lord Stanley, too, thought that much of the waste land in New Zealand belonged to the Crown and, when he discovered that it did not, was prepared to countenance a penal land tax to make it so. The New Zealand Company was therefore correct in its contention that ‘neither the Company nor Lord John Russell, nor indeed Lord Stanley, down to the time when difficulties arose through the operation of the Court of Claims, contemplated the interpretation of the treaty of Waitangi which is now the occasion of great and unexpected embarrassment to the Government …’.48 Indeed, the difference between the New Zealand Company and Lord Stanley was by no means as great as it seemed. The company insisted upon an official assertion of the principle that Maori rights to occupied land only would be recognized. Stanley refused, but believed that substantially the same effect would be achieved by a practical enquiry into Maori land claims. However, Stanley’s decision to leave the matter to be decided by investigation in New Zealand proved to be the thin end of the wedge. Earl Grey, who was the most ideologically committed of all the heads of the Colonial Office to a narrow interpretation of the land guarantee, found that he had to abandon his doctrinaire views in the face of the recalcitrant reality that the Maoris did own the ‘waste’ lands in New Zealand, believed that their ownership had been guaranteed by the Treaty of Waitangi, and would resist any attempt to deprive them of it. James Stephen, on the other hand, seems to have believed, in 1840 at least, that the only way the Crown could acquire land in New Zealand was by purchase from the Maoris or by reversion from the excessive claims of individual European 148

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purchasers. But Stephen appears to have qualified this view, for it was he who first suggested the formula that all land unappropriated by either Maoris or Europeans belonged to the Crown,49 and by 1846 Stephen admitted to confusion on the land question, ‘so bewildering have been the many changes of policy’ which he had witnessed in the previous few years.50 It is unlikely that Stephen influenced Colonial Office land policy very much for, from 1843 onwards, he withdrew as much as possible from dealing with New Zealand affairs at all.51 During the first seven years of the Crown colony in New Zealand, the politicians at the Colonial Office either failed to understand or were reluctant to accept the full implications of what the second article of the Treaty of Waitangi guaranteed to the Maoris, though by the end of the period they were prepared to admit that the matter must be decided in New Zealand. During that time sufficient information was available from well-informed sources in the metropolis and from the Colonial Government in New Zealand on which a correct interpretation of the land guarantee might have been based. The Church Missionary Society, founding its opinion on information from its missionaries in New Zealand, told Stanley that there were no waste lands in New Zealand not claimed by some Maori chief or tribe.52 Acting-Governor Shortland pointed out that ‘Any assumption that the Crown has large amounts of land in New Zealand is completely wrong.’53 There was, therefore, a yawning credibility gap between Colonial Office protestations that the Treaty of Waitangi was being scrupulously and honourably observed, and Colonial Office failure to understand what the treaty actually meant. The chief reason for this failure was that early Victorians generally thought of land questions in New Zealand in terms of European concepts of property and ownership, and in the light of British experience in North America and Australia. On those continents, tribes who lived predominantly by hunting were scattered over vast regions in a manner which the white man from an increasingly crowded Europe could only regard as prodigal. Since Europeans theorized that land only acquired value as labour and capital were expended upon it and that individual property rights arose originally from this expenditure of labour and capital, they were only prepared to recognize aboriginal rights to land which they tamed and cultivated. The white man assumed a perfect right, provided the native people were treated with a certain justice, to convert what he regarded as ‘waste’ land into his own private property.54 Thus the distinction between ‘waste’ and ‘occupied or enjoyed’ land grew up; aborigines had rights to the second, because they used it productively, but not to the first. Just as in North America and Australia where the Indians and the Aborigines accorded values to land other than those measured by capital, labour, and demand, so in New Zealand the application of a European theory of land value was peculiarly inappropriate to a society which used land in many different ways apart from cultivating it, and which had appropriated all the ‘waste’ lands to tribal ownership. Yet almost every politician in the Colonial Office between 1840 and 1846, as well as the New Zealand Company, believed that the theories and principles 149

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laid down by Vattel, the Supreme Court of the United States, Chancellor Kent, and Dr Arnold,55 should apply to New Zealand, and that the Crown should claim ownership of the waste lands and admit Maori rights only to cultivated and otherwise occupied land. But Stanley, Hope, and eventually Earl Grey, came to realize that whatever ought to be the case, the Treaty of Waitangi had introduced a new element56 and Maori custom would have to be consulted. However, it was not merely a question of the application of an inappropriate theory. Colonial Office politicians from Lord John Russell to Earl Grey misunderstood the land guarantee for so long not only because they adopted a Eurocentric view of ‘waste’ lands, but also because there was considerable domestic political pressure for them to do so. From 1843 to 1845 the New Zealand Company mounted a persistent and fierce campaign to get the Colonial Office to adopt a narrow interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi; the correspondence descended to ‘a ludicrous pitch of Billingsgate on both sides’ but succeeded, in Wakefield’s eyes, in rolling ‘the proud Stanley in the dirt’.57 Much water had passed under the bridge since the New Zealand Association of 1837 had stipulated that Maori sovereignty and territory must be respected and only acquired with the Maoris’ free consent. Now the supporters of the company were demanding the assertion of sovereignty over New Zealand by right of discovery and the appropriation of all unoccupied land, for to invest native tribes with the attributes of sovereignty was ‘inconsistent with truth’.58 The need for large areas of land with a secure title had clearly changed the systematic colonizers’ perception of what the truth was. The company’s pressure was strengthened by the support of many in Parliament who, while unsympathetic to and even critical of the company on other grounds, nevertheless agreed with its contention that it was ridiculous to allow a mere 100,000 or so Maoris the ownership of the whole of New Zealand. Indeed, as a company supporter did not fail to point out, the chief defender of the Colonial Office in the Commons, Under-Secretary Hope, had been of this opinion before he joined the Government.59 The company also mustered considerable support among the merchants and bankers in the city, and won the editorial support of most of the London daily newspapers, including the grudging Times.60 The New Zealand Company’s campaign, although failing to gain its principal object, the overthrow of the Treaty of Waitangi, nevertheless carried a good deal of weight in the Colonial Office. Indeed, Stanley was apparently prepared to give way on the issue in April 1845, but the threatened resignation of UnderSecretary Hope seems to have helped to steel his nerve.61 Moreover, although the heads of the Colonial Office had little time for the New Zealand Company as a body, they did agree with its aim, that New Zealand should be rapidly and deliberately colonized. Normanby’s instructions had envisaged regular emigration conducted by the Government. Russell decided that the New Zealand Company was a better vehicle and approved the 200,000-acre Nelson settlement. Even Stanley did try hard, within the limitations imposed by his acceptance of the 150

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Treaty of Waitangi, to help the company continue its emigration work. But if the Maoris owned the whole of New Zealand the land needed for settlement would have to be bought from them, a time-consuming, troublesome, and increasingly costly procedure. The pressure to colonize seemed to clash with the duty to honour the treaty. There was, therefore, a considerable temptation for the Colonial Office to reconcile this conflict by keeping the letter but breaking the spirit of the treaty. There is unmistakeable evidence during the first seven years of the Crown colony that the Colonial Office and the Colonial Government gave way to this temptation. Normanby’s instructions had laid great emphasis on the caution with which land should be purchased from the Maoris. By Governor Grey’s time this stricture had been forgotten. Certainly, the Colonial Government and the Colonial Office did their best to help the New Zealand Company oust the resident Maoris from coveted areas in Port Nicholson and the Hutt valley. On his first visit to Wellington Governor Hobson reported that the Maori chiefs ‘all demanded protection from the encroachments of the Company, who, they asserted, had most unscrupulously appropriated their lands’. Hobson assured them that their unsold pa and cultivations would be protected,62 while a month earlier he had told Colonel Wakefield that he would sanction ‘any equitable arrangement’ for persuading the Maoris to give up their villages.63 This was hardly straight dealing, let alone in accord with a policy of not purchasing land ‘essential, or highly conducive’ to the Maoris’ ‘comfort, safety or subsistence’. Acting-Governor Shortland, Commissioner Spain, Chief Protector George Clarke, and Governor FitzRoy, despite their pro-Waitangi views, all followed Hobson’s line. Spain beat down the Maoris from their ‘exorbitant demands’, which he thought Clarke had encouraged, ‘reducing them to reason’ and the sum of £1,500 as compensation for their Port Nicholson claims excluding pa and cultivations. Clarke informed the local Maoris that they had no choice but to accept compensation, as they could not be allowed to resume lands already built upon by settlers, even though they had not been validly purchased. FitzRoy exerted considerable pressure on the Te Aro Maoris to accept £300 for valuable land which they had never sold and which happened to be right in the middle of the town of Wellington, by stressing the valueless nature of Maori lands. The Colonial Office weighed in with a promise to the company of ‘cordial assistance’ in its efforts to gain Maori lands, where Spain* had not already awarded them to the company.64 The situation created at Port Nicholson and other company settlements by the precipitate influx of large numbers of emigrants was undoubtedly a difficult

*

Spain quoted Vattel’s theories at Te Rauparaha to show him how forebearing Britain had been over the question of Maori land rights, and to induce him to relinquish the upper Hutt valley (Spain to FitzRoy, 13 April. 1844, C.O. 209/33: 102–4.

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one, so difficult in fact that unless the New Zealand Company and the settlers were prepared to tolerate Maori pa in Wellington and Maori cultivations alongside European farms in the Hutt, it would be impossible to protect the land rights of both Maoris and settlers impartially. Since this toleration was not forthcoming, one side had to give way, and in Port Nicholson and the Hutt valley it was the Maoris who were ‘persuaded’ to do so. The Colonial Government and the Colonial Office lent their ready support to help the New Zealand Company succeed with this persuasion. Other examples of the pressure to acquire land defeating the spirit behind Normanby’s instructions and the Treaty of Waitangi may be found. The Colonial Office decided, though not without a good deal of internal argument, that land claimed by settlers but not awarded to them by the Land Claims Commission should revert not to the Maoris who had sold it, but to the Crown.65 Whatever the finer legal arguments Stephen might adduce to support it, the decision was essentially unjust for, as the Church Missionary Society and Governor FitzRoy pointed out,† the Crown could hardly take away land from the settlers on the ground that they had overreached the Maoris and then proceed to keep the land itself.66 In another case a settler named Forsaith was plundered of several hundred pounds worth of property by some Kaipara Maoris who believed that he had desecrated their burial ground. Forsaith was proved innocent of this charge, so the Colonial Government fined the Maoris 19,000 acres of land as compensation for Forsaith’s loss. Yet the Government awarded Forsaith only 678 acres and kept the remainder of the land itself. The Colonial Office made no objection, but the Treasury pointed out that ‘the most dangerous consequences may result to the happiness of the natives, and to the future peace of the colony’, (and to the Exchequer!), if the Maoris were to be punished ‘by vast sacrifices of territory, to be thereafter occupied by British settlers’.67 Indeed, the obvious result of a land fine policy would have been to encourage Europeans to provoke Maoris in order to get their land. But the clearest evidence of Colonial Office preparedness to keep to the letter but not to the spirit of the treaty is to be found in Earl Grey’s 1846 instructions to Governor Grey. The new Secretary of State disagreed with and deplored the recognition that had so far been accorded Maori claims to ‘waste’ lands in New Zealand. But he trusted that the ‘evil’ which would arise from such a recognition might ‘to a great degree be neutralised’ by a strict enforcement of the Crown’s exclusive right of pre-emption, ‘the very foundation upon which systematic colonization must be based’.68 In other words the monopoly right to purchase land, which had been granted to the Crown in the second part of the second article of the Treaty of Waitangi, was to be used to neutralize the Maoris’ possession of

†

FitzRoy, in fact, disobeyed his instructions on this point to forestall Maori opposition (FitzRoy to Stanley, 15 Oct. 1844, C.O. 209/29:89).

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their lands which had been guaranteed by the first part of the same article. It was the realization, slow and reluctant though it had been, that the Maoris did own the ‘waste’ lands in New Zealand, which induced the Colonial Office to turn the treaty against itself. Governor Grey was quite prepared to obey Earl Grey’s instructions on this point. He decided that the Maoris would ‘cheerfully’ recognize the Crown’s right of pre-emption and would ‘in nearly all, if not all instances, dispose, for a merely nominal consideration, of those lands which they do not actually require for their own subsistence’.69 The pre-emption clause would permit the covert application of the European theory that aboriginal peoples owned only land which they occupied and cultivated. It is instructive, therefore, to examine the origin and nature of ‘the exclusive right of pre-emption’ which the second article of the Treaty of Waitangi gave to the Crown over those lands which the Maoris wished to sell, at prices to be negotiated. For pre-emption was to be a vital component in British land policy in New Zealand and to have serious consequences for future relations between the colonial Government, the settlers, and the Maoris.* The idea of a government pre-emption of land had been suggested by the Report of the Committee on Aborigines70 and formed part of Colonial Office policy from the moment it was decided to obtain sovereignty over parts of New Zealand according to Hobson’s plan. Stephen’s minutes of 21 January and 15 March 1839 and the first two drafts of Hobson’s instructions all envisaged that Parliament would include in the Act necessary for establishing a Crown colony in New Zealand, a provision that all future land purchases there would be invalid unless founded on a Crown grant.71 By the time of Normanby’s final instructions, the idea of using Parliament had been dropped and Hobson was told to issue a proclamation instead. The actual proclamation issued, first by Governor Gipps on 19 January and then by Hobson in New Zealand on 30 January 1840, simply declared all future land purchases from the Maoris ‘null and void’.72 But Normanby’s instructions went further. Hobson was also to persuade the Maori chiefs not only to approve the proposed cession of sovereignty, but also to undertake not to grant or sell their lands to anyone but the Government’s representative. The Colonial Office’s recognition that a right of pre-emption would form a vital and necessary part of British land policy in New Zealand seems, like its view of Maori land rights, to have been based on European experience in North America. There, international lawyers maintained, European powers had relied on discovery for their title as against other nations. When discovery was followed

*

Throughout this section ‘pre-emption’ is used in the same sense as the Colonial Office understood it at the time, that is ‘the exclusive right of purchase’. This is not now, and probably never has been the dictionary meaning of the term, where it is usually defined as ‘the first offer’ or the ‘right of first refusal’. Where I wish to convey this meaning I shall use one of these phrases. See Ross, N.Z.J.H. article, pp. 144–5.

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by occupation, the occupying power was deemed to have the sole right of purchasing land from the indigenous inhabitants.73 This pre-emptive right did not depend upon any negotiation or agreement with the American or Canadian Indians; it was inherent in the occupying power. The probable reasons why the Colonial Office actually wished to negotiate a pre-emptive right with the Maoris, rather than merely relying on a proclamation binding on British subjects, were twofold. First, it may have been thought that the unilateral imposition of a ban on Maori land sales to Europeans was scarcely consistent with British recognition of the rights of the Maoris as a sovereign people. Secondly, a pre-emptive clause would make the Crown’s land monopoly that much more effective. British subjects would not only be prevented by proclamation from getting a good land title from the Maoris; the Maoris would voluntarily undertake not to sell them any land anyway. The Crown would thereby completely monopolize the buying and selling of land in New Zealand. Normanby explained this to Hobson in August 1839. ‘Contemplating the future growth and extension of a British colony in New Zealand’, it was of the first importance that land should be sold rather than given away in free grants as had happened in other colonies, to the detriment of their prosperity. After British subjects had been prevented by proclamation from buying and speculating in land, Hobson was to obtain by ‘fair and equal contracts’ with the Maoris enough waste land to meet the needs of settlers arriving in New Zealand. The sale of these lands would provide money for future purchases and, beyond the original comparatively small outlay for the first purchase, no other money would be needed. Normanby thus assumed that the price paid to the Maoris would bear ‘an exceedingly small proportion’ to the price which the settlers would pay to the Government for the same land. Nor apparently was there ‘real injustice in this inequality’, because much of the country was regarded as being of no use to the Maoris and possessing hardly any exchangeable value. Such a value would only be created and increased by the introduction of capital and settlers and in the benefits of that increase the Maoris themselves would ‘gradually participate’. In the meantime, the land revenue created by the price differential would be applied, after deductions for surveys, roads, and other essential needs, to the introduction of emigrants from Britain.74 The need to provide an emigration fund was the real reason for the pre-emption provision in the Treaty of Waitangi. Civil servants and politicians in the Colonial Office were not alone in regarding pre-emption as essential to British land policy in New Zealand; the systematic colonizers emphasized its importance, too. In the 1837 abstract of the New Zealand Association’s Bill, and in the 1838 Bill itself, it was laid down that no valid titles to Maori land could be obtained except through the founders, the governing body of the proposed colony. The December 1838 plan put forward by George Lyall on behalf of the New Zealand Company of 1825 banned all future Maori land sales to settlers; Lyall remarked that this was to protect the Maoris, presumably from selling their land too quickly and from fraudulent bar154

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gains.75 The minority report of the 1840 parliamentary select committee on New Zealand and the report of the 1844 committee, which were undoubtedly favourable to Wakefieldian colonization, both stressed the importance of a Crown right of pre-emption.76 Finally, Wakefield himself stated that the New Zealand Land Company desired that no individuals should be allowed to buy land from the Maoris, but that a responsible government officer should purchase it. It was the fact that this officer was not to be a company man in disguise, but Captain Hobson, that forced the company to pre-empt pre-emption by sending off the Tory in May 1839. The need for haste lay in the certainty that if the company had to buy land from the Crown they would have to pay a good deal more for it than if they bought direct from the Maoris. Like the Colonial Office, the systematic colonizers favoured and indeed depended upon pre-emption (except when it worked against themselves), because it would create a price differential between what the New Zealand Company paid the Maoris for their land and what it received from the settlers. The company, along with the Colonial Office, argued that the real price the Maoris got in exchange was the enhanced value given to their remaining land by the establishment of a European colony in their vicinity. Thus, the amount which the colonist paid for his land constituted a profit of nearly 100 per cent on the company’s outlay in buying the same land from the Maoris. This profit was to be used partly for paying the company’s expenses and administration costs, but mainly to finance large-scale emigration to the new colony. If there was no prohibition on direct land purchases, the colonists would get a better deal from the Maoris, there would be no emigration fund, and the company would have no raison d’etre. Strict control of land transactions would also allow careful regulation of the number, size, and position of settlements in the new colony, preventing the dispersion which Wakefield regarded as one of the main defects of previous colonization. In short, pre-emption would provide the profit, eliminate the competition, and permit the direction of systematic colonization. The protection of the Maoris from land-jobbers was the least of the reasons why the Wakefieldian system favoured pre-emption. It was also, by the time of the annexation, the least important reason why the Colonial Office adopted a pre-emption policy in New Zealand. Before then, given that Glenelg’s partial intervention plan discouraged organized colonization, it may be assumed that pre-emption was not seen as a mechanism for financing emigration, but as a measure to prevent land disputes between the races, to stop speculation, and to protect the Maoris from exploitation. However, the momentous though unobtrusive change in Colonial Office attitudes to colonizing New Zealand between the end of May 1839, when Glenelg’s ‘no colonization’ plan was still being used as a basis for policy-making, and mid-July when Hobson’s instructions were drafted, led to the adoption of that system of land and emigration administration which was the hall-mark of Wakefieldian colonization. Pre-emption would provide the mechanism for the colonization of New Zealand; 155

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if it had ever been designed primarily to protect the Maoris’ land from exploitation, it was certainly not for that reason that Hobson was instructed to seek Maori acceptance of it in August 1839.77 Though Lord John Russell subsequently decided that emigration conducted by the Land and Emigration Commissioners was sure to fail and that ‘for the present’ the New Zealand Company had better handle it,78 and though little Government-sponsored emigration actually took place, the rationale behind the pre-emption policy remained the same. During the first seven years of the Crown colony, New Zealand governors and Colonial Office politicians discussed this rationale on a number of occasions. Hobson pointed out to his Legislative Council that the British Government had foreseen the impossibility of effectually colonizing New Zealand without the power which pre-emption gave of deciding which areas should be opened for settlement, and when.79 The council enshrined the right of pre-emption in its second Ordinance, the Land Claims Commission Act of 1841.80 But the control of settlement was only a secondary reason for pre-emption. Stanley had no doubt that ‘the original intention’ was to allow the Crown, without competition from the settlers, to get land from the Maoris on ‘easy terms’ in order to finance emigration, public works, and the purchase of more cheap land to be sold to the settlers at a profit.81 G. W. Hope, Stanley’s Parliamentary Under-Secretary, was even more explicit: though, ‘incidentally’, the Maoris would benefit from the exclusion of land speculators from the market, ‘the object of the provisions of the treaty of Waitangi as to pre-emption unquestionably was to lay the foundation of a system of colonization from funds to be procured on the resale at a profit by the Crown of lands bought by it from the natives, and the stipulation for a right of pre-emption was resorted to only as a part, and a necessary part of that system.’82 Gladstone showed little understanding in remarking that pre-emption was ‘the proper means’ of placing the British Government in a ‘just and mediatorial position’ between the settlers and the Maoris.83 In contrast, FitzRoy realized and George Grey suggested, that there was no better way of controlling the Maoris than by refusing to buy land from those who opposed the Government; to them, preemption had possibilities as a political weapon to subdue recalcitrant Maoris.84 But there is no doubt that the real importance of pre-emption lay in the fact that, as Secretary of State Earl Grey realized, it was ‘the very foundation upon which systematic colonization must be based’.85 In the light of this view, how was the pre-emption clause explained to the chiefs during the negotiation of the Treaty of Waitangi? The first difficulty arises over a semantic, but vitally important, point. Was pre-emption explained as meaning that the Crown had the exclusive right of purchasing Maori land, or that the Crown had the first offer only and that others could buy if the Crown declined to do so? The fact that both Hobson and the Colonial Office intended and believed that they had obtained the exclusive right of purchase does not necessarily mean that that was how it was explained to the Maori chiefs. 156

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There is, unfortunately, almost no way of knowing what interpretation of the pre-emption clause the Protestant missionaries and other people entrusted with explaining the treaty conveyed to the Maori chiefs throughout New Zealand. Indeed, the only, and rather unconvincing, piece of evidence appears to be a letter written to an Auckland paper in 1861 by W. F. Porter, a landowner and former member of the Legislative Council. Porter stated that a gentleman at the Bay of Islands ‘who had more to do with getting the treaty signed than any man in the colony’, presumably Henry Williams, had written to him to say that the following explanation of pre-emption had been given at the Waitangi meeting: ‘The Queen is to have the first offer of the land you may wish to sell, and in the event of its being refused by the Crown, the land is yours to sell it to whom you please.’ According to Porter, his correspondent maintained that this was how the chiefs understood the pre-emption clause and that had any other explanation been given, no Bay of Islands chiefs would have signed the treaty.86 Yet it is curious that Porter’s correspondent, who stated that the missionaries would have been ‘guilty of trickery — if not treachery — to the New Zealanders, had they not fully and clearly explained to the natives the meaning of the pre-emption clause’, should have allowed the New Zealand Government to enforce‚ according to his own account, a completely erroneous interpretation of that clause from 1840 to 1861 before raising his voice, and then only in a private letter. At least two other missionaries, Davis and Colenso, understood that the pre-emption clause meant that the Maoris must sell only to the Government, though Colenso believed that the Maoris themselves were unaware of this.87 Whether the chiefs understood pre-emption to mean the ‘exclusive right of purchase’ or the ‘first offer’ is as difficult to ascertain as it is to know in which sense it was explained to them. Colenso cited one treaty signatory who protested vehemently, when told that he was no longer allowed to sell his lands to individuals, that they were his to do what he liked with.88 At the Hokianga signing another chief insisted that if his lands were to be sold he would do it himself.89 On the other hand, there is mention of a March 1840 letter which seems to indicate that the chief who wrote it understood that land deals with individual settlers were wrong,90 and Henry Williams reported that the chiefs in the Cook Strait region were ‘much gratified that a check was put to the importunities of the Europeans to the purchase of their lands’, and that they were now to receive protection along with British subjects.91 Whatever the Maori chiefs understood by pre-emption when they signed the treaty, many of them came to believe later that they had not given the Government the exclusive right of purchase, but the first offer only. If it is impossible to do much more than guess how the meaning of the pre-emption clause was explained to the chiefs, or how they understood it, it is almost as difficult to know what reasons, if any, were given them for the inclusion of a pre-emption provision at all. No surviving account of the signing at Waitangi mentions whether the Maoris were told why pre-emption was necessary. However, Major Bunbury did make some explanation on his southern travels. To 157

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the Coromandel chiefs he said, through a missionary interpreter, that pre-emption was intended ‘to check their imprudently selling their lands, without sufficiently benefitting themselves or obtaining a fair equivalent’. At Tauranga he repeated that pre-emption was ‘intended equally for their benefit and to encourage industrious white men to settle amongst them’, rather than allowing the appropriation of large areas of land by absentee speculators; the Queen would buy their land ‘at a juster valuation’.92 Viewed in the light of Normanby’s instructions to Hobson to buy Maori lands at ‘an exceedingly small proportion to the price for which the same lands will be resold by the Government to the settlers’, Bunbury’s explanation of the reason for pre-emption and its likely benefit to the Maoris was palpably misleading. It would seem reasonable to conclude that if Bunbury, acting directly under Hobson’s instructions, explained the need for pre-emption on the grounds of preventing land speculation and protecting the Maoris, then this was the explanation which the Government gave generally. It is most unlikely that Hobson, and those who negotiated the treaty for him, would have told the Maoris that pre-emption was designed as a device whereby the Government could buy their land cheaply and uncompetitively and then finance development and emigration by selling it at a much higher price to the settlers. Such an explanation would scarcely have been very persuasive. Yet that was precisely the reason for pre-emption. Normanby’s instructions and the later statements of Hope, Stanley, and Earl Grey show this conclusively. Again there seems to have been a discrepancy between what the Maoris were told and what the Colonial Office meant, just as there had been between the emphasis laid on the protection of the Maoris as the main reason for British intervention, and the actual reasons for it which included many other factors to do with the protection of British settlers and their interests. James Busby, who had been so eager to promote British interference in New Zealand, nevertheless remained sufficiently objective to point up these differences between explanation and intention. He accurately summarized the stated grounds for that interference as being Britain’s inability to halt the great influx of British subjects into New Zealand, and the difficulty of preventing crimes and outrages and providing protection for the well-disposed of either race from the violence of men of the opposite disposition. ‘The only motives alleged were those of benevolence and protection.’ Nothing at all was said about the Government promoting emigration, let alone profiteering on Maori lands. Busby drew the moral: It therefore need excite no surprise that they [the Maoris] should consider themselves as overreached and betrayed, when that right of pre-emption which they were prevailed upon to yield to the Queen for the benevolent purpose of protecting them from the fraudulent dealings of Her subjects should be made the very instrument of realising their worst fears. Whatever may be said of the desire of the New Zealanders to have our countrymen 158

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settled amongst them, they have always dreaded the approach of such numbers as should place them in our power. The right of pre-emption must be retained by the Government, but the Maoris must be convinced that ‘this trust is administered, as it was professed to be obtained, exclusively for their benefit’.93 Bishop Selwyn was equally critical of the way in which pre-emption operated, though he, too, opposed its abandonment. He thought that the Government could never make a profit on Maori land ‘without a loss of dignity and influence’ so great that the money gained for public works and improvements would be poor compensation. ‘No human reasoning’ would convince the Maoris that the Government was acting for their benefit in making such a profit. Indeed, Selwyn believed that to employ the profit to introduce English labourers was, from the Maoris’ point of view, ‘to use the value of their own lands against themselves’. It was in the Maoris’ interests, just as it was the Europeans’ duty, to hire and instruct Maoris as agricultural workers and so enable them to compete in the labour market. Profits on land should therefore be made to work for the Maoris, not against them.94 Busby was justified in characterizing the feeling among some Maoris about pre-emption as one of betrayal, though it must be remembered that whenever Busby referred to the Maoris he had in mind those in the northern part of the North Island, for he had no experience of the rest of New Zealand. In the north, the Maoris had high expectations of the immediate benefits that would follow the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, particularly from the sale of land to the Government. Hobson noticed ‘much impatience and discontent’ among Maoris who wanted to sell land as early as May 1840, and his observations were confirmed by Symonds.95 In the south of the North Island, on the other hand, the Maoris were much more concerned with enlisting the Government’s aid to protect land which they considered they had not sold to the New Zealand Company, rather than with persuading the Government to buy more of their land itself. Indeed, there do not seem to have been any complaints from the Cook Strait region that the Government was interpreting pre-emption to mean the exclusive right of purchase instead of the first offer only, which probably indicates the ex post facto nature of such complaints in the north. When the New Zealand Government did waive pre-emption unilaterally in the south in favour of the New Zealand Company in 1841, it was not done to placate a Maori demand for the freedom to sell their lands to the settlers. Rather, it was to boost commercial confidence in the company’s settlements by granting what amounted to a prima facie title against all-comers and by allowing the company to negotiate directly with the Maoris about compensation for lands unjustly appropriated.96 In the north, however, over a hundred Kororareka residents told Hobson in December 1841 that no gathering of Maoris in the area took place without expressions of discontent at the supposed effect of pre-emption on land sales and trade, 159

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and at an extremely impolitic notice which Hobson had issued, on Colonial Office instructions, forbidding the cutting of kauri except by the Government.97 The petitioners raised the spectre of a Maori attempt to regain independence unless ‘the badge of slavery’ fixed upon them by the pre-emption clause was removed98 (and the land freed for settler purchases). By 1843 discontent had increased substantially. Kemp, the Protector of Aborigines for the Northern District, and Godfrey, one of the Land Claims Commissioners, both reported violent disaffection at Kaitaia, springing from the loss of the ‘very considerable revenue’ which the Maoris formerly obtained from selling their lands. Godfrey noted that the Maoris were ‘not quite convinced’ that they had surrendered the exclusive right of purchase to the Crown, though he thought that there were other, undiscovered causes of discontent besides preemption.99 When Governor FitzRoy arrived in December 1843 he was met by representations from Ngatiwhatua and Waikato chiefs stating that they had understood the Treaty of Waitangi to mean that the Government would have the first offer of land only. The Waikato chiefs pointed out that their waste lands would not be bought by the Government because it wanted only large areas, whereas ‘the common Europeans are content with small places to sit down upon’.100 FitzRoy quickly became convinced, probably influenced by George Clarke, the Chief Protector for Aborigines, that the settlers had fostered northern Maori discontent with the pre-emption clause. Nevertheless FitzRoy, of whom Stanley once wrote ‘no man can be more anxious than he is to maintain the rights of the aborigines and to give them official protection’,101 thought that the Maoris had some good arguments on their side. They maintained that ‘the exclusive right of pre-emption’ had not been properly translated into Maori in the treaty and that they would not have signed had they known what it was supposed to mean; the word used in the treaty was te hokonga, which meant simply ‘the purchase’.102 Moreover, how could the third article of the treaty promise them all the rights and privileges of British subject-hood when one of those rights, that of disposing of their property to whomsoever they wished, was forbidden them? FitzRoy thought that unfortunately the facts went far to support the Maoris’ case.103 Even before he left England, FitzRoy had been aware of the problem and had questioned the Colonial Office about the possibility of waiving pre-emption in certain cases.104 Stanley was initially quite prepared to let the Maoris sell their land to individuals at, say, not less than five shillings an acre, provided the purchasers paid at least fifteen shillings an acre to the Government for emigration and public works,105 but the Land and Emigration Commissioners argued that there was no sufficient practical motive for unilaterally breaking the treaty or going against the general precedent on which the pre-emption clause was based, particularly when the Government would be responsible for any ill-consequences to the Maoris which might result from letting land speculators loose. They recommended that the Government announce its strict adherence to the 160

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treaty, supporting it with the argument that, because the Crown was trustee for ‘various beneficial purposes’, it should make more out of land sales than Maori sellers.106 In the face of these arguments, Stanley left the matter for FitzRoy to report on after his arrival in New Zealand.107 This was sufficient of a loophole for Governor FitzRoy, once he had discovered the extent of Maori opposition to pre-emption and the Colonial Government’s complete lack of funds to buy Maori land at Maori prices anyway. In March 1844 he decided to waive the pre-emption clause of the treaty to allow individuals to buy from the Maoris, provided that ten shillings an acre was paid to the Government. Each sale would be carefully vetted by the Protectors and no pa or sacred places were to be sold.108 The Land and Emigration Commissioners decided that they had no objection to the waiver as a temporary measure, and the Colonial Office more or less agreed.109 It soon became clear that the ten shillings fee was sufficiently high, given the shortage of capital in the colony, to prevent more than an initial 600 or so acres being bought direct from the Maoris at a total price of about thirty-five shillings an acre. The arguments used to support the first pre-emption waiver, that the Government’s reputation and the peace of the colony were at stake if the Maoris were not permitted to sell their land privately, seemed to FitzRoy to demand a further relaxation. On 10 October 1844, therefore, he reduced the fee payable to the Government from ten shillings to one penny an acre,110 thus eliminating any sizeable government profit on the 100,000 acres which quickly changed hands. This was going too far for the Colonial Office. Stanley, who had always emphasized the importance of assuring a land revenue to the Government under any pre-emption waiver, instructed FitzRoy’s replacement, George Grey, that he disapproved of the ‘penny an acre’ proclamation; though he would not order its immediate retraction because of the possible effect such a move might have among the Maoris, it should be rescinded as soon as possible. The ‘ten shillings an acre’ scheme might be continued for the northern half of the North Island alone, though he favoured its discontinuance and the reintroduction of a strict right of preemption.111 In the sequel, Governor Grey carried out Stanley’s wishes, withdrew both proclamations, and began settling claims which had arisen under them.112 In the Native Land Purchase Ordinance of 1845 Grey ensured that it was made a criminal offence to purchase Maori tribal land. Governor Grey argued his case against FitzRoy’s pre-emption waivers convincingly. He agreed that the local government had intended to publicize prospective transactions under the ‘penny an acre’ proclamation, which would have allowed competition, but this was never done.113 The result was unjust to both Maoris and settlers. The Maori seller was not free to dispose of his land to the highest bidder, nor were other settlers in a position to bid, because pre-emption was waived on the application of and in favour of a specific individual. Other regulations besides that on publicity were evaded and the general administration of the pre-emption waiver was certainly slovenly and probably corrupt.114 161

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Governor Grey also objected to waiving pre-emption per se. He thought it led the Maoris to abandon ‘legitimate occupations’ and live indolently off the proceeds of land sales, so much so that their progress in industry and civilization and the commerce and wealth of the colony in general were being retarded ‘for years’. His other main criticism, which rather contradicted the argument about the Maoris living off the proceeds of land sales, was that even under FitzRoy’s proclamation the Maoris still received ludicrously inadequate payments for their land: in one case a horse, saddle, bridle, seven guns, and a pair of trousers for 4,140 acres; in another, £86 1s 6d for 2,731 acres.115 Yet Grey was far from being genuinely concerned that the Maoris were not receiving value for their land and never really considered improving FitzRoy’s pre-emption waiver to allow a free and fair trade in land. He was much more interested in using a strictly enforced right of pre-emption to acquire large areas of Maori territory for settlement, and in forestalling Maori demands for prices which bore ‘some slight relation to the actual value of the lands’ by keeping his purchases sufficiently in advance of the spread of the European population.116 Under Grey’s use of the pre-emption provision a lot more Maori land changed hands cheaply than had been the case under FitzRoy’s pre-emption waiver, which Grey had criticized as being so detrimental to the Maoris. There were several reasons why the pre-emption clause of the Treaty of Waitangi became a matter of conflict between the northern Maoris and the Government, contributing to the groundswell of discontent which swept Hone Heke into prominence in 1845.* First of all, the inclusion of a pre-emption provision assumed that the Government would generally be prepared to buy land that the Maoris wanted to sell. This assumption was not fulfilled. In the early years of the Crown colony the Government did not have enough money to buy land on any but the smallest scale, and the Colonial Office and the Treasury were not prepared to provide it with the funds to do so. The metropolitan government failed to realize the implications of its own policy and to provide the resources necessary to carry out its own instruction: to acquire sufficient land for British settlers and use the profit to promote development and emigration. Both Shortland and FitzRoy reported that it was difficult to obtain large tracts of land from the Maoris,117 yet when Governor Grey was provided with the necessary resources he found no difficulty. Since little Maori land was purchased by the Government in the first five years of the Crown colony, the Maoris lost the revenue to which, in the north at any rate, they had become used to receiving from sales of land to individual Europeans before 1840. Naturally, they were discontented. Secondly, from those government purchases which did take place, the Maoris soon learnt that they were receiving a very low price for land subse-

*

For a detailed treatment of Hone Heke’s rebellion see Wards, Shadow, chapter 4.

