Edward Gibbon Wakefield : the colonization of South Australia and New Zealand
Chapter VIII
Chapter VIII
Settlement of Wellington—Ill-judged Proclamation of Governor Hobson—Auckland Made the Seat of Government—The Company and the Colonial Office—Massacre of Wairau—Governors Fitzroy and Grey—Wakefield's Illness
Governmental mismanagement had created two rival authorities in New Zealand, one clothed with the attributes of legality, the other representing the brain and muscle of the colony. Before Captain Hobson could take any steps to assert the supremacy with which he had undoubtedly been invested, the pioneers of the Tory had been reinforced by the arrival of six emigrant ships between 22d January and 7th March, bearing the choicest contingent of colonists, the South Australian excepted, that had come to form a British settlement since the days of the Mayflower, and superior to the Pilgrim Fathers in their average standard of culture, and as representatives of all classes of the nation. All landed at Port Nicholson. The history of the infant settlement, almost from day to day, may be read in Colonel Wakefield's reports and in Edward Jerningham Wakefield's Adventures in New Zealand, a book which will always hold a distinguished place among English books of travel, notwithstanding an atmosphere of controversy conducted with questionable taste and temper, and an unevenness mainly attributable to its having been compiled from letters written home. 'Then between thirteen and fourteen years of age,' says Mr Albert Allom in his delightful pamphlet of reminiscences of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, 'it was my great happiness to be sent for on every arrival of despatches, in order that I might have the first perusal of the diary of E. J. Wakefield, giving an account of the expedition of Colonel Wakefield which founded Wellington.' Colonel Wakefield would undoubtedly be worshipped by the present race of Wellingtonians as a hero, did the Hellenic dispensation still obtain. After one abortive attempt at location, the city was founded in its present picturesque but confined situation, compared by Lord Lyttelton to that of Ilfracombe, cramped and hemmed in by furzy hills, but with deep water to the shore, and with the magnificent central position which has made it, though but fifth among New Zealand cities in population, the capital of the country. It was originally called Britannia, but Edward Gibbon Wakefield, among whose virtues gratitude held a conspicuous place, remembered the service which the Duke of Wellington had rendered to the South Australian colonists, and how the intended acknowledgment had been thwarted. By his interposition, and as a personal favour to himself, the city received the name of Wellington.
For a short time affairs at Wellington went on propitiously. Up to the date (4th June) when Lieutenant Shortland, Colonial Secretary, arrived to proclaim the Queen's sovereignty, and put an end to the provisional state of things which had hitherto obtained, 'nearly fifteen hundred English people and four hundred untutored savages had lived for five months without any serious breach of the laws, to which they were bound by nothing more than a voluntary agreement, and which could summon no physical force to their assistance.' Much ill-feeling was unfortunately created by a perfectly needless proclamation of Governor Hobson, declaring that the measures necessarily adopted by the colonists for self-protection until a regular government could be established 'amounted to high treason,' and styling the magistrates provisionally appointed 'an usurping government.' To his further definition of the Port Nicholson settlers as 'adventurers' they replied with spirit. 