The Treaty of Waitangi; or, how New Zealand became a British Colony. Thomas Lindsay Buick
liberties, by demonstrating its utter hopelessness."
It is somewhat difficult to say, in the absence of contemporary newspapers, what impression was created in the public mind by the Resident's proclamation or by the native Declaration of Independence, but in due course the latter was, in accordance with the unanimous desire of the chiefs, "laid at the feet of His Majesty," and in the following year—so tardy was communication in those days—it was courteously, but guardedly acknowledged by Lord Glenelg, who wrote to Governor Bourke:
"With reference to the desire which the chiefs have expressed on this occasion, to maintain a good understanding with His Majesty's subjects, it will be proper that they be assured, in His Majesty's name, that he will not fail to avail himself of every opportunity of showing his goodwill, and of affording to those chiefs such support and protection as may be consistent with a due regard to others, and to the interests of His Majesty's subjects."
Left to its own devices, the native Confederation was faced with a task that proved altogether too exacting for its resources, and it cannot be claimed for the new authority that it remodelled the Government or reclaimed the dissolute society by which it was surrounded. Had it been possible to restrict the intercourse of the natives to the Missionaries and the more respectable portion of the settlers, they might, combined with the counsels of the Resident, have been speedily induced to form an effective administration amongst themselves, and that important stage once reached, they, with their quick intelligence, might have easily acquired a working knowledge of the higher principles of self-government. But thrust as they were in the midst of a strangely confused community, any such limitation was obviously impossible.
Even if it had been practicable, the irreconcilable differences which had sprung up between the Resident and the Missionaries, of which the natives were perfectly cognisant, necessarily detracted from the beneficial influence which an official in Mr. Busby's position might, and ought to have wielded.
The absence of the physical force which Mr. Busby pined for was unmistakably against the due observance of the ordinary decencies of life, for the people whom Captain Fitzroy had described as "ragamuffins," and Captain Hobson had still more emphatically condemned as "abandoned ruffians," were scarcely likely to be amenable to anything more gentle than the grip of the handcuff or the probe of the bayonet. It was therefore to but little purpose that the Confederation should pass ordinances which, if not respected, could not be enforced.
The difficulties of the Confederation accumulated with the increase of trade and population, both of which were growing rapidly. In the year 1836 no fewer than 93 British, 54 American, and 3 French ships put in at the Bay of Islands. The irregular settlement of white people at various spots along the coast had increased in like manner, until in the early part of 1838 a body of no less than 2000 British subjects had taken up their permanent abode in New Zealand. The part these people were playing in the scheme of civilisation was still small, if we are to accept as accurate the verdict of Dr. G. R. Jameson, who in his Travels in New Zealand has taken the responsibility of saying that from all he had seen and heard respecting the fixed traders, or the casual visitors for trade, it could be affirmed in the most positive terms that not one of them had ever attempted to teach a native to read or write, or to communicate to his mind one ray of Christian knowledge or of moral rectitude. With a few honourable exceptions they had been in their intercourse with the natives guided by one ruling impulse—the love of gain. Their predominant aim was ever and always to obtain the greatest possible quantity of pigs, potatoes, flax, maize, labour, or land in exchange for the smallest possible amount of tobacco, ammunition, and piece-goods.[23]
It was not alone, however, by the criminal taint of a large section of the population and this excessive hunger for trade that the seeds of continued anarchy were sown. A new evil was at hand which threatened to sap the independence of the Maori, and reduce them to a condition of speedy and abject poverty. This was the land hunger which about this time seized the white population of Australia. There the opinion had gripped the public mind that under the Declaration of Independence it would be possible to pursue in New Zealand the schemes of land aggregation which Sir George Gipps had checked in New South Wales. Under his new land regulations the price of land in that colony had been raised from 3s. to 12s. per acre, and hearing that large areas were to be obtained in New Zealand for less than the proverbial song, the speculators swarmed over to the Bay of Islands, and in the year 1837 the land fever in all its phases of "sharking," "jobbing," and legitimate purchase literally raged throughout the country. "What gold was to the Spaniard in Mexico the land at this period became to the English in these islands, and as the warlike aborigines most coveted the acquisition of firearms, they divested themselves of their only possessions in order to obtain those deadly instruments, which, together with ardent spirits, were the most potent means for the destruction of their race. Almost every captain of a ship arriving in Sydney exhibited a piece of paper with a tattooed native head rudely drawn upon it, which he described as the title-deed of an estate bought for a few muskets, hatchets, or blankets."
Several years elapsed before it was possible to reduce these frenzied bargains to tabulated form, but during the debate on New Zealand affairs, which occupied the House of Commons for three days in 1845, the representative for Westminster, the Hon. Captain Rous, R.N., put forward the following startling figures as authentic. A Mr. Webster, an American, he said, claimed to have purchased forty miles of frontage on the west side of the river Piako;[24] a Mr. Painham claimed nearly the whole of the north coast of the Northern Island. Mr. Wentworth of New South Wales asserted his right to 20,100,000 acres in the Middle Island; Catlin & Co. to 7,000,000; Weller & Co. to 3,557,000; Jones & Co. to 1,930,000; Peacock & Co. to 1,450,000; Green & Co. to 1,377,000; Guard & Co. to 1,200,000, and the New Zealand Company to 20,000,000.
Yet another authority has stated that the whole of the South Island was claimed by a Company consisting of four gentlemen, in consideration of giving the chiefs a few hundred pounds in money and merchandise, and a life annuity of £100.[25] Another individual, representing a commercial firm in Sydney, claimed several hundred thousand acres, including the township of Auckland, for which he paid as compensation one keg of gunpowder. The island of Kapiti was claimed by five different parties, each declaring they had purchased it, but each naming a different price. Some alleged they had paid £100, others goods to the value of £30, and so on, the only point of unanimity being that they were each able to produce something that resembled the signatures of Te Rauparaha or Te Rangihaeata.
In much the same way the district round Porirua was claimed by eight separate parties, each contending that Te Rauparaha had sold to them, and to them alone. Cooper, Holt & Rhodes of Sydney asserted they had paid merchandise to the value of £150 for a tract of country between the Otaki and Waikanae Rivers, running in an easterly direction forty miles from the mouth of the river, thirty miles in another direction, and ten miles along the coast. Mr. John Hughes, also of Sydney, claimed in part all the lands of Porirua for a distance of thirty miles, bounded by the sea on the one hand, and by the Tararua Range on the other.
In the general censure which followed upon the disclosure of these unseemly proceedings the Missionaries did not escape criticism, and are still, at times, subject to severest strictures on this question, as it affects public morals. Unjust as these strictures frequently are the purchase from Hongi, in 1819, of 13,000 acres at Kirikiri for forty-eight axes, by the Rev. Samuel Marsden,[26] was one amongst other transactions which on the face of it seems to leave room for the gravest enquiry as to its propriety.[27]
If the Confederation of chiefs had been helpless in the face of social disorder, it was still more impotent to cope with the inroads of the speculator. The greed for land on the part of the Pakeha, and the hunger for muskets on that of the Maori, rendered futile all attempts to control the traffic by an already effete administration. The need for a wider application of authority and efficient Government at length found voice in a petition which