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quently sold to settlers at a much higher price. They were being denied the right to sell to the highest bidder while the Government, by no means uninformed about the Maoris’ sense of grievance,118 became the biggest land-jobber of all. By 1841, the Colonial Government had paid £1,445 for land which it sold at £25,431; by 1844 £4,054 had been paid for land sold for £40,263.119 On the one hand, the influence and dignity of the Government was lowered in the eyes of the Maoris, and the Protectors of Aborigines were placed in an anomalous position as both protectors and land-buyers.120 On the other hand, the Maoris began demanding the prices which the Government received from the settlers, further increasing the Government’s inability to buy Maori land. Some, no doubt encouraged by landhungry Europeans, also began to attack the Treaty of Waitangi, asserting that they had intended to convey to the Crown only the first offer, not the exclusive right of purchase. Set against the hypothetical advantages which they gained from being ‘protected’ against land speculators, the Maoris suffered the real disadvantages of either not being able to sell their land at all, because of the Government’s impecuniosity, or of not being able to sell it at a competitive price. It is little wonder that they felt unjustly treated, but the Colonial Office was not prepared to eliminate their grievance at the expense of the prospective land revenue and emigration fund. And, indeed, the emigration fund remained very much ‘prospective’. Most of the early government profit on land went in surveying, public works, administration, and the Protector’s Department; little was spent on emigration. Settlers therefore depleted their capital and lessened their ability to develop their property by paying high land prices without receiving the corresponding advantages in the form of more labour and emigrants with capital to invest in the colony.121 Nor did the actual expenditure locally of the initial land revenue offset the economic stagnation resulting from the high price and slow transfer of land. So, with a shortage of capital and labour, and with few emigrants, land sales and land revenue fell away to virtually nothing. Pre-emption benefited the settlers no more than it did the Maoris. The argument on which the Colonial Office based its insistence on preemption and the creation of a price differential was both spurious in itself and inconsistent with overall, avowed, British policy in New Zealand. What the Colonial Office (and the systematic colonizers) said was this: in Maori society land has no economic value of the sort we Europeans recognize and therefore we will buy it at a price which reflects this, a very low price; but in our society land has an economic value imparted to it by the market force of demand and by capital investment, and therefore once the land passes to us we will sell it at a high price which reflects this; you will benefit in the long run because colonization will raise the value of all lands in New Zealand. Yet the high price paid by the settlers was not the product of true demand or of actual capital investment, but was artificially created by a government land monopoly, reinforced by an upset price and auc163

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tion system. The price differential was not based on any valid economic ground; it was an artificial construct. Nor was the policy behind the pre-emption clause in the Treaty of Waitangi compatible with the professed aim of British intervention in New Zealand, the impartial protection of the interests of both settlers and Maoris. Such protection was impossible if the standards of one society were arbitrarily applied to the other. European concepts of land value were used in this way. Land was defined as worthless to the Maoris when in fact it possessed a wide range of productive, social, and emotional values. Pre-emption discriminated against the Maoris in two ways. On the one hand, the values which the Maoris accorded their land were discounted. On the other hand, they were excluded from the value system which the pakeha used, at least until colonization had advanced much further and they had alienated a good deal more of their land cheaply. Far from recognizing the need to find a common ground between two different value systems, the pre-emption policy deliberately kept them separate in order to capitalize on the difference; ‘no common interest’ was created between buyer and seller.122 Maori land would pay for the European colonization of New Zealand. Undoubtedly, the most significant outcome of the debate between the Colonial Office and the New Zealand Company about the meaning of the land guarantee was the recognition by the British Government that the Treaty of Waitangi would have to be interpreted according to the way in which the Maori signatories understood it, rather than according to European theories about the land rights of aboriginal peoples. This recognition prevented the outbreak of a major war or series of wars similar to that which occurred in the 1860s; in the 1840s such a conflict would have threatened the European presence much more severely that it did later and would have cast into grave doubt the future of colonization in New Zealand. The debate also revealed the fortuitous character of the main clause of the Treaty of Waitangi. Hobson was not specifically instructed to include a land guarantee in the treaty and when he did so, no particular thought was given to the matter until a head-on collision between Maori and settler claims to land occurred in the New Zealand Company’s settlements. The protection of Maori land, other than that used for cultivations or villages, was undertaken without forethought and the main clause of the treaty was not properly understood by the politicians who approved and then attempted to administer it during the first seven years of the Crown colony. When the implications became clear, many of those who realized that the treaty would have to be upheld, let alone those who opposed it outright, regretted that it had ever been signed. Thirty years later when the Colonial Office came to deal with a similar frontier situation in Fiji, it was realized that the Fijians’ desire to reserve their soil (and people) and cede only the right of government to Britain would create a 164

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situation directly comparable with that which had arisen from the land guarantee in the Treaty of Waitangi. Fuller, an official in the Colonial Office, thought the New Zealand precedent ‘anything but encouraging’ because it had necessitated the buying out of the Maoris, and because of ‘the easy manner’ in which in many cases the Maoris had been induced to relinquish their lands ‘for very much less than their real worth’ through ignorance of their value, lack of money and other causes.123 The Colonial Office therefore insisted that the Fijians make an unconditional cession and leave all matters, including land ownership, to the justice of the British Government.124 History had taught the Colonial Office a lesson. In the 1840s, however, the situation could not be so easily resolved. A vital question hung over the future of New Zealand: was the protection of the Maoris enshrined in the Treaty of Waitangi compatible with the rapid and extensive colonization of New Zealand by Europeans? The second article of the treaty certainly provided for both the protection of Maori rights to land and for the purchase of enough of that land for future settlement. Only gradually was it realized that the Maoris owned all the land in New Zealand and that buying land was the only way of getting enough land to meet the needs of British emigrants. At this point the New Zealand Company, their sympathizers in Britain, and many settlers in New Zealand turned against the treaty because it seemed to give the Maoris power to stop colonization.* They insisted that Maori rights to occupied land only be recognized, leaving the ‘waste’ lands to the Crown and available for settlement. The Colonial Office resisted this pressure and decided that the Treaty of Waitangi must be honoured; where Maori custom showed that they existed, Maori rights to land would be recognized and protected. This seemed to confirm the company’s contention that the treaty and colonization were incompatible. Yet this was only true if the Maoris were unwilling to sell their lands and, in the short run at least, they were willing. Many Maori tribes were prepared to dispose of much of their territory, not because it was useless to them as the company and the Government contended, but because they felt that it was less valuable in comparison with the material benefits of the European way of life for which it could be sold. The settlers wanted land; many Maoris wanted to sell it. The problem was one of how to effect a fair exchange. The pre-emption provision seemed designed to meet it. However, the real intention behind the pre-emption clause was to effect an exchange which could scarcely be considered fair. The Government would buy Maori land at nominal prices, sell to the settlers at a much higher price, and finance British emigration on the profits. Many Maoris in the north became discontented with the injustice of a treaty which recognized their rights to land, but prevented them from gaining anything much from selling it; men like Busby,

*

For example, see 1844 Report, pp. 151, 223.

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Selwyn, Whiteley, Clarke, and FitzRoy sympathized with their case. What was needed was either a fair purchase policy by the Government acting as trustee for the benefit of the sellers, or a free market system where, with certain safeguards against fraud, land speculation, and Maori alienation of essential land, the laws of supply and demand set the price. FitzRoy’s pre-emption waiver did not establish such a system, as Governor Grey correctly pointed out, but neither he nor the Colonial Office were prepared to make a better attempt. Instead the Government chose to uphold the land guarantee, thereby alienating the New Zealand Company and the settlers, and to insist on a strict right of pre-emption, thereby alienating Maori land sellers. It missed the opportunity, uncertain though its outcome might have been, of allowing the economic self-interest of both Maoris and settlers to meet and haggle on equal terms. By 1847 the Colonial Office had come to agree with the company’s contention that, as a matter of principle, the Treaty of Waitangi and colonization were incompatible. Since there was no question of halting colonization, even if that were within the power of the Government, the land guarantee had to be nullified. How could this be done without breaking faith and provoking a war? The Treaty of Waitangi itself provided the answer. The problem, as the politicians at the Colonial Office slowly realized, was that Britain had inadvertently recognized Maori rights to all the land in New Zealand, waste or occupied. The solution, as it dawned upon Earl Grey and Governor Grey, lay in the concession which the Crown had procured from the Maoris of a monopoly right to buy that land. If the pre-emption monopoly was used extensively and rigorously, it would effectively neutralize the wide recognition of Maori land rights. Thus, as Earl Grey recommended to his namesake, the purchase of land by the Crown should be carried forward ‘as rapidly as possible’, partly because the longer the delay the more costly it would be, but chiefly because it was of the ‘utmost importance’ with a view to the regular colonization of New Zealand, that the control of all the waste lands should be as completely as possible in the hands of the Government.125 Although the pre-emption provision seemed to provide a mechanism whereby the protection of Maori land ownership recognized in the treaty could be harmonized with the settlers’ need for land, given a particular interpretation it could be used to render that protection worthless and reduce the land guarantee to nothing more than a hollow gesture. By 1847 a major, if not the major aim of a Government avowedly established to protect Maori rights was to part the Maoris from their land as quickly, quietly, and cheaply as possible in order to make way for European colonization. The way to do this, as the Colonial Office and the Colonial Government realized, was to turn the Treaty of Waitangi against itself.

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7 Law and Custom Along with the problem of the land and its ownership, came the question of the law and its application.* Should British laws apply to everyone in New Zealand equally, or should exceptions be made in favour of the Maoris and their customs? Was moral influence sufficient to ensure Maori submission to the law and the government, or would force be necessary? What was the ultimate goal of British Maori policy? The answers to these questions depended upon certain assumptions which British policy-makers, missionaries, and colonizers made about the Maoris, and about their own society in relation to that of the Maoris. First, the Maoris were apparently regarded as superior to any other aboriginal race with which the British Empire had come in contact, whether they were American Indians, Australian Aborigines, South African Bantu, or South Asian Indians. ‘Amongst the many barbarous tribes‚’ Russell told Hobson, ‘… there are none whose claims on the protection of the British Crown rest on grounds stronger than those of the New Zealanders.’1 ‘We are told‚’ Vernon Smith agreed, ‘that we have in N. Zealand a finer race of Aborigines than elsewhere, more capable of mental & moral improvement.’2 The New Zealand Association, too, considered the Maoris superior to the superstitious Hindu, the apathetic Turk, the self-satisfied Tartar, and the Pacific Islander enervated by his voluptuous climate,3 though of course this view was adopted as much from the need to give New Zealand a good public image as from a belief in its truth. This assumption about Maori superiority was based on a belief that the Maoris had advanced further along the road to ‘civilization’ than many other indigenous peoples. ‘They are not mere wanderers …’ Russell went on, ‘nor tribes of hunters or of herdsmen; but a people among whom the arts of government have made some progress; who have established by their own customs a division and appropriation of the soil; who are not without some measure of agricultural skill and a certain subordination of ranks; with usages having the character and author-

*

For a detailed treatment of this question, and others which arise from it, see Alan Ward’s Show of Justice.

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ity of law.’ Many of the early Victorian touchstones of civilization were there: government, law, a social hierarchy, agriculture, and land ownership. A second assumption followed naturally from the first. If the Maoris were already further up the ladder of ‘civilization’ than their aboriginal contemporaries, they were no doubt ‘more capable of mental & moral improvement’ in the future. As Gordon Gairdner put it: ‘The native of New Zealand is naturally in some degree domesticated even in his wildest state, and has an aptitude for civilization.’* This belief in the Maoris’ amenability to civilization, strengthened by the humanitarian ethos of the time, secured for them during the 1830s and at the time of the annexation a much greater recognition of their rights, to sovereignty and to protection, than had been accorded any other aboriginal race in the British Empire. It never died out among men who did not favour the complete degradation or extermination of the Maoris, even when relations between the two races in New Zealand reached flashpoint and exploded into war. The third and most obvious assumption which the British made was that the ‘civilization’ for which the Maoris had an aptitude, and to which they must be raised, was none other than that of Victorian Britain. The early Victorians thought in terms of a hierarchy of cultures or civilizations at the top of which came Christian Europe led by Britain, just as their descendants after Charles Darwin believed in a hierarchy of races which paralleled it. Thus, the Maoris must be ‘raised’ or ‘elevated’ in the scale of civilization, abandoning their customs and traditions under the ‘benign’ and ‘enlightening’ influence of British example. Vernon Smith, who had little impact on New Zealand history, and George Grey, who had a great deal, were the most uncompromising exponents of this view. Vernon Smith argued that if the extinction of the inferior Maori race by the abler European was predictable (though it was scarcely a matter on which the latter could judge objectively), then humanity would merely dictate that it be accompanied by as little terror and cruelty as possible; to that end the Maoris would best be separated from the Europeans and left to ‘evaporate’ among their own institutions. On the other hand, ‘If the experiment of their elevation is attempted, tho’ the alteration should not be forcible or immediate, the unceasing object must be to make them British.’ This could best be done, Vernon Smith thought, by providing ‘the same justice & the same law, not by surrounding their superstitions with impassable barriers, but

*

Gairdner, minute to Hawes, 27 Aug. 1846, C.O. 201/366:210–13. Gairdner continued: ‘The Aborigine of Australia is migratory and desultory in all his pursuits. To him the restraints of civilization are painful, and he is glad to escape from them.’ Was there an element of the self-fulfilling prophecy about such distinctions? Russell noted that though Britain’s duty and aim for all aboriginal peoples was the same, methods of dealing with them must differ. ‘No workman would attempt to saw a plank of fir, and cut a block of granite with the same instrument, tho’ he might wish to form each to the same shape.’ (Russell to Gipps, 25 Aug. 1840, C.O. 202/ 43:9.)

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by weaning them from their uncouth institutions and attaching them to our own.’4 George Grey omitted any proviso about immediacy. In a report on civilizing the Australian Aborigines, written in 1840, Grey argued that however unjust such a proceeding might at first sight appear, ‘true humanity’ would make the Aborigines ‘from the very commencement amenable to British laws, both as regards themselves and Europeans’. Previous attempts to civilize them had foundered because they had been allowed to retain their own customs at least as far as relations between themselves were concerned; to punish an Aborigine for a crime committed against a white man but not against another Aborigine was invidious. Only civilized law could produce civilization.5 All that was not conducive to ‘civilization’ as conceived by the early Victorians must be swept away. Grey’s report received considerable, though not wholly unqualified approval in the Colonial Office and in Australia. More important, its author became Governor of New Zealand at the end of 1845. Though Grey and Vernon Smith expressed the assumption most clearly, in general all the civil servants, politicians, missionaries, colonists, and colonial government officials connected with New Zealand subscribed to the view that early Victorian British civilization was of a superior order, and one to which the Maoris should aspire. The ultimate goal of British policy was the ‘Europeanization’ of the Maori. Maori society must assimilate to the British society which was being established in New Zealand, and ultimately, there should take place a complete amalgamation of the Maoris with the settlers for, as the New Zealand Association expressed it, there was no ‘physical repugnance’ between the Maori and the European as there was between the white man and the negro in America.6 Given the cultural, religious, and social values and the state of sociological and anthropological knowledge at the time, it was probably impossible for most early Victorians to conceive that there might be anything of permanent value in Maori culture and society. How then did the goal of assimilation sit with the avowed duty to protect both races in New Zealand impartially and equally? The content of ideas of equality and impartiality varies with the historical context in which they occur. To the early Victorians equality presupposed an inherent or an achieved similarity, of education, religious adherence, social mores and values, and of landed and material wealth. Perhaps the clearest of many illustrations of this presupposition in the New Zealand case was the exclusion of the Maoris from the franchise under the abortive 1846 constitution, by qualifications which demanded the occupation of a tenement and the ability to read and write English. The literary stipulation was eliminated in the 1852 constitution but an altered property qualification remained, Earl Grey trusting to the Maoris’ ‘advance in civilization and the acquisition of property, to enable them, by degrees, to take their share in elections along with the inhabitants of European race’.7 Equality of political rights demanded Maori subscription to the material and social values of early Victorian civilization. Being equal meant being British. Assimilation implied the protection of all under 169

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the same institutions and the same law. Nevertheless, several of the civil servants and politicians handling New Zealand affairs in the early years of the Crown colony realized that to demand immediate Maori conformity to British laws and values would merely be to discriminate against the Maoris under cover of providing equal treatment. James Stephen had made the same point in 1829, with regard to the Hottentots in the Cape Colony,8 and he and others showed a willingness to tolerate some of the differences between Maori and colonial society, not because diversity was one of the rights of men, but because it could not be eliminated quickly without injustice. For those who took this view, the question became one of time; ‘gradually’ the Maoris would abandon their own ways and adopt those of the European. In the meantime, presumably, British law and government would protect Maoris and settlers impartially in areas where they were both subject to the same law, while safeguarding Maori rights to different customs and interests in other areas. This was an ambitious aim for a new government with inadequate resources. It would require co-operation from the Maoris, tolerance from the settlers, and strength from the Government. All were in short supply in the early years of the Crown colony in New Zealand. Normanby’s instructions to Hobson clearly expressed the idea of a transitional phase in the process of civilizing the Maoris. Support for the work of the missions and the establishment of schools would provide for Maori religious and intellectual advancement, but as far as social improvement went, ‘until [the Maoris] can be brought within the pale of civilised life, and trained to the adoption of its habits, they must be carefully defended in the observance of their own customs, so far as these are compatible with the universal maxims of humanity and morals’.9 Hobson either overlooked this injunction when the Treaty of Waitangi was drawn up, or else he did not consider it suitable for inclusion. In the third article of the treaty the Maoris were simply granted ‘all the rights and privileges of British subjects’, leaving for the future the question of whether the corresponding, but unmentioned, duties and obligations would be exacted in full. However, under pressure from the Protestant and Catholic missionaries, Hobson did publicly declare at the Waitangi signing ceremony that, along with all the Christian sects then operating in New Zealand, Maori customs would receive impartial protection from the Government. He also told Shortland, in appointing him police magistrate at Kororareka, that a rigid application of British laws to the Maoris should be avoided in favour of some sort of compromise.10 In the meantime the Colonial Office had delayed further consideration of the policies which the impartial protection of both races would require until news of the success of Hobson’s mission had been received and it had been decided to separate New Zealand from New South Wales. Then, in November and December 1840, a considerable amount of time and paper was spent in discussing and 170

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drafting the ‘Aborigines’ sections in both the Royal Instructions and the general instructions which were to guide Hobson as Governor; and, as if these were not enough, a further despatch on the subject was also drawn up in January 1841. For Stephen, Vernon Smith, and Lord John Russell, Normanby’s instructions and the Treaty of Waitangi were by no means the final words on the policy to be adopted towards the Maoris nor the complete expression of the humanitarian idealism which partly underlay the annexation; they undertook the task of drawing up a ‘Maori policy’ afresh.11 Stephen began by drafting a brief paragraph on the Maoris in the Royal Instructions. Vernon Smith mistook it as a full treatment of the subject and criticized it as being ‘meagre’. If the Maoris were, in fact, ‘a finer race of Aborigines than elsewhere’ with a superior aptitude for improvement, then now was the time for ‘a new treatment’. Only a belief in the Maoris’ inferiority could justify the protection so far provided, nor would a mere protectorate system for a separate and subject race suffice for the future. The Maoris must be offered British justice, British law, and British institutions with ‘the unceasing object’ of making them British.12 Russell merely referred Vernon Smith to the more general instructions which would deal with these matters at greater length. That they certainly did, and Vernon Smith can have had no complaints on the score of brevity. His and George Grey’s assimilationist views may have influenced Russell, for the Secretary of State added to Stephen’s opening paragraph on the unique claims of the Maoris to British protection, an instruction that Hobson should look ‘rather to the permanent welfare of the tribes now to be connected with us, than to their supposed claim to the maintenance of their own laws, and customs’. When these led to inter-tribal fighting, the Queen’s authority must be upheld. However, in a more detailed reference to Maori customs later on, Stephen, with Russell’s approval, did distinguish between those which must be eliminated forthwith such as cannibalism, human sacrifice, and infanticide; those which were pernicious but might be gradually overcome by example and encouragement rather than by law; and those which were merely absurd and might be borne with until voluntarily abandoned by a more enlightened generation of Maoris. The instructions went on: ‘It is important to advert distinctly to this topic, because without some positive declaratory Law authorising the Executive to tolerate* such customs, the Law of England would prevail over them, and subject the natives to much distress and many unprofitable hardships.’13 The appointment of protectors and the enactment of laws to safeguard the

*

Ward, Show of Justice, pp. 38, 45, 63, notes that Russell changed Stephen’s draft from ‘recognising’ such customs to ‘authorising the Executive to tolerate’ them, and suggests that this and Russell’s additional paragraph weakened the intention to respect Maori custom which Stephen expressed in the first draft. However, the instructions remained quite clear and emphatic on the point and the changes were marginal rather than of any great significance.

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Maoris and their property were two particular measures, along with the support of the missions and the education of Maori youth, which Russell enjoined Hobson to carry out. A speedier and less complicated administration of justice than that provided by the English justice of the peace system would probably be necessary. The protector of aborigines should be provided with immediate access to and priority of treatment in a court of criminal justice, as well as a summary jurisdiction in questions between Maoris and Europeans and, in some cases, between Maoris alone.14 In a further despatch, Russell suggested that a law should be passed constituting the protector of aborigines the advocate or attorney ex officio for the Maoris in any suit or proceeding in the ordinary courts of the colony.15 Yet Vernon Smith had referred to protectors as only affording ‘cold countenance’ to subject races, and Stephen had little faith in their efficacy for the Maoris. ‘If we could train these people to act as militia or an armed police, we should do them more good than by enlisting a thousand protectors for their defence’ he wrote, for only by making aboriginal peoples ‘formidable’ could one ensure that Europeans respected them.16 As it happened Stephen was wrong in New Zealand’s case, for although the Maoris were already pretty formidable, there were plenty of foolhardy Europeans who wanted to take them on. Nevertheless, Stephen’s views influenced Russell. Though omitting Stephen’s more contentious passages, he did suggest that Hobson might try and inculcate in the Maoris military habits and discipline, for only if the settlers respected the Maoris’ strength or recognized their usefulness would they escape the oppression that other indigenous peoples had suffered.17 However, since the Aborigines Committee of 1837 had recommended it, and since a similar scheme in Australia had not yet proved a failure, Stephen and Russell also instructed Hobson to appoint a protector of aborigines and provide him with sufficient power. With regard to the Maoris’ ‘utility’, Russell acknowledged that there would be great difficulties in persuading the Maoris to undertake manual labour. Here he recommended George Grey’s report on the Australian Aborigines as containing good advice on tempering jobs to the ways of the indigenous people rather than expecting strict conformity with European work habits, and on the importance of educating aboriginal youth in morals, religion, and industry. An unconscious slip in the drafting of this section of the instructions reveals some confusion of races; Stephen, who had previously noted that the Maoris were ‘settled agriculturalists’, now attributed to them ‘all the bad habits of an indolent predatory and wandering life’.18 Be that as it may, it was chiefly Grey’s advice on education and employment which impressed.19 In contrast to Grey’s emphasis on the immediate application of English law to Aborigines, Stephen and Russell thought Hobson should tolerate some Maori customs. They showed some wariness of a wholesale and immediate assimilationist policy. On the one hand, Hobson’s inclusion in the Treaty of Waitangi of an article granting the Maoris the rights and privileges of British subjecthood accorded fully with the ultimate goal of Colonial Office policy: complete assimilation. On 172

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the other hand, Hobson omitted from the treaty the very important rider contained in Normanby’s and, later, Russell’s instructions, that in the meantime harmless Maori customs should be protected from the operation of English law. The omission was of no small significance, for it meant that the Colonial Office and the Colonial Government were not committed by treaty to uphold any aspect of Maori society, but only Maori rights to land. Yet Maori traditions, institutions, and indeed the whole Maori social fabric were closely connected with the land; the weakening or the destruction of that social fabric would eventually mean the loss of the land too. There was another vital question associated with the application of English law to Maori society: the provision and use of a military force to eliminate Maori practices that were considered undesirable or immoral, particularly tribal warfare, cannibalism, and infanticide. Hobson had raised this question with Normanby before he left for New Zealand, and Normanby had suggested that such practices be eliminated ‘by authority, and if necessary by actual force’. Yet Hobson was provided with no force at all and was told to rely on raising a militia or armed police. Hobson anticipated problems; if he included Maoris there might be trouble in suppressing Maori practices, but if he enrolled only Europeans the result might be a racial war. It was this fear, in fact, which prevented Hobson, Shortland, and FitzRoy from carrying out Colonial Office instructions to raise a militia during the first five years of the Crown colony.20 In August 1839 Normanby merely retreated into unreality by suggesting that force would not really be necessary if the Government made its disapproval sufficiently plain.21 The failure of the Colonial Office to provide Hobson with a military force at the time of his departure in 1839 did not result from any question of principle, but solely from a shortage of troops and money. The Government had been compelled to choose, Stephen noted, between increasing the armed forces considerably or providing inadequate protection for the expanding Empire. They chose the latter alternative, ‘on sufficient grounds’ Stephen presumed.22 Russell made a token reversal of this decision in late 1839, fearing resistance to Hobson not by the Maoris but by the settlers, though the emigrants should be treated with consideration even if the New Zealand Company’s actions in despatching them were unjustifiable. He authorized Governor Gipps to detach 100 soldiers for service in New Zealand.23 They arrived in mid-April 1840 and were employed to control a disturbance between some of Pomare’s people and several seamen at the Bay of Islands in early June. Hobson used the occasion to represent ‘the very frail tenure’ by which peace with the Maoris was maintained and the absolute necessity of providing more troops. The Colonial Office agreed, but since there were none available the formation of a militia or an armed police force was again suggested.24 Indeed, Hobson asked for more troops in February, June, and October 1840, and in February and December 1841; his requests were in vain. With only 100 troops at his command, he therefore had to govern with ‘patient forebearance 173

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and conciliatory measures’.25 This raises the question of the relationship between ‘moral suasion’ and the provision of military force. There is no doubt that government by moral influence alone, without troops to back it, was never a deliberate Colonial Office policy after Busby’s failure and the decision to intervene further; it was a matter of expediency forced by an imperial shortage of soldiers.* To some it may have appeared that Britain was trying to govern New Zealand by moral suasion as a matter of principle,† but a glance at the published parliamentary papers would have told them otherwise. Indeed, moral influence and force were not regarded as incompatible or mutually exclusive by the early Victorians, but as inter-dependent elements. When Hobson first asked for more troops after his arrival in New Zealand he emphasized that they were needed for ‘the moral effect’ which their presence would produce, rather than for actual use.26 Shortland, FitzRoy, and many others in New Zealand and Britain argued the same way: government by moral influence depended on the backing of a sufficient force, and the presence of such a force was the best guarantee against its use. Of course there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that should persuasion fail the troops would be used, but to hope — genuinely and sincerely — that they would not be needed was neither inconsistent nor incompatible with believing that they should be there. The concept of force as a deterrent is not unique to those living in a nuclear age. However, imperial logistics and the exigencies of the British budget dictated that no more than 100 permanent soldiers were to be allowed the New Zealand Government until the time of George Grey’s appointment. The first major test of British law in relation to the Maoris came in late 1841 and early the following year with the trial and execution of Maketu, a chief’s son, for the murder at the Bay of Islands of widow Roberton, her two children, a servant and a part-Maori lad. The Maoris accepted the matter as being one in which the Queen’s jurisdiction should be admitted and the trial passed quietly, though the lengthy process appeared callous to men accustomed to more summary methods.27 The case was quickly followed by that of a settler, Forsaith, whom Kaipara Maoris had mistakenly plundered in retaliation for the desecration of their burial ground. Here the punishment was more in accord with Maori practice, being simply a matter of compensation, though the amount of land exacted, 19,000 acres, was ridiculously large. Lord Stanley used each case to illustrate his views. On the one hand the trial of Maketu pleased him because it was of the greatest importance that the Maoris should be satisfied with the British method of administering justice and abandon their own. On the other hand, to help this pro* †

As Wards (Shadow, p. 31) suggests, such an idea was ‘an unrealistic concept’, then as now. But for a criticism of the interpretation which Wards builds upon this evidence, see J. Binney, ‘Review’, N.Z.J.H. 1969, 3(2):200. Wards mentions Selwyn, Domett, and ‘most of the Company settlers’ (Shadow, pp. 31, 176–9).

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cess British legislation must be framed in some manner to suit Maori prejudices. If the desecration of burial grounds was not yet punishable it should be made so, and even a disproportionate penalty attached in order to convince the Maoris that offences considered grave by them would be gravely dealt with by the Government, and to restrain them from taking matters into their own hands.28 The British system of justice should prevail, but it should take account of Maori needs. The question of whether the Government’s jurisdiction would obtain in cases between Maoris and whites seemed on the way to settlement. However, government interference in solely Maori disputes and the attendant problem of the use of force was quite another matter. A test case occurred in 1842 when a dispute over land arose between a Ngatitamatera chief, Taraia, and the Ngaiterangi of Tauranga. Several Tauranga Maoris were killed and eaten. Taraia and his supporters maintained that the Government had no right to intervene because the matter was a purely Maori one and the disputed lands had not been ceded in sovereignty under the Treaty of Waitangi. Hobson’s position was further complicated by the lack of a sufficiently powerful force to guarantee successful interference. In the event, conciliation prevailed and the disputed lands were sold to the Government. But the Government’s reluctance to use force was not lost on the Maoris, and the main question about interference in Maori disputes was left undecided.29 Though George Clarke, Chief Protector of Aborigines, had initially recommended that the troops be used, he changed his mind partly on the grounds that they were too few, but chiefly because their use would be unjust when the Government had provided no machinery for settling Maori land disputes. Clarke thought that Maori rejection of European interference resulted from the lack of governmental institutions among them, and recommended an increase in the Protectorate Department; one protector and one sub-protector for 120,000 Maoris was quite inadequate in his view. Acting-Governor Shortland complied and added a suggestion that magistrates be appointed in various Maori districts. He also believed that an increased military force should be provided, not for use in Maori quarrels because that would be dangerous, but to maintain the Government’s dignity and give it greater influence. The Colonial Office approved the Colonial Government’s reluctance to coerce the disputants in the Tauranga case, but pointed out that part of the aim of intervening in New Zealand had been to put a stop to tribal warfare. This aim still stood; waging war was an attribute of sovereignty which should now be denied the Maoris either ‘by friendly mediation, or where we have the means, by overpowering force …’.30 Nothing was done to provide such a force, however. In December 1842 a new and more serious tribal conflict, again involving cannibalism, broke out between the Ngaiterangi at Tauranga and the Ngatiwhakaue at Maketu. The Government felt obliged to send its sixty-five or so available troops, Hobson having threatened to use force in future after the previous conflict there. Shortland restricted the more bellicose Major Bunbury to a peace-keeping role and the affair petered out by March 1843 without further 175

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fighting. It split the Executive Council however. George Clarke opposed the use of force because it would be considered a breach of faith both by those tribes who had not signed the treaty and who did not regard themselves as British subjects, and by those who had but thought the treaty guaranteed their customs. AttorneyGeneral Swainson went further and argued that those Maoris who had never accepted the treaty were legally outside British sovereignty. Neither Clarke, nor Colonial Treasurer Shepherd, nor Shortland were prepared to go quite that far; they contended instead that it would be ‘an act of humanity to both natives and Europeans to consider the whole of the tribes of New Zealand as British subjects’.31 The Colonial Office gave Swainson’s doubts about the legitimacy of British sovereignty over non-signatories of the Treaty of Waitangi short shrift. The Government had an undoubted right to intervene in Maori disputes.* But that right need not always be exercised. As Stephen pointed out, sovereignty and law were not convertible terms and it was perfectly possible for the Maoris to be British subjects without being subject to British laws. There was no reason why the Maoris should not live under their own customs (with the usual exceptions) not only in matters between themselves but ‘to the utmost possible extent’ in matters between themselves and the State, though English law should gradually supersede Maori custom. Such a state of affairs existed to a greater or lesser extent in Ceylon, British India, and among the Indians in Canada. If the distinction between sovereignty and law was established, Stephen concluded, British dominion would in no way injure the Maori chiefs or their people. ‘But, to be sure, if these black men are, in respect of their new allegiance, to be brought under the yoke of Blackstone’s commentaries, it would be as good a reductio ad absurdum as could be proposed.’32 Stanley agreed: it was both impossible and unjust to apply the English legal system to ‘savages’* to whom British laws, language, religion, and manners were unknown.33 But all the theorizing in the world was of no use unless it was translated into practice, and that could only be done 12,000 miles away by the New Zealand Government and the new Governor, Robert FitzRoy. Before he left England, FitzRoy discussed Maori policy with the Colonial Office. He suggested that conciliation rather than force should be used to govern

*

*

Doubts about the competency of colonial law over offences committed by the Aborigines inter se were raised about this time in New South Wales by Justice Willis. The Colonial Office disagreed with him as it did with Swainson. (Gipps to Stanley, 24 Jan. 1842; Stanley to Gipps, 2 July 1842, 29 Sept. 1843, C.O. 201/316:217–39 and 201/332:243–4.) Stanley did not go as far as this in reference to the Australian Aborigines. There, ‘The application of our law to punish the crimes of savage men is probably inevitable …’, though in each case the necessity should be distinctly established (Stanley to Gipps, private, 6 Apr. 1843, C.O. 201/323:411).