'It is true that we are adventurers. We have ventured property and life, our own property and that of our children, in an undertaking which was rightly called by the sagacious Bacon heroic. If our adventure be successful we shall have laid the foundation of a community speaking the language and enjoying the institutions of England.' Hobson, nevertheless, meant well, and would probably have acted otherwise if he had seen Wellington for himself, but he was detained in the north by a stroke of paralysis. A great opportunity of conciliating all classes of settlers was lost when he proclaimed the seat of government at Auckland, founded by himself under the advice of Henry Williams, on a site admirably selected for a city, but so severed from the rest of the colony that correspondence with Wellington frequently went by way of Sydney. The original plan of laying out, long ago amended, had many fantastic features, and seemed better adapted to serve the purposes of speculators in land than those of bonâ fide colonists. In judging Hobson's proceedings, it must be remembered that, though as a naval officer he was a captain, as a colonial governor he was but a lieutenant, and owed deference to his superior, Sir George Gipps, Governor of New South Wales, one of the most masterful rulers our Australian possessions have ever had. Gipps, to his credit, was engaged at home in a campaign for the protection of New Zealand against the ravenous land speculators of Australia, whose ideas are well illustrated by the tale, be it vero or ben trovato, of one of them who proclaimed from the summit of the highest hill available, 'I claim for myself all the land I can see, and all that I cannot see I claim for my son John.' At this system, but no less at the rights and just expectations of the settlers who had come out on the faith of the Company's promises, Gipps struck an overwhelming blow by his Act of 4th August 1840, annulling all titles to land in New Zealand 'which are not or may not be hereafter allowed by Her Majesty.' The Act was as illogical as despotic, for it extended to all transactions which had taken place before New Zealand had become a British possession; otherwise, however, the Governor's purpose of frustrating the Australian land speculators would not have been attained. All the mischief came from the Home Government's delay in proclaiming New Zealand an independent colony, and their omission to send out a governor and a council along with the Company's first expedition. New Zealand having in the meantime been declared a separate colony, the Act was temporarily disallowed at home, but was re-enacted by Hobson in June 1841, Government undertaking to send out a commissioner to investigate claims. It is only just to Sir George Gipps to state that, upon receiving a deputation from Wellington, he made a temporary compromise which was not regarded as unsatisfactory, bat there could be no finality until the conclusion of the commissioner's inquiries. 'This functionary's award,' says Mr Reeves, 'was not given for years. When he did give it, he cut down the Company's purchase of twenty million acres to two hundred and eighty-three thousand. Meantime, the long and weary months dragged on, and the unfor- tunate settlers were either not put in possession of their land at all, or had as little security for their farms as for their lives.'
1 'You once asked me how Stephen and I liked Lord John's way of doing business. Very much—very different to anything before him.'— Henry Taylor to Edward Villiers, October 1839.
So that the ram, that batters down the wall,
For the great swing and rudeness of his poise,
They place before his hand that made the engine;
Or those that with the fineness of their souls
By reason guide his execution.
'I have not time,' Wakefield writes to his father, in October 1841, 'to attend to details; almost every hour of my day, to say nothing of nights, from year's end to year's end, being engaged in taking care of the principles and main points of our New Zealand enterprise, and in what Arthur calls "the management of people," which means the persuading of all sorts of dispositions to pull together for a common object.'
In the course of 1841, Lord John Russell sent out to New Zealand two of the most distinguished men who ever went there, a pair of old Cambridge friends— George Augustus Selwyn as Bishop, and Sir William Martin as Chief Justice. Martin went out in the same vessel with Swainson, appointed Attorney-General, and ere they landed the two had prepared a legal system adapted for an infant colony, which shortly bore fruit in abundant legislation. Selwyn, not to be outdone, learned Maori from a native during the voyage, and arrived speaking it fluently.
