The Treaty of Waitangi; or, how New Zealand became a British Colony. Buick Thomas Lindsay
the Company might send out to New Zealand, nor would they give future recognition to any proprietary titles to land within that country, which the Company might obtain by grant or purchase from the natives. Indeed, so far had matters, he said, now been pushed, that he had no option but to indicate that the time had arrived when Her Majesty must be advised by her Ministers to adopt one of the last of Lord Glenelg's recommendations, before he left the Colonial Office,39 and take measures without delay to obtain cession in sovereignty to the British Crown of such parts of New Zealand as are, or might be, occupied by British subjects, and that officers selected by the Queen, and not by the Company, would be appointed to administer the executive Government within such territory. "Under these circumstances," the Colonial Secretary concluded, "I must decline to furnish the Company with the introductory letters for which they apply."
This intimation was given to the Company in the dying days of April 1839, and by the 13th of June Lords Normanby and Palmerston had, after consultation with the Law Officers of the Crown, agreed not only that the moment was ripe for official action, but that the proper course to take was to send to New Zealand an officer with Consular powers, whose first duty would be to secure the cession in sovereignty from the chiefs. The territory so ceded was then to be annexed to New South Wales, the Consul to be raised to the rank of Lieut. – Governor, acting under the Governor of the Mother colony, but invested with sufficient authority to preserve law and order in the country. His salary of £500 per annum was at first to be a charge upon the revenues of New South Wales, to be refunded so soon as the necessary arrangements could be made for the collection of taxation in New Zealand.
On July 19 these proposals were confirmed by the Lords of the Treasury, whereupon Lord Palmerston penned the letter to Captain Hobson of which the opening paragraph of the previous chapter is a brief extract.
In the meantime a clipper brig of 400 tons, named the Tory had been quietly fitted out by the Company for a dash to New Zealand. She was armed with eight big guns, and as a precaution against a hostile reception, small arms were provided for all the members of the crew, a specially selected body of men. Under the command of Captain Chaffers, who had been round the world with Fitzroy in the Beagle, she left Plymouth Sound on May 12 (1839) and proving a smart sailer, crossed the equator twenty-six days out, the high land of the South Island being sighted in the vicinity of Cape Farewell on August 16. This pioneer ship of the Company's fleet carried in her cabin their official representative in the person of Colonel William Wakefield, and in her hold a full complement of pots, pipes, and Jews' harps, which that gentleman proposed to exchange as full value for the land he hoped to acquire by barter from the natives.
The sailing of the Tory was the New Zealand Company's challenge to the Government, and in any estimate of its subsequent policy this precipitate event must be accounted an important factor in endowing the Colonial Office with a vital force which had hitherto been sadly lacking.
CHAPTER III
FINDING A WAY
The favour of Ministerial selection for the onerous task of bringing New Zealand within the realms of Britain fell upon Captain Hobson, because his record in the Navy had justified the opinion expressed of him by Sir Richard Bourke, that he was an experienced and judicious officer. Moreover, his visit to the country in the Rattlesnake had given him a local knowledge of which few men of eminence and character were at that time possessed. There is no reason to suppose that the appointment was in any way a party one, and except that the new Consul was the victim of indifferent health, it was probably the best that could have been made at the time, its greatest justification being the complete success which attended his mission up to the time of his early decease.40 Captain Hobson left England in the H.M.S. Druid commanded by Lord John Churchill. He went out fortified for his task by a series of instructions which left little doubt that if Ministers had been slow to move, they had at least endeavoured to take a statesman-like view of the position when circumstances compelled them to act, the breadth of which can be best understood from the instructions themselves. After adverting to the social conditions existing in New Zealand, with which Captain Hobson was perfectly cognisant and which Lord Normanby assured him the Government had watched with attention and solicitude, the Colonial Secretary proceeded to explain the attitude which the Government had adopted in regard to this branch of Imperial policy.
We have not been insensible to the importance of New Zealand to the interests of Great Britain in Australia, nor unaware of the great natural resources by which that country is distinguished, or that its geographical position must in seasons, either of peace or war, enable it in the hands of civilised men to exercise a paramount influence in that quarter of the globe. There is probably no part of the earth in which colonisation could be effected with a greater or surer prospect of national advantage.
On the other hand, the Ministers of the Crown have been restrained by still higher motives from engaging in such an enterprise. They have deferred to the advice of the Committee of the House of Commons in the year 1836 to enquire into the state of the Aborigines residing in the vicinity of our colonial settlements, and have concurred with that Committee in thinking that the increase in national wealth and power, promised by the acquisition of New Zealand, would be a most inadequate compensation for the injury which must be inflicted on this kingdom itself by embarking in a measure essentially unjust, and but too certainly fraught with calamity to a numerous and inoffensive people whose title to the soil and to the sovereignty of New Zealand is undisputable and has been solemnly recognised by the British Government. We retain these opinions in unimpaired force, and though circumstances entirely beyond our control have at length compelled us to alter our course, I do not scruple to avow that we depart from it with extreme reluctance.
The necessity for the interposition of the Government has, however, become too evident to admit of any further inaction. The reports which have reached this office within the last few months establish the facts that about the commencement of 1838 a body of not less than two thousand British subjects had become permanent inhabitants of New Zealand, that amongst them were many persons of bad and doubtful character, – convicts who had fled from our penal settlements, or seamen who had deserted their ships, – and that these people, unrestrained by any law and amenable to no tribunals, were alternately the authors and victims of every species of crime and outrage. It further appears that extensive cessions of land have been obtained from the natives, and that several hundred persons have recently sailed from this country to occupy and cultivate these lands. The spirit of adventure having been effectually roused it can be no longer doubted that an extensive settlement of British subjects will be rapidly established in New Zealand, and that unless protected and restrained by necessary loans and institutions they will repeat unchecked in that quarter of the Globe the same process of war and spoliation under which uncivilised tribes have almost invariably disappeared, as often as they have been brought into the immediate vicinity of emigrants from the nations of Christendom. To mitigate, and if possible to avert these disasters, and to rescue the emigrants themselves from the evils of a lawless state of society, it has been resolved to adopt the most effective measures for establishing amongst them a settled form of Government. To accomplish this design is the principal object of your mission.
I have already stated that we acknowledge New Zealand as a sovereign and independent state so far at least as it is possible to make that acknowledgment in favour of a people composed of numerous dispersed and petty tribes, who possess few political relations to each other, and are incompetent to act or even deliberate in concert. But the admission of their rights, though inevitably qualified by this consideration, is binding on the faith of the British Crown. The Queen, in common with Her Majesty's predecessor, disclaims for herself and her subjects every pretension to seize on the Islands of New Zealand, or to govern them as a part of the Dominions of Great Britain unless the free intelligent consent of the natives, expressed according to their established usages, shall be first obtained. Believing, however, that their own welfare would, under the circumstances I have mentioned, be best promoted by the surrender to Her Majesty of a right now so precarious, and little more than nominal, and persuaded that the benefits of British protection and of laws administered by British judges would far more than compensate for the sacrifice by the natives of a national independence which they are no longer able to maintain, Her Majesty's Government have
Captain Hobson had acquired some distinction in the Navy by the capture of a band of pirates in the Mediterranean, the personal bravery displayed by him on that occasion being decidedly meritorious. He was afterwards engaged with the sloop-of-war