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the Maoris. Yet though they might be ‘easily controlled’ and the use of the military arm avoided if the Government acted correctly, it should possess a sufficiently powerful force to decide any issue at once. FitzRoy therefore requested an increase in naval and military strength, not in order that it might be used against the Maoris, but for ‘moral effect’. ‘The white man’s person is now held almost sacred:-the soldiers have not been defeated — Long may such moral feelings be preserved — they are of more consequence in New Zealand than an army.’ Nevertheless an army, or part of one, should be provided to help preserve these ‘moral feelings’.34 With FitzRoy, as with Hobson and Shortland, the effectiveness of moral suasion depended not on the absence of military force, but on its presence. However, Stanley reiterated the Colonial Office position, that no increase could be expected.35 As for purely Maori quarrels, no general rule could be laid down; the right to interfere must be upheld, but cautiously, and mediation would provide the best solution.36 By about the end of 1843, then, the main questions relating to law and force had been decided, in theory, by the Colonial Office. All Maoris were subject to British sovereignty. The Government had a right to intervene in purely Maori disputes, but the right should be exercised with caution and preferably without the use of force. The problem could largely be avoided if the operation of some Maori customs was permitted both between Maoris and in some cases between them and the Government. In practice, however, nothing had been done. No declaratory law permitting the toleration of certain Maori customs had been passed, but neither had any adequate provision been made for extending the administration of English law to the Maoris. Nor had any remotely sufficient force been provided to encourage submission to that law, or give moral influence to the Government’s measures. FitzRoy, like Hobson, had a clear mandate to safeguard some Maori customs and to suppress others, but he was provided with no more force than his predecessor despite the worsening racial situation in New Zealand. Instead, he was offered Stanley’s ‘sanguine hope that in New Zealand may be set the first example of an uncivilised race peaceably incorporated with an European population, and subject to our laws by no other compulsion than that of equal justice and firm moderation, and without any sudden disruption of their own social ties, or any violent interference with their native usages’.37 That Stanley’s ‘sanguine hope’ was quite unrealistic had been made increasingly plain in the reports of George Clarke and Acting-Governor Shortland. Clarke’s first report as Protector of Aborigines referred to a considerable degree of suspicion among the Thames and Waikato Maoris about the intentions of the Government, arising partly from what they had heard of the fate of the Aborigines in New South Wales and Tasmania and the Indians in North America. Some of the Maoris had asked for a translation of the laws applying to them, or ‘Were the English the only people interested in the laws …?’38 It was to be twenty years before any such translation was available. In the meantime, though there was some 177

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remedy for Maori grievances such as the shooting of their pigs, the trampling of their crops by stray cattle, the desecration of burial grounds, and European encroachment on Maori land and timber preserves, the law was ‘rendered inoperative in most native cases by the wily European, the ignorance of the native, its own tardiness, and a want of efficient officers on or near the spot to execute it’. Moreover, the law took away ‘all that once united society’, customs such as the settling of disputes by compensation and relationships like that between master and slave, without putting anything in their place. It was scarcely to be expected therefore, that English law would be accepted by the Maoris until they knew how it worked and were able to make use of it. Clarke used the Cattle Trespass Ordinance to illustrate his conclusion. The Maoris were compelled to fence their land to keep off European stock, while at the same time they were forbidden by a notice in the Native Gazette from retrieving their own stock from unfenced European land. ‘The law and public opinion will protect the European, but what will it do for the native? The European knows how to proceed in maintaining his right; the native is ignorant of even the first steps to be taken.’39 Thus, Clarke pointed out, the Maoris became discontented with the Government because it could not settle their disputes itself and yet would not let them do so themselves for fear that they would use violence. Though there were now five protectors, their numbers were still insufficient, especially when much of their time was given over to land buying and other tasks which scarcely enhanced their reputation as ‘protectors’.40 Indeed, ‘Notwithstanding the great efforts that Her Majesty’s Government has made on behalf of the natives, and the reiterated promises given them of protection for their properties, yet on many points the natives have suffered wrong.’ This was partly due, Clarke maintained, to the inapplicability of English law to Maori circumstances. Therefore Maori customs should be legalized, future changes in the law respecting them should not be made without consulting the Maori people through their chiefs, and usages which were abolished should be accompanied by published explanations. Special courts could be established for dealing with solely Maori cases; the protectors would preside over them and work in association with the Maori chiefs.41 Shortland agreed with Clarke’s suggestion of Native Courts, and with the idea that the Protectorate Department should be removed from executive government control and united with the Native Reserve Trust, bringing all funds available for the Maoris under a single control. However, it would be difficult to provide a better deal for the Maoris unless more money was available and unless it was possible to enforce court decisions with the backing of an adequate military force.42 Shortland, in his brief term as Acting-Governor, could do no more than increase the Protectorate Department and point out the problems for the Colonial Office. Governor FitzRoy arrived in New Zealand in late 1843 and, in addressing his first Legislative Council meeting in January 1844, he promised declaratory laws to protect the Maoris and an arrangement for giving some of the chiefs qual178

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ified magisterial powers and small salaries.43 Such arrangements would only be temporary, however, as FitzRoy subscribed to the assimilationist goal of British policy that the Maoris should enjoy ‘the full rights of British subjects, as soon as they are sufficiently advanced in civilization’.44 As he told a 200-strong gathering of chiefs at Remuera, near Auckland, he did not want to interfere with customs which affected only themselves, but he nevertheless hoped that they would adopt European clothes, eliminate nakedness and ‘the strange contortions of face’ that were so offensive, and become more like Europeans in the years to come.45 The first fruits of FitzRoy’s willingness to soften the impact of government policy appeared when he appointed Richmond as Superintendent of the Southern (Cook Strait) District and instructed him on his duties. He was to adopt a generally neutral position with regard to Maori disputes or even conflicts, intervening only in order to mediate. If Maoris refused to vacate validly purchased land he was to use force only with extreme caution, even when reasonably sure that it would be effective, and only when the welfare of the public as a whole rather than that of individuals alone would benefit.46 The Colonial Office blenched: Stephen thought the instructions of ‘Very questionable prudence’ with regard to the Maoris, Hope that their tendency was ‘too much to maintain their nationality’, and Stanley that they favoured the Maoris ‘unduly’. He was not prepared to disapprove FitzRoy’s caution against enforcing English law strictly, Lord Stanley told George Grey, but no concessions should be made in demanding obedience if it was consistent with public safety.47 Stanley’s instruction was, in fact, little different from that which FitzRoy had given to Richmond, but the difference in tone indicated that the Colonial Office was less willing to tolerate exceptions in favour of the Maoris in practice than it had been in theory. This was further borne out when FitzRoy secured the passage on 16 July 1844 of the Native Exemption Ordinance. In crimes between Maoris, European interference was made dependent on Maori request. In mixed race cases, the chiefs were supposed to apprehend the Maori criminal in return for payment, a clause which took no account of tribal loyalty. Bail at a security not exceeding twenty pounds was to be allowed Maoris in all cases except rape and murder. Convicted Maori thieves could pay four times the value of goods stolen in lieu of other punishment, an adoption of the Maori principle of compensation. Since Maoris were not liable to imprisonment for debt, those with no money or property went free.48 News of this Ordinance was not well received in the Colonial Office. The general principle merited approval but the detailed provisions were at fault: ‘laws so unequal in favour of the weaker party, will, by the sure operation of familiar causes defeat their own ends.’ Stanley did not disallow the law because of possible repercussions but advised Grey to confine it as far as possible to cases involving Maoris only, or else amend it to eliminate the manifest inequalities.49 ‘Thus,’ as McLintock has written, ‘the ordinance, which might have been the forerunner of enlightened legislation designed to adapt gradually the pakeha legal 179

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code to Maori concepts and traditions, died from its own excesses, leaving the great bulk of the native population far outside the jurisdiction of the courts.’* Moreover, time was running out. For FitzRoy’s general Maori policy was alienating the European population to the point where any special consideration or exceptional legislation for the Maoris would be offset by the ensuing white backlash. FitzRoy’s refusal to punish Te Rauparaha and Te Rangihaeata for the Wairau affray,† wise and just in principle though announced in an unfortunate manner, his abrogation of Spain’s Taranaki award, again completely justifiable, and his apparent appeasement of Hone Heke and Kawiti, all created the impression that the Government existed solely for the benefit and conciliation of the Maoris. Three results followed. The settlers and the New Zealand Company began to demand a strict application of English law to the Maoris. The Maoris grew increasingly determined to ignore it, according to European commentators. The Colonial Office lost sight of its transitional policy in its concern to secure total Maori submission to British authority. The New Zealand Association had also, at first, laid great emphasis on the idea of exceptional laws in favour of the Maoris, commissioning the Reverend Samuel Hinds to write a paper on the subject which appeared as an appendix to Gibbon Wakefield and John Ward’s book on the colonization of New Zealand. However, just as the association’s initial willingness to recognize Maori territorial rights had early given way to the New Zealand Company’s denial of those rights, so the association’s concern for protecting the Maoris from the rigours of British law imbued its successor company no further than the first sign of trouble. As soon as the Port Nicholson Maoris began to assert their ownership over land which they had not sold, the New Zealand Company began to insist that the Government invoke the law and punish Maori violence, or ‘mischievous consequences’ would follow, consequences unaffected by arguments ‘ever so ingeniously drawn from the circumstances, that in any case, or in any number of cases, the colonists have encroached upon the natives, instead of the natives being the aggressors on the colonists’.50 In other words, it did not matter to the company if the colonists were in the wrong as long as the law prevented the Maoris from ousting them. By invoking strict law the company did not expect to be the loser. Similarly, after the Wairau affray, the Wellington and Nelson settlers and *

†

McLintock, Crown Colony, pp. 181–2. Though he criticized it heavily, Grey’s own Resident Magistrates’ Courts ordinance drew to a considerable extent upon FitzRoy’s Native Exemption Ordinance (Ward, Show of Justice, pp. 74, 203). Other legislation concerning the Maoris during FitzRoy’s time, such as the Native Trust, Jurors, Unsworn Testimony, and Fines for Assault Ordinances made little impact (Ordinances, pp. 140–4, 157, 196–7). For a fuller treatment of the Wairau affray of June 1843, in which twenty-two Europeans were killed following an ill-advised and illegal attempt to arrest the two Ngatitoa chiefs for refusing to give up disputed land in the Wairau valley, see Wards, Shadow, pp. 74–78, 88–89.

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the company demanded ‘an equal and impartial administration of the law’ on the premise, as a Wellington petition put it, that ‘one drop of the blood of the meanest of her Majesty’s Subjects was sacred at the extremities of the Earth …’.51 Yet, only if a drop of Maori blood was considered equally sacred, would the law be administered impartially. In Britain the 1844 select committee supported the New Zealand Company’s demand for a rigorous application of British laws to the Maoris, just as it had concurred whole-heartedly with the company’s limited view of Maori land rights. There had been ‘a want of vigour and decision in the general tone of the proceedings adopted towards the natives’, and too much respect had been shown for Maori customs, which were, the committee felt, injurious to their best interests. The Maoris should be made to understand that they were British subjects and must act appropriately; rather inconsistently, the committee also recommended that the Government should treat them as ‘children’, with firmness as well as kindness. A more severe enforcement of authority over the Maoris must be tempered with a regard for their welfare and improvement and every effort must be made to amalgamate the two races. When the Maoris showed sufficient improvement in intelligence they should be placed on a footing of ‘perfect equality’ with white men. The select committee recommended the policy suggested by George Grey in his report on the Australian Aborigines.52 Stanley, though he found much of Grey’s report inapplicable to the Maoris, agreed with the 1844 committee’s general recommendation, the speedy assimilation of the Maoris to British laws and civilized life. Nevertheless, the Colonial Office’s gradualist approach was still — in 1844 — regarded as having some validity and FitzRoy was advised to exercise discretion and forebearance, particularly as his lack of military power might forbid interference in cases where otherwise it would be advisable.53 The difference between the Colonial Office and the New Zealand Company on the question of the Maoris and English law was, therefore, more one of timing and manner than of substance. The ultimate goal was the same: the amalgamation of the Maoris with the British population. ‘Perfect equality’ would be accorded the Maoris when they raised themselves to British standards. There were others apart from the settlers, the New Zealand Company, and the 1844 committee who began to demand a firmer attitude on the part of the Government towards the Maoris. Many commentators whose basic sympathies lay with the Maoris began to regard their refusal to give up the Hutt valley for settlement, combined with Hone Heke’s activities in the north, as evidence of increasing Maori truculence. Octavius Hadfield, a much respected Anglican missionary at Otaki, thought that the Wairau affray had produced a great change in Maori attitudes. Before it they believed in British justice and feared British power; afterwards they doubted the justice and considered the British cowards. The Government had lost both moral influence and military respect. A sufficient demonstration of force, a bloodless show of strength, should therefore be made to 181

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convince the Maoris that the Government was not to be trifled with and to restore its moral influence.54 Commissioner Spain believed that the Maoris had decided to ignore British law and authority because neither could be enforced. Before ‘the philanthropic principles’ underlying the colonization of New Zealand could be carried out, it was absolutely essential that the Government show its power by a military demonstration, not to inflict punishment but for moral effect.55 Richmond, the Superintendent of the Southern District, felt the same way about the Maoris’ continued occupation of the Hutt. Though the settlers were ‘mad’ and had learnt nothing from the Wairau and would even repeat the attempt if allowed, he thought that the time had come for administering a check or even a lesson to the Maoris, ‘out of mercy to themselves’. Richmond yielded to none in his attachment to the Maoris, but when they called Queen Victoria a slave and forebearance cowardice, when they trampled on the flag and broke the solemn agreement over the Hutt, then it was time to show British power.56 Clarke, too, pointed out that with the example of settler agitation against the Government before them, the Maoris would be impossible to control by moral influence; physical force would be needed.57 Though most of these commentators emphasized that force should be used only for moral effect, there was a certain attitude that ‘the blow if struck should even in humanity be so severe as not to need repetition’.58 These reports of growing Maori truculence and recommendations of humanitarian chastisement from men such as Hadfield, Spain, Richmond, and Clarke, when combined with settler and New Zealand Company pressure in the same direction, probably helped persuade the Colonial Office that a firmer line would have to be taken with the Maoris. But, undoubtedly, it was FitzRoy’s failure to control Hone Heke’s rebellion with the troops and Australian reinforcements at his disposal which finally persuaded the Colonial Office of the need to provide an adequate force in New Zealand. As Stanley told George Grey, urgent steps had been taken for despatching a sufficient military contingent: ‘Among the circumstances which have forced on Her Majesty’s Government this measure, the chief is that of the unfriendly relations which appear to have arisen between the colonists and the aborigines …’.59 Stanley ritually instructed Governor Grey to uphold the Treaty of Waitangi scrupulously, to protect the Maoris’ personal freedom and safety, and to show every possible respect within the structure and administration of the law for entrenched Maori opinions, feelings, and prejudices, provided that they were ‘not inconsistent with the peace and welfare of the colonists of European descent’. Subject to these conditions, however, Grey was naturally to require from the Maoris complete subjection to the law, and to enforce that subjection with all the civil and military power at his command.60 The discretion and forebearance which Stanley had urged on FitzRoy only ten months before was now no longer necessitated by a paucity of military force. The ‘sanguine hope’ of peaceful amalgamation without disruption had faded too. In the face of a Maori rebellion Colonial Office priorities changed from easing the Maori transition to British law 182

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and government, peacefully, to obtaining a general submission to British authority, by force if necessary. Hope’s draft of the instructions for Grey showed clearly the trend in Colonial Office thinking. Forebearance appeared to have made the Maoris bold; therefore, though clemency should still be shown, the Government’s authority must be imposed.61 Proceedings which confirmed rather than diminished chiefly influence should be discouraged because they made Maori subjection to British authority more difficult.62 At the same time, in New Zealand, George Clarke was recommending precisely the opposite course to that contained in the Colonial Office’s instructions to Grey. British authority would remain limited, he argued, unless a material change took place in the relations between Maoris and Europeans. The European invasion had snapped Maori social bonds, but had put nothing in their place. Inevitably, the Maoris tried to continue their traditional customs. Clarke believed that the declining power and influence of the chiefs63 should be re-established and linked with an intermediate or transitional legal system. The Fines for Assault and Native Exemption Ordinances were two examples of what could be done, but they had been misrepresented and opposed by the settlers, especially in the southern district. A continuing enquiry into land titles would also be necessary because, even after Commissioner Spain’s investigations, Maori land custom and usage were still in doubt, providing a field pregnant with further trouble. All in all, the colonization of New Zealand had been undertaken with totally inadequate means, Clarke argued. ‘To govern the New Zealanders without destroying them, an expensive machinery must be employed.’ The Maoris would have to be convinced that the Government was in a position to protect as well as rule them. Clarke pointed out that many if not all the difficulties which had arisen could have been prevented had they legalized those Maori customs which were not repugnant to fundamental principles of morality and invested the chiefs with magisterial authority; ‘but instead of this we have been so apprehensive lest any portion of the executive power should pass into other hands, that our firmest friends have been shaken in their confidence in our ultimate intentions …’.64 The next two decades were to show how accurate an observation that was. With Clarke’s astute summary James Stephen was in complete agreement: The great practical conclusion deducible from it is, I think, that it was a great error to set aside the native customs, or to attempt to govern these people in their relations with each other, excepting only so far as might be necessary for the prevention of war and of inhuman practices. This is an opinion maintained on the first foundation of the colony by Lord John Russell and afterwards maintained by Lord Stanley. It has been opposed in practice by that spirit of legal pedantry from which no English society is ever emancipated, and by the contempt and aversion with which the European race everywhere regard the Black races. I am not aware that any benefit would result from insisting again on this principle.65

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Secretary of State Gladstone agreed. British policy had undergone a significant change. The tone of resignation with which Stephen and Gladstone concluded that it was no longer worthwhile to insist upon the legalization of Maori customs,* coupled with the decision to provide Governor Grey with a military force sufficient to procure a general submission to British law and authority, signalled the end of a relatively tolerant, transitional policy. The speedy ‘Europeanization’ of the Maoris became the immediate goal. Grey had been instructed by Stanley to respect Maori customs, within a general application of British law, as long as they were compatible with the settlers’ peace and welfare. This did not mean that Grey’s Maori policy would necessarily be subordinate to the interests of the settlers, but it did leave the judgement of which Maori customs were inconsistent with the settlers’ welfare firmly in Grey’s hands. Grey soon decided that all of them were inconsistent, that they were ‘obsolete and useless’ to the Maoris and the colony generally, and that it would be to the Maoris’ advantage to adopt British laws and use British institutions. Grey felt that it would ‘perhaps be better not to require our Courts in any way to recognise the barbarous customs of the native race …’.66 The transitional legal policy was well and truly dead. At one level, the third article of the Treaty of Waitangi conferred on the Maoris an honour which, to the early Victorians, was the highest the Empire could bestow: the status of British subjects. It accurately reflected the ultimate goal of British policy towards the Maoris: amalgamation. The underlying mixture of ethnocentric and racial assumptions concerning the superiority of British laws, institutions, social habits, religion, and people, is plainly apparent. The Maoris, already comparatively high in the scale of races, should be raised to the British level. It is probably true to say that everyone connected with New Zealand who did not wish to see the Maoris exterminated, whether missionary, colonizer, civil servant, politician, or settler, subscribed to the assumptions and to the ultimate goal of British Maori policy. If the early Victorians saw no real alternative to the goal of amalgamation, there were certainly differences of opinion about how it should be approached. Those like Vernon Smith and George Grey favoured a rapid and uncompromising assimilationist policy. Others, in the Colonial Office, the Colonial Government,

*

Earl Grey did direct George Grey to establish, under the 1846 constitution, ‘aboriginal districts’ where Maori customs and usages were to operate until such time as Christianity, ‘civilization’, the English language, and ‘mutual confidence between the two races’ made them unnecessary (Earl Grey to Grey, 23 Dec. 1846, enclosing the 1846 Constitutional Act, C.O. 209/47:283). The Act was suspended and so the districts were never established. Given George Grey’s views, they probably never would have been, even if the rest of the constitution had been implemented; see Ward, Show of Justice, pp. 84–85.

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and the missionary societies, believed that assimilation should be quite gradual, and that the Maoris’ transition from their own customs and usages to those of British law and society should be eased as much as possible. Maori customs should be protected by declaratory or exceptional laws until such time as they disappeared before the superior example of higher civilization. This transitional policy was enunciated by the Colonial Office on a number of occasions during the first five years of the Crown colony. Yet, unfortunately, it was never translated into practice and so failed to make any impact on the development of race relations in New Zealand. The difficulties were considerable. The Colonial Office could only theorize and instruct; it could not force67 the Colonial Government to carry out a policy which depended for its success entirely upon local knowledge. But the Colonial Government did not generate the time, the resources, or the will to acquire that knowledge and translate it into well-framed laws; Clarke blamed the law authorities, notably Swainson, for being averse to innovation in this respect,68 but the Colonial Government as a whole was at fault. With the worsening of relations between the Maoris and the settlers over land in the southern settlements, and with Maori restlessness culminating in Heke’s rebellion in the north, the chances of the Government initiating and the settlers co-operating with exceptional laws in favour of the Maoris faded. Yet perhaps the main reason why the transitional legal policy was never really tried lay in the universal view that Maori customs were inferior and barbarous and should be superseded in time anyway. It was likely that less effort would be made to safeguard temporarily that which was regarded as not worth preserving in the long run. The transitional legal policy was compromised by the ultimate goal of assimilation and amalgamation. Other aspects of the Colonial Government’s Maori policy, and its administration of that policy, bear examination for the light they throw on how the third article of the Treaty of Waitangi was interpreted in the early years after annexation. The origins of the Protectorate Department in New Zealand lay in the recommendation of the 1837 Aborigines Report that protectors be appointed to defend the interests of the Australian Aborigines. The establishment of protectorates in the Port Phillip district (present-day Victoria) and in Western Australia coincided with the annexation of New Zealand, and their failure did not become apparent until after a similar scheme was set up across the Tasman. Though the New Zealand protectorate was, like the Australian experiments, ‘an application of will without knowledge’ and without the necessary financial and administrative resources,69 it was not regarded as a failure so soon because the protectors seemed to be accomplishing the aims which Normanby had laid down for them: the protection (and the purchase) of Maori land. Lord John Russell amplified Normanby’s instructions by suggesting that the protectors be given special legal powers to protect the Maoris at law. They should also become acquainted with Maori customs and be ready to supply the Govern185

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ment with information on them, as well as report generally every six months on the demographic, social, political, moral and religious state of the Maoris. The Protectorate Department was to be financed from fifteen to twenty per cent of the proceeds of all government land sales, any surplus being devoted to Maori welfare in general or invested in the best available securities, though it was thought that the funds would generally be expended within each financial year.70 Under George Clarke, the Anglican missionary appointed Chief Protector by Hobson in May 1840, the department grew to a total of six by 1843, though Clarke still considered this quite inadequate for the job. The annual allocation for the department from the sale of Crown lands rose from £219 in 1840 to £1,550 in 1842 and £2,073 in 1844,71 that is from about one per cent to five and a half per cent of the total annual expenditure of the Government. Most of it was spent on salaries of £400 for George Clarke, £150 for each of the four sub-protectors, presents for the Maoris, special allowances, and travelling expenses. The Government also issued the Native Gazette, for which Clarke reported a demand for 1,000 copies a month, and for which he claimed an unostentatious but ‘immense’ influence.72 Stanley refused to increase the fifteen to twenty per cent allocation of land revenue when Hobson reported that the department needed strengthening. In fact, the financial straits of the Colonial Government soon led Hobson to borrow all the unspent Protectorate fund, and the British Treasury decided that since it had not been intended to set up an accumulating fund or provide for any retrospective demand, there was no need to repay it.73 Shortland, too, overspent the land survey allocation and was permitted by Stanley to pay it out of ‘any available portion of the receipts from land’, an oblique reference to the £2,684 surplus which had again accumulated in the Protectorate fund.74 FitzRoy was told that one of the areas in which he might make savings was that of expenditure on the Maoris.75 It is clear that, even if surpluses did sometimes accumulate, there was never enough money in the Protectorate Department’s funds to finance a proper beginning in Maori educational and health services. With the Colonial Office and the Treasury prodding the Colonial Government to raid the Protectorate Department funds for other purposes, it is obvious how low a priority Maori social welfare was, even when Clarke repeatedly stressed its importance. During the first five years of the Crown colony, the Government provided no financial aid for the establishment of schools for the Maoris, despite the fact that both Normanby and Russell emphasized such aid as ‘indispensable to the success of any measures for their ultimate advancement in social arts and in the scale of political existence’.76 Health fared a little better, as the Government employed one doctor specifically for Maori health in Wellington and the New Zealand Company provided a house for him to use as a hospital. In Nelson the only public utility provided for the Maoris was a guesthouse for those visiting the town.77 In June 1844 Governor FitzRoy established a Native Trust to administer for the Maoris’ benefit any surplus funds in the Protectorate Department’s account 186

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and any revenue received from the leasing of lands reserved for the Maoris by the New Zealand Company. The preamble to the ordinance stated that the best way to save the Maoris from destruction was to assimilate them ‘as speedily as possible’.78 Bishop Selwyn, one of the trustees, envisaged the foundation of schools, hospitals, hostelries and so on. But the Treasury’s repudiation of any debt to the Protectorate Department’s funds and the failure of the land reserves to produce any revenue, owing largely to commercial recession, destroyed any prospect of the Government acquiring ‘moral influence’ through the operations of the Trust. Indeed, as Selwyn told FitzRoy in 1845, the whole time he was a trustee not a shilling of rental or revenue of any kind came in. Selwyn concluded that the Government had not showed itself in its ‘parental character’ to any degree; he had heard it said by the Maoris that the Government was ‘only a thing of soldiers, barracks, constables, and gaols’.79 The provision of legal protection was one of the main areas of the protectors’ duties. Here, despite Russell’s instructions, no special powers were provided for the protectors nor any real attempt made to safeguard harmless Maori customs or except them from the operation of a foreign code of law, apart from FitzRoy’s abortive Native Exemption Ordinance of 1844. Nevertheless, the protectors did represent the Maoris in courts on occasion, notably before Spain’s Land Claims Commission. In fact their main work was concerned with land, either in dispute between the Maoris themselves as at Tauranga in 1842, or between Maoris and Europeans in the company’s settlements. However, the protectors faced a major problem. Not only were they placed in an ambivalent position as both protectors and purchasers of Maori land, but, being cast in the role of defenders of Maori interests against European claims, they inevitably alienated the settlers and the New Zealand Company. Whatever the particular defects of the protectors or the department, the very nature of their task was bound to irritate and annoy the settlers and provoke the accusation that they were worsening rather than improving relations between the races.80 The appointment of a missionary as Chief Protector added to settler discontent, as Stephen and Vernon Smith foresaw.81 On the other hand, if Governor Hobson wanted a man who knew Maori and Maori customs, he could do little else except select a missionary. Clarke’s awareness of the difficulties which the annexation and European colonization posed for Maori society, while by no means perfect, proved better than that of any other high Government officer and keener than most leading men outside the Government. His competent and sensitive reports show this clearly. He undoubtedly influenced government policy towards the Maoris in a conciliatory direction and his advice on specific matters such as the Wairau affray and the Taranaki land award was sound. Clarke’s representation of Maori interests was both well-informed and conscientious. But he did not go out of his way to hide his pro-Maori anti-settler prejudices and never gained the respect, at least, of those whose interests he was bound to oppose. His accusations of ‘recklessness … want of decorum and common prudence’ on the part 187

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of the settlers did not endear him to his countrymen.82 Coupled with apparent nepotism, in the employment of his two sons and Shortland’s brother as sub-protectors, and with hints of land speculation and corruption, Clarke’s reputation in the colony was merely that of a partisan supporter of his own family, the Protestant missions, and the Maoris.83 Governor Hobson’s attitude to the settlers seems to have been rather confused. In May 1841 he described the Wellington settlers as ‘by far the most important in the colony’ and ‘a valuable class of colonists’, while the settlers in the north had given him ‘every possible support’; yet at the same time he thought both groups so self-interested that no confidence could be placed in either party.84 When the Church Missionary Society accused the New Zealand Company of malpractice in some of its colonizing activities, Stephen noted that Hobson obviously sided with the missionaries and distrusted the company; Russell agreed that he should be warned about his partisanship.85 Many of Hobson’s decisions, such as his adherence to the Treaty of Waitangi and his selection of Auckland as the capital of the colony, unavoidably alienated settler opinion in the south. In other matters he was unnecessarily heavy-handed: his unfounded accusations of ‘high treason’ and ‘usurpation’ against the Port Nicholson ‘republic’; his scheme to attract labour away from the company settlements to Auckland; the long delay before he visited Wellington and then only after disparaging its harbour and environment in a public despatch to the Colonial Office; his legislation for the southern settlements without consultation or representation;the land-jobbery and indeed the whole expense of the Auckland government; all these were seen by the Wellington settlers as more or less deliberate insults. Though the settlers were not noticeably objective, Hobson himself did much to create the colonists’ opinion that his Government was incompetent, oppressive, and philoMaori. FitzRoy brought to New Zealand the strong pro-missionary, pro-Maori sympathies which had developed during his 1835 visit with Charles Darwin in the Beagle. Stanley seems to have selected him largely because he had the interests of the Maoris at heart. The southern settlers decided within six months of his arrival that FitzRoy’s aim was simply to placate the Maoris by giving in to their demands; his heavy reliance on the Protectorate Department for advice reinforced this opinion.86 Though in fact FitzRoy’s Maori policy was defensible on the ground of its essential justice in most respects, he himself admitted that the ‘extreme forebearance’ with which he had to treat the Maoris, because he lacked an adequate military force, ‘bordered on inhumanity towards the settlers’ and placed the local government in a difficult and humiliating position.87 The Maoris were not so convinced that the Government was bending over backwards to uphold their interests and protect their rights. As early as 1841 Clarke noticed that among the Thames and Waikato tribes there was considerable suspicion of the Government’s motives and a fear that the fate which had befallen the Australian Aborigines and the American Indians would also befall them. The 188

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Maoris, as Clarke noted, saw the possession of their lands and their liberty as interconnected and were fearful for both.88 In the far north the great Rarawa chief, Nopera Panakareao, had apparently found cause to reverse his early optimism about the Treaty of Waitangi; in May 1840 he had believed that ‘The shadow of the land goes to Queen Victoria, but the substance remains to us’; by January 1841 he had decided that ‘The substance of the land goes to Europeans, the shadow only will be our portion.’89 In the south too, and at Banks Peninsula, Clarke found many Maoris worried about their land and ‘disgusted with what they consider the grasping disposition of Europeans’.90 Hobson felt that they were so apprehensive about losing their land that the use of force in its defence was ‘not unlikely’, a report which caused James Stephen to comment that the prospect for future relations with the Maoris did not seem very bright. Nevertheless, among the younger chiefs Clarke found a disposition ‘to rely on the integrity of the British Government: they hold inviolate the treaty, saying that the words of it cannot be broken’.91 The increasing bitterness between the Maoris and the settlers over land matters, fed by the continual influx of Europeans, began to colour relations between the two races generally. Difficulties in communication and differences in language, custom, and law became increasingly noticeable. Clarke, Spain, and FitzRoy all remarked upon the feelings of rancour, hatred, and vengefulness which many settlers held towards the Maoris while, according to Clarke, in Maori eyes the standard of everything European was so debased by attempts to defraud them of their land that the Maoris prided themselves on an integrity far superior to that of the English and generally held them in contempt.92 In an accurate prophecy of Heke’s rebellion two years later, Clarke stated in 1843: ‘… never was there a people more uneasy under the yoke of submission to authority than the New Zealanders, and they only want a bold and enterprising leader to throw off even the name of subject.’93 For all that the New Zealand Government in the first five years of the Crown colony gave the settlers and the New Zealand Company the impression that it was deliberately pro-Maori and anti-settler, the accusation merely served to conceal just how little was done for the Maori people during this period. It was a time of lost opportunities. The initial rapid influx of Europeans and the formation of several widely scattered settlements forced the Government to concentrate mainly on defending Maori land rights in the face of settler encroachment. Every step in this defence — the upholding of the land guarantee in the Treaty of Waitangi, the investigation of land claims, the refusal to avenge the Wairau affray — brought down on the Government’s head the most violent and outraged accusations of bias from the settler communities. Impartial protection in their eyes meant the triumph of settler over Maori interests at every turn. Consequently the New Zealand Government’s Maori policy became a holding operation, an essentially negative rearguard action. No real attempt was made to effect a transitional legal policy, with forms and institutions modified to suit Maori needs. No re189

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sources were devoted to the promotion of Maori health and education. No effort was made to soften the impact of the European invasion and ease the process of adaptation. Obviously, little could be done in the short space of five years and the provision of many facilities was either rudimentary or non-existent in some of the European settlements. Yet, as Colonial Office administrators and politicians realized from the time of Normanby’s instructions, a beginning should be made if the Maoris were ever to be ‘improved’ sufficiently for them to be admitted to a ‘perfect equality’ with the whites. It was unfortunate that the British Government refused to provide the Colonial Government with the resources necessary to carry out its own instructions, and that the effort which was made went almost wholly into governing the European settlers. Indeed, the government and legal system established in New Zealand were entirely British, designed and administered mainly in the interests of the white colonists, though to some extent paid for by the Maoris through trade revenue.94 Even so, the Maoris might have benefited from the extension of the rudiments of an unmodified British governmental and legal system, for at least they would have had some form of government and an opportunity to learn to use the system. As it was, the lack of money and manpower meant that many Maori tribes were not governed at all in the early years of the Crown colony. They were left in a limbo, somewhere between the traditional practices of their own society and the rights and privileges of their new status as British subjects. Diametrically opposed though their views generally were, both George Clarke and Gibbon Wakefield remarked that the contrast between the pretension to govern and the inability to do so exposed the weakness of the British position and induced contempt rather than co-operation from the Maoris.95 It is little wonder that this lack of government led the Maoris to try and adapt European institutions to their own needs in the next decade, for British government had gone by default. Many Europeans, on the other hand, were convinced that during the first five years the New Zealand Government had been far too accommodating towards the Maoris, a conviction which arose from Hobson’s and FitzRoy’s willingness to defend Maori land rights combined with their sometimes overtly negative attitude towards settlers and colonization. While in reality the Government did not benefit the Maoris more than the settlers, many colonists and, increasingly, many humanitarian missionaries and government officials believed that an emphasis had been given to the defence of Maori interest which was incompatible with the government and colonization of New Zealand by Europeans. Just as a broad interpretation of Maori land rights was seen by many as a barrier to colonization, so a temporary toleration of some of the Maoris’ traditional customs and social institutions was seen as an obstacle to the establishment of British law and government. The third article of the Treaty of Waitangi had not enshrined any such toleration, but only the ultimate goal of British Maori policy: amalgamation. Under Governor George Grey the emphasis was laid on the rapid achievement of this goal. 190

