The Treaty of Waitangi; or, how New Zealand became a British Colony. Thomas Lindsay Buick
so assist the parent body in reaching a conclusion as to its merits. Without waiting for these replies the Committee proceeded to deliberate upon the evidence then available, and on June 6, 1837, formulated the following resolutions, which they ever afterwards consistently made the basis of their attitude towards the Association.
That the New Zealand Association appears to the Committee highly objectionable on the principle that it proposes to engage the British Legislature to sanction the disposal of portion of a foreign country over which it has no claim to sovereignty or jurisdiction whatever.
That the Association is further objectionable from its involving the colonisation of New Zealand by Europeans, such colonisation of countries inhabited by uncivilised tribes having been found by universal experience to lead to the infliction upon the aborigines of great wrongs and most severe injuries.
That the Committee consider the execution of such a scheme as that contemplated by the Association especially to be deprecated in the present case, from its unavoidable tendency, in their judgment, to interrupt if not to defeat, those measures for the religious improvement and civilisation of the natives of New Zealand, which are now in favourable progress through the labours of the Missionaries.
That for the reasons assigned in the preceding resolutions the Committee are of opinion that all suitable means should be employed to prevent the plan of the New Zealand Association from being carried into execution.
The Society again made declaration of its views in the following year, embodying in its annual report (May 1, 1838) a plea for the humane consideration of New Zealand's claims, and for their own disinterested services to the country:
Your Committee cannot close this report on the New Zealand Mission without adverting to the peculiar situation of that country as it is regarded by the public at large. What events may await this fair portion of the globe, whether England will regard with a sisterly eye so beautiful an Island, placed like herself in a commanding position, well harboured, well wooded, and fertile in resources; whether this country will stretch forth a friendly and vigorous arm, so that New Zealand may with her native population adorn the page of future history as an industrious, well-ordered, and Christian nation, it is not for the committee of the Church Missionary Society to anticipate—but this consolation they do possess. They know that the Society has for the past twenty years done good to the natives, hoping for nothing again, nothing save the delight of promoting the Glory of God and good-will among men. The Society has sent forth its heralds of peace and messengers of salvation, and has thus contracted such an obligation towards those whom it has sought to benefit that your Committee are constrained to lift up their voice on behalf of that Island, and to claim that no measures shall be adopted towards that interesting country which would involve any violation of the principles of justice on our part, or the rights and liberties of the natives of New Zealand.
The Society having once determined upon its attitude towards the Association never turned back. Their Secretary, Mr. Dandeson Coates, became a militant force whom they found it difficult to shake off, and together with the enormous influence he was able to wield in religious circles, constituted a power that might have made the Government pause had they been predisposed to afford the Association the shelter of their wing.
Harassed by the Church Missionary Society and repulsed by Parliament the Association turned to the hope of resuming the negotiations with the Government at the point at which they had broken with Lord Glenelg. In the previous year the Colonial Secretary had, it will be remembered, reluctantly professed sympathy with the objects of the organisation up to the point that it fell short of being a Joint-Stock Company. He had then informed Lord Durham[35] that colonisation having gone on in New Zealand to some extent, the only question was between allowing it to proceed along desultory lines, without law, and fatal to the natives, or a colonisation organised and salutory. "Her Majesty's Government are therefore," he said, "disposed to entertain the proposal of establishing such a colony. They are willing to consent to a Corporation by a Royal Charter, of various persons to whom the settlement and government of the projected colony for some short term of years would be confided. The Charter would be framed with reference to the precedents of the colonies established in North America by Great Britain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries."
The basis on which these Atlantic colonies had been established was that of business concerns; for it was officially stated that the Association's scheme was objected to because of the absence of an actual subscribed capital, and the consequent want of protection to those proceeding to the colony as emigrants. For the reasons already given, the stipulation that the Association should convert itself into a Joint-Stock Company was so contrary to the motives which had inspired it that it was at first, and still was, hotly resented and resisted by its principal and truly philanthropic promoters. Many of these now withdrew from the ranks of the Association; but others, rather than give up the hope of colonising the Islands, consented to comply with the demand of the Minister, after Parliament had rejected their Bill, as they wrongly assumed, for the insufficient reason of a non-existent capital. The Association then, in 1838, became a Company, shares were issued, capital subscribed, the reorganisation changing its whole character from a quasi-benevolent to a strictly commercial concern, whose business it was to buy land at a low price in New Zealand, and sell it at a high price in England.[36]
In the meantime a change had taken place at the Colonial Office. Lord Glenelg had fallen over his Canadian policy, and in the year following its reconstruction, the Company, on the ground that they had now complied with all that had been stipulated for, approached his successor, Lord Normanby, "with a view of obtaining, through his Lordship's intervention, a Royal Charter of Incorporation." Upon what took place at this interview the widest divergence of opinion appears to exist. The Company claimed that the Minister received them with the greatest affability and encouragement, and that in consequence they left the Colonial Office in high spirits at the very favourable reception they had met with, and were perfectly satisfied in their own minds that all opposition to their scheme had not only ceased, but that they could proceed with the full concurrence of the Government.
Their feelings may, therefore, be easily imagined when, within forty-eight hours of their meeting with the Minister, they received an official letter from Lord Normanby, dated March 11, 1839, in which his Lordship warmly repudiated the suggestion that the Government was in any way bound to give effect to his predecessor's promise. He pointed out that Lord Glenelg's offer had been distinctly rejected by those to whom it was made; that they had since applied to Parliament for powers which they had failed to procure from the Crown; and that the personnel of the Company had so completely changed that by no process of reasoning could it be argued that the promise of Ministerial approval had been given to the same people as were now making the application. He therefore claimed that he stood unfettered by any pledge, and was free to discuss the question in the public interests, and for the public as though the rejected offer of 1837 had not been made.
In thus sternly refusing to countenance the proceedings of the Company, the Minister may have been induced to adopt the course he took by a reason altogether different from that which he gave, but one which he found more difficult to diplomatically express. For directing his attention to the change in the personnel of the promoters he was indebted to his Departmental Secretary, Mr. Stephen, who had kept the strictest watch upon the correspondence of the Company, and when the request, now under review, was preferred, he wrote a Memorandum to his Minister which may have profoundly influenced the mind of Lord Normanby.
"You can see," he said, "from looking over the list of the proposed Directors, that the leading members are now Roman Catholics. If this business is committed to them, New Zealand will infallibly become a Roman Catholic country. I am convinced that this would give the most severe offence to all the religious bodies which have established Missions there. I cannot withhold expressing my own opinion that the objection would be perfectly just and well founded. As long as we have the choice of establishing Popery or Protestantism in any part of the world I cannot understand how any one, not a Roman Catholic, would hesitate what that choice should be."[37]