Life of Sir George Grey: Governor, High commissioner, and Premier. An Historical Biography.

Chapter VII. — Governor of New Zealand—continued

Chapter VII.
Governor of New Zealand—continued.

Civilising the Maoris.

The Governor now gathered all the powers of Government into his own hands and was henceforth free to devote himself to the most interesting, as it was doubtless the most important, part of his mission to New Zealand. Having fought and conquered the natives—always an essential preliminary with him—he devoted himself to the work of pacificating and civilising them. He was well fitted for the task. Genuine kindness of heart, sympathy with the wronged, a horror of injustice, and perhaps something of the savage in his own nature made him a born mediator. His schemes embraced nothing less than the amalgamation of the two races. Like Samuel Marsden and the missionaries, Lawry and Buller, like the New Zealand Company and a well-informed writer in the Edinburgh Review, as also like Samuel Stanhope Smith, an old-time president of William and Mary College, with respect to the population of the United States, Sir George Grey believed that the future inhabitants of New Zealand would be a mixed population, a blend of British and Maoris. He certainly believed that, as two noble Spanish houses trace back their descent to Montezuma, and Australians as well as Virginians are proud to count Pocahontas among their ancestors, New Zealand families might one day boast of having in their veins the blood of a Christian hero like Te Waharoa or a mighty warrior like Te Rauparaha. The latter expectation has hardly been realised, save in a few isolated instances; while the former has been signally disappointed; and both did more credit to the hearts than to the heads of those who thus hoped to save a doomed race.

Amalgamating the Races.

No more destructive policy could, indeed, be conceived. The mixture of the primary races stands condemned as producing ''chaotic'' constitutions, of body, mind, and character, and leading to the inevitable degeneracy of the mixed breed. The experience of breeders is here decisive. No experienced breeder would dream of blending radically different species, save now and then for a special purpose, as when the horse and the ass are interbred to produce the mule, or even widely separated varieties of the same species, as when the horse and the zebra are interbred for fancy or scientific objects. He unites closely allied varieties of the same species, or members of the same variety that have some different points. To unite disparate individuals would be, not to imperil, but to wreck, the slowly acquired results of long inheritance or accumulated selection. The rules of the advisable mixture of human races are identical with the rules of the intermixture of animal races. Shun mixtures of the primary races and blend only varieties, is the one clear imperative rule in human societies, as among domesticated animals. Doubly is the mixture of primary races condemned when one of the races is very high and the other very low in the scale. All history testifies against it. Canada under the French régime is a speaking example. During the hundred years of French occupation, when the French immigrants mingled with the Indians, they sank so rapidly in the anthropological scale that they gloried in resembling savages in mind as well as in manners. The South American republics at this day contain visible evidence of the "chaotic constitutions" resulting from the mixture of the immigrant Spaniards with the natives. Their political instability and their moral deterioration alike prove the injurious character of the blend. At the other end of the scale, the union of the Germanic races of Northern Europe in North America furnishes proof of the happy effects of the mixing of allied varieties. We need not too severely censure the short-sighted promoters of an injurious measure. In those pre-Darwinian days the most instructed individuals were unable to realise at what cost the purity of a race is maintained. It is only by the unintermitted action of natural selection, as also of that artificial selection which follows in its steps, that each human race preserves the attributes that have been with such difficulty acquired.

Organising the Maoris.

The end desired was happily unattainable, but the means used subserved wiser purposes. Adopting the suggestion of James Busby, the first official British Resident in the Islands, the Governor pensioned some of the tribal chiefs; others received regular rations; and to others were given presents. Eealising, as Hongi had long ago realised, that the possession of arms of precision was the chief source of Maori strength against the English and at the same time the chief cause of wars with one another, he succeeded, after a long struggle with his Council, in stopping the sale of fire-arms to the natives; and he otherwise endeavoured to abolish intertribal wars. He restricted the sale of alcoholic liquors among them and thus checked their ravages. One has seen, at the Hot Lakes, a stately Maori wrapped in his blanket, with the port of an ancient Roman clothed in his toga, assisting a tipsy Maori woman, with a child on her back, along the road; and one could conceive the hatred of the pakeha that smouldered in the heart of the old chief.

Grey next reverted to the policy of Governor Hobson, unhappily reversed by FitzRoy, of prohibiting the sale of Maori lands to private individuals and re-asserted the pre-emptive right of the Government. He proceeded to organize the natives. He formed and armed a body of Native police under European officers. Some of the more intelligent he intended to use on juries and otherwise employ in connection with the administration of justice. Courts were created; resident magistrates were appointed, with the powers of commissioners; and one of these was afterwards Sir John Gorst. A lawyer was made standing counsel to the Maoris, with a salary and a commission on sums received. The courts thus constituted were at first freely resorted to by the natives. During one year 211 cases were tried and £490 recovered from Europeans in Auckland alone for the Maoris.

Hospitals.

Pursuing his habitual policy, Grey reared hospitals for the natives in the four chief northern settlements, and at two of these, by 1852, nearly a thousand patients had been treated. He hoped thus to eradicate the belief in witchcraft, but it appears that in this he was no more successful than afterwards in South Africa.

Schools.

As previously in South Australia, he endeavoured to civilise the Maoris by educating the young. This time, however, he set up no State schools, but wisely left the teaching of the Maori children in the efficient hands of the missionaries. A proportion of the Colonial revenue, a larger proportion of the proceeds of land sales, and a fixed proportion of the funds contributed by the Imperial Government were paid to the Anglican, Wesleyan, and Catholic missionaries. A total sum of £5,900 was thus annually expended. The only conditions annexed were that Government inspectors should be permitted to examine the schools, and that English should be taught in them. Grey also induced the Maoris to set apart landed reserves as permanent endowments that would constantly be rising in value. The schools were industrial as well as educational. Carpenters and farm labourers were to train the young Maoris in the primary arts. Agricultural implements, horses, and cows were to be provided by the Government. Grey congratulated himself on the amount of success these institutions attained. It was, at all events, the beginning of a system of education which, to the credit of the Colony, has never been pretermitted.

Grey's Personal Sympathy.

Grey evidently did much for the Maoris; perhaps he did all that it was possible to do. Only one more gift could he bestow on them, and this he did not withhold. He gave them himself. With none of the repugnances which make wholesome contact with lower races impossible to most Englishmen, he moved among them as one of themselves. He learnt their language, studied their traditions, wrote down their legends. The aggrieved told their wrongs into the Governor's own ear and received the promise of redress from the Governor's own lips. There was no condescension, no affectation of dignity or authority, but no one who saw him in the midst of a group of chiefs could doubt where the real ascendancy lay. The Maoris on their side took him to their hearts. With the nobler leaders, like Waka Nene and Rewi, he formed a high, respectful friendship, such as he had with Martin and Selwyn. To the end the great body of them never knew any other Governor than Kawana Kerei, and to the last they spoke of him with an affectionate veneration such as few savage peoples have felt for a civilised ruler. When the good and evil of his life comes to be balanced in the eternal scales, his noble work among the Maoris, and afterwards among the more degraded races of South Africa, will weigh down all else. It will be his passport to Walhalla.