8 The Obligations of Good Faith New Zealand became part of the British Empire in 1840 through the interaction of three different pressures. First, during the 1830s, the spontaneous and inexorable colonization of parts of New Zealand by individual British subjects and the impact of their increasing numbers and widening range of activities upon indigenous Maori society, created a lawless and anarchic imperial frontier. Secondly, missionary and colonization groups in Britain used information about this frontier situation to pressure the Colonial Office to intervene in New Zealand to serve their own purposes. Thirdly, politicians and civil servants in the Colonial Office generally felt a responsibility to control and protect both the activities of British subjects beyond the boundaries of the Empire, and the indigenous societies with which they became involved. This made them amenable to the representations of the pressure groups and predisposed them to accept, reluctantly, that there was a need for intervention. The movements of individual British settlers to New Zealand were ‘the determinants of imperial growth’,1 but only because the British Government was prepared to follow and control them. Given this predisposition, however, it was inevitable that the frontier situation in New Zealand would provoke British interference, though the timing and nature of that intervention was to some extent affected by the pressure of interested groups in Britain. The combustion of a peripheral frontier and metropolitan pressures generated the impulse for imperial expansion into New Zealand. Two attitudes underlay the Colonial Office response to the expansion of the European frontier in the antipodes: first, the continuing bond of allegiance between British subjects and the Crown entailed on Britain a duty to control the criminal and protect the law-abiding among the settlers in New Zealand, and, second, there was a humanitarian duty to protect the Maoris from the worst consequences of the European invasion of their country. During the 1830s this dual concept became the rationale for British intervention in New Zealand. The acquisition of sovereignty was undertaken from motives both humanitarian and nationalistic, both idealist and pragmatic, both for the benefit of the Maoris and the benefit of the settlers. No particular priority was given to either part of the dual duty in the plan for 191

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establishing a regular government in New Zealand; the aim was clearly to provide impartial protection for both races. Hobson was, nevertheless, instructed to persuade the Maori chiefs that the main reason for British intervention was their own protection. He was told to emphasize especially the humanitarian motive for British interference, whereas in general Colonial Office policy statements the protection of British settlers and their interests was accorded equal importance. This discrepancy between the partial explanation which Hobson was to give to the Maoris and the complete rationale for his mission has led to a historical overemphasis of humanitarianism as a motive in the annexation of New Zealand. Humanitarian concern for the Maoris was not the main reason for British intervention; it was one of two main reasons, the other being a desire on the part of Britain to protect her own nationals in their legitimate pursuits. The preamble to the Treaty of Waitangi, a document often regarded as the clearest indication that the annexation was undertaken mainly to benefit the Maoris, envisaged the establishment of regular government to save the settlers, as well as the Maoris, from the evils of frontier anarchy. However, by August 1839 the Colonial Office did not just intend British intervention to meet a static situation. Faced with the need to establish regular government and with the inevitability of further British emigration, the Colonial Office decided that the Government itself should undertake the colonization of New Zealand by using the pre-emption monopoly to create an emigration fund. Hobson was not instructed to explain this part of Colonial Office intentions to the Maori chiefs, nor does it appear that he did so. Busby had at least a debating point when he argued that the Government could not engage in the active colonization of New Zealand and be consistent with the spirit of the Treaty of Waitangi, because the reason for the treaty which had been offered the Maoris was Britain’s inability to prevent British subjects going to New Zealand.2 Certainly, it is clear that Normanby’s instructions to Hobson laid particular emphasis on the reason for British intervention which would appear most attractive to the Maoris — their own protection — and underplayed the protection which the settlers were to receive and the Government’s plans to introduce many more of them. In short, the Colonial Office’s negotiating tactics disguised the whole truth behind the British intervention from the Maori chiefs who signed the Treaty of Waitangi. The treaty, on the face of it, exchanged the sovereignty of New Zealand and a Crown monopoly of land purchases for three considerations: the Maoris were guaranteed possession of all their lands, they were protected from European land speculators, and they were accorded equal rights and privileges with British subjects. Only an examination of British policy during the early years of the Crown colony reveals how the Colonial Office interpreted these considerations, what purposes they were intended to serve, and what ultimate goals they embraced. The first point to emerge from such an examination is that although the Colonial Office accepted the treaty and approved Hobson’s proceedings, the politicians at the Colonial Office did not understand what the guarantee of Maori 192

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lands in the second article really meant in terms of the New Zealand situation, and regretted that it had ever been made when they found out. Though Normanby’s instructions implied, and the signatories to the treaty understood, that the Maoris were guaranteed all their land, whether waste or occupied, whether cultivated or wild, Lord John Russell, Lord Stanley, and Earl Grey either failed to realize or were reluctant to accept that this was so. Their attitudes reveal that Britain guaranteed Maori rights to land other than potato patches and pa quite accidentally. And although the Maori chiefs believed that the second article of the treaty had, perfectly intentionally and in all sincerity, promised protection for all their lands, nevertheless by 1846 the Colonial Office agreed with the New Zealand Company’s view that the land guarantee was ‘a bar to sound colonization’;3 if it could not be retracted, it must be circumvented. The second conclusion to be drawn is that the pre-emption provision in the second article of the Treaty of Waitangi was not designed primarily to protect the Maoris from unscrupulous European land speculators, as has generally been thought. It was included chiefly in order to provide the New Zealand Government with a monopoly right to buy Maori land at low, uncompetitive prices; the land could then be resold at a considerable profit and British emigration financed on the proceeds. Maori land would pay for the British colonization of New Zealand. Such a proceeding was justified by an application of European economic criteria to Maori land in order to define it as worthless until it passed to the settlers, in whose hands it would increase in value to the benefit of all. By 1846 a further use of the pre-emption provision had been found by Earl Grey and Governor Grey. Through a rigorous application of the Crown’s exclusive right of pre-emption, ‘the very foundation upon which systematic colonization must be based’, the unfortunate land guarantee which formed a barrier to such colonization could be circumvented. The second article of the Treaty of Waitangi could be turned against itself. The belief that the Colonial Office intentionally guaranteed the Maoris possession and protection for all their lands in the second article of the Treaty of Waitangi is mistaken. The evidence shows that, in a treaty variously described by historians as ‘a chivalrous attempt … to harmonise the natural demands of the settlers with the “natural rights” of the natives,’4 ‘a sincere attempt to found a colony on a just footing’,5 and as enshrining ‘an honest policy deliberately pursued’,6 the protection of Maori rights to all their lands was not policy but accident, an accident to be regretted and to be neutralized, while any benefit to the Maoris from the pre-emption provision was quite incidental to the main purpose of creating a government profit on Maori lands to finance British emigration. The attitude of the New Zealand Government is instructive here. Hobson, Shortland, FitzRoy, Clarke, Chief Justice Martin and Attorney-General Swainson, as well as Busby, Bishop Selwyn, and most of the missionaries, all believed that the land guarantee should be a matter of honest policy because on the good faith of it the Maori chiefs had signed the treaty; many of these men also believed 193

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that the way in which the pre-emption provision operated was quite unfair to the Maoris. The Colonial Office’s interpretation of the second article of the treaty was therefore not the only one possible at the time. Indeed, the potential existed for reconciling Maori and settler interests over land, as some contemporaries suggested; for, even if the land guarantee was upheld as a matter of policy rather than as an unfortunate mistake, many Maori tribes wanted to sell land which settlers wanted to buy. Either an open market with some safeguards, or the operation of the pre-emption monopoly in the interests of the Maoris as well as the settlers, through the creation of a trust fund for their social development, might have effected the transfer of land more or less to the satisfaction of both parties. The impartial protection of each race required some such reconciliation of Maori rights to land, including the right to sell land for a fair price, with the needs of the settlers. But by 1846 the Colonial Office’s decision to set about neutralizing the land guarantee, using the pre-emption provision as the means of doing it, served not to reconcile or harmonize Maori and settler interests, but to subordinate Maori interests to the demands of systematic colonization. While the land guarantee for a long time had a different meaning and the pre-emption provision a different purpose for the Colonial Office than those which the signatories to the treaty understood them to possess, the third article of the Treaty of Waitangi expressed accurately enough the ultimate goal of British Maori policy, though it omitted an important safeguard to be attached to that policy. The goal was the assimilation and eventually the amalgamation of the Maoris with the British settlers. The missing safeguard was the interim protection of harmless Maori customs and traditional practices. In according the Maoris the highest boon which the Empire could confer, the rights and privileges of British subjects, the ultimate aim was, in Vernon Smith’s phrase, ‘to make them British’. But to ‘elevate’ the Maoris to what was naturally considered by the British to be the most superior form of civilization would take time. Insofar as the Treaty of Waitangi was a promissory note for racial equality, it was to be redeemed on British terms at some indefinite date in the future at a discount of Maori society and Maori values. In the meantime the wholesale application of British law would put the Maoris at a serious disadvantage: ‘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 … obligations for both will be to destroy the weaker under a show of justice.’7 The Colonial Office realized this, and Hobson was instructed to discriminate in favour of the Maoris by protecting their customs. Hobson omitted to include such a safeguard in the Treaty of Waitangi, nor was any subsequent effort made to remedy the omission by passing a declaratory law as Russell suggested. Indeed, despite repeated Colonial Office instructions on the subject, the preoccupied, impecunious, and embattled New Zealand Government did virtually nothing to carry out this most important aspect 194

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of British Maori policy. By 1846 the opportunity had passed, for the increasing hostility between the races over land in the southern districts exhausted any tolerance which the settlers might have had for a less than strict application of British law to the Maoris. In the north the outbreak of Hone Heke’s rebellion hardened governmental and Colonial Office attitudes in the same way. Though Stephen believed that it was ‘a great error’ to set aside Maori customs, and although Stanley’s instructions to Governor Grey still urged respect for them, the emphasis had shifted to exacting a complete submission to British law, by force if necessary. The ultimate goal of assimilation foreshadowed in the Treaty of Waitangi became the immediate goal, and the attempt at a transitional legal policy was still-born. Under Governor Grey the impartial protection of both races would be provided, insofar as it was provided at all, on British terms. The concept of a dual duty to protect both Maoris and settlers as the rationale for British intervention in New Zealand seemed to indicate that the impartial protection of both races would be one of the major, if not the major, aim of British policy after the annexation. But impartial protection can only be provided for two different groups in a society either if their interests are sufficiently similar for any clash to be measured and judged according to standards which both accept, or, if their interests are too dissimilar, by the recognition of separate standards of judgement. Impartial protection is impossible if the standards and values of one group are arbitrarily imposed on the other. As far as the application of British law was concerned the Colonial Office recognized this initially, and the failure to safeguard essential Maori interests may be justly attributed to the admittedly hard-pressed and inadequately supported New Zealand Government. As far as the land was concerned, it was the politicians in the Colonial Office who failed to realize that the impartial protection of Maori and settler interests could not be provided, even under cover of a ‘scrupulous adherence’ to the Treaty of Waitangi, if the aim was the acquisition of vast areas of Maori land as cheaply, as quickly, and as quietly as possible. That there was a failure to provide impartial protection in the areas of land and law is borne out by the evidence of men who had the interests of the Maoris at heart. George Clarke complained that a large portion of the British legislature had tried to get rid of or neutralize the Treaty of Waitangi and that many of the acts of the local government — of which Clarke was a member, it must be added — were directly opposed to the spirit of the treaty; the operation of the pre-emption clause was the chief example he gave. But the British Government had ‘Very imperfectly’ discharged its duty to the Maoris in other ways, especially in the legal field where, until the laws were modified and the court system simplified to suit Maori cases, it could not be otherwise than impossible for the Maoris to receive justice. Indeed, the utter inefficiency of the Government where Maoris were concerned had only served to convince them, Clarke believed, that ‘European interests were the sole objects of solicitude and that the rights and interests of the Natives were matters of nominal consideration.’8 Clarke’s criticisms cannot 195

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merely be passed off as the opinions of one man, for others supported various aspects of his comprehensive indictment of British Maori policy: thus the Colonial Office, and Stephen in particular, agreed with Clarke’s views on the application of unmodified British law; Busby, Selwyn, FitzRoy and others supported his criticism of pre-emption; and almost everyone, including Gibbon Wakefield, realized that the Government which had been established in New Zealand hardly touched the Maoris at all. For some, of course, this was as it should be. Charles Buller argued that, in the beginning at least, government should be for the colonists and not the Maoris.9 The New Zealand Company directors, in congratulating Governor FitzRoy on his appointment, hoped that the Government of New Zealand would ‘in future be conducted with a view solely to the well-being of the settlers’.10 The implication was clear, that only when the settlers were happy would the protection of the Maoris become possible, for no government could effectively safeguard their interests unless the settlers were prepared to co-operate. Thus, the recognition of Maori rights to ‘waste’ land merely created a hatred for the Maoris because it kept the settler from the land he wanted,11 and unless the Maori obstacle was removed from the settlers’ path, there would be no tolerance of any of the legal discrimination so essential for the impartial protection of the Maoris under an alien system of law. As far as Edward Gibbon Wakefield was concerned, ‘Real and lasting protection for the Natives there can be none, but in the friendly feelings of the colonists towards them, and in the process of amalgamation.’12 For the settlers and colonizers, and for the Colonial Office by 1846, that process demanded the separation of the Maoris from all but small portions of their land to pave the way for systematic colonization; such a separation was justified on the ground that it would ultimately benefit the Maoris and promote their civilization. In the late 1830s humanitarian concern, genuine idealism, and ‘nobility of purpose’13 were all part of the justification for acquiring Maori sovereignty in order to protect Maori rights, particularly to their land. In the mid-1840s, humanitarian concern was used to justify the acquisition of that same land, in order to assimilate and civilize the Maoris. This profound change, from protecting to procuring Maori land, was a measure of the Colonial Office’s failure to understand the implications of Hobson’s Treaty of Waitangi for the process of systematic colonization. The decision to adhere ‘scrupulously’ to the treaty outwardly was a measure, partly of a sense of obligation to honour an agreement formally negotiated, and partly of a recognition that to abrogate the treaty unilaterally would start a war with the Maoris. As Peel commented to Hope in 1848, ‘If the obligations of good faith vary with the military skill and prowess of the parties to a Treaty, the New Zealanders have put in a claim to be respected which it has become prudent on our part to recognize.’14 The Treaty of Waitangi has often been praised by historians of colonial policy and of New Zealand as the highest expression of humanitarian influence 196

8 The Obligations of Good Faith

in British nineteenth-century imperial expansion. It has come to possess a great deal of symbolic significance in the history of New Zealand as a moral compact between Maori and pakeha. As far as the actual terms of the treaty with regard to land and law are concerned, this significance has been misplaced. Yet the treaty did express a highpoint of early Victorian humanitarian idealism in one sense. The greatest compliment which Britons, who believed their civilization superior to all others, could pay to the Maoris was to invite their participation as equals when that civilization was established in New Zealand; the Treaty of Waitangi was founded upon the concept of racial equality as the early Victorians understood it. However, the accompanying deep-seated cultural exclusiveness prevented the recognition of anything of value in Maori society; the equal treatment promised the Maoris ultimately depended upon their becoming brown Englishmen, and amalgamation meant simply the submergence of the Maori in the European. Underlying the humanitarian idealism and the promise of impartial and equal protection lay fundamental attitudes of cultural and racial superiority. If the Treaty of Waitangi is to stand today as a symbol of racial equality, it must stand no longer for a Victorian equality in which one race is required to become like the other, but for a more tolerant ideal of equality which recognizes the right of humans to be diverse.

197

Appendixes

1(a)

Value (in £ sterling) of New Zealand exports of flax, timber, black whale oil and whalebone, to New South Wales and Tasmania, 1830–40 FLAX TIMBER WHALE OIL WHALEBONE 1 1830 19,600 (841 tons) __ __ __ 2 1831 26,000 (1,240)1 4,707 __ 1,0232 1832 17,618 (932) 7,264 3,509 — 1833 3,600 (284) 8,952 7,272 2,217 1834 7,532 (563) 4,622 7,018 3,132 1835 1,812(148) 5,248 14,606 6,186 1836 2,097(145) 5,636 13,866 7,950 1837 460(23) 1,600 12,187 7,605 1838 775 (42) 5,112 26,106 5,530 1839 1,035 (68) 9,521 45,695 10,916 1840 398 (21) 12,197 20,508 8,213 OTHER EXPORTS generally over £1,000 annual value: seal skins (to 1834), vegetables (from 1834), beef, pork, and maize (from 1836). OTHER ARTICLES exported in small quantities: beer, tobacco, swine, bacon and hams, fish, raw beet sugar, butter, cheese, lard, wheat and other grain, flour, hay, and wool. SOURCE: Customs 6 ‘Imports into Colonies by Country’, v. 1–9.

201

1(b)

Value (in £ sterling) of total New Zealand exports to New South Wales and Tasmania, 1830–40, with comparative figures of other major exporters to the two colonies 18,4261 2 34,282 32,909 (Great Britain 555,000; Fisheries 91,000.) 23,117 (G.B. 624,000; Fisheries 180,000; China and Philippines 40,000; Mauritius 32,000.) 1834 28,433 (G.B. 870,000; Fisheries 164,000; Mauritius 76,000; China 51,000.) 1835 32,788 (G.B. 873,000; Fisheries 130,000; China 68,000; Mauritius 52,000.) 1836 36,410 (G.B. 991,000; Fisheries 91,000; Mauritius 56,000; British India 52,000; China 38,000.) 1837 24,538 (G.B. 1,023,000; China 82,000; Mauritius 52,000; Fisheries 24,000.) 1838 43,139 (G.B. 1,418,000; Mauritius 65,000; China 53,000; British India 44,000.) 1839 83,470 (G.B. 1,804,000; Fisheries 94,000; Java 88,000.) 1840 72,695 (G.B. 2,298,000; Fisheries 105,000.) SOURCE: Customs 6 ‘Imports into Colonies by Country’, v. 1–9. 1830 1831 1832 1833

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2

Note on the problem of retrospective diagnosis of disease in relation to Maori health in the 1830s I am indebted to Dr Bryan Gandevia, Associate Professor in Thoracic Medicine at The Prince Henry Hospital, New South Wales, for the following comments contained in a letter on this subject. ‘The problem of retrospective diagnosis, particularly in native populations, is extremely difficult, because the diseases did not necessarily behave in the same way as they do today, nor even as in older textbook descriptions. Furthermore, the lay descriptions do not always give appropriate emphasis to the several symptoms, and they may well confuse two disease entities under the same general label; alternatively, they might use merely a symptom as a label for a disease. One cannot rely even on the word “infectious”. It is therefore very difficult to hazard a guess as to the new disease called “clover”. It could even be measles, which may cause death through respiratory complications. There is little doubt that the diagnosis of typhus for one of the diseases is wrong, but on the other hand the description “erysipelitic” strongly suggests a streptococcal infection. Apparently, the streptococcus first came to notice in the colonies in about 1833 (it must have been there before), chiefly as a result of epidemics of scarlet fever. Puerperal fever, which can be due to this or other organisms, also first came to notice at this time. ‘As regards the presence of influenza, the possibility is certainly real. If by consumption and scrofula are meant the two diseases specifically caused by tuberculosis bacilli, it is a little surprising to find them prevalent so early in the period of New Zealand’s settlement, as tuberculosis was probably unknown before the arrival of the Europeans. Generally speaking it was uncommon in Australia, except amongst emigrants, until the 1850s.1 Consumption was a general term often applied to non-tuberculous wasting diseases, while scrofula may have been a description applied uncritically to a variety of skin conditions. The Maoris are peculiarly liable to an unusual form of bronchiectasis, a non-tuberculous chest disease which would not have been distinguished by the missionaries or by doc-

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tors at that time. ‘On the question of fertility,2 there can be little doubt that other factors besides venereal disease played a part in diminishing the fertility of native races, although it would certainly contribute. Where one venereal disease is prevalent the other is always to be found, but a gonococcal salpingitis would be the most direct cause of infertility. In Australia, yaws was endemic and probably influenced European conclusions at a later date because it gives a positive test for syphilis and produces somewhat similar lesions, at least in the bones; it does not seem that yaws was present so early in New Zealand. Finally, “cholera” was likely to be applied by a lay person, and by doctors, to any severe dysentery, and it does not necessarily imply epidemic cholera.’

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Composition of the New Zealand Company of 1825, the New Zealand Association Committee of 1837, and the New Zealand Company Directorates of May and November 1839

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Biographical material on the members of the New Zealand Company of 1825, the New Zealand Association Committee of 1837, and the New Zealand Company Directorates of May and November 1839 NEW ZEALAND COMPANY OF 1825 John George Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham, 1792–1840. Politician and diplomat; Whig M.P. 1813; Earl 1833; Privy Councillor 1830; Lord Privy Seal 1830–3; Ambassador Extraordinary to St Petersburg 1835–7; High Commissioner and Governor-General of Canada 1838; Governor of the New Zealand Association 1837–8, and of the New Zealand Company 1839–40. John William Buckle. Solicitor for the 1825 Company; partner in Buckle, Bagster, and Buckle, shipowners; sometime chairman of the Shipowners’ Society. Russell Ellice. Merchant in East India trade; chairman of the East India Company 1853. Stewart Marjoribanks. Merchant in East India trade and connected with East India Company; founder of Pacific Pearling Company 1825. Ralph Fenwick. Member of family firm in shipping insurance. George Lyall, d. 1853. Politician and merchant; became head of family firm of East India merchants and shipowners 1805; chairman of the Shipowners’ Society in 1820s; director 1830, and chairman 1841, of the East India Company; Tory M.P. 1833–5, 1841–7; ‘diffident and unobtrusive’ though his mercantile knowledge gave him considerable influence in the Commons and the city (D.N.B. v. XII, p. 304). George Palmer, 1772–1853. Politician and merchant; East India Company naval service; entered family partnership of 206

8 3(b)

East India merchants and shipowners 1802; master of the Mercers’ Company 1821; chairman of the Shipowners’ Society 1832; Tory M.P. for Essex 1836–47. Robert Torrens, 1780–1864. Political economist; Royal Marines, retiring on half-pay 1835; Colonel 1837; a founder of South Australia and chairman of S.A. Commissioners; Whig M.P. 1831–5. Hon. Sir Courtenay Boyle, d. 1844. Admiral 1821. Edward Ellice, 1781–1863. Nicknamed ‘Bear’; politician and merchant; in Canadian land and fur trade, life-long connexion with Hudson Bay Company; Whig M.P. with radical sympathies 1818–26, 1830–63; Secretary to Treasury and Whip 1830–2; Secretary at War 1833–4; Privy Councillor 1833. Edward John Littleton, 1st Baron Hatherton, 1791–1863. Landowner and politician; Whig M.P. for Staffordshire 1812–35; Chief Secretary for Ireland 1833–4; Privy Councillor 1833; created Baron 1835; ‘a man of moderate abilities and unimpeachable character’ (D.N.B. v. XI, p. 1250). James Pattison. Deputy-chairman 1817, 1821, 1827, and chairman 1818, 1822, of the East India Company; director 1831–3, deputy-governor 1833–4, and governor 1834–7, of Bank of England; M.P. James Faden, William Mannings, Abraham Wildey Robarts: nothing discovered. NEW ZEALAND ASSOCIATION COMMITTEE, 1837 For Durham, see above. William Hutt, 1801–82. Politician; Whig M.P. for Hull 1832–41, for Gateshead 1841–74; K.C.B. 1865; active in colonial and commercial affairs and a South Australian Commissioner. William Henry Francis, Lord Petre: nothing discovered. Sir George Sinclair, 1790–1868. Author; Whig M.P. 1811–41; succeeded as Baronet, of Ulbster, 1835. Sir Francis Thornhill Baring, 1st Lord Northbrook, 1796–1866. Politician and banker; chairman of N.Z. Association Committee 1837; head of a branch of the Baring family interested in the Far East trade; Whig M.P. for Portsmouth 1826–65; a lord of the Treasury 1830–4; joint Secretary of the Treasury 1834, 1835-Aug. 1839; Chancellor of the Exchequer Aug. 1839-Sept. 1841; Privy Councillor 1839; First Lord of the Admiralty 1849–52. Sir William Molesworth, 1810–55. Politician; Radical 207

Fatal Necessity

M.P. for Cornwall 1832–7, Leeds 1837–41, Southwark 1845–55; with Buller, Grote, and Mill, a leader of the ‘Philosophical Radicals’; wrote report of 1837 select committee on transportation; opposed Whig coercive measures in Canada; moved censure motion against Glenelg in March 1838; strong supporter of Wakefieldian theories of colonization; Privy Councillor 1852; Secretary of State for Colonies 1855. William Bingham Baring, 2nd Baron Ashburton, 1799–1864. Politician; first cousin to Francis Baring; Whig M.P. 1826–37, Tory M.P. 1837–48; succeeded to the peerage 1848; Secretary to the Board of Control 1841–5; Privy Councillor 1845; Paymaster-General 1845–6. Walter Frederick Campbell. M.P. Charles Enderby. Became head of Enderby and Sons, a large family firm of South Sea sperm whalers. Robert Ferguson. M.P. Benjamin Hawes, 1792–1862. Politician; Whig M.P. for Lambeth 1832–47, Kinsale 1848–52; Parliamentary UnderSecretary for Colonies 1846–51, and for War 1851–7; Permanent Under-Secretary for War 1857–61; K.C.B. 1856. Reverend Samuel Hinds, 1793–1872. D.D.; Dean of Carlisle 1848; Bishop of Norwich 1849–57. Philip Henry Howard. M.P. for Carlisle 1830–52. Thomas Mackenzie. M.P. Sir William Symonds, 1782–1856. R.N. Captain 1827; Surveyor of the Navy 1832–47; Rear Admiral 1854. Henry George Ward, 1797–1860. Politician, diplomat, colonial service; Whig M.P. for St Albans 1832–7, Sheffield 1837–49; Secretary to the Admiralty 1846–9; High Commissioner for the Ionian Islands 1849–55; Governor of Ceylon 1855–60, and Madras 1860; G.C.M.G. 1849. William Wolryche Whitmore. M.P. for Bridgnorth 1820–32; leader of East Indian sugar interest and involved in East India trade; vice-president of the Anti-Slavery Society. NEW ZEALAND COMPANY DiRECTORATE, MAY 1839 For Durham, Buckle, R. Ellice, Marjoribanks, Fenwick, Lyall, Palmer, Torrens, Hutt, Petre, and Sinclair, see above. James Brodie Gordon: nothing discovered. Sir John Pirie. Head of the Oriental Steamship Company; Lord Mayor of London 1842. John Abel Smith, 1801–71. Whig and Liberal M.P. for Chichester 1831–59, 1863–8; merchant banker, chief partner 208

8 3(b)

of family banking firm of Smith, Payne, and Smith 1835–45; founder partner of Smith, Magniac and Company, East India and China merchants and forerunner of Jardine, Matheson and Company. Joseph Somes, 1787–1845. Deputy-governor of New Zealand Company until Durham’s death in 1840, Governor 1840–5; largest shipowner in England, mostly interested in East India trade and South Sea whaling; M.P. for Dartmouth 1844. W[illiam?] Thompson. M.P.; Lord Mayor of London 1829; director of the Bank of England 1827–51. Sir Henry Webb, Bart.; Arthur Willis: nothing discovered. George Frederick Young. Shipping magnate. John Ward, 1805–90. Diplomat; co-author with E. G. Wakefield of a book on the colonization of New Zealand, 1837; private secretary to Durham 1838; secretary of the New Zealand Colonization Company 1838; various diplomatic appointments in the 1860s. NEW ZEALAND COMPANY DIRECTORATE, NOVEMBER 1839 In addition to those of the May 1839 directorate, excluding Fenwick, Lyall, Palmer, and Torrens, and including Baring and Molesworth. John Ellerker Boulcott; A[lfred?] Nairne: nothing discovered. Thompson A. Hankey. Member of family banking firm of Hankey and Company; deputy-governor 1847–51, governor 1851–3, director 1853–8, of the Bank of England; M.P. for Peterborough 1853–68, 1874–80. SOURCES: Dictionary of National Biography; Joseph Haydn, The Book of Dignities, 3rd edition (by H. Ockerby), London 1894; Manning, N.Z.J.H. article.

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Note on the November 1840 Agreement between the New Zealand Company and the Colonial Office The question of whether the New Zealand Company or the Colonial Office was right about the proper interpretation of Russell’s agreement, signed in November 1840, is one of considerable complexity. On the one hand Stephen commented: ‘We assume, and they admit, the invalidity of their Title to so much as an acre of land in New Zealand.’ (Stephen, minute to Vernon Smith, 3 Nov. 1840, C.O. 209/8:309.) The New Zealand Company, too, later denied that it had ever asserted that it had acquired by purchase proprietary rights over a large area in New Zealand, though it had ‘probably’ told the Government that its agent had made a bargain with the Maoris under which it ‘claimed’ such an area. (Somes to Stanley, 24 Jan. 1843, 1844 Report, app. 24.) However, not long after the agreement was signed, it seemed to admit what it later denied, that the company had a right of prior selection ‘out of the whole of the extensive territories which it had previously acquired, territories amounting to about one-third of the whole surface of New Zealand’. (Somes to Russell, 29 Jan. 1841, B.P.P. 1841, XVII, (311), 96. My emphasis.) Moreover Colonel Wakefield, the company’s principal agent in Wellington, understood the Russell agreement to rest upon the assumption that the company had acquired a valid title from the Maoris; he negotiated with Hobson on that basis and the company approved his view of the matter. (Wakefield to N.Z. Company, 11 Sept. 1841, enclosing Wakefield to Hobson, 24 Aug. 1841; N.Z. Company to Wakefield, 30 Apr. 1842; 1844 Report pp. 543–4.) Certainly Russell later maintained that he had understood the company to have made purchases fully large enough to allow the Crown to satisfy any claim under the agreement of 1840. (Russell to Somes, 29 June 1844, 1844 Report, app. 412.) Lord Stanley also discussed the matter with Russell and came away with the impression that Russell agreed that he had gone as far as he could go towards meeting the Company and that Russell ‘did not support the view which the Company take of the unqualified nature of the engagement entered into on the part of

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the Government.’ (Stanley to Buller, private, 6 Mar. 1843, Derby Papers 175/2, Letterbook’ 5 Jan.-31 Aug. 1843, p. 63.) Thus, despite Stephen’s comment, the bulk of the evidence suggests that the company did claim to have made valid purchases from the Maoris, and that the 1840 agreement was based upon this claim even though it was not explicitly stated. Nor did the New Zealand Company at first object to an enquiry into its purchases from the Maoris or refuse to compensate those whose lands proved not to have been validly purchased. Wakefield agreed with Hobson that the company would pay full compensation in such cases and again the company approved his action. (1844 Report, pp. 543–4.) Indeed, the company allocated Wakefield ‘a considerable sum to compensate, without delay, any native who may appear to have a just claim upon the Company, or otherwise to reconcile the allowance of that claim with the conflicting demands of the English settlers’, though the company thought that reports of disputes between Maoris and colonists were exaggerated. (Somes to Stanley, 10 June 1842, C.O. 209/18:149–52.) Wakefield, too, was optimistic about the result of Spain’s enquiry as late as May 1842, asserting that his purchases from the Maoris gave ‘an unimpeachable title to the vast but thinly inhabited territory affected by them’ when measured against ‘the real justice and good conscience of each case, without regard to legal forms’; he was prepared to co-operate with Spain, but shorten the procedures as much as possible and pay court fees under protest. (Wakefield to N.Z. Company, 30 May 1842, C.O. 209/18:258–62.) As it became apparent that Spain was indeed going to take ‘legal forms’ into consideration and that the company’s purchases from the Maoris would prove to be anything but ‘unimpeachable’, the New Zealand Company decided to backtrack. It turned to Russell’s agreement and insisted that the Crown, not the company, was responsible for compensating the Maoris for any of Wakefield’s 1839 purchases which proved to be invalid. This shift of tactics reveals that it was not so much the principle of paying compensation to which the company objected, but the possibility that a much larger amount of money than was first thought would be needed for the purpose.

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The Treaty of Waitangi, 1840. Official English text. HER MAJESTY VICTORIA, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, regarding with Her royal favour the Native Chiefs and Tribes in New Zealand, and anxious to protect their just rights and property, and to secure to them the enjoyment of peace and good order, has deemed it necessary, in consequence of the great number of Her Majesty’s subjects who have already settled in New Zealand, and the rapid extension of emigration both from Europe and Australia which is still in progress, to constitute and appoint a functionary properly authorized to treat with the Aborigines of New Zealand for the recognition of Her Majesty’s sovereign authority over the whole or any part of those Islands. Her Majesty, therefore, being desirous to establish a settled form of Civil Government with a view to avert the evil consequences which must result from the absence of necessary laws and institutions, alike to the Native population and to Her subjects, has been graciously pleased to empower and authorize me, William Hobson, a Captain in Her Majesty’s Royal Navy, Consul and LieutenantGovernor of such parts of New Zealand as may be or hereafter shall be ceded to Her Majesty, to invite the confederate and independent Chiefs of New Zealand to concur in the following articles and conditions:— Article the First The Chiefs of the Confederation of the United Tribes of New Zealand, and the separate and independent Chiefs who have not become members of the Confederation, cede to Her Majesty the Queen of England, absolutely, and without reservation, all the rights and powers of sovereignty which the said Confederation or individual Chiefs respectively exercise or possess, or may be supposed to exercise or to possess, over their respective territories as the sole Sovereigns thereof. Article the Second 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

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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 and 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 in that behalf. Article the Third In consideration thereof, Her Majesty the Queen of England extends to the Natives of New Zealand Her royal protection, and imparts to them all the rights and privileges of British subjects. W. HOBSON, Lieutenant-Governor.

Now, therefore, we, the Chiefs of the Confederation of the United Tribes of New Zealand, being assembled in congress at Victoria, in Waitangi, and we, the separate and independent Chiefs of New Zealand, claiming authority over the tribes and territories which are specified after our respective names, having been made fully to understand the provisions of the foregoing Treaty, accept and enter into the same in the full spirit and meaning thereof; in witness of which we have attached our signatures or marks at the places and the dates respectively specified. Done at Waitangi, this sixth day of February, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and forty….

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References

Chapter 1 notes 1 M. Winiata, The Changing Role of the Leader in Maori Society, pp. 53–54. 2 For some exceptions see despatches of 25, 30 Jan., 10 Feb. 1837. Colonial Office 209/2:297–308. 3 William Yate, An Account of New Zealand, p. 31. 4 W. Williams, 6 Nov. 1827, Church Missionary Society CN/08; 21 Feb. 1831, CN/M6:82. 5 T. Chapman, 24 Feb. 1834, C.M.S. CN/030; R. Davis, 1 Sept. 1830, CN/ M6:1. 6 H. Williams, 31 Dec. 1824, 15 Feb. 1831, C.M.S. CN/0101; journal, 24 July 1827, CN/094. 7 For Mair see J. C. Andersen and G. C. Petersen, The Mair Family, pp. 12–27, 300–4. 8 For this paragraph see H. M. Wright, New Zealand, 1769–1840. Early years of Western Contact, pp. 23–27; J. W. Davidson, ‘European Penetration of the South Pacific, 1779–1842’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge 1942, p. 206. 9 Browne to Darling, 24 Apr. 1831, ADM I/4248, p. 3 (Hereafter, ‘Browne report’). 10 W. R. Wade, A Journey in the Northern Island of New Zealand: Interspersed with Various Information Relative to the Country and People, p. 182. 11 J. R. Elder, The Letters and Journals of Samuel Marsden 1765–1838, pp. 452–68. 12 Darling to Huskisson, 10 Apr. 1828, C.O. 201/192:457–8.

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13 Dumaresq to Hay, 12 Aug. 1830, enclosing papers on Raine’s establishment, C.O. 323/162:68–73. 14 Browne report, p. 7; see also extract from the Sydney Monitor, 30 March 1831, copy in C.O. 201/222:476; Davidson thesis, p. 201; Yate, Account, pp. 29–30. 15 Browne report, pp. 3–4; for Tapsell see Pilley, 8 Apr. 1836, C.M.S. CN/068. 16 Browne report, p. 5; R. McNab, The Old Whaling Days, p. 13. 17 Browne report, p. 5; McNab, Whaling, pp. 40–41, 45; Polack, New Zealand, v. II, p. 290. 18 Browne report, pp. 6–7; H. E. R. L. Wily and H. Maunsell, Robert Maunsell LLD. A New Zealand Pioneer, His Life and Times, p. 46; McNab, Whaling, p. 7; Polack, New Zealand, v. II, p. 294. 19 J. C Bidwell, Rambles in New Zealand 1839, pp. 104–5; J. Cowan, A Trader in Cannibal Land, pp. 105–9. 20 Browne report, p. 8; McNab, Whaling, pp. 7, 52; Polack, New Zealand, v. II, pp. 288–90. 21 Browne report, pp. 11–12; Davidson thesis, pp. 196–7; Wright, New Zealand, p. 28; E. J. Tapp, Early New Zealand. A Dependency of New South Wales 1788–1841, pp. 47–50. 22 H. Williams, 16 Apr. 1833, C.M.S. CN/0101. 23 Browne report, pp. 9–10; A. H. Clark, The Invasion of New Zealand by People, Plants, and Animals, p. 53; McNab, Whaling, p. 100. 24 Tapp, Early New Zealand, p. 53 ff; McNab, Whaling, pp. 83–84. 25 Browne report, pp. 8–10; Clark, Invasion, p. 56. 26 Clark, Invasion, pp. 55–59. 27 Darling to Murray, 12 Aug. 1830, C.O. 209/1:13; Yate, Account, p. 103. 28 Wright, New Zealand, pp. 29–31. 29 Collector and Comptroller of Customs, statements on N.Z. trade, 14 Aug. 1830 and 13 Apr. 1831, C.O. 201/213:262–3 and 201/219:460. For the trade for the calendar year 1831 see appendix l(a), p. 249. 30 Torrens’ memorial on New Zealand, undated, registered C.O. 26 Jan. 1831, C.O. 201/224:501–6. 31 Davis, 9 Feb. 1836, C.M.S. CN/M9:180–2; Chapman, 6 Aug. 1838, CN/030; Clarke, 12 Feb. 1833, CN/M7:4–5.

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32 Busby to N.S.W., 26 Jan. 1836, C.O. 209/2:153–4; Wade, Journey, p. 182. 33. Clarke, 15 Nov. 1837; C.M.S. CN/M10:246; Clarke, 1 Mar. 1838, CN/0101. 34 Brown, 30 Dec. 1839, C.M.S. CN/026; W. Williams, 28 Aug., 12 Nov. 1839, CN/096; Davis, 1 and 22 Mar. 1839, CN/M11:297, 351; Taylor, 3 Sept. 1838, CN/M10:584–5; ‘Remarks of the Sub-Committee on Mr. Coates’ Letter to Lord Glenelg, July 23 1838’, Feb. 1839, CN/04. 35 H. Williams, 7 Mar., 22 Apr. 1839, C.M.S. CN/0101. 36 Maunsell, 22 Jan. 1839, C.M.S. CN/064. 37 Stephen, minute, 21 Jan. 1839, C.O. 209/4:193. 38 H. Williams, 11 Jan. 1839, C.M.S. CN/M11:301. 39 Turner, 20 Nov. 1838, p. 2, W.M.S. in letters. He thought there were from 1,000 to 1,200 Englishmen, mostly from the lower classes. See also Bethune to Maitland, 24 July 1838, F.O. 58/1:103. He estimated 1,000 Europeans of which the missionaries and their families comprised about 200 in the northern part of the North Island alone in mid–1838. 40 Davidson thesis, p. 208; K. Sinclair, A History of New Zealand, p. 31; Wright, New Zealand, p. 32; Mason, 20 Sept. 1840, C.M.S. CN/060; Andersen, Mair, pp. 27, 308. 41 Woon, 20 Oct. 1838, W.M.S. in letters; Polack, New Zealand, v. I, p. 267; J. Walton, Twelve Months’ Residence in New Zealand, p. 18. 42 McNab, Whaling, pp. 274–8. 43 Clark, Invasion, p. 61. 44 Brown, 4 Aug. 1837, C.M.S. CN/026. 45 Chetwode to Bethune, 5 Oct. 1838, F.O. 58/1:110. 46 Details of these stations are few and have been culled from many sources: Davidson thesis, pp. 210–11; Clark, Invasion, pp. 67, 69; T. M. Hocken, Contributions to the Early History of New Zealand, London 1898, p. 33; McNab, Whaling, passim; W. Williams, journal, 26 Jan. 1838, C.M.S. CN/ 096. 47 Davidson thesis, pp. 210–11. 48 Clark, Invasion, p. 59; see appendix l(a), p. 249. 49 Davidson thesis, pp. 213–4. 50 Yate to Dumaresq, 1 Sept. 1831, C.O. 201/220:342–4. 51 Bunbury to Hobson, 28 June 1840, C.O. 209/7:159; E. Sweetman, The

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52 53 54

55

56 57 58 59

60 61 62 63

64

65

66

Unsigned New Zealand Treaty, pp. 93–94. Ashwell, 29 Aug. 1837, C.M.S. CN/019. Chetwode to Bethune, 5 Oct. 1838, F.O. 58/1:106, 108; Andersen, Mair, pp. 309–10; Wade, Journey, pp. 180–2. Maunsell, 30 Nov. 1840, C.M.S. CN/064. For Webster see J. L. Campbell, Poenamo, pp. 22–30, passim; Wade Journey, pp. 182, 184. C.O. 209/ 20:135–6. Davidson thesis, pp. 200–4; Wright, New Zealand, p. 35; Andersen, Mair, pp. 306–7; Wade, Journey, p. 64; S. M. D. Martin, New Zealand; in a Series of Letters, London 1845, pp. 63–65. Chapman, 24 Feb. 1834, C.M.S. CN/030; Yate, 13 Feb. 1834, CN/099; Davis, 18 Nov. 1834, CN/M8:83; Ashwell, 27 Dec. 1836, CN/019. Busby to N.S.W., 15 Jan. 1839, C.O. 209/4:33–36; 21 Mar. 1838, 209/3:52. Busby to Glenelg, 20 Apr. 1837, C.O. 209/2:318–9. W. B. Marshall, A Personal Narrative of Two Visits to New Zealand in His Majesty’s Ship Alligator, A.D. 1834, p. 20; J. S. Marais, The Colonization of New Zealand, p. 89. Turner, 20 Nov. 1838, p. 14, W.M.S. in letters. Davidson thesis, p. 194. Coates to Chichester, 4 Dec. 1839, C.M.S. G/AC 1/3:250 A-F. W.M.S. Synod Minutes, 1840; Report from the Select Committee on New Zealand, with minutes of evidence, B.P.P. 1840, vii, (582) (hereafter 1840 Report), p. 97, Beecham’s evidence. H. Williams, 3 Sept. 1830, C.M.S. CN/M5:584–5; also Clarke, 6 Sept. 1830, CN/M6:10; H. Williams, 23 Feb., Davis, 5 Mar., Brown, 23 Mar., Fairburn, 24 Mar., Marsden, 13 Mar. 1830, G/Cl v. II, p. 255; Baker, 6 Sept. 1830, 9 July 1832, CN/020; W. Williams, 11 Sept. 1830, 1 Sept. 1831, CN/096; Chapman, 5 Sept. 1831, CN/030. J. M. C. Binney, ‘Christianity and the Maoris to 1840. A Comment’, New Zealand Journal of History, 1969, 3(2): 148–9. For 1828 see W. Williams, Christianity Among the New Zealanders, pp. 89–92. Marsden, 13 Mar. 1830, C.M.S. G/Cl v. II, p. 255; W. Williams, journal, 3–18 Mar. 1830, CN/M5:466–9; Davis, 1 Sept. 1830, CN/M6:4 ; Yate, Account, pp. 117–9, 179–80.

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References

67 W. Williams, 11 Sept. 1830, C.M.S. CN/M5:586. For earlier conversions see Williams, Christianity, pp. 63, 100, 149. 68 Yate, Account, p. 231. For earlier Church and Wesleyan printed translations see C. J. Parr, ‘A Missionary Library. Printed attempts to instruct the Maori, 1815–1845’, Journal of the Polynesian Society, 1961, 70(4):429–49. 69 Davis, 28 Apr. 1831, C.M.S. CN/M6:159; W. Williams, 1 Sept. 1831, 20 Feb. 1834, CN/096; Yate, Account, pp. 240–1. 70 Baker, 6 Sept. 1830, C.M.S. CN/020; Chapman, 5 Sept. 1831, CN/030. 71 Whiteley, private, 5 Jan. 1835, W.M.S. in letters. 72 Marsden to missionaries, 3 Apr. 1830, C.M.S. CN/04; Yate, Account, p. 190. 73 Reports and minutes, 1833–5, C.M.S. CN/04. See also minutes, various, 1835, G/Cl v. 14; H. C. Fancourt, The Advance of the Missionaries, pp. 31–36; Yate, Account, passim. 74 For this paragraph see minutes, 29 July, 6 Oct. 1836, 10 Jan. 1840, and H. Williams, report, 29 Jan. 1839, C.M.S. CN/04; Williams, Christianity, passim; Fancourt, Advance, pp. 36–38, 79–80, 87–88, 116. 75 White, 29 Nov. 1830, 1 Aug. 1833; Orton, report on N.Z. mission, 19 Sept. 1833, W.M.S. in letters. See also J. M. R. Owens, ‘Christianity and the Maoris to 1840’, N.Z.J.H. 1968, 2(1):23. 76 Maunsell, 5 Nov. 1838, C.M.S. CN/064; Fancourt, Advance, pp. 18, 72. 77 Parr, J.P.S. article, pp. 435–42. 78 Yate, Account, p. 180. 79 ‘Remarks of the Sub-committee on the Society’s Letter of August 1838’, Feb. 1839, C.M.S. CN/04; H. Williams, 25 July 1840, CN/0101. 80 Owens, N.Z.J.H. article, pp. 18 n. 4, 22. 81 Clarke, 4 Sept. 1835, C.M.S. CN/08. 82 H. Williams, 7 Dec. 1835, C.M.S. CN/05(b). See also H. Williams, 7 Mar., 22 Apr. 1839, CN/0101. 83 Minutes, 21 Jan., 2 Mar., 6 Apr. 1836, C.M.S. CN/01. Minutes, 31 Jan. 1837, G/Cl v. 15 p. 554. 84 Davis, 1 June, 18 Nov. 1839, C.M.S. CN/M11:507–8, 605. 85 W. Williams, 14 Nov. 1838, 5 May 1840, C.M.S. CN/096; W. Williams, 31 Dec. 1839, CN/08. 86 Clarke, 13 Sept. 1833, C.M.S. CN/M7:292–4; Clarke, 30 May 1838, CN/08.

218

References

87 Wade, June 1838, C.M.S. CN/092; Davis, 18 Nov. 1839, CN/M11:604–5; Turner, 20 Nov. 1838, p. 7, W.M.S. in letters; Stack, 7 Feb. 1840, from Tauranga. CN/078: Andersen, Mair. p. 308. See also Dillon to Russell, 11 Apr. 1840. C.O. 209/7:314. 88 Davis. 5 June 1838. C.M.S. CN/M11:181–4. 89 Statement of the Committee of the Church Missionary Society, in reference to Land purchased by the Missionaries in New Zealand, London, 1845. B.P.P. 1845. XXXIII. (378), pp. 475–9. 90 Clarke. 16 Nov. 1838, C.M.S. CN/0101. 91 Baker. 28 Mar. 1836, C.M.S. CN/020. 92 H.Williams. 7 Mar. 1839, C.M.S. CN/0101. 93 Maunsell, 22 Jan. 1839, C.M.S. CN/064. Maunsell’s emphasis. 94 Yate. Account, p. 164; W. Williams, 20 Feb. 1834, C.M.S. CN/096; Maunsell, 7 Aug. 1838, CN/064: Orton report, 19 Sept. 1833; Turner, 20 Nov. 1838, p. 10, W.M.S. in letters. 95 See below, pp. 88, 107. 96 Binney. N.Z.J.H. article, p. 149. n. 30, citing J. Rutherford ‘Note of Maori Casualties in their Tribal Wars 1801–1840’, second draft ms., History Department. University of Auckland, New Zealand. 97 ibid. 98 Davis, 23 Apr. 1832, 18 Nov. 1834, C.M.S. CN/M6:412, CN/M8:82. 99 Wright, New Zealand, pp. 83–84. 100 ibid., pp. 84–85. 101 ibid., pp. 89–91. 102 Sinclair. New Zealand, p. 28. 103 Wright. New Zealand, p. 92 ff. 104 H. Williams, 16 Apr. 1833, C.M.S. CN/0101; various reports in CN/06. 105 Wright, New Zealand, p. 100. 106 Davis. 5–18 Mar., Marsden, 13 Mar., Brown, 23 Mar., W. Williams, journal, 3–18 Mar. 1830, C.M.S. CN/M5:444–51, 466–9, 476; King, 24 Mar. 1830, CN/054. King could not recall such a battle at the Bay in the previous ten years. 107 Williams, Christianity, p. 144. 108 Chapman, 6 Aug. 1838, C.M.S. CN/030.

219

References

109 110 111 112 113 114

115 116

117 118 119

120

121 122 123

124 125 126

Clarke, 29 July 1837, C.M.S. CN/08. Mathews, 15 Nov. 1838, C.M.S. CN/061; Clarke, 19 Sept. 1837, CN/08. Clarke, 16 Nov. 1838, C.M.S. CN/0101. My emphasis. Binney, N.Z.J.H. article, pp. 148–51; cf. Owens, N.Z.J.H. article, p. 29. Elder, Marsden, p. 508; Yate, Account, pp. 205, 238–9. For one modification see O. Wilson, ‘Papahurihia, First Maori Prophet’, J.P.S. 1965, 74(4):473–83; Binney, N.Z.J.H. article, pp. 154, 160. For the traditional role of peacemakers see A. Ward, A Show of Justice, p. 9. Wright, New Zealand, p. 62; Turner, 20 Nov. 1838, p. 12, W.M.S. in letters. Yate, 14 Nov. 1828, C.M.S. CN/099; Davis, 20 Jan. 1829, quoted in J. N. Coleman, A Memoir of the Rev. Richard Davis, pp. 112–3; H. Williams, 29 Jan. 1829. CN/094. Coleman. Memoir, pp. 112–3; Kemp, 15 May 1829, C.M.S. G/C1 v. 10, p. 496. Brown journal, 15 Sept. 1830, C.M.S. CN/026; Clarke, 13 Sept. 1833, CN/ M7:292; Davis, 17 Sept. 1833, quoted in Coleman, Memoir, p. 164. Clarke, 5 Dec. 1834, 20 Feb. 1835; Davis, 18 Nov. 1834, 29 Jan. 1835, C.M.S. CN/M8:82–83, 114, 132. Davis reaffirmed his opinion of the serious decline in Maori numbers, the C.M.S. in Britain having questioned it; Jowett to Davis, 29 Jan. 1834, CN/L2:369. Ford report, 25 June–25 Dec. 1838, C.M.S. CN/041; H. Williams, 29 Jan. 1839, and other reports, CN/04; Mathews, 4 Mar. 1839, CN/061; Davis, 6 Mar. 1839. CN/M11:299: Broughton, 28 Mar. 1839, CN/03; W. Williams, 26 Feb. 1839. CN/096: Buller, 31 Jan. 1839, Turner, 6 Feb. 1839, W.M.S. in letters; Harding to Maitland, 15 Feb. 1839, ADM 1/220:335. Clarke, 1 June 1839. C.M.S. CN/08; Mathews, 28 Jan. 1839, and reports 1 July 1840. 1 July 1841. CN/061; Woon, 28 Nov. 1839, W.M.S. in letters. Davis. 18 Nov. 1834, C.M.S. CN/M8:82–83. Ford, 26 Sept., sub-dated 14 Nov. 1837 and report, 22 Aug. 1837-Feb. 1838, C.M.S. CN/041; W. Williams, 26 Feb. 1839, CN/096; Clarke, 19 Sept. 1837, CN/08; Ashwell, 29 Aug. 1837, CN/019. ibid.; Ford report; Woon, 24 Jan. 1839, W.M.S. in letters. Ashwell, 21 June 1838, C.M.S. CN/019; Ford, 25 Sept. 1840, CN/041. Davis, 13 Feb. 1837, quoted in Coleman, Memoir, p. 205; cf. Wright, New

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127

128 129

130

131 132 133 134 135

136 137

138 139 140

Zealand, p. 64 and Binney, N.Z.J.H. article, p. 153. See also Ford, 4 June 1838; report, Dec. 1837-June 1838, C.M.S. CN/041; Davis, 12 Dec. 1835, quoted in Coleman, Memoir, p. 198; Davis, 25 May 1838, CN/M10:538–9; Thomson, New Zealand, v. I, Chap. XI. Puckey, 27 Jan. 1836, 7 Apr., 30 Nov. 1837, C.M.S. CN/072; Mathews, 1 Dec. 1837, 5 June, 15 Nov. 1838, CN/061. H. Williams, 25 Oct. 1832, C.M.S. CN/0101; Ford, 29 Aug. 1838; report, 25 June–25 Dec. 1838, CN/041; Brown, 8 Aug. 1838, CN/026; Rotorua and Hauraki reports, 1839, CN/06; Stack report, 1 Oct. 1838; letter, 16 Feb. 1841, CN/078. Ford reports, Dec. 1837-June 1838, 25 June–25 Dec. 1838, C.M.S. CN/041; Clarke, 30 May 1838, CN/08; Baker, 4 June 1838, CN/020; Wade, June 1838, CN/092; Turner, 2 June 1838; Woon, 14 June 1838, quoting Hobbs who thought the present mortality the worst in fifteen years, W.M.S. in letters. W. Williams report, 11 Feb.1838, C.M.S. CN/04. ibid.; H. Williams report, 4 July 1838. W. Williams to Marsden, 16 Nov. 1836, C.M.S. C/GM/2:74; J. Binney, ‘Whatever Happened to Poor Mr Yate?’ N.Z.J.H. 1975 9(2), 111–25. Turner, 20 Nov. 1838, p. 10, W.M.S. in letters; Wright, New Zealand, pp. 58, 63. For infanticide and/ or abortion see Busby to N.S.W., 16 June 1837, C.O. 209/2:337; Maunsell, 5 Nov. 1838, C.M.S. CN/064; King, 5 Mar. 1839, CN/ 054; Broughton, 28 Mar. 1839, CN/03; Harding to Maitland, 15 Feb. 1839, ADM 1/220:335; Cowan, Trader, p. 97. Wright, New Zealand, pp. 59–61. Mathews, 15 Nov. 1838, C.M.S. CN/061; Woon, 20 Oct. 1838, 14 Oct. 1839; Turner, 2 June, 29 Oct., 20 Nov. 1838, pp. 5–6, W.M.S. in letters; Wright, New Zealand, pp. 65–80. Ford’s reports, CN/041, also contain comments on many of these aspects of Maori health. Clarke, 19 Sept. 1837, C.M.S. CN/08. See n. 137 and Clarke (Jun.) report, 13 Dec. 1842, C.O. 209/21:331–2. Turner, 20 Nov. 1838, p. 11, W.M.S. in letters; Coates to Clarke, 4 April 1838, C.M.S. CN/L3:279.

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141 Ford. 23 Feb., 4 June 1838, C.M.S. CN/041. 142 Clarke, 30 May 1838, C.M.S. CN/08; Clarke, 16 Nov. 1838, CN/0101. 143 Davis, 18 Nov. 1834, C.M.S. CN/M8:82; Davis, 25 May 1838, CN/ M10:538; King, 5 Mar. 1839, CN/054; Broughton, 28 Mar. 1839, CN/03; Andersen, Mair, pp. 308–9, 311; Wade, Journey, pp. 70–74. 144 W. Williams, 7 Dec. 1837, 19 Mar. 1838, 26 Feb. 1839, C.M.S. CN/096. 145 Turton, 19 Oct. 1840, W.M.S. in letters. 146 Mathews, 15 Nov. 1838, C.M.S. CN/061; J. Binney, N.Z.J.H. article, pp. 153–4; Owens, N.Z.J.H. article, pp. 24–25. 147 Baker, 12 Sept. 1833, C.M.S. CN/020; Morgan, 2 Oct. 1835, CN/065; Maunsell, 6 Apr. 1837, CN/064. 148 Parr, J.P.S. article, p. 445. 149 Binney, N.Z.J.H. article, p. 155; Bidwell, Rambles, p. 42. 150 Binney, N.Z.J.H. article, pp. 152–3. 151 Minutes, Southern District, 6 Oct. 1836, C.M.S. CN/04. 152 Yate, Account, pp. 244–6; Baker, 15 Apr. 1833, C.M.S. CN/020. 153 Puckey, 12 June 1840, 21 Sept. 1839, C.M.S. CN/072. 154 Winiata, Maori Society, pp. 45–46, 49–50; Sinclair, New Zealand, p. 31. 155 Frederick Madden, ‘Towards Trusteeship: A Study in the Influence of the Evangelicals on Native Policy in New Zealand 1814–1854’, B. Litt. thesis, Oxford 1939, p. 36. 156 The author apologises for and withdraws the reference to the article by Dr J.M.R. Owens cited in this footnote upon original publication in 1977, as it did not state the view implied in the text. 157 K. R. Howe, ‘The Maori Response to Christianity in the Thames-Waikato Area, 1833–1840’, N.Z.J.H. 1973, 7(1), 28–46. 158 Yate, Account, p. 216. Williams, Christianity, p. 210, feared a band-wagon effect. 159 Browne report, p. 22. 160 ibid., pp. 12–17, 20–21. 161 Woon, 24 Apr., 1839, W.M.S. in letters. 162 Ward, Show of Justice, pp. 16–20, passim.

222

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Chapter 2 notes 1 C.O. 209/4:210, 241, 253. 2 J. C. Beaglehole, ed., The Journals of Captain James Cook in his Voyages of Discovery, Cambridge 1955, v. 1, p. cclxxxiii. 3 Barrow to Hay, 2 July 1829, C.O. 323/146:95–96. 4 H.R.N.Z. 1:39; Tapp, Early New Zealand, pp. 3–4. 5 A. Gorrie, ‘Political Relations between Great Britain and New Zealand prior to 1840’, unpublished thesis, Auckland 1936, p. 12; Tapp, Early New Zealand, pp. 4, 66. 6 H.R.N.Z. 1, 316–8. 7 ibid., 328–9. 8 Davidson thesis, p. 87. 9 Tapp, Early New Zealand, pp. 68–73; J. M. Ward, British Policy in the South Pacific 1786–1893, pp. 37–38. 10 Davidson thesis, p. 340. 11 W. E. Hall, A Treatise on the Foreign Powers and Jursidiction of the British Crown, p. 2; Halsbury’s Laws of England, 3rd ed. London 1954, v. 7, p. 208. It was not until the 1870 Naturalization Act that any procedure existed for discarding allegiance. 12 R. T. E. Latham, in W. K. Hancock, Survey of British Commonwealth Affairs, v. I, pp. 514–6; H. Jenkyns, British Rule and Jurisdiction Beyond the Seas, p. 5. 13 Jenkyns, British Rule, pp. 126–9; Hall, Treatise, p. 20. 14 Jenkyns, British Rule, pp. 136–7. 15 ibid., p. 143. 16 Draft treatise, Sir Julian Pauncefote (?), F.O. 97/497. 17 ibid., Hope’s ‘Report on British Jurisdiction in Foreign States’, 18 Jan. 1843. 18 B.P.D. 3rd Series, 1832, XLIII, 505–6; Stephen, minute to Russell, 16 Nov. 1839, C.O. 209/5:51. For a draft of the bill see 209/1:102. 19 For a discussion of the Act, Jenkyns, British Rule, pp. 143–4. 20 Memorandum on Her Majesty’s Jurisdiction in Western Polynesia by Sir Julian Pauncefote, F.O. 97/497. 21 Stephen’s draft of Glenelg to Durham, 25 Jan. 1838, C.O. 209/3:263. The passage was omitted from the final version. See also Blackstone’s Comment-

223

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22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

31 32

33 34 35

36 37 38

39 40 41

aries, 5th ed., v. 1, pp. 366, 370; Hall, Treatise, p. 4; Latham, in Hancock, Survey, p. 520. Stephen to Barrow, 25 May 1839, ADM 1/4275. Stephen minute, 21 Jan. 1839, C.O. 209/4:199. ibid., 244–5, second draft of Hobson’s instructions, undated. Andersen, Mair, pp. 301–3. M. F. Lindley, The Acquisition and Government of Backward Territory in International Law, pp. 10–47. G. R. Mellor, British Imperial Trusteeship 1783–1850, passim. Tapp, Early New Zealand, pp. 11–12, 15–16. Bathurst to Macquarie, 9 Apr. 1816, H.R.N.Z. I:407. Memorial of the Committee of the C.M.S. to Earl Bathurst, covering letter dated 19 Mar. 1817, C.O. 201/88:454–9. The Act was passed on 27 June 1817. A. H. McLintock, Crown Colony Government in New Zealand, p. 14 and references; Wilmot-Horton to Thierry, 10 Dec. 1823, H.R.N.Z. 1:615. Hay to Barrow, 14 June 1826, enclosing memorial, copy, 24 Apr. 1826, C.O. 201/221:283–6. The Privy Council Committee’s opinion is summarized in Hay’s letter. Barrow to Hay, 15 June 1826, C.O. 201/175:29. Laws (Satellite) to Admiralty, 11 Mar. 1829, C.O. 201/201:162–6. Howick to Barrow, 5 Jan. 1831, C.O. 209/1:19–20; also 27 Sept. 1831; Howick to Elliot, 19 Oct. 1831; Hay to Elliot, 20 Mar. 1832, and enclosures, 202/28:16–17, 32, 119. Elliot to Howick, 7 Jan. 1831, C.O. 209/1:21; Barrow to Hay, 24 Mar. 1832, with abstract of correspondence on the subject, 201/228:27–31. Bourke to Goderich, 23 Dec. 1831, C.O. 209/1:89. For a list of warships on the newly-formed Australasian station during the 1830s see ADM 1/4269. Hay to Mitchell, private, 22 Oct. 1830, C.O. 324/86:161–2; Hay to Dumaresq, private, 17 Jan. 1831, 324/87:10–11; Hay, minute, 29 Jan. 1831, 201/ 224:505. Stephen’s opinion, 25 May 1830, C.O. 201/215:696–7. Goderich, minute, 3 June 1832, C.O. 201/229:339–42. Stephen’s opinion, 25 May 1830, C.O. 201/215:696–7; Hay to Bacon, 23

224

References

42 43

44 45 46

47

48 49 50 51

52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

Feb. 1831, 324/87:13. His general remarks about expense applied to the particular case of New Zealand. Darling to Huskisson, 10 Apr. 1828, C.O. 201/192:457–8; Darling to Murray, 4 Jan. 1829, 201/200:58–59. Darling to Goderich, 13 Apr. 1831 and enclosures, C.O. 209/1:28–65. Darling had first discussed the idea of a Resident in his despatch to Murray, 12 Aug. 1830; ibid.:11–14. ibid., 69–71, 77–78, Darling to Goderich, 4 June, 7 Sept. 1831. Marsden to Pratt, 4 June 1824; H.R.N.Z. I:627–9. ibid., 715–7; Marsden to Coates, 18 Apr. 1831; Marsden to Darling, 2 Aug. 1830; Broughton to Darling, 14 Apr. 1831, enclosing H. Williams to Marsden, 25 Mar. 1831, C.O. 209/1:15–18, 63–65. Raine to Murray, 3 Jan. 1829, C.O. 201/200:60; Browne to Darling, 24 Apr. 1831, ADM 1/4248; McDonnell 9 June, Maclaren 7 Sept., Donnison 8 Sept., Jones 8 Sept. 1831, each to McLeay, 201/220:336–41, 366–73. For example, see Bourke to Goderich, 23 Dec. 1831, C.O. 201/221:380–3. Elder, Marsden, p. 501, fn; Tapp, Early New Zealand, pp. 75, 80. Coates to Howick, 21 July, 29 Aug. 1831, and enclosures, C.O. 201/ 222:469–71, 475–6. Gore, Lane, Wilkinson, Brooks, and Buckle to Goderich, undated, registered C.O. 26 Mar. 1832, C.O. 201/229:552–3; Donlan to Goderich, 1 and 23 June 1832; ibid., 339–42, 349–50; Torrens’ memorial, undated, registered C.O. 26 Jan. 1831, 201/224:501–6. For example, see Dillon to Goderich, 14 May 1832, C.O. 201/229:337–8. Mitchell to Hay, private, 24 May 1830, C.O. 323/162:216; Dumaresq to Hay, private 30 July, 12 Aug. 1830, ibid., 64–73. Darling to Goderich, 13 Apr. 1831, C.O. 209/1:30–31. ibid., 66, Goderich to Bourke, 31 Jan. 1832. Stewart to Howick, 10 May 1832, C.O. 201/228:370–1. Goderich to chiefs, 14 June 1832, C.O. 209/1:104–5. Davidson, p. 216. Goderich to chiefs and Goderich to Bourke, 14 June 1832, C.O. 209/1:104–5, 100. Darling to Goderich, 19 Oct. 1831, enclosing Darling to Bourke, 12 Oct.

225

References

61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69

70

71 72 73 74

75 76 77 78 79

1831, C.O. 201/221:97–102. Bourke to Busby, instructions, 13 Apr. 1833, C.O. 209/1:107–8. Busby to Hay, 4 Aug. 1831, C.O. 323/165:251–2. Darling’s despatch arrived on 29 Aug. 1831. Wilder, minute, 29 Sept. 1834, C.O. 201/239:137. Darling to Murray, 29 Jan. 1831, enclosing Busby memorial, 10 Jan. 1831, C.O. 201/218:97–106. For some of the papers see C.O. 201/223:101–81 and for good opinions of the jury paper see 202/27:48–49. Hay, minute, 18 Aug. 1831, C.O. 323/166:125–6; Hay, minute, 12 Jan. 1832, 201/229:121. Hay (?), minute, 28 Feb. 1832, C.O. 201/220:331; Hay to Busby, 28 Mar. 1832, 202/28:125–6; Busby to Hay, 31 Mar. 1832, 209/1:177–8. Bourke to Hay, 15 Mar. 1833, enclosing Busby to Hay, 12 Mar. 1833; unsigned minute, 18 Sept. 1833, C.O. 201/231:338–58. Bourke to Glenelg, 6 Nov. 1837, and enclosures, C.O. 201/263:127–51; cf. folios 128 and 136; E. Ramsden, Busby of Waitangi, pp. 40–42; Tapp, Early New Zealand, pp. 84–85. Twiss to Torrens, 11 May 1829, C.O. 202/24:34; Stephen’s opinion, 25 May 1830, 201/215:697; Howick to Lord F. Somerset, 27 Sept. 1831, C.O. 202/ 28:17. Somerset to Hay, 6 Feb. 1832; Hay (?), minute, 10 Feb. 1832, C.O. 201/228: 179–80. Goderich to Bourke, 18 Mar. 1832, C.O. 209/1:86. Bourke to Hay, 15 Mar. 1833, C.O. 201/231:338–40. Bourke to Glenelg, 26 Dec. 1835, enclosing draft N.S.W. Bill with a note on New Zealand by Chief Justice Forbes, C.O. 201/248:308–12, 373. Bourke had told Busby otherwise, however; see note 75. Bourke to Busby, instructions, 13 Apr. 1833, C.O. 209/1:107–17. Ramsden, Busby, p. 49. James Busby, ‘A Brief Memoir relative to the Islands of New Zealand’, June 1831, C.O. 209/1:183–99, pp. 17–18, published July 1832. My emphasis. Busby to Hon. H. Sewell, 18 July 1856; quoted in Ramsden, Busby, p. 43. Spring-Rice to Bourke, 8 July 1834, C.O. 209/1:119–20; Bourke to Glenelg.

226

References

80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87

88

89 90

91 92 93 94 95 96 97

98

13 Sept. 1837, 201/262:296. Busby to N.S.W., 17 May 1833, C.O. 209/1:204–7. H. Williams, 16 Apr. 1833, C.M.S. CN/0101. Quoted in Ramsden, Busby, p. 63. No source given. N.S.W. to Busby, 13 July, 7 Nov. 1833, C.S./N.S.W.; Busby to N.S.W., 13 Jan. 1834; Busby Despatch Books, v. I, p. 85. N.S.W. to Busby, 31 Aug. 1833, CS/N.S.W. N.S.W. to Busby, 24 Apr. 1834, CS/N.S.W.; Marshall, Narrative, pp. 21–22. Bourke to Glenelg, 6 Jan. 1836, C.O. 201/252:9. Busby to Hay, 3 May 1834, and enclosures; Busby to N.S.W., 30 Oct., 28 Nov. 1834, and enclosures; Bourke to Spring-Rice, 1 Feb. 1835, and enclosures, C.O. 209/1:138–62. 237–47, 253–9. ibid., 241–7, petition of twenty-one British subjects in the Bay of Islands, received by Busby 10 May 1834; letter from ten British subjects to Busby. 6 May 1834; Busby reply, 9 May 1834. Powditch, Mair, Clendon, and Polack were among the signatories of the letter. Busby to N.S.W., 18, 26 Jan., 18 May 1836, C.O. 209/2:140–8, 152–7, 232–7; N.S.W. to Busby, 23 Mar., 23 Aug. 1836, CS/N.S.W.:21–22, 530–6. Bourke to Stanley, 29 Apr. 1834, enclosing N.S.W. Executive Council minute, extract, 7 Sept., 1833; Busby to Hay, 3 Apr. 1834, and various enclosures. C.O. 209/1:121–4, 213–36. ibid., 129, Aberdeen to Bourke, 21 Dec. 1834. ibid., 264–6, Busby to Hay, 2 Nov. 1835, enclosing a copy of the Declaration, 28 Oct. 1835. ibid., 268–70, Glenelg to Bourke, 26 May 1836. Busby to N.S.W., 18 May 1836, C.O. 209/2:232–7. N.S.W. to Busby, 23 July, 9 Nov. 1833, CS/N.S.W. Bourke to Stanley, 23 Sept., to Lambert, 23 Aug. 1834, B.P.P. XXXIX, 1835, (585), pp. 755–6. ibid., pp. 760–5; Bourke to Spring-Rice, 6 Dec. 1834, enclosing Lambert to Bourke, 1 Nov. 1834 and Johnstone to Military Secretary N.S.W., 31 Oct. 1834; Glenelg to Bourke, 28 Oct. 1835, C.O. 209/1:163–8. For an eyewitness account see Marshall, Narrative, pp. 149–301. Bourke to Stanley, 23 Sept. 1834, and to Spring-Rice, 6 Dec. 1834, 1 Feb.

227

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99 100 101 102

103

104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111

1835, B.P.P. 1835, XXXIX, (585) pp. 755, 760; C.O. 209/1:138–41. Busby considered the expedition justified and a useful ‘lesson’; Busby to Hay, 3 Dec. 1834, 209/1:249–50. Hay, minute, 8 May 1835; Hay to Coates, May 1835, C.O. 209/1:249, 357–60; Grey to Wood (Adm.), private, 1 Sept. 1835, 202/33:100–01. Glenelg to Bourke, 28 Oct. 1835, C.O. 209/1:163–8. Gairdner, minute, 15 Nov. 1837, C.O. 209/2:291–2. Enclosure in Howick to Stephen, private, 11 Jan. 1836, Grey Papers: Stephen, 126/13; Bourke to Glenelg, 26 Dec. 1835; Glenelg to Bourke, 23 Aug. 1836, C.O. 201/248:311, 318–9. E. H. Brookes and C. Webb, A History of Natal, South Africa, 1965, pp. 25–26; M. Wilson and L. Thompson, ed. The Oxford History of South Africa, Oxford, 1969, v. 1, p. 354. G. E. Metcalfe, McLean of the Gold Coast. The Life and Times of George McLean, 1801–1847, London 1962, passim. Transcription of the Journal of Edward Markham, 1834, Mitchell Library, quoted in E. Ramsden, Marsden and the Missions, p. 64. Turner, 20 Nov. 1838, pp. 12–13, W.M.S. in letters. Gairdner, minute to Grant, n.d., late July 1838, C.O. 209/3:455. Note 106 above and Davis, 9 Feb. 1836, C.M.S. CN/M9:180–2; Gairdner, minute to Stephen, 23 Oct. 1837, C.O. 209/2:289. Salisbury, minute, 15 May 1888; F.O. 84/1922:154. Gairdner, minute, 15 Nov. 1837, C.O. 209/2:291–2. ibid., Stephen, minute, 16 Nov. 1837. Chapter 3 notes

1 Notably Ward's, Shadow, pp. 25–26. 2 G. S. Graham, Great Britain in the Indian Ocean, A Study of Maritime Enterprise, 1810–1850, pp. 2, 263. Graham’s point applies equally well to the Pacific Ocean. 3 Graham, Maritime Enterprise, pp. 405–6, 415–24; see Hay to Barrow, private, 12 Feb. 1826, C.O. 324/85:28–29, and 3 Oct. 1828, 1 July 1829, private, 324/86:68–69, 102. 4 Hay to Bourke, private, 21 Jan. 1832, G/N.S.W.

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5 Hay to Mitchell, private, 22 Oct. 1830, C.O. 324/86:161–2; Hay to Dumaresq, private, 17 Jan. 1831, 324/87:10–11. 6 Dumaresq to Hay, private, 30 July 1830, C.O. 323/162:64–66; Torrens’ memorial, undated, registered C.O. 26 Jan. 1831, 201/224:505; McDonnell to McLeay, 9 June 1831, 201/220:339. 7 Yate, 15 Aug., sub-dated 3 Sept. 1831; Yate, journal, 19 Sept. 1831, C.M.S. CN/099. 8 W. Williams, journal, 27 Sept. 1831, C.M.S. CN/096. 9 Yate to N.S.W., 16 Nov. 1831, enclosing petition of thirteen chiefs to William IV, signed in the presence of the Committee of Missionaries, 5 Oct. 1831, C.O. 201/221:384–8. The version in 209/1:96–98 gives no date. 10 Laplace to Minister of Marine, 5 Sept. 1831 (Port Jackson), 24 Nov. 1831 (Valparaiso): Sèrie Marine, BB4 1004, letters from Laplace. 11 ibid., Laplace to Minister of Marine, 24 Nov. 1831 (second letter of this date); H. Williams, journal, 4 Oct. 1831; C.M.S. CN/094. 12 W. Williams, journal, 4 Oct. 1831, C.M.S. CN/096; Yate, journal, 3–5 Oct. 1831, CN/099; Yate to N.S.W., 16 Nov. 1831, and enclosure, C.O. 201/221: 384–8. 13 H. Williams, journal, 6 Oct. 1831, C.M.S. CN/094; W. Williams, journal, 6 Oct. 1831, CN/096. 14 Lindesay to Goderich, separate, 4 Nov. 1831, enclosing an extract from Exec. Co. minute no. 55, 31 Oct. 1831, and enclosures, registered C.O. 20 Mar. 1832, C.O. 201/221:272–89. 15 H. Williams, journal, 19–21 Nov. 1831, C.M.S. CN/094. 16 Bourke to Goderich, 23 Dec. 1831, with enclosures, C.O. 201/221:380–98. 17 Hill to Coates, private, 9 Nov. 1831, registered C.M.S. 20 Mar. 1832, C.M.S. CN/02. 18 Palmerston to Granville, no. 64, draft, 20 Mar. 1832, enclosing Goderich to F.O., same day, F.O. 27/442; Hay to Backhouse, immediate, 23 Mar. 1832, and enclosures, F.O. 27/457. 19 Granville to Palmerston, no. 107, 23 Mar. 1832, F.O. 27/445. 20 Drafts, Dec. 1829, Sèrie Marine, BB4 1004, Minutes. 21 Carleton, p. 133. 22 Ibid., p. 133; Dillon, Letter, 1 May 1832, p. 7.

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23 24 25 26 27 28

29 30 31

32 33 34 35 36 37

38 39 40

41 42 43

Cf. Ramsden, Busby, p. 35; Wards, Shadow, p. 7. Goderich to Bourke, 31 Jan., 18 Mar. 1832, C.O. 209/1:66–68, 86. Quoted in Elder, Marsden, p. 505, fn. Thierry to Busby, and to W. Williams and J. King, 14 Sept. 1835, C.O. 209/ 2:85–93. H. Williams, 10 Oct. 1835, C.M.S. CN/05(b). Busby to N.S.W., 10 and 31 Oct. 1835; Busby to Thierry, 30 Oct. 1835, C.O. 209/2:83–84, 95–100; The British Resident at New Zealand to His Britannic Majesty’s Subjects, who are Residing or Trading in New Zealand, C.M.S. Press, Pahia, 10 Oct. 1835, copy in 209/2:94. ibid., 20–21, Glenelg to Bourke, 26 Aug. 1836. ibid., 318–24, Busby to Glenelg, 20 Apr. 1837, enclosing petition, Oct. 1836. Bourke to Glenelg, 25 Oct. 1837, enclosing Thierry’s Address to the White Residents in New Zealand, 20 Sept. 1837, registered C.O. 24 May 1838, C.O. 201/262:382–4. Gairdner, minute to Stephen, 23 Oct. 1837, C.O. 209/2:288–9. Davis, 19 Mar. 1838, C.M.S. CN/M10:451. Ramsden, Marsden, p. 84. Stephen, minute to Grey, 25 May 1838, C.O. 201/262:383. B.P.D. 3rd Series, 1838, XLIII, 871–82. Busby to N.S.W., 16 Jan. 1838, registered C.O. 24 Aug. 1838, C.O. 209/3: 31–32. The references to Thierry’s failure are underlined in the Colonial Office copy. ibid., 117–20, 348–9, Angas to Glenelg, 20 Dec. 1838; Stephen to Backhouse, 29 Dec. 1838. Palmerston to Granville, no. 45, draft, 25 Jan. 1839, F.O. 27/573. ibid., pencilled note, 28 June 1839, recording that no answer had been received from Granville. Backhouse wrote a similar note on 6 Mar. 1840 (F.O. 58/1: 198). There is nothing on the subject in the archives of the Paris Embassy (F.O. 146/201). Fox-Strangways to Stephen, 4 Feb. 1839, enclosing Dillon to Palmerston, 28 Jan. 1839, C.O. 209/5:36–38. Fox-Strangways, minute, 7 Mar. 1839, F.O. 58/1:62. Stephen, minute to Labouchere, 7 May 1839, on Busby to N.S.W., 24 Sept.

230

References

44 45

46

47

48

49 50

51 52 53 54 55 56

57

1838. Busby to N.S.W., 10 Nov. 1838, registered C.O. 7 June 1839, C.O. 201/ 277:3, 195. Stephen, minute to Vernon Smith, 22 Apr. 1839; Vernon Smith, minute, 23 Apr. 1839, C.O. 209/4:76. For Pompallier see L. Keys, The Life and Times of Bishop Pompallier, Christchurch 1957. Baring to Melbourne, 21 June 1837; N.Z.A.L.:8 Roy to Symonds, 1 Sept. 1837, N.Z.A.L.:22. See also Marais, Colonization, pp. 97, 98, and McLintock, Crown Colony, p. 44. D. Coates, Notes for the Information of those Members of the Deputation to Lord Glenelg, respecting the New-Zealand Association, who have not attended the Meetings of the Committee on the Subject, confidential, 28 Dec. 1837, para. 32, copy in C.O. 209/3:133–44. The Church Missionary Society did not indicate a change in this opinion before Hobson’s departure. Taylor, 3 Sept. 1838, C.M.S. CN/M10:585; Davis, 1 Mar. 1839; H. Williams, 11 Jan. 1839, CN/M11:297–8, 301; Broughton, 27 Mar. 1840, CN/03; Woon, 14 June 1838, W.M.S. in letters. Maitland to Wood, 13 June 1839, enclosing Harding to Maitland, 15 Feb. 1839, on the visit of H.M.S. Pelorus to New Zealand, ADM 1/220:330–6. Many historians have noticed this, for instance, A. J. Harrop, England and New Zealand from Tasman to the Taranaki War, p. 7; J. Andersen, C.H.B.E. v. 7, pt II, chap. 4, p. 48; McLintock, Crown Colony, p. 11; Tapp, Early New Zealand, pp. 44–45. Busby to Glenelg, 20 Apr. 1837, enclosing petition, Oct. 1836, C.O. 209/ 2:318-24. Ramsden, Busby, p. 167. Stephen, minute to Hope, 21 Sept. 1841, C.O. 201/309:14. Stephen to Napier, 5 Jan. 1843, B.M. Add. Ms. 34623:314b–5. Davis, 1 Mar. 1836, quoted in Coleman, Memoir, p. 202; Baker, 28 Mar. 1836, C.M.S. CN/020; Clarke, 31 Mar. 1837, CN/08. Carleton, Henry Williams, p. 125. H. Williams, 11 Jan., 18 June 1838, C.M.S. CN/0101; H. Williams, 11 Jan. 1839, CN/M11:301–3; Clarke, 1 Mar., 16 Nov. 1838, CN/0101; Clarke, 30 May 1838. CN/08; Coates to Clarke, 17 Apr. 1838, CN/L3:284–5. Davis. 27 May, 15 Nov. 1838, quoted in Coleman, Memoir, pp. 230, 236;

231

References

58 59 60 61 62

63

64 65 66

67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76

Davis, 19 Mar., 25 May 1838, C.M.S. CN/M10:451, 538; Davis, 5 June, 6 Dec. 1838, 1 and 22 Mar. 1839, CN/M11:161–2, 181–4, 292–8, 351. Baker, 4 June, 26 Nov. 1838, C.M.S. CN/020; Ford, 4 June 1838, CN/041. Chapman, 6 Aug. 1838, C.M.S. CN/030; Chapman to Busby, extract, 16 Feb. 1836, C.O. 209/2:184–5. Maunsell, 7 Aug., 5 Nov. 1838, 22 Jan. 1839, C.M.S. CN/064. W. Williams, 14 Nov. 1838, C.M.S. CN/096; W. Williams, 31 Dec. 1839, CN/08. Taylor, 3 Sept. 1838, C.M.S. CN/M10:585; Cowper, 16 July, 29 Sept. 1838, CN/02. Mathews thought a few pious settlers would benefit the Maoris by providing employment, but it is unlikely that he favoured colonization by the N.Z. Association (Mathews, 15 Nov. 1838, CN/061). ‘Remarks of the Sub-committee on Mr. Coates’ Letter to Lord Glenelg, July 23, 1838’, undated, adopted at a special meeting 20 Feb. 1839, received in England 29 June 1839, C.M.S. CN/04. ibid., ‘Remarks of the Sub-committee on Society’s letter of August 9, 1838’, undated, read at a meeting on 12 Feb. 1839, received England 29 June 1839. See n. 63; also Coates to Clarke, 9 Nov. 1838, C.M.S. CN/L3:352. For a discussion of the differences between the views of Coates and the missionaries see Madden, B.Litt. thesis, pp. 115, 165–77; Davidson thesis, pp. 256, 404–5; McLintock, Crown Colony, p. 36; Sinclair, New Zealand, p. 49; C. H. Wake, ‘George Clarke and the Government of the Maoris: 1840–45’, H.S.A.N.Z. 1962 10(39):343; Ward, Show of Justice, pp. 28–29. Woon, 14 June 1838, W.M.S., in letters. ibid., Woon, 24 Jan. 1839; Woon, 24 May 1839. ibid., Turner, 20 Nov. 1838, pp. 1, 13–14. Gairdner, minute, 23 Oct. 1837, C.O. 209/2:288–9. Hobson to Bourke, 8 Aug. 1837, C.O. 209/2:30–37. Bourke to Glenelg, 9 Sept. 1837, registered at the C.O. 1 Feb. 1838, C.O. 209/2:24–28; Bourke to Glenelg, 10 Sept. 1837, 201/262:272–4. McLintock, Crown Colony, p. 26. Busby, ‘A Brief Memoir …’, C.O. 209/1:197–9. Busby to Bourke, 26 Jan. 1836, C.O. 209/2:152–7. ibid’, 232–7; Busby to N.S.W., 18 May 1836; N.S.W. to Busby, 23 Aug.

232

References

77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84

85 86 87 88 89 90 91

92 93 94 95 96 97

1836, CS/N.S.W.:21–22. Busby to N.S.W., 16 June 1837, C.O. 209/2:333–52. ibid., 351, Busby to N.S.W., 16 June 1837. 1840 Report, pp. 7–8, 109–10; Marais, Colonization, pp. 30–37; McLintock, Crown Colony, pp. 32, 36–38, 75–76. For example see Stephen, minute to Vernon Smith, 9 Apr. 1840, C.O. 209/ 7:311. Stephen, minute to Vernon Smith, 4 Oct. 1840, C.O. 209/8:324, and 18 Feb. 1841, 209/6:373; Stephen to Vernon Smith, 23 Mar. 1841, 201/315:409. C.M.S. G/C1 v. 12, p. 20. Coates to Glenelg, private, 12 May 1835, C.O. 209/1:350–1. Coates to Marsden, private, 10 July, 25 Aug. 1835; Coates to Buxton, private, 5 Mar., 25 June 1836, 15 Apr. 1837, C.M.S. G.AC/19/2:16–18, 29, 93–95, 135–8, 446–51; Report from the Select Committee on Aborigines (British Settlements), B.P.P. 1837, VII, (425), 18–22 (hereafter, Aborigines Report). Coates to Glenelg, private, 29 Aug. 1835; C.O. 209/1:361–3. Coates’s emphasis. Hay to Coates, May 1835, C.O. 209/1:249, 357–60. Coates to Buxton, private, 25 June 1836, C.M.S. G.AC/19/2:93–95. Aborigines Report, p. 14 ff. Aborigines Report, pp. 78–81. Aborigines Report, pp. 85–86. K. Sinclair, ‘The Aborigines Protection Society and New Zealand — a Study in nineteenth-century opinion’, unpublished thesis, Auckland 1946, pp. 13–16. ibid., passim. Entry for 22 May 1837, N.Z.A.M.; 1840 Report, p. 1. Wakefield to Torlesse, 12 May 1837; Wakefield to Mrs Torlesse, 12 Oct. 1837, Wakefield Letters, B.M. Add. Ms. 35261:9–10, 12. Entry for 31 May 1837, N.Z.A.M. Entry for 6 June 1837, C.M.S. G/C1 16:123–5. Baring to Melbourne, 9 and 14 June 1837, N.Z.A.L.:1, 3; Wakefield’s evidence, 1840 Report, p. 2. Wakefield’s account of the interview appears to be

233

References

98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111

112 113 114 115 116 117

the only one extant. Baring to Melbourne, 21 June 1837, N.Z.A.L.:8–9. 1840 Report, pp. 2, 7–8; cf. B.P.D. 3rd Series, 1838, XLIII, 877. Howick merely stated that Glenelg had been unable to attend at the last minute. Melbourne to Glenelg, 14 June 1837; Stephen, minute to Glenelg, 16 June 1837, and draft proposals, C.O. 209/2:386–9. Entry 28 June 1837, recording the receipt of a private letter from Melbourne; N.Z.A.M. Melbourne to Howick, 26 June 1837, Grey Papers: Melbourne, 115/1. Howick to Ward, private, 27 June 1837, enclosing Paper I, 26 June 1837, on draft New Zealand Association Bill; Grey Papers: New Zealand, 145/2:1. Stephen to Howick, 1 July 1837 and enclosure, Grey Papers: Stephen, 126/ 11. He had not shown this letter to Glenelg because of lack of time. Baring to Howick, Ward to Howick, 28 June 1837, Grey Papers: New Zealand, 145/2:2 and 3. ibid., 4 and 6, Howick to Ward, private, 29 and 30 June 1837. ibid., 5 and 7, Ward to Howick, private, 30 June, 2 July 1837. Entry for 10 July 1837, N.Z.A.M. Wakefield and others to Lord Minto, 24 July 1837, N.Z.A.L.:18. Coates to Grey, private, 28 June 1837, C.M.S. G/AC 19/2:153–4. ibid., 160–2, Coates to Buxton, private, 29 Aug. 1837; and 183–9, Coates to Glenelg, private, 29 Nov. 1837, enclosing The Principles, Objects and Plan of the New Zealand Association examined, in a Letter to the Right Hon. Lord Glenelg, Secretary of State for the Colonies, London, 1837, copy in C.O. 209/3:175–96. Minutes, 5 Dec. 1837; Marsden, 11 Aug. 1837, C.M.S. G/C1 v. 16, pp. 372–3, 378. Coates to Glenelg, 20 Dec. 1837, C.O. 209/2:391. Bunting to Glenelg, 21 Dec. 1837, C.O. 209/2:393–4. Coates to Clarke, 20 Dec. 1837, C.M.S. CN/L3:253. Wakefield’s evidence, 1840 Report, p. 2. Memoranda, 25 Nov.–6 Dec. 1837, C.O. 208/185:117–9; Torrens to Durham, 29 Nov., 5 Dec. 1837, Lambton Papers; H. T. Manning, ‘Lord Durham and the New Zealand Company’, N.Z.J.H. 1972, 6(1):2–5.

234

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118 Baring to Melbourne, 21 Nov. 1837, N.Z.A.L.:41. This letter was not registered at the C.O. until 23 Dec., so Melbourne may have delayed sending it on (C.O. 209/2:398–400). The Bill still contained a sweeping waiver of liability for the colonizers (ibid., 407). 119 Entry for 21 Nov. 1837, N.Z.A.M. 120 Wakefield to Durham, 6 Dec. 1837, Lambton Papers. 121 Again, the only account of the interview is in Wakefield’s evidence, 1840 Report, pp. 3, 109. 122 Draft memorandum, 15 Dec. 1837, C.O. 209/2:411–22. Glenelg was the only Colonial Office representative at the 13 Dec. meeting and Gairdner noted that Glenelg drew up the memo himself afterwards (Gairdner minute, 28 Feb. 1839, 209/4:318). See Wakefield to Durham (?), 16 Dec. 1837, Lambton Papers, for a copy of the memorandum with marginal comments and rebuttals by Wakefield. 123 Glenelg to Durham, 16 Dec. 1837, Lambton Papers. 124 Melbourne to Howick, 14 Dec. 1837, Grey Papers: Melbourne 115/1. 125 Wakefield to Durham, 15 Dec. 1837, Lambton Papers. 126 Entries for 16 and 18 Dec. 1837, C.O. 208/185:115. Glenelg was sent a copy: Enderby to Glenelg, 18 Dec. 1837, 209/2:444–6, and the petition was referred to the Lords Committee in 1838. 127 Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords appointed to inquire into the Present State of the Islands of New Zealand and the Expediency of regulating the Settlement of British Subjects therein; with minutes of evidence. B.P.P., 1837–8, XXI, (680)(123), pp. 76–78. (Hereafter 1838 Report). 128 Melbourne to Howick, 16 Dec. 1837, Grey Papers: Melbourne 115/1. Chapter 4 notes 1 2 3 4 5

1840 Report, pp.3, 109. Memorandum, 15 Dec. 1837, C.O. 209/2:411–22. Melbourne to Howick, 16 Dec. 1837, Grey Papers: Melbourne, 115/1. Lady Howick, 30 Nov. 1837, Grey Papers: Journal, C3/3. Stephen to his wife, 18 Nov. 1837, Stephen Papers: Journal of copied letters, v. 11, pp. 49–50. 6 28 Dec. 1837, Grey Papers: Journal, C3/3.

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7 Chester W. New, Lord Durham. A Biography of John George Lambton, First Earl of Durham, Oxford 1929, pp. 309–13, 555. See also Manning, N.Z.J.H. article, pp. 6–7. 8 Marais, Colonization, p. 27. 9 Stephen, minute to Grey, 18 Dec. 1837, C.O. 209/2:331. The minute is not signed, but is in Stephen’s handwriting. 10 ibid., 331–52, Busby to Grey, 4 Aug. 1837, enclosing Busby to N.S.W., 16 June 1837. 11 T. L. Buick, The Treaty of Waitangi, p. 46; J. C. Beaglehole, Captain Hobson and the New Zealand Company, p. 22; G. H. Scholefield, Captain William Hobson, p. 69; McLintock, Crown Colony, p. 32. Also Wakefield in 1840 Report, p. 3. 12 Bourke to Glenelg, 9 Sept. 1837, registered C.O. 1 Feb. 1838, C.O. 201/262: 222; General Registers, 326/237:1; Glenelg to Durham, 5 Feb. 1838, 209/4: 295–7. 13 Molesworth to Grey, 9 Jan. 1838, C.O. 201/282:278–9; Coates to Glenelg. private, 1 Jan. 1838, 209/3:125–6. 14 Gairdner, minutes to Stephen, 23 Oct., 15 Nov. 1837, C.O. 209/2:288–9, 291–2. 15 ibid., 333–52, Busby to N.S.W., 16 June 1837. 16 Busby to N.S.W., 16 June 1837, text and marginalia, C.O. 209/2:341, 344. 17 ibid., 351. 18 Minutes, 26 Dec. 1837, C.M.S, G/C1 v. 16, p. 608; Coates to Glenelg, 22 Dec. 1837, C.O.209/2:395. 19 Melbourne to Howick, 16 Dec. 1837, Grey Papers: Melbourne, 115/1. 20 Glenelg to Durham, 29 Dec. 1837, C.O. 209/2:423–32. 21 ibid., 434–9, Durham to Glenelg, 30 Dec. 1837. 22 Cf. E. G. Wakefield and J. Ward, The British Colonization of New Zealand, pp. 54–57. 23 Coates to Glenelg, private, 1 Jan. 1838, C.O. 209/3:125–6. 24 ibid., 127–30, Coates to Glenelg, private, 3 Jan. 1838. 25 D. Coates, Notes for the Information of those Members of the Deputation to Lord Glenelg, respecting the New-Zealand Association, who have not attended the Meetings of the Committee on the Subject, confidential, 28 December

236

References

26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

34 35 36 37 38 39

40 41 42 43 44 45

46

1837, London, p. 17, copy in C.O. 209/3:133–44. Coates to Glenelg, private, 3 Jan. 1838. C.O. 209/3:130. Coates to Clarke, 4 Apr. 1838, C.M.S. CN/L3:279. 1838 Report, pp. 180–2; Coates to Glenelg, 23 July 1838, C.O. 209/3:169. For this and the following paragraph see Notes, passim, C.O. 209/3:133–44. ibid., 128, Coates to Glenelg, private, 3 Jan. 1838. Minutes, 16 Jan. 1838, C.M.S. G/C1 v. 16, pp. 627–9. Coates to Grey, 30 Jan. 1838, in reply to Grey to Coates and Bunting (W.M.S.), 25 Jan. 1838, C.O. 209/3:151–3. ibid., 253–6, Glenelg to Durham, 25 Jan. 1838. Although this letter has ‘cancelled’ written across it, either it or a similar one must have been sent, for Durham’s reply (note 34) mentioned Glenelg’s ‘last communication’. The two men communicated privately as well (C.O. 209/4:295–7 and 1840 Report, pp. 105–6). Durham to Glenelg, 27 Jan. 1838, Lambton Papers. 27 Jan. 1838, Grey Papers:Journal C3/3. Durham to Glenelg, draft, 4 Feb. 1838, Lambton Papers. Glenelg to Durham, 5 Feb. 1838, C.O. 209/4:295–7. Minutes, 6 and 20 Feb. 1838, C.M.S. G/CI v. 16, pp. 653, 672–4. Wakefield’s evidence, 1840 Report, pp. 7–8, 109–10. For variations on this interpretation see Marais, Colonization, pp. 30–37; McLintock, Crown Colony, pp. 32,36–37. D. Coates, The Present State of the New-Zealand Question considered, in a Letter to J. P. Plumptre, Esq. M.P., London 1838, p. 11. E. Stock, The History of the Church Missionary Society: its Environment, its Men and its Work, London 1899, v. 1, pp. 255–6. McLintock, Crown Colony, pp. 36–37, 75–76. Coates, Notes, p. 16, C.O. 209/3:133–44. Stephen noted this inconsistency in a later letter from Coates to Glenelg (23 July 1838, 209/3:168). Memorandum of a meeting, 29 Nov. 1837, C.O. 208/185:118. Marais, Colonization, p. 31; S. Hinds, The Latest Official Documents relating to New Zealand; with Introductory Observations, London 1838, p. 18, for a justification. Glenelg to Durham, ‘cancelled’, 25 Jan. 1838, C.O. 209/3:264–5.

237

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47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58

59 60

61 62 63 64

65 66 67

Wakefield’s evidence, 1840 Report, pp. 109–10. Glenelg to Durham, 29 Dec. 1837, C.O. 209/2:423–32. See above pp. 96–97. Glenelg to Durham, 25 Jan. 1838, first draft, C.O. 209/3:262. Marais, Colonization, p. 40; Scholefield, Hobson, p. 72; McLintock, Crown Colony, p. 38. Turnbull, Bubble, pp. 26–28. Manning, N.Z.J.H. article, p. 10. Stephen to Napier, 7 and 14 Mar. 1838, Napier Papers, B.M. Add. Ms. 34618: 611, 631. B.P.D. 3rd Series, 1838, XLII, 152–5, House of Lords motion for a select committee to inquire into the present state of the islands of New Zealand. Minutes, 27 Feb., 6 and 27 Mar., 3 and 7 Apr. 1838, C.M.S. G/C1 v. 16, pp. 689, 694–5, 738–9, 745–7, 755–6. Coates to Clarke, 4 Apr. 1838; C.M.S. CN/L3:278. Coates to Glenelg, confidential, 12 May 1838, C.O. 209/3:155–6. The letter refers to an interview on the previous Monday. See also Coates to Glenelg, 21 May 1838, ibid.: 157–8. ibid., 156, Stephen, minute, 15 May 1838. ibid., 374–5, memorandum for Glenelg, 4 May 1838. It does not appear to be by Stephen or Gairdner, and may therefore have been written by Sir George Grey. Coates to Clarke, 17 Apr. 1838, C.M.S. CN/L3:285–7. Baring to Glenelg, 28 May 1838, C.O. 209/3:284–5. ibid., 286–7, Grey to Baring, 1 June 1838. Minutes, 29 May, 5, 19, 26 June 1838, C.M.S. G/C1 v. 17, pp. 37, 48, 92–93, 99–100; Coates to Stephen, private, 20 June 1838, enclosing Petition of the C.M.S. committee against the New Zealand Association, C.O. 209/3:160–2. 20 June 1838; Grey Papers: Journal, C3/3; B.P.D., 3rd Series, XLIII, 1838, 542, 871–82; Harrop, New Zealand, p. 62. Evans to Glenelg, 25 June 1838; Stephen, minute, 30 June 1838; Grey to Evans, 7 July 1838, C.O. 209/3:290–3. ibid., 544–5, H. G. Ward to Melbourne, (?), private, 28 June 1838, registered C.O. 3 July 1838.

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68 Resolution, 9 July 1838, N.Z.A.M. 69 See appendix 3, p. 252. 70 Chichester to Glenelg, 24 June 1838, enclosing a private memorandum, C.O. 209/3:366–72. 71 Glenelg to Howick, 11 July 1838, Grey Papers: Glenelg 87/6; Grey, minute, 5 July 1838, C.O. 201/264:301–2. 72 Minutes by Stephen, 23 July 1838, Gairdner, undated but late July 1838, and Glenelg, 11 (?) Sept. 1838, C.O. 209/3:454–5. 73 ibid., 160–72, Coates to Glenelg, 23 July 1838; minutes, 24 July, 14 Aug. 1838, C.M.S. G/C1 v. 17, pp. 176, 191–2. The session ended on 16 August 1838 and Parliament resumed on 5 February 1839. 74 Stephen, marginal comments and minute to Grey, 26 July 1838, C.O. 209/3: 164, 167, 170. 75 ibid., 171–2, Gairdner, minute to Glenelg, 24 Aug. 1838. 76 Minutes, 14 Aug. 1838, C.M.S. G/C1 v. 17, pp. 191–2. 77 14 July 1838, Grey Papers: Journal, C3/3. 78 Glenelg to Durham, 5 Feb. 1838, C.O. 209/4:295–7. 79 Memorandum for Glenelg, 4 May 1838, C.O. 209/3:374–5. 80 1838 Report. 81 Coates to Clarke, 9 Nov. 1838, C.M.S. CN/L3:352. 82 Entries for 31 Oct., 28 Nov., 10 Dec. 1838, C.O. 208/185:90–95. 83 Stephen to Wood, 15 Aug. 1838, Barrow to Stephen, 15 Aug. 1838, registered C.O. 30 Nov. 1838, C.O. 209/3:102–5. Stephen noted the discrepancy, but presumed that the matter had been acted upon. 84 Coates to Glenelg, private, 30 Nov. 1838 enclosing Clarke, 1 Mar. 1838, C.M.S. G/AC 1/3, pp. 133–4. He mentioned an interview with Glenelg on the same subject on 28 November. 85 Glenelg to Gipps, 1 Dec. 1838, C.O. 209/4:80–82. The draft of this despatch was begun on 29 November 1838, but included a reference to the Admiralty correspondence of August. 86 Stephen to Backhouse, first draft, 12 Dec. 1838, C.O. 209/5:28–34. 87 Stephen to Backhouse, final draft, 12 Dec. 1838, C.O. 209/3:111–6; ibid., 107, Backhouse to Stephen, 31 Dec. 1838. 88 ibid., 395–6, Glenelg to Hobson, 28 Dec. 1838.

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89 Hobson to Grey, 14 Feb. 1839, C.O. 209/4:100–3; Scholefield, Hobson, pp. 51, 57–58, 65. 90 Hobson to Glenelg, 1 Jan. 1839, C.O. 209/4:83–85, Glenelg replied that he would be happy to discuss these matters, Glenelg to Hobson, 3 Jan. 1839. 91 ibid., 87–93, Hobson to Glenelg, 21 Jan. 1839. 92 ibid., 193–201, Stephen, minute, 21 Jan. 1839. 93 ibid., 191, Glenelg, minute, 12 Feb. 1839. 94 ibid., 204–6, first draft of consular instructions, 24 Jan. 1839. 95 Cf. Wards, Shadow, p. 22 n. 3 and p. 27. 96 First draft of consular instructions, 24 Jan. 1839, C.O. 209/4:208. 97 ibid., 209–10, first draft of consular instructions, 24 Jan. 1839. 98 ibid., 191–2, Glenelg, minute, 12 Feb. 1839. 99 Cf. Marais, Colonization, p. 38, n. 3; Trevor Williams, ‘James Stephen and British Intervention in New Zealand, 1838–40’, Journal of Modern History, 1941, 13(1):23–27; McLintock, Crown Colony, p. 46. 100 Stephen, minute to Glenelg, 31 Dec. 1838; Grey to Lyall, 8 Feb. 1839, C.O. 209/3:321–3. 101 Stephen, minute to Labouchere, 15 Mar. 1839, C.O. 209/4:326–31. 102 J. W. Davidson, ‘New Zealand, 1820–1870: an Essay in Re-interpretation’, H.S.A.N.Z. 1953, 5(20):353. 103 C.O. 201 and 209. 104 28 Dec. 1837 and 11 Aug. 1838, Grey Papers: Journal, C3/3. 105 R. Russell, ed., Early Correspondence of Lord John Russell, 1805–1840, London 1913, v. II, p. 228; S. Walpole, The Life of Lord John Russell, 2nd ed., London 1889, v. I, pp. 303, 308–12. 106 ‘Memorandum respecting the changes which were made in Lord Melbourne’s Administration in 1839’, 14 Jan. 1884, Grey Papers: Creighton 113/ 16, and Grey’s Journal, v. 19, 25 Jan. –5 Feb. 1839; Walpole, Life, v. 1, pp. 312–4; E. Dobie, ‘The Dismissal of Lord Glenelg from the Office of Colonial Secretary’, The Canadian Historical Review, 1942, 23(3):280–5. 107 C. E. Stephen, ed., The First Sir James Stephen. Letters with Biographical Notes, Gloucester 1906, pp. 56–57. 108 D.N.B. v. VIII, p. 381. 109 Stock, Church Missionary Society, v. 1, pp. 452–3.

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110 W. L. Burn, Emancipation and Apprenticeship in the British West Indies, London 1937, p. 140, n. 1. 111 Stephen to Howick, Feb. 1845, Grey Papers: Stephen, 126/11. On the question of Stephen’s influence over Glenelg see E. T. Williams, ‘The Colonial Office in the Thirties’, H.S.A.N.Z. 1943, 2(7): 152–3 and T. J. Barron, ‘James Stephen, the development of the Colonial Office and the administration of three Crown colonies: Trinidad, Sierra Leone and Ceylon’, Ph.D. thesis, London 1969, p. 129. 112 Coates to Clarke, 19 Dec. 1838, C.M.S. CN/L3:380. Chapter 5 notes 1 ‘P.S. to memorandum of 14 Jan. 1884’, 12 Nov. 1884, p. 25, Grey Papers: Creighton, 113/16; D.N.B. v. XV, p. 1116. 2 Walpole, Russell, v. 1, p. 335. 3 H. Reeve, ed., The Greville Memoirs, London 1888, v. IV, p. 241; New, Durham, pp. 525–6. 4 J. Gallagher, ‘Fowell Buxton and the New African Policy, 1838–1842’, The Cambridge Historical Journal, 1950, X(1):36–58. 5 Normanby to Russell, private, 22 Sept. 1839, Russell Papers. P.R.O. 30/22, v.3D, pp. 5–12. 6 Graham, Indian Ocean, pp. 274–301, 361–2. 7 Stephen to Napier, 19 Sept. 1839, B.M. Add. Ms. 34620, p. 382. 8 Gairdner, minute to Stephen, 21 Feb. 1839, C.O. 209/4:190, enclosing the draft instructions for the consul and the Cabinet memorandum which Glenelg had left for his successor. 9 Normanby to Gipps, 3 Mar. 1839, G/N.S.W.; Busby to N.S.W., 25 May 1838, C.O. 209/3:58–60. 10 Lyall to Glenelg, 14 Dec. 1838, signed by all the New Zealand Company of 1825 except E. Ellice, Faden, and Mannings, C.O. 209/3:313, and appendix 3 below, p. 252. 11 ibid., 297–312, 317–46, Lyall to Grey, 28 Dec. 1838, enclosing two plans for colonizing New Zealand; the second is the one discussed here. Torrens had sent an earlier version to Stephen, 6 Nov. 1838. 12 Minutes, 26 Mar., 16 Apr. 1839, C.M.S. G/C1 v. 17, pp. 572–3, 589–90.

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13 Coates to Beecham, 28 Mar. 1839, W.M.S.: Correspondence with the Colonial Office. Coates’s emphasis. 14 Lyall to Normanby, 25 Feb. 1839. Labouchere to Lyall, 29 Feb. 1839, C.O. 209/4:307–15. There was apparently another interview in mid-April, with no result (Torrens to Stephen, 12 Apr. 1839, 209/5:369–70). 15 Torrens to Durham, 2 May 1839. See also Wakefield to Durham, 2 May 1839, two letters, and Russell Ellice to Durham, 21 May 1839, Lambton Papers. 16 Manning, N.Z.J.H. article, p. 12. 17 Hutt to Normanby, 20 Feb. 1839. Standish Motte, at that time chairman of the association, backed up Hutt’s argument about the charter in strong legal language (Motte to Normanby, 4 Mar. 1839, C.O. 209/4:301–2, 517–20). G. S. Evans, on behalf of some of the prospective emigrants, had approached Durham and sought his sympathy in January 1839, and Durham had consented to meet them. Evans to Durham, 17 Jan. 1839, and draft reply, 19 Jan. 1839, Lambton Papers. 18 Stephen, minute to Labouchere, 6 Mar. (corrected from ‘December’) 1839; Labouchere to Motte, 11 Mar. 1839, C.O. 209/4:523–7. 19 ibid., 529–30, Motte to Labouchere, 12 Mar. 1839. 20 Wakefield’s evidence, 1840 Report, pp. 12–14. 21 ibid., p. 13, Labouchere’s questions, nos. 69, 70 and Wakefield’s replies. My emphasis. 22 Minutes, 19 Mar. 1839, C.M.S. G/C1 v. 17, p. 553. 23 Stephen, minute to Labouchere, 6 Mar. 1839, C.O. 209/4:523. Manning (N.Z.J.H. article, p. 11), can only identify one Roman Catholic, Lord Petre. 24 Cf. Beaglehole, Hobson, p. 25, and Williams, J.M.H. article, pp. 25–37. 25 Stephen, minute to Labouchere, 15 Mar. 1839, C.O. 209/4:326–31. 26 Labouchere’s questions, nos. 67, 68; 1840 Report, p. 12. 27 ibid., p. 13, Wakefield’s evidence. 28 Hutt to Labouchere, 12 Mar. 1839, C.O. 209/4:531. 29 Minutes, 21 Mar. 1839, C.O. 208/185:97–98. 30 Hopper’s Diary (his emphasis). 31 1840 Report, p. 11. 32 Minutes, 21 Mar., 10 Apr., 2 May 1839, C.O. 208/185:97–102, 130.

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33 Hutt to Crawford, 16 Apr. 1839, C.O. 209/8:355. 34 Hutt to Normanby, 29 Apr. 1839, enclosing Instructions from the New Zealand Land Company to Colonel Wakefield, C.O. 209/4:532–45. The Colonization Association started calling itself by its new name before the prospectus of 2 May 1839 was issued. William Wakefield was Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s elder brother. 35 Minutes, 16 Apr. 1839, C.M.S. G/C1 v. 17, p. 589. 36 Labouchere to Hutt, 1 May 1839, C.O. 209/4:546–9. 37 ibid., 550–1, Hutt to Labouchere, 1 May 1839. 38 ibid., 558–9, prospectus; Minutes, 2 May 1839, C.O. 208/185:99–102. 39 First Colony prospectus, C.O. 209/4:560. 40 ibid., 552–5, Durham to Normanby, 22 May 1839; Minutes, 13 June 1839, C.O. 208/180:21–22. 41 Normanby to Durham, private, 10 June 1839, Durham Papers, Box XXII, bundle 51. 42 Minutes, 14 June 1839, C.O. 208/180:23. Author’s emphasis. 43 Turnbull, Bubble, p. 29; Harrop, England and New Zealand, p. 69. At this stage the committee of the First Colony welcomed both the proposed government inquiry into land titles, and government pre-emption. (Evans to N.Z. Colonization Co., 24 June 1839, C.O. 208/1:306). 44 Petre to Normanby, 12 Aug. 1839; Labouchere to Petre, 19 Aug. 1839, C.O. 209/4:564–6; Wakefield to Durham, 20 Aug. 1839, Lambton Papers. 45 Stephen, minute to Stanley, 15 Dec. 1841, C.O. 209/11:463; Stephen to Howick, Feb. 1845, Grey Papers: Stephen, 126/11; Ingestre to Stanley, 5 May 1845, enclosing set of proposals, 209/39:310. 46 Minutes, 4 Dec. 1838, 5 Feb. 1839, C.M.S. G/C1 v. 17, pp. 383, 487. 47 ibid., pp. 553, 589–90, minutes, 19 Mar., 16 Apr. 1839. 48 ibid., p. 589, minutes, 16 Apr. 1839. 49 Coates to Glenelg, confidential, 2 May 1839, C.M.S. G/AC 19/2:243–5. 50 Minutes, 28 May, 4 and 25 June, 2 July 1839, C.M.S. G/C1 v. 18, pp. 26, 33–34, 71–72, 79–80. 51 Coates to Clarke, 17 July 1839, C.M.S. CN/L3:444–8. 52 See Ward, Show of Justice, pp. 28–29. 53 Stephen to Labouchere, 15 Mar. 1839, C.O. 209/4:326–31.

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54 Stephen to Napier, 23 Nov. 1839, Napier Papers, B.M. Add. Ms. 34620, p. 508. 55 Stephen and Labouchere, minutes, 2 May 1839, C.O. 209/4:551; Hobson to Gipps, 24 Dec. 1839, G/N.Z. 36/1, pp. 1–7. 56 Stephen, minute to Labouchere, 18 May 1839, C.O. 209/4:243–4. 57 Draft instructions, undated, C.O. 209/4:227, 230. 58 Draft instructions, undated, C.O. 209/4:242. 59 ibid., 233. See also first draft of instructions, 24 Jan. 1839; ibid., 212–3. 60 Jenkyns, British Rule, pp. 5–6. 61 Stephen, minute to Vernon Smith, 21 July 1840, C.O. 209/7:40. 62 For further discussion of this point see below, pp. 162–3; and N. A. Foden, The Constitutional Development of New Zealand in the First Decade 1839–1849, pp. 24–27. I am also indebted to D. K. Fieldhouse, Nuffield College, Oxford, for discussion of this question. 63 Hobson to Labouchere, private, 30 May 1839, C.O. 209/4:104–7. He mentions the interview but not the decision. 64 Draft of letters patent, 27 May 1839, C.O. 380/122:5–8. 65 Normanby to Attorney-General, 30 May 1839; Law Officers to Normanby, 6 June 1839, C.O. 209/5:74–77. 66 Stephen to Treasury, 13 and 18 June 1839 and enclosures, T/1:4527 file 26074, nos. 12690, 13028. 67 Treasury to Stephen, 22 June 1839, C.O. 209/5:96–98. 68 ibid., 101–2, Treasury to Stephen, 24 July 1839; copy of Treasury minute, 19 July 1839, B.P.P. 1839, XXXIV, (469), 555. 69 Wards, Shadow, pp. 25–26; McLintock, Crown Colony, p. 49; Williams, H.S.A.N.Z. article, pp. 150–1 and J.M.H. article, pp. 22–23, 30. 70 Stephen, minute to Normanby, 7 June 1839, C.O. 209/5:78. 71 Minutes, 25 June, 2 July 1839, C.M.S. G/C1 v. 18, pp. 71, 79–80; B.P.D. 3rd Series, 1839, XLVII, 828–9. 72 Normanby to Attorney-General, 30 May 1839, C.O. 209/5:77. 73 For similar views see J. Rutherford, The Treaty of Waitangi and the Acquisition of British Sovereignty in New Zealand, 1840, pp. 13–14; and Foden, Constitutional Development, pp. 28–41. 74 Normanby to Admiralty, 1 July 1839, C.O. 209/4:128–9; Admiralty to

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76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92

93

94 95

Stephen, 5 July 1839, 209/5:4. Hobson letters to Colonial Office, 30 May, 6 June, 27 July, 13 and 20 Aug. 1839, C.O. 209/4:104–7, 108–12, 147–8, 169, 177–8. In the last letter he complained of a general lack of support from the Colonial Office. ibid., 151–6, 181–2, Hobson to Labouchere, 1 and 21 Aug. 1839. ibid., 157–63, 251–82, Normanby to Hobson, 14 Aug. 1839 and 15 Aug. 1839 (supplementary instructions). ibid., 185, Hobson to Labouchere, 24 Aug. 1839. ibid., 251–6, Normanby to Hobson, 14 Aug. 1839. ibid., 256–7. Normanby to Attorney-General, 30 May, 1839, C.O. 209/5:76. Minutes, 25 June 1839, C.M.S. G/C1 v. 18, p. 71. Hobson to Gipps, 24 Dec. 1839, 16 Jan. 1840, G/N.Z. 36/1:1–7, 10–12. Normanby to Hobson, 14 Aug. 1839, C.O. 209/4:262, 280. B.P.D. 3rd Series, 1840, LV, 545. Hobson to Labouchere, 1 Aug. 1839, C.O. 209/4:151–2. ibid., 157–8, Normanby to Hobson, 15 Aug. 1839. ibid., 343, Stephen, minute to Vernon Smith, 28 July 1839. Somes to Palmerston, 7 Nov. 1839; Stephen to Foreign Office, 18 Mar. 1840, B.P.P. 1840, XXXIII, pp. 66–69. Normanby to Hobson, 14 Aug. 1839, C.O. 209/4:258–60. Gipps to Hobson, 15 Jan. 1840, C.O. 209/6:24–27. ibid., 39–45, Hobson to Gipps, 4 Feb. 1840. For various interpretations of this apparently ultra vires action see Scholefield, Hobson, pp. 83–85, Rutherford, Acquisition, p. 19, and McLintock, Crown Colony, p. 57. For the details of the negotiations and the general outline contained in this and the following paragraphs see Hobson to Gipps, 5 Feb. 1840, C.O. 209/6:46–51, and the excellent eye-witness account by W. Colenso, The Authentic and Genuine History of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. For another account see C. Wilkes, Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition During the Years 1838–1842, New York 1856, V. 2, pp. 375–6. Hobson to the New Zealand chiefs, 27 Apr. 1840, cited in T. L. Buick, The Treaty of Waitangi, p. 191. Sweetman, Unsigned Treaty, pp. 11–12.

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96 Hobson to Gipps, 17 Feb. 1840, C.O. 209/6:58–63. 97 ibid., 66–70, 99, Gipps to Russell, 31 Mar., 5 Apr. 1840. Hobson had taken no troops with him, but Russell to Gipps, 26 Sept. 1839 (C.O. 209/4:187–8), had given Gipps permission to send some. 98 Gipps to Hobson, confidential, 3 Apr. 1840, C.O. 209/6:93–96. 99 ibid., 146–54, Hobson to Russell, 25 May 1840. 100 ibid., 126–30, Hobson to Bunbury, instructions, 25 Apr. 1840. 101 ibid., 132–6, Shortland to Hobson, 6 May 1840, Hobson to Russell, 15 Oct. 1840, and enclosures, C.O. 209/7:102–8, 114–5, 122–7, 137–41. 102 Wakefield to N.Z. Co., 26 Feb. 1841, B.P.P. 1844, XIII, (054), 637; Beaglehole, Hobson, pp. 51–61. 103 Hobson to Russell, 25 May 1840, C.O. 209/6:146–54. 104 Hobson to Russell, 25 May 1840, C.O. 209/6:152–3. 105 Bunbury to Hobson, report, 28 June, 1840, C.O. 209/7:148–59. 106 ibid., 53–54, Russell to Hobson, 10 Nov. 1840. 107 ibid., 40, Stephen, minute to Vernon Smith, 21 July 1840. 108 B.P.P. 1841, XVII, (311), pp. 31–42. 109 Hobson to Gipps, 4 May 1841, G/N.Z. 36/1, pp. 20–21. 110 Treasury to Stephen, 22 June 1839, C.O. 209/5:98. 111 Stephen, minute to Vernon Smith, 9 July 1840, C.O. 209/6:33. 112 Stephen, minute to Hope, 28 Dec. 1842, C.O. 209/18:416–7. 113 Stanley to FitzRoy, 13 Aug. 1844, C.O. 209/32:375. 114 For the legal argument see Rutherford, Acquisition, passim. and A. B. Keith, The Dominions as Sovereign States, London 1938, pp. 154–5. 115 Shortland to Stanley, confidential, 13 July 1843, enclosing Swainson, confidential minute, same date, C.O. 209/22:245–6, 285–93. 116 ibid., 252, Stephen, minute to Hope, 28 Dec. 1843. 117 ibid., 267, Stanley to FitzRoy, 10 Feb. 1844. 118 Colenso, Signing, p. 31. 119 Hobson to Gipps, 5 and 17 Feb. 1840, C.O. 209/6:47–48, 58–64. 120 Hobson to Bunbury, 29 Apr. 1840, cited in T. Bunbury, Reminiscences of a Veteran, V. III, p. 6. 121 Ross, N.Z.J.H. article, pp. 139–43. 122 Ward, Show of Justice, pp. 44–5.

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123 Clarke to Colonial Secretary, 1 July 1845, C.O. 209/35:54–55; Winiata, Maori Society, p. 52. Cf. Fairburn, 15 July 1840, C.M.S. CN/039. 124 Russell, minute. 10 July 1840. C.O. 209/6:33. 125 Historians have generally praised this humanitarian emphasis. See, for example, Beaglehole, Hobson, p. 33; Scholefield, Hobson, p. 75; Williams, J.M.H. article, p. 34: McLintoek, Crown Colony, p. 50. 126 C.O. 209/4:210. 127 ibid., 242. 128 ibid., 259–60. 129 ibid., 204, 208. 130 ibid., 191, 227. 131 ibid., 255–6. 132 Busby to Hope, 17 Jan. 1845, C.O. 209/41:83–84. 133 ibid., 540. Shortland to Stanley, 18 Jan. 1845. 134 Clarke to Colonial Secretary, 30 Mar. 1846. C.O. 209/44:82. 135 Coates to Clarke, 17 July 1839. C.M.S. CN/L3:446; Beecham to Chairman N.Z. District. 2 Sept. 1839. W.M.S. in letters. 136 Grey to Lyall. 8 Feb. 1839. C.O. 209/3:322–3; Labouchere to Petre, 19 Aug. 1839. 406/1:84. 137 Manning. N.Z.J.H. article, pp. 14–15; see also appendix 3. pp. 253–6. 138 Hay to Bourke. 21 Jan. 1832. G/N.S.W. 139 Stephen to Admiralty. 16 May 1837; Stephen to Treasury, 28 July 1837, C.O. 202/36:49–50. 132–5. 140 Stephen, minute to Hope, 5 Jan. 1842; Stanley minute, 6 Jan. 1842. C.O. 209/ 19:18. For a similar view applied to Australia alone see W. P. Knaplund, ‘Sir James Stephen on a White Australia’. Victorian Historical Magazine 1923, 12(4):240–2. 141 Normanby to Hobson, 14 Aug. 1839. C.O. 209/4:252–3. 142 Russell to Archbishop of Canterbury, 6 July 1840, C.O. 406/1:118. Chapter 6 notes 1 B.P.D., 3rd Series. 1845, LXXXI, 766. 2 Elsdon Best, The Maori, Wellington. 1924. V. I. p. 396. 3 A.J.H.R., 1890. G1. White’s evidence, p. 12.

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4 W. Swainson. New Zealand and its Colonization. London 1859, p. 151; Selwyn to FitzRoy, Nov. 1845. C.O. 209/49:365. 5 A.J.H.R., 1890. G1. F. F. Manings evidence, p. 18. I am indebted to Mr E. T. Williams. Rhodes House, Oxford, for lending me a ms. of his own on Maori land tenure. 6 W. Williams to Clarke, 10 May 1845, C.O. 209/35:420–2. 7 Coates’s evidence. 1840 Report, p. 85; Coates to Stanley, 14 Aug. 1844, C.O. 209/32:315–9: Beecham to Stanley, 14 May 1845, noting that there was no need to add to the amount of evidence already available on this subject, 209/39: 589–94. 8 Clarke to Colonial Secretary, 1 June 1843, and enclosure, C.O. 209/35:153. 9 Normanby to Hobson, 14 Aug. 1839, C.O. 209/4:253, 265, 268–9. 10 Sweetman. Unsigned Treaty, pp. 60–65. 11 Russell, minute, 10 July 1840, C.O. 209/6:33; Russell to Gipps, 16 Jan. 1841, B.P.P. 1841. XVII, (311), pp. 78–79; Speech of His Excellency Sir George Gipps, in Council, on Thursday 9 July 1840 …, Sydney 1840, copy in 209/ 6:270–85. 12 Draft 1844 report, Hope Papers, file 461. Hope omitted this comment from the final report which he submitted to the 1844 committee. 13 B.P.D. 3rd Series. 1840, LV, 528, 532. 14 W. D. McIntyre and W. J. Gardner, eds., Speeches and Documents on New Zealand History, Oxford 1971, pp. 56–57. 15 Russell, minute to Stephen, 24 Dec. 1840, C.O. 209/8:442 (Russell’s emphasis); Russell to Hobson. 14 Feb. 1841, 406/2:36–37. 16 Russell to Hobson, 9 Dec. 1840, C.O. 209/8:499–500. 17 ibid.. 443. Stephen, minute to Vernon Smith. 28 Dec. 1840. 18 Russell to Somes, 29 June 1844, 1844 Report, app. p. 412; B.P.D. 3rd Series, 1845, LXXXI, 934–5. 19 Stephen, minute to Vernon Smith, 28 Dec. 1840, C.O. 209/8:445. 20 ibid., 247. Stephen, minute, 23 Oct. 1840. 21 Somes to Stanley. 24 Oct. 1842, enclosing W. Wakefield to N.Z. Co., 30 May, 3 June 1842. C.O. 209/18:250–6. 258–64. 22 ibid., 282–5, Hope to Somes, 7 Nov. 1842. 23 ibid., 317–34. Somes to Stanley, 11 Nov. 1842, and enclosed memorandum.

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34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

ibid., 417–9. Stephen, draft, 28 Dec. 1842. Hope to Somes, 10 Jan. 1843. 1844 Report, pp. 20–22. C.O. 209/4:537. Somes to Stanley. 24 Jan. 1843. C.O. 209/26:35–92. ibid., 117–20, Hope to Somes, 1 Feb. 1843. ibid., 280–303, Somes to Stanley, 15 Feb. 1843. ibid., 306, Hope to Somes, 1 Mar. 1843; see appendix 4, p. 256. 1844 Report, p. xxix. ibid., pp. xxii-iii. Stanley to FitzRoy, 13 Aug. 1844, C.O. 209/32:366–410. Stanley to Peel, 17 Dec. 1844, Derby Papers, 129/4 Peel correspondence (Stanley’s emphasis). News of the report contributed to Maori unrest (Clarke to FitzRoy, confidential, 24 Feb. 1845, 209/33:300–3). Hope, minute to Stanley, 22 Nov. 1844, C.O. 209/40:259. Stanley to FitzRoy, 30 Nov. 1844, C.O. 209/27:461. ibid., 462–3. Stanley to FitzRoy, 13 Aug. 1844, C.O. 209/32:366–410; Stanley to Grey, 27 June 1846, 406/4:177–8. B.P.D. 3rd Series, 1845, LXXXI. 693–5. ibid., 665–756, 761–846. 853–971. B.P.D., 3rd Series, 1845, LXXXII, 318–9. Stanley to Peel, 16 July 1845, Derby Papers 176/2, Letterbook, 11 Nov. 1844–27 June 1846, p. 236. Earl Grey to Grey, 23 Dec. 1846, C.O. 209/47:270–7. Grey to Earl Grey, 15 May 1848, C.O. 209/60:229–32. B.P.D., 3rd Series, 1848, XCVI, 349. Stanley to Grey, secret, 28 June 1845, C.O. 209/40:298–302. For this paragraph see McLintock, Crown Colony, pp. 209–13. B.P.D., 3rd Series, 1845, LXXXII, 857–8. 1840 Report, pp. vi-x. 1844 Report, app. p. 378. Stephen, minute to Hope, 9 Mar. 1843, C.O. 209/40:14. Stephen, minute to Hawes, 11 Dec. 1846, Grey Papers: New Zealand, 145/3 no. 39. For directly conflicting views of the property rights of the South Island Maoris see Stephen, minute to Hope, 31 July 1845, C.O. 209/30:70, and

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56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64

65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72

Stephen, minute to Lyttleton, 12 June 1846, 209/47:193. Stephen to Howick, Feb. 1845, Grey Papers: Stephen, 126/11. Coates to Davis, 22 June 1843, C.M.S. CN/L4:302. Shortland to Stanley, 20 Oct. 1843, C.O. 209/23:291–2. James Kent, Commentaries on American Law, 11th edition, Boston 1866, v. III, pp. 492–5. Earl Grey was greatly impressed by a passage from The Miscellaneous Works of Thomas Arnold, D.D., London 1845, pp. 156–7, which he quoted in his despatch to Grey, 23 Dec. 1846, C.O. 209/47:271–2. Stanley to FitzRoy, 13 Aug. 1844, C.O. 209/32:369–72. E. G. Wakefield to Rev. Charles Torlesse, undated [1844], B.M. Add. Ms. 35261, p. 71. Wakefield and Ward, Colonization, pp. 52–53, 271; Coates, Letters to… Inglis, pp. 16–18, C.O. 209/39:522–39. B.P.D., 3rd Series, 1845, LXXXI, 804. Marais, Colonization, pp. 199–200. Hope to Stanley, 5 and 8 May 1845, Hope Papers, file 469. Hobson to Sec. State, 20 Oct., 13 Nov. 1841, C.O. 209/10:46, 116–21. ibid., 143, Hobson to Wakefield, separate, 5 Sept. 1841. Shortland to Sec. State, 23 and 24 Sept. 1842, and enclosures, C.O. 209/ 16: 33–34, 67–69, 103–4; Spain to Shortland, private, 31 May 1843, 209/ 22:308–9; Clarke to Shortland, 28 Oct. 1843, 209/27:144. Stephen, minutes to Hope, 5 and 7 June 1843; Hope, minute to Stephen, 7 June 1843; Stanley, minute, n.d., C.O. 209/24:134–6. Coates to Stanley, 17 Oct. 1842, C.M.S. G/AC 1/3:540–51; Fitzroy to Stanley, 16 May 1843, C.O. 209/24:121–5. C.O. 209/14:202–3, 343–7; Treasury to Stephen, 17 Oct. 1842, 209/ 17:267–8; 209/21:265–71 and 209/35:79–80. Earl Grey to Grey, 23 Dec. 1846, C.O. 209/47:275–6. Grey to Earl Grey, 15 May 1848, C.O. 209/60:229. Aborigines Report, p. 78. C.O. 209/4:197, 215–6, 235, 328–9. Proclamation, 30 Jan. 1840, C.O. 209/6:45. Gipps’s abortive treaty also contained a monopoly right to purchase Maori land (Sweetman, Unsigned

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94 95 96 97

Treaty, pp. 60–65). Kent, Commentaries, v. III, pp. 485–7, 490–1; 1840 Report, p. vii. Normanby to Hobson, 14 Aug. 1839, C.O. 209/4:267–8, 279. C.O. 209/3:328. 1840 Report, p. ix, resolution 2; 1844 Report, p. xiii, resolution 12. Cf. McLintock, Crown Colony, p. 66; K. Sinclair, The Origins of the Maori Wars, p. 28. Russell, minute, 26 May 1841, C.O. 209/11:168–9. Hobson to Russell, 16 Dec. 1841, enclosing address, C.O. 209/10:257, 266. The Ordinances of the Legislative Council of New Zealand, p. 5. Stanley to FitzRoy, 30 Nov. 1844, C.O. 209/27:462–3. Hope, draft of instructions to Grey, 10 June 1845, C.O. 209/38:321–2. Gladstone to Grey, 18 Mar. 1846, C.O. 209/35:401. FitzRoy, memo. on the sale of Maori land, 14 Oct. 1844, C.O. 209/29:28; Wards, Shadow, p. 111; Grey to Stanley, 10 Dec. 1845, C.O. 209/38:129–30. Earl Grey to Grey, 23 Dec. 1846, C.O. 209/47:276. Ross, N.Z.J.H. article, pp. 151–2. Davis to Coleman, 5 Feb. 1840, subdated ‘8 Feb.’, quoted in Coleman, Memoir, pp. 247–8; Colenso, 24 Jan. 1840, C.M.S. CN/M11:715–6. ibid., Colenso; Brodie’s evidence, 1844 Report, p, 39. Shortland to Stanley, 18 Jan. 1845, enclosure, C.O. 209/41:572. Ross, N.Z.J.H. article, pp. 145–6. H. Williams to Hobson, 11 June 1840, C.O. 209/7:140. Bunbury to Hobson, 6 and 15 May 1840, C.O. 209/6:431–2, 440. Busby to Hope, 17 Jan., 24 Feb. 1845, C.O. 209/41:82–87, 97–101 (Busby’s emphasis). On the question of numbers, see also, Miller, New Zealand, pp. 26, 47, 53. Selwyn to FitzRoy, Nov. 1845, C.O. 209/49:349–51. Hobson to Gipps, 5 May 1840, C.O. 209/6:124; Symonds to Colonial Secretary, 12 May 1840, 209/7:127. Hobson to Sec. State, 13 Nov. 1841, C.O. 209/10:135–7; FitzRoy to Stanley, 19 Dec. 1844, 209/30:202; Hope to Ingestre, 7 Aug. 1845, 209/39:398. Russell to Hobson, 14 Feb. 1841, C.O. 406/2:36–37; New Zealand Government Gazette, 3 Nov. 1841; Busby to Stanley, 30 Apr. 1842, and enclosures,

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98 99 100

101 102 103

104 105 106 107 108 109 110

111

112 113 114 115 116 117

C.O. 209/15:105, 120, 126. The edict was subsequently withdrawn (Gazette, 26 Jan. 1842). Petition of 104 Kororareka residents, 15 Dec. 1841, C.O. 209/14:312–21. Kemp to Clarke, 10 Feb. 1843, Godfrey to Colonial Secretary, 16 Feb. 1843, C.O. 209/21:338–40, 348–52. Quoted in Ross, N.Z.J.H. article, p. 146. The original letters have not survived, but certified translations were printed in the Southern Cross on 30 Dec. 1843; cf. Grey to Stanley, 9 June 1846, C.O. 209/44:56–58. Stanley, minute, 20 Oct. 1843, C.O. 209/21:313. Ross, N.Z.J.H. article, pp. 145, 147. FitzRoy to Stanley, 15 Apr. 1844, C.O. 209/27:286–9; Clarke to FitzRoy, confidential, 9 Oct. 1844; FitzRoy to Stanley, 14 Oct. 1844, 209/29:9–13, 37–39. FitzRoy to Stanley, 16 May 1843, C.O. 209/24:125–8. ibid., 136, Stanley minute, n.d. ibid., 137–8, Elliott, minute, June 1843. ibid., 141–2, Stanley to FitzRoy, 26 June 1843. FitzRoy to Stanley, 15 Apr. 1844, and enclosure P, C.O. 209/27:286–90, 446–7. Commissioners to Stephen, 19 Nov. 1844, C.O. 209/40:248–58; Stanley to FitzRoy, 30 Nov. 1844, 209/27:463–4. FitzRoy to Stanley, 14 Oct. 1844, proclamation and Exec. Co. minutes enclosed, C.O. 209/29:9–13, 21–22, 33–35. The Executive Council gave its unanimous support. Stanley to Grey, 27 June, 14 Aug. 1845, B.P.P. 1846, XXX, (337) pp. 229, 241. The New Zealand Company strongly supported this; Ingestre to Stanley, 24 July 1845, C.O. 209/39:387. Grey to Stanley, 10 Dec. 1845, C.O. 209/38:129–30. Grey to Gladstone, 1 Dec. 1846, C.O. 209/46:449–53. Grey to Stanley, 9 June 1846, C.O. 209/44:56–68. ibid., 245–7, Grey to Gladstone, 21 June 1846 and 25 Nov., 18 Dec. 1846, 209/46:286–97, 490–505. Grey to Earl Grey, 15 May 1848, C.O. 209/60:229–32. C.O. 209/23:290 and 209/29:30.

252

References

118 FitzRoy to Stanley, 15 Apr. 1844, C.O. 209/27:286–7; Emigration Commissioners to Stephen, 19 Nov. 1844, 209/40:255–6; Whiteley, remarks on the Wairau affray, 20 July 1843, 1844 Report, pp. 181–2. 119 B.P.P. 1844, XXXIV, (328) pp. 778–9; Statement of the Total Revenues and Expenditure of the Colony of New Zealand, 22 May 1844. 120 Hobson to Russell, 15 Dec. 1841, C.O. 209/10:234–8. Stanley agreed that the two roles should be separate (Stanley to Hobson, 10 June 1842, ibid.), but nothing was done until it was too late to remove the unfavourable impression (Shortland to Sec. State, 30 Oct. 1843, 209/23:289, and Clarke to Colonial Secretary, 30 Mar. 1846, 209/44:85). 121 Hobson to Stanley, 10 May 1842, enclosing an Auckland petition requesting a lowering of the price of land, C.O. 209/15:18–28. There were others. 122 Selwyn to Fitzroy, Nov. 1845, C.O. 209/49:351. 123 Fuller, confidential minute, 12 May 1874, p. 8, C.O. 881/4, no. 39. 124 C.O. telegraph to Robinson, secret, 10 Aug. 1874, C.O. 537/115:27. 125 Earl Grey to Grey, no. 97, 27 Dec. 1848, C.O. 209/60:73. Chapter 7 notes 1 2 3 4

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Russell to Hobson, 9 Dec. 1840, C.O. 209/8:480. Vernon Smith, minute, 5 Nov. 1840, C.O. 380/122:151. Wakefield and Ward, Colonization, pp. 172–3, 176. Vernon Smith, minute, 5 Nov. 1840, and additional para. 63, draft Royal Instructions, C.O. 380/122:150–1. He noted that his views agreed with those in Grey’s report. Grey to Russell, 4 June 1840, enclosing report, C.O. 201/304:245–63. Wakefield and Ward, Colonization, pp. 29, 278–9. McLintock, Crown Colony, pp. 287, 328, 345. W. P. Knaplund, Sir James Stephen and the Colonial System, 1813–1847, Madison, 1953, p. 23. But see P. Hasluck, Black Australians, pp. 136–7. Normanby to Hobson, 14 Aug. 1839, C.O. 209/4:269–70. Wards, Shadow, p. 47. Cf. ibid., pp. 24, 28, 48. Wards argues that the idealism stopped in January 1839, with the first draft of Hobson’s instructions. Vernon Smith, minute, 5 Nov. 1840, C.O. 380/122:150–1.

253

References

13 14 15 16

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

30 31

Russell to Hobson, 9 Dec. 1840, C.O. 209/8:480, 486–7. ibid. ibid., 456, Russell to Hobson, 28 Jan. 1841. ibid., 192, Stephen, minute to Vernon Smith, 28 Oct. 1840. The same applied to the Australian Aborigines; see Stephen, minutes, 27 July 1841 and 25 Nov. 1842, C.O. 201/306:31 and 201/320:422, where he described the system of an official Protectorate as ‘a mere illusion’. Russell to Hobson, 9 Dec. 1840, C.O. 209/8:489–90. ibid., 491. Stephen, minute to Hope, 21 Sept. 1841, C.O. 201/309:59; Hasluck, Black Australians, pp. 128–9. Wards, Shadow, pp. 59, 81–82, 109. Hobson to Labouchere, 1 Aug. 1839; Normanby to Hobson, additional instructions, 15 Aug. 1839, C.O. 209/4:153–4, 161. ibid., 249–50, Stephen, minute to Vernon Smith, 21 Sept. 1839. Vernon Smith thought this hard on Hobson. ibid., 251, 187–8, 609–15, Russell, minutes 17 and 23 Sept. 1839; Russell to Gipps, 26 Sept. and 4 Dec. 1839. Hobson to Gipps, 15 June 1840; Russell to Hobson, 25 Dec. 1840, C.O. 209/6: 190–6. Hobson to Shortland, 24 July 1840, quoted in Wards, Shadow, p. 54. Hobson to Normanby, 20 Feb. 1840, C.O. 209/7:30. Wards. Shadow, pp. 54–55; cf. Ward, Show of Justice, pp. 53–55. Stanley to Hobson, 5 Oct. 1842, C.O. 209/14:346–8; Ward, Show of Justice, pp. 58–63. For this and following paragraph see Shortland to Stanley, 24 Sept. 1842, enclosing Clarke to Hobson, 15 June 1842, Clarke to Col. Sec, 30 June 1842, and enclosures; Shortland to Hobson, 5 Aug. 1842, C.O. 209/16:100–6, 119–22, 129–41; Wards, Shadow, pp. 60–62; Wake, H.S.A.N.Z. article, pp. 348–50. Hope to Stanley, minutes, 14 May 1843, C.O. 209/16:107. Shortland to Sec. State, 31 Dec. 1842, 22 Apr. 1843, and enclosures, C.O. 209/16:446–54, 460–509 and 209/20:341–63; Wards, Shadow, pp. 64–68; Wake, H.S.A.N.Z. article, pp. 350–1.

254

References

32 Stephen, minutes to Hope, 19 May and 28 Dec. 1843, C.O. 209/16:455 and 209/22:253–4. 33 Stanley to FitzRoy, 10 Feb. 1844, C.O. 209/22:261. 34 FitzRoy to Stanley, 16 May 1843, C.O. 209/24:130–4, 135. 35 ibid., 144, Stanley to FitzRoy, 26 June 1843; Wards, Shadow, p. 73. 36 Stanley, minute, n.d. [May 1843], C.O. 209/24:136. 37 Stanley to FitzRoy, 30 Nov. 1844, C.O. 209/27:460. 38 Clarke to Hobson, n.d. [early 1841], C.O. 201/308:63–91. 39 Clarke to Hobson, 18 June 1842, C.O. 209/16:109–18. The Ordinance was amended after two years to meet Clarke’s criticism (Ordinances, pp. 116, 155, 233). 40 Clarke to Colonial Secretary, 30 June 1843, C.O. 209/23:325–9. 41 ibid., 300, Clarke to Colonial Secretary, 31 July 1843 and 1 June 1843, enclosure, C.O. 209/35:153–4. Very similar views on the inapplicability of English law to the Australian Aborigines were expressed by three government officers, Hutt, Robinson and La Trobe. Hutt to Russell, extract, 20 Jan. 1842, 18/33:71, and Hasluck, Black Australians, p. 71; Robinson to La Trobe, Dec. 1844, 201/356:518–20; La Trobe to Colonial Secretary, 18 June 1846, 201/367: 339–41. La Trobe suggested a special legal code for these, ‘the more degraded divisions of the human race …’. 42 Shortland to Colonial Office, 30 Oct. 1843, C.O. 209/23:285–96. 43 FitzRoy to Stanley, 11 Jan. 1844, enclosing address, C.O. 209/27:19–20, 41–42. 44 FitzRoy to Auckland deputation, 30 Dec. 1843, C.O. 209/28:89. 45 ibid., 23, 27–28, 31, FitzRoy to Stanley, 25 May 1844. Stanley approved of his ‘language’ to the chiefs; Stanley to FitzRoy, 30 Nov. 1844, C.O. 209/ 27:460. 46 FitzRoy to Stanley, 4 June 1844, enclosing instructions, C.O. 209/28:59–66. 47 ibid., 60, 74–75, Stephen, Hope, Stanley minutes, 10–12 Apr. 1845; Stanley to Grey, 10 Aug. 1845. 48 Ordinances, pp. 158–60. 49 Stanley to Grey, 13 Aug. 1845, C.O. 209/29:210–16; Ward, Show of Justice, pp. 66–71. 50 Somes to Stanley, 27 Jan. and 14 Feb. 1843, C.O. 209/26:156–7, 269–72.

255

References

51 52 53 54

55 56 57 58 59

60 61 62 63 64 65

66

67

For another change of opinion by the company on the question of British law and the Maoris see Report of a Special Committee, 1 Apr. 1846, 209/48:168. Guyton, Revans, Ridgeway, & other Wellington residents, petition to FitzRoy, n.d. [Jan. 1844], C.O. 209/28:91–92. 1844 Report, pp. x-xi. Stanley to FitzRoy, 13 Aug. 1844, C.O. 209/32:406–10; Hope, draft report, 1844 Report, p. xxix. Spain to FitzRoy, private and confidential, 12 Apr. 1844, summarizing Hadfield’s verbal opinion, alluded to in Hadfield to Spain, 27 Mar. 1844, C.O. 209/30:215–6, 220. ibid., 226–30, Spain to FitzRoy, confidential, 2 July 1844. Richmond to FitzRoy, 24 Dec. 1844, 6 Jan. and 6 Feb. 1845, C.O. 209/33: 228–35, 248–51, 292–6. ibid., 246–7, Clarke to Colonial Secretary, 1 Jan. 1845. S. M. D. Martin to Hope, 30 June 1845, C.O. 209/41:463; Ward, Show of Justice, pp. 62, 60–70. Stanley to Grey, instructions, 13 June 1845, C.O. 406/4:167; Stanley to Peel, 16 July 1845, Derby papers 176/2, Letterbook 11 Nov. 1844–27 June 1846, p. 236. ibid., 168–9; Stanley to Grey, 10 Aug. 1845, ibid., 212–3. Hope, draft instructions, 19 May 1845, C.O. 209/38:284. Hope, minute to Stanley, 30 Mar. 1845, C.O. 209/41:278. Selwyn to FitzRoy, Nov. 1845, C.O. 209/49:317; McLintock, Crown Colony, pp. 168, 393–4. Clarke to Colonial Secretary, 1 July 1845, C.O. 209/35:69–73, 83–86. Clarke’s emphasis. ibid., 47, Stephen, minute to Lyttleton, 26 Feb. 1846. See also FitzRoy to Stanley, 10 Nov. 1845, and Stanley’s marginal comment, C.O. 209/36:420. Stephen made a similar reference to racial feeling between whites and blacks in Australia; Stephen, minute to Hope, 22 Sept. 1841, 201/309:63. Grey to Earl Grey, 15 Dec. 1847, C.O. 209/55:116–7. For summaries of Grey’s Maori policy see McLintock, Crown Colony, pp. 204–9, 392–9; J. Rutherford, Sir George Grey, K.C.B. 1812–1898, pp. 204–33. Despite Clarke’s opinion; see Clarke to Coates, extract, 9 June 1841, C.O.

256

References

68 69

70

71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80

81 82 83

209/17:317–8. Clarke to Colonial Secretary, 30 Mar. 1846, C.O. 209/44:93; Wake, H.S.A.N.Z. article, pp. 354–5. E. J. B. Foxcroft, ‘The New South Wales Aborigines’ Protectorate, Port Phillip District, 1838–50’, H.S.A.N.Z. 1940–41, 1 (2 & 3):76, 157; C. D. Rowley, The Destruction of Aboriginal Society. Aboriginal Policy and Practice, v. 1, Canberra 1970, passim; for Western Australia see Hasluck, Black Australians, passim; for Clarke and the New Zealand Protectorate see Wake, H.S.A.N.Z. article. Russell to Hobson, 9 Dec. 1840, 28 Jan. 1841, C.O. 209/8:455–6, 485–8. The same financial provision was made for the Aborigines in New South Wales; Russell to Gipps, 25 Aug. 1840, 202/43:15. McLintock, Crown Colony, p. 177, n. 2. Clarke to Hobson, 18 June 1842, and to Shortland, 31 Oct. 1843, C.O. 209/ 16: 117 and 209/27:232–4. Stanley to Hobson, 10 June 1842, C.O. 209/10:237–8; Treasury minute, 10 Mar. 1843, 209/15:184; Selwyn to FitzRoy, Nov. 1845, 209/49:339–40. Shortland to Secretary of State, 12 June 1843; Stanley to FitzRoy, 11 Apr. 1844, C.O. 209/21:197–9, 205–7. Stanley to FitzRoy, 14 Sept. 1843, 1844 Report, pp. 253–4. Normanby to Hobson, 14 Aug. 1839; Russell to Hobson, 9 Dec. 1840, C.O. 209/4:269–70 and 209/8:482–4, 488. Clarke to Shortland, 31 Oct. 1843, and enclosures, C.O. 209/27:234–44. Ordinances, pp. 140–4. Selwyn to FitzRoy, Nov. 1845, C.O. 209/49:338–43, 370–5. For examples of petitions which included the Protectorate Department among their grievances see Shortland to Sec. State, 2 Dec. 1843, and enclosure, C.O. 209/24:5–20, 30; Wellington residents to FitzRoy, Jan. 1844, 209/ 28:92; FitzRoy to Stanley, 21 Feb. 1845, and enclosure, 209/33:48–59. Stephen and Vernon Smith, minutes, 28 Oct. 1841, C.O. 209/8:192. Clarke to Hobson, n.d. [early 1841], and 18 June 1842, C.O. 201/308:90 and 209/16:110–11. McLintock, Crown Colony, pp. 178–81. Grey cited most of these points as reasons for abolishing the Protectorate Department in 1846; Grey to Stanley,

257

References

84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91

92

93 94 95

10 May 1846, C.O. 209/43:137–44. Hobson to Secretary of State, 26 May 1841, C.O. 209/9:110–17. Stephen, minute to Vernon Smith, 2 Apr. 1841; Russell, minute, 3 Apr. 1841, C.O. 209/11:63. McLintock, Crown Colony, pp. 173, 191. FitzRoy, Remarks, p. 23; C.O. 209/49:443–76. Clarke to Hobson, n.d. [early 1841], C.O. 201/308:63–91. Quoted, Wards, Shadow, p. 49. Clarke to Hobson, n.d. [Sept. 1841?], C.O. 209/10:125–32. Hobson to Secretary of State, 15 Dec. 1841, enclosing Clarke to Colonial Secretary, 30 Sept. 1841; Stephen, minute to Hope, 2 June 1842, C.O. 209/ 10: 230–46. Numerous references may be found on the general state of race relations and the following are only a selection. Clarke to Coates, 9 June 1841, C.O. 209/17: 317–8; Coates to Colonial Secretary, 18 June 1842, 209/16:109–18; Clarke, report, 31 July 1844, 209/30:86–109; Clarke, report, 1 Jan. 1845, 209/33: 236–47; Spain to Shortland, 19 Nov. 1843, 209/23:141–3; FitzRoy to Stanley, 15 Apr. 1844, 209/27:262–4; FitzRoy to Stanley, confidential C, 19 Oct. 1844, 209/29:101–10. Clarke to Colonial Secretary, 4 Jan. 1843; Clarke to Shortland, 30 June 1843, C.O. 209/21:311–5 and 209/23:298–300. FitzRoy, Remarks, p. 60, C.O. 209/49:472. Clarke to Colonial Secretary, 30 Mar. 1846, C.O. 209/44:94; E. G. Wakefield to Gladstone, 21 Jan. 1846, 209/50:438; Selwyn to FitzRoy, Nov. 1845, and Martin to FitzRoy, 17 Jan. 1846, 209/49:331–75, 392. Chapter 8 notes

1 Davidson thesis, p. 215. 2 Busby to Hope, 24 Feb. 1845, C.O. 209/41:97–98. 3 Report of a Special Committee of the New Zealand Company, 1 Apr. 1846, C.O. 209/48:156. 4 McLintock, Crown Colony, p. 63. 5 Sinclair, Origins, p. 28. 6 W. H. Oliver, The Story of New Zealand, London, 1960, p. 51.

258

References

7 8 9 10 11

Wakefield and Ward, Colonization, appendix, p. 400. Clarke to Colonial Secretary, 30 Mar. 1846, C.O. 209/44:83–97. B.P.D. 3rd Series, 1845, LXXXI, 698. McLintock, Crown Colony, p. 149. Buller to Stanley, confidential, 26 Apr. 1845, C.O. 209/39:297; Buller, B.P.D. 3rd Series, 1845, LXXXI, 680, 690. 12 E. G. Wakefield to Gladstone, 21 Jan. 1846, C.O. 209/50:442–3. 13 McLintock, Crown Colony, p. 63; cf. Wards, Shadow, p. 28. 14 Peel to Hope, private, 19 Feb. 1848, Hope Papers, file 438. Appendix 1(a) notes 1 These figures are taken from Davidson thesis, appendix VI(b), p. 394, and apply only to N.S.W. The remainder of my figures for flax and the other items differ from Davidson’s to a greater or lesser extent because, whereas he used the N.S.W. Blue Books to obtain figures for N.S.W. alone, I have used the P.R.O. Customs 6 series giving combined figures for N.S.W. and Tasmania. There were other, inexplicable, discrepancies between the two sources however. 2 Trade Return for 1 Jan.–8 Dec. 1831, C.O. 209/1:94. Appendix 1(b) notes 1 Collector and Comptroller of Customs, statement on N.Z. trade for 1 Jan.-14 Aug. 1830, C.O. 209/1:24–26. Exports to N.Z. were £9,592. 2 ibid., 94; Trade Return for 1 Jan.–8 Dec. 1831. Exports to N.Z. were £30,760. N.B. The figures given in this appendix differ, in places quite markedly, from those provided from the N.S.W. statistical registers by Tapp, Early New Zealand, appendix IX, p. 178. Appendix 2 notes 1 Bryan Gandevia and K. Bryn Thomas, ‘Dr. Francis Workman, Emigrant, and the history of taking the cure for consumption in the Australian colonies’, Med. J. Aust., 1959, 1:1. 2 Bryan Gandevia and F. M. Forster, ‘Fecundity in early New South Wales: an

259

References

evaluation of Australian and Californian experience’, Bull. N.Y. Acad. Med., 1974, 50:1081. Appendix 3(a) notes 1 Little is known about the details of the company, but see McLintock, Crown Colony, pp. 16–17. 2 Marais, Colonization, p. 40, states that few of the committee appear on the N.Z. Company of 1839 and that some of the committee’s most important members dropped out. While it is true that only five of seventeen members joined the company, they were five of the most influential and active members of the association’s committee. See also Wakefield’s evidence, 1840 Report, p. 10.

260

Abbreviations

A.J.H.R. A.T.L. B.P.D. B.P.P. C.H.B.E. C.S./ N.S.W. D.N.B. G/N.S.W. G/N.Z. H.R.N.Z. H.S.A.N.Z. J.M.H. J.P.S. N.Z.A.L N.Z.A.M. N.Z.J.H. P.R.O.

Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives (of New Zealand) Alexander Turnbull Library (Wellington, New Zealand) British Parliamentary Debates British Parliamentary Papers Cambridge History of the British Empire Archives of the Colonial Secretary of New South Wales Dictionary of National Biography Archives of the Governor of New South Wales Archives of the Governor of New Zealand Historical Records of New Zealand Historical Studies Australia and New Zealand Journal of Modern History Journal of the Polynesian Society New Zealand Association Letterbook New Zealand Association Minutebook New Zealand Journal of History Public Record Office.

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273

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Aborigines: House of Commons Committee and Report 1837, 91–93, 97, 100, 102–3, 132, 146, 149, 153–4, 165, 194, 216, 231; Aborigines Protection Society, 93–4, 165; see also Grey, George, report on Aborigines. Admiralty, provision of warships for N.Z., 59–60, 65, 69, 73, 93, 124–5, 129, 152, 168 Alligator, H.M.S., 67, 69, 71, 86, 91 Annexation, 11–14, 50, 52, 55, 57, 73–77, 80, 133, 149–51, 153–6, 159, 162, 165, 167, 170–1, 175, 180, 196, 211, 214, 231, 234, 239, 243; see also Sovereignty Ashwell, Benjamin Yates, 41 Assimilation (amalgamation), 14, 49, 147, 211–16, 222–3, 226–31, 233, 237, 242–5 Baker, Charles, 35, 41, 82–83 Baring, Francis Thornhill, 95–96, 97, 99, 119 Bay of Islands: European settlement in the 1830s, 19–22, 25–30, 34–35; Maori population of, 37–39, 44–45 Bedchamber crisis, 134 Beecham, Rev. John, 92, 167 Bourke, Richard, Governor of N.S.W., 34, 85; and Busby’s appointment, 60, 62–69, 71; and foreign power interest, 76–78, 169; and reports on N.Z., 86–89, 106 British Resident, appointment of, 49–50, 54, 58, 61–64, 74, 77, 92, 101, 115, 166, 168–9; see also Busby Brown, Rev. Alfred Nesbitt, 27, 40, 160 274

Index

Browne, Gordon, 22–23, 25, 29, 48–49, 61 Buller, Charles, 186, 244 Bunbury, Major Thomas, 28, 159–61, 199, 200 Busby, James: instructions to, 66, 86; as British Resident, 20, 26–27, 30, 34, 64–71, 73, 77–79, 81, 83–85, 91, 103, 112, 121, 124–5, 131, 135, 145, 147, 158, 166, 218; 1837 report on N.Z., 84, 87–89, 106–9, 111, 115, 123; views on annexation etc., 167, 176–7, 179, 200–201, 208, 239, 241, 244; see also British Resident Buxton, Thomas Fowell, 91–92, 95, 98, 131, 165 Cattle Trespass Ordinance, 222–3 Chapman, Thomas, 21, 26, 29, 39, 83 Charter: Busby’s suggestion of, 88, 108, 123; offer to N.Z. Association, 14, 104, 106–10, 113–18, 120–2, 130, 132, 137–8, 143, 168; Stephen’s views on, 105–6, 117, 127, 129, 138, 145, 148, 153; application by N.Z. Colonization Association for, 137–8, 142–4 Church Missionary Society, establishment and expansion in N.Z., 21–22, 26, 30–33, 46–47; land purchases by, 33–35, 175; and foreign power interest, 80–81; missionaries as peacemakers, 30–31, 39, 45–47; as healers, 45–47; views on British intervention, 81–85; conversions, 31, 33, 46–48, 51; as a pressure group in England, 57–58, 90–92, 94–95, 97–98, 101–2, 107–8, 111–15, 118–24, 127, 130, 132–3, 136, 144–7, 167, 189, 192, 234 Clarke, George: as missionary, 26, 31, 33, 35, 39–40, 44, 82–83, 111, 124; as Chief Protector of Aborigines, 167, 178, 191, 202, 208, 219–20, 222–3, 227–9, 231–7, 241, 243–4 Clendon, James Reddy, 22, 27, 29, 33, 67, 80 Coates, Dandeson, 62, 82–85, 90–92, 95, 98–99, 107–8, 111–15, 118–19, 121–5, 132–3, 136, 141, 144–7, 152, 154, 167, 170 Colenso, William, 159, 198 Colonial Office, and making of British policy towards N.Z., 11–14, 37, 50–51, 54–55, 57–62, 64–65, 68–70, 72–74, 77–80, 82, 86–93, 96–98, 100–1, 104n, 105–10, 112–16, 118–26, 128–39, 141–4, 147–9n, 151–9, 161, 163,

275

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165–70, 175–6, 178, 181–200, 202–3, 205–9, 214, 216–18, 220–1, 224–6, 228, 230–2, 234, 236, 238–44, 256 Colonization, and systematic colonizers, 12–14, 58–59, 83–85, 93–94, 99, 101–3, 109, 112, 116–17, 119–20, 123–4, 127–30, 132–3, 135–46, 149, 154–7, 159, 166, 170, 175, 190–1, 195–7, 206–9, 225, 229, 234, 237–42, 244 Consular instructions: first draft, 127–9, 144–5, 155, 165–6, 179, 194; second draft, 148–50, 154–5, 165–6, 179, 164; for final draft see Normanby, instructions to Hobson Conversion, of Maoris to Christianity, 31, 33, 146, 148, 151 Cook, Captain James, 36–37, 51–52, 94, 156–7, 162 Crown Colony, establishment of, 11–13, 129, 148–51, 161–2 Darling, Ralph, Governor of N.S.W., 22, 49–50, 52, 58, 61–66, 75–76, 85–86, 168–9 Davis, Richard, 21, 26, 31, 34, 37, 40–41, 43n, 44, 78, 82–83, 198 Declaration of Independence, 68, 72, 78, 156, 164 Dillon, Peter, 77 Durham, John George Lambton, 1st Earl, 14, 99, 101, 105–6, 109–10, 113–14, 116, 118, 123, 130, 134, 136–7, 142, 155 Elizabeth affair, 49–50, 58, 61–63, 74, 91 Enderby, Charles, 99, 101 Ethnocentrism, 211–13, 230, 245; see also Racial equality European population in N.Z., 21–23, 25–30, 35–36, 49; increase as reason for British intervention, 101, 107, 110, 126–7, 130, 149, 153–4, 156, 165, 200, 238; see also Maori, impact of European invasion on European traders, 23, 30, 48–49, 61–62 Evans, Dr Samuel, 95, 120–1, 145 Fairburn, William, 32, 175 Fiji, cession of, 207–8 First Colony of N.Z., 142, 145 FitzRoy, Captain Robert, Governor of N.Z., 119, 162–3, 178, 185–6, 191–2, 197, 202–5, 208–9, 217–18, 221–6, 228, 232–3, 235–7, 241, 244 Flag, adopted by northern tribes, 68, 156

276

Index

Flax trade, 20–21, 23–24, 29, 48, 57, 168 Foreign jurisdiction, 54, 70, 86, 92–93, 115, 155–6; see also Statutes Foreign power interest in N.Z., 12, 60, 62, 74–81, 87–88, 91, 94–96, 100, 119, 126, 128n, 130, 147–8, 152, 169–70; see also Bourke Ford, Samuel, 41, 45, 83 Forsaith, Edmund, 192, 219 Gairdner, Gordon, 70–71, 78, 107, 121–3, 135, 211 Gipps, Sir George, Governor of N.S.W., 104n, 125, 135, 151, 158–60, 179–80, 194, 217 Girls’ War, 22, 31, 37–38 Gladstone, William Ewart, 187, 197, 229 Glenelg, Charles Grant, 1st Baron, Secretary of State for Colonies, 14, 58, 69–72, 78–79, 84, 91–93, 96–135, 138, 142–8, 154–5, 165–6, 196 Goderich, Frederick John Robinson, Viscount, 60–63 Gold Coast, 70 Granville, Granville Leveson-Gower, 1st Earl, 77, 79 Grey, Sir George, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Colonies, 93, 95, 98, 104n, 112, 114–15, 128, 132, 134, 146, 165 Grey, George, Governor of N.Z., 187, 191, 193, 197, 203–5, 209, 211, 215, 218, 224, 225n, 228–30, 237, 241–3; report on Aborigines, 212, 216, 226 Grey, Henry George, 3rd Earl (earlier Lord Howick), 58, 95–97, 99, 101, 104–6, 109, 113–14, 116–17, 120–2, 131, 134, 178n, 185, 187–8, 190, 193, 197, 199–200, 209, 213, 240–1 Guard, John, 24–25, 69 Hadfield, Rev. Octavius, 32, 227 Harriet affair, 69 Hay, Robert, 60–61, 64, 72, 75, 91, 169 Heke, Hone, 204, 225, 227–8, 231, 236, 242 Herald, H.M.S., 158, 161 Hobson, Captain William, Governor of N.Z., 11, 14, 28, 59, 79, 142; report on N.Z., 86–87, 89, 106, 119, 122–4, 126, 128–9, 132–3, 155, 163, 194; appointment and mission to N.Z., 126, 128, 145, 148, 150–8, 164–70;

277

Index

negotiations with Maoris, 158–64, 178–81, 187, 194–5, 197–9, 207, 239–42; as Governor, 162, 176, 191, 201, 214–22, 232, 234–5, 237, 257; see also Normanby, instructions to Hobson Hokianga, 19–20, 22–23, 27, 34, 124, 158–9, 163, 179, 198 Hongi Hika, 24, 37–38 Hope, George William, 180, 185, 188, 190, 197, 199, 224, 228, 245 Howick, Lord, see Grey, Henry George, 3rd Earl Humanitarianism, 12–15, 56–59, 72, 93–94, 117, 132–3, 145–7, 165, 170–1, 211, 214, 227, 238–9, 244–5 Hutt Valley, 191–2, 227 Hutt, William, 137–9, 141, 144, 148 Impartial protection, policy of, 13–14, 55–56, 58–59, 61, 63–64, 68, 72, 88, 103, 109–10, 118, 124, 127–8, 147, 165–8, 170–1, 175–6, 192, 199–200, 206, 212–14, 226, 238–9, 241–3, 245; in practice, 69, 236, 243–4 Infanticide, 42 Kemp, Henry Tracy, 201 Kendall, Thomas, 52, 78 Kororareka, 21–22, 25, 27, 158, 201, 214; Association, 19–20 La Favourite, 76–77 Labouchere, Henry, 134, 137–9, 141, 144–6, 148, 151–5, 187 Land: for land claims investigation see Spain: land guarantee in Treaty of Waitangi, 11, 14, 175–6, 178–93, 207–9, 240–4; land ownership and European theories on ‘waste’ land etc., 56, 176–90, 192n, 193, 206–7; land ownership and Maori practice, 176–8, 186–9, 193; land purchase by Europeans, 19, 33–35, 175; Land Purchase Ordinance, 1845, 203 Laplace, Captain, 76–77 Law, application of British law to Maoris in theory, 11, 14, 210, 213–17, 226, 228–31; in practice, 217–26, 230, 233, 236–7, 242–4; see also Native Exemption Ordinance; Waitangi, treaty of Letters Patent, 1839, 151–2:

278

Index

1841 (otherwise known as the ‘Charter’), 162, 180, 184 Lindesay, Patrick, Acting Governor of N.S.W., 76–77 Lyall, George, 136, 195, 252–3 McDonnell, Thomas, 22, 34, 61, 66, 75, 79, 121, 124 Macquarie, Lachlan, Governor of N.S.W., 52, 57 Mair, Gilbert, 22, 27, 29, 33, 35, 54, 67 Maketu, trial of, 218–19 Maori: European assumptions about, 210–13; health, 39–44; impact of European invasion on, 35–37, 43–50, 130, 165, 236, 238; population, 36–37, 39–40, 42–45, 88, 111, 115, 130; warfare, 37–39; see also Assimilation; Bay of Islands; Hobson; Land; Law Marsden, Samuel, 31, 39, 61–62, 82, 98 Martin, Sir William, Chief Justice, 187, 241 Mathews, Joseph, 31 Maunsell, Robert, 26–27, 35, 83–84, 160 Melbourne, William Lamb, 3rd Viscount, 94–101, 103–6, 109–10, 120, 131, 134 Moral suasion, 83, 122, 210, 217–18, 221, 227; see also Troops Musket trade, 21, 37–38 Natal, 70, 135 Native Exemption Ordinance, 224–5, 233 Native Trust, 223, 233 Nelson, 191, 226, 233 New South Wales, 11, 19–20, 23, 26, 49, 52, 54, 58, 62–63, 65–67, 75–76, 78, 81–82, 84, 86–87, 99, 104n, 112, 125, 130, 151–2, 158, 161, 168 New Zealand Association, 13–14, 58, 80, 136–8, 166, 168–9, 190, 195, 210, 212, 225; foundation of, 94; missionary views on, 82–5; as a pressure group, 90, 94–125, 130–3, 143, 145 New Zealand Company (and New Zealand Land Company), 11–12, 14, 23, 34, 90, 93–94, 121, 132, 136, 141–2, 144–5, 148, 152, 155, 159–61, 167, 169,

279

Index

176, 197, 217, 233–4, 236, 244, 256–8; and question of Maori land ownership, 181–92, 201, 207–9, 240; and pre-emption, 195–6, 201; and application of law to Maoris, 225–7 New Zealand Company of 1825, 21–22, 99, 116, 136, 145, 167, 195 New Zealand Society for Christian Civilization, 136 Nopera Panakareao, 46, 235 Normanby, Constantine Henry Phipps, 1st Marquis, 11, 58, 129, 134–43, 145, 147–8, 151–2, 155, 167, 187; instructions to Hobson, 153–7, 164–7, 170, 178, 181–3, 191–2, 217, 194–6, 199, 213–14, 216, 231–2, 236, 239–40 Palmerston, Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount, 79, 125 Peel, Sir Robert, 185, 245 Polack, Joel Samuel, 20, 23, 67 Pomare, 22, 38, 67, 217 Pompallier, Jean Baptiste François, Bishop, 81, 158 Port Nicholson, 159–61, 182, 191–2, 225, 234 Preece, James, 32 Pre-emption, 11, 14, 129, 139–40, 142, 149, 175, 178, 193–206, 208–9, 240–2, 244; see also Waitangi, treaty of Proclamations of 21 May 1840, 160–2 Protectorate of Aborigines, 202, 205, 215–16, 219, 222–3, 231–5 Protection of British subjects, 53–56, 58–60, 62–63, 66, 68–69, 71–72, 81–82, 86, 166–7, 170, 200, 236 Race relations, 15, 20, 28, 35–36, 46–50, 144, 175, 211, 229–31, 233, 235–6, 242, 245 Racial equality, 15, 136, 147, 170, 211–14, 226–7, 230, 236, 242, 245 Te Rangihaeata, 225 Te Rauparaha, 37–38, 192n, 225 Richmond, Mathew, 224, 227 Russell, Lord John, 58, 105, 131, 134–5, 156, 157n, 161, 164, 179–82, 188, 190–1, 197, 210, 214–17, 231–4, 240, 242; agreement with N.Z. Company, 181–3, 256–8 Selwyn, George Augustus, Bishop, 187, 200, 208, 233, 241, 244 Shortland, Willoughby, 159–60, 167, 178, 189, 191, 205, 214, 217–23, 234, 241

280

Index

Smith, Robert Vernon, 80, 210–12, 214–15, 230, 233, 242 Somes, Joseph, 124, 141, 184 South Island, 24–25, 27–28, 30, 38, 52, 83, 156–7, 159–61, 184–5, 187 Sovereignty, and cession of, 11, 14, 51, 53, 56–60, 62–63, 68–70, 72–73, 80, 83, 86–89, 92, 94–96, 98, 107, 111–12, 126, 128–9, 136, 138, 142–6, 148n, 149, 150–1, 153–7, 159–67, 178–9, 181, 190, 194, 211, 219–21, 239–40, 244 Spain, William, 182–4, 191–2, 225, 227, 229, 233, 236, 257 Stack, James, 42, 160 Stanley, Edward George Geoffrey Smith, Lord Stanley of Bickerstaffe, 162–3, 181, 183–91, 197, 199, 202–3, 219, 221–2, 224, 226, 228, 230, 232, 235, 240, 242, 257 Statutes, 1817, 1823, 1828, 13, 52–53, 57, 59–60, 65, 73, 156–7, 168; see also Foreign jurisdiction Stephen, James, 11, 26, 28, 54–55, 58, 60–61, 71–72, 79–80, 82, 90–91, 93, 96–97, 104n, 105–7, 112–13, 115, 117–19, 121–2, 126–33, 135, 137–8, 143, 145–56, 161–2, 165–70, 178, 180–1, 183, 188, 192, 194, 213–17, 220–1, 224, 229, 233–5, 242, 244, 256–7; see also Charter; Colonial Office Stewart Island, 24–25, 30, 160–1 Swainson, William, 162–3, 220, 231, 241 Symonds, William Cornwallis, 160, 201 Tauranga, feuds, 219–20 Taylor, Rev. Richard, 84, 175 Te Aro pa, 192 Thierry, Charles Phillip Hippolytus, Baron de, 68, 78–79, 81, 94, 130 Timber trade, 20–21, 29, 48, 57, 168 Torrens, Colonel Robert, 25, 75, 136 Tory, 124, 141–3, 145, 147–8, 155, 195 Trade, with N.S.W. etc., 20, 23, 25–26, 28–29, 49, 57, 59–64, 67, 69, 72, 91, 95, 128, 147, 168–70 Treasury, 63, 151–2, 154, 193, 205, 232 Troops, provision and use of, 65–66, 69–71, 85, 88, 91, 217–24, 227–9, 233 Tuhawaiki, Hone, 161 Turner, Benjamin, 20, 27 Turner, Nathaniel, 30, 44, 85

281

Index

United Tribes of N.Z., 68, 86, 128, 158, 166 d’Urville, Dumont, 78 Victoria, Queen, 11, 162, 227 Wade, William, 22 Wairau affray, 225–7, 234, 236 Waitangi: 14, 67, 150; treaty of, 11–13, 15, 129, 158–64, 167, 178–209, 214, 216, 219–20, 228, 230–1, 234–7, 239–45, 258–9; see also Land guarantee; Pre-emption; Sovereignty Wakefield, Edward Gibbon. 12–14, 80, 90, 94–95, 98–101, 103, 113, 116, 118, 133, 136–40, 190, 195–6, 225, 237, 244 Wakefield, Colonel William, 23, 141, 160, 184, 257–8 Ward, Henry George, 96–97, 120–1 Webster, William, 29 Wesleyan Missionary Society: 22, 30–33, 51; as a pressure group, 85, 98, 102, 108, 145, 167 Whaling, 24–25, 27–28, 168 Wilder, George, 151 William IV, King, 55, 66, 68, 77, 96, 98 Williams, Henry, 21, 26–27, 31, 33, 35, 42, 62–63, 76–78, 83, 158, 160, 198–9 Williams, William, 31–32, 34, 42, 75–76, 83–84, 160 Woon, William, 49, 85 Yate, William, 21, 28–29, 31–32, 42, 46, 48, 62, 75–77 Zebra, H. M.S., 76–77

282

Copyright

First e-book edition published in 2013 by Bridget Williams Books Limited, P O Box 12 474, Wellington, New Zealand, www.bwb.co.nz, [email protected] First published in print in 1977 by Auckland University Press and Oxford University Press. © Peter Adams 1977, 2013 This e-book is copyright. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without the prior permission of the copyright holders and the publisher. Inquiries should be made to Bridget Williams Books. ISTC A022013000006248 ISBN 9781927277195 (EPUB) ISBN 9781927277218 (PDF) DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.7810/9781927277195 Editorial Note This work was first published by Auckland University Press and Oxford University Press in 1977 (ISBN 0196479509). Aside from a few minor corrections and the addition of hyperlinks, the work is presented here as originally published. Help with your BWB e-Book Your BWB e-Book uses high production standards and is built to last. Please note that to view some tables on smaller devices you will need to reduce the font size. If you are experiencing any issues with this or other BWB titles and require help, your first point of contact is the bookstore or library that supplied access to the work. If they are unable to assist, please contact BWB at [email protected] – we will be happy to help. Digital cover design by Neil Pardington, Base Two Digital proofreading by Caroline Budge and Philip Rainer Digital development by Infogrid Pacific and Tom Rennie

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