The Bishopric incarnated an idea of the New Zealand Company's already put forward in 1837. Wakefield had written to his sister Catherine in November 1841:— 1
'We had a long and very satisfactory interview with the Bishop yesterday. The object of the Bishop's meeting with our committee was to come to some practical determination as to what was to be done for the Church of England and benefit of the natives in the Company's settlements; and it was resolved accordingly, subject to the approval of our Court to-day—First, that the Company would advance, on the security of the native reserves at Wellington, £5000 for the purpose of immediately establishing schools for natives, where the children may live away from their parents. Secondly, that the Bishop and the Company agree to subscribe as much respectively as the other shall subscribe for endowment of the Church of England at Wellington, Wanganui, New Plymouth, and Nelson. The Bishop undertook for the great Societies and we for the Company. So there is a race between the Church and the Company as to which shall first collect the larger sum; and the more either shall collect, the more precisely must the other furnish. We, having the money in hand, began with£5000 for Nelson, which secures £10,000, the Church being bound to double our subscription. I shall do my utmost to get a large contribution from the Company for Wellington and New Plymouth. The Company has already contributed, in land and money, £2000 towards the endowment of the New Zealand bishopric.' From the date of Lord Stanley's accession the annals of New Zealand for several years become disagreeable and uninviting. The historians of the period, from Mr Rusden on one side to Mr E. J. Wakefield on the other, offer a continual spectacle of crimination and recrimination, and the fatigued reader may well abandon the hope of arriving at any sound conclusion if he has not a firm grasp of the idea that while all parties concerned—agents of the Company, settlers, missionaries, officials—committed many and grievous errors, the mistakes of individuals were unimportant in comparison with the fundamentally vicious situation created by the indecision of the Home Government. All was confusion and uncertainty. The Company, deprived by the Government proclamation of their purchases for an indefinite period, until a commissioner should report what proportion he would allow them, and equally frustrated by Lord Stanley's action of the compensation Lord John Russell had promised them, could convey no valid titles to their colonists, who were tempted to abandon the settlement, but whose pluck and perseverance in their trials constitute a bright chapter of British colonial history. The reluctance to assume control of the country by a direct act of imperial authority had necessitated the treaty of Waitangi, which had recognised the natives as possessors of the soil, not merely where they had settled upon it, but where they were merely rovers across it, and had bound the British to respect native customs and traditions, even where these were virtually prohibitive of colonization. There could not be a stronger instance of this than in the case of Taranaki, otherwise New Plymouth, in the Northern Island, where a colony mainly drawn from Devon and Cornwall had been planted in 1841 by the New Plymouth Company, which had bought 60,000 acres of land from the New Zealand Company. These acres had been purchased by Colonel Wakefield from a tribe who claimed by right of conquest, but who had not themselves put the land to beneficial use. When the conquered tribe, at the time in a state of bondage to the victors, regained their freedom through the influence of Christianity, they demanded payment as proprietors. Was this preposterous claim to be adjudicated by English or by Maori law? Under the latter it was possibly good; at all events the successor of Hobson (who had died, more esteemed than regretted, on 10th September 1842), Captain, afterwards Admiral, Fitzroy, thought so. 'Instead,' says an impartial authority, Mr Reeves, 'of paying them fairly for the 60,000 acres—which they did not require—he handed the bulk of it back to them, penning the unhappy white settlers up in a miserable strip of 3200 acres. The result was the temporary ruin of the Taranaki settlement and the sowing of the seeds of an intense feeling of resentment and injustice, which bore evil fruit in later days.'1 Printed in Dean Jacob's History of the Church of New Zealand.
Admiral Fitzroy's motive for this excessive condescension was probably fear of a native war, which his pliancy was more likely to invite than to avert. He did much worse in the Middle Island. Under the provisional administration of Lieutenant Shortland (September 1842—January 1844), the most dismal tragedy that ever occurred in New Zealand had taken place. The settlement of Nelson, on Blind Bay in the Middle Island, had been founded in October 1841 by an expedition consisting of three vessels, the Arrow, the Will Watch and the Whitby, which had sailed on 28th April under the direction of Captain Arthur Wakefield, R.N., with whom we have already become acquainted, 'not only an able pioneer leader,' says Mr Reeves, 'but a man of high worth, of singularly fine and winning character, and far the most popular of his family.' 1
1 Bishop Selwyn says in an unpublished private letter: 'I believe that a more humane and judicious man than Captain Wakefield did not exist, or one more desirous of promoting a good understanding between the two races.' In Mr Gisborne's New Zealand Rulers and Statesmen, pp. 20-22, is a most beautiful character of Arthur Wakefield as the ideal colonist, written by Mr Alfred Domett, afterwards Prime Minister of New Zealand.
The settlement was at first most prosperous, but by June 1843, land difficulties arose with the natives, 'tampered with,' Colonel Wakefield complained, 'by a host of missionaries, protectors, magistrates and commissioners.' Huts erected by the Company in the Wairau district were burned down by two native chiefs, Rauparaha and Rangihaiatea. What ensued is described in a letter from Colonel Wakefield to his sister Catherine, not hitherto published:—
'The magistrates of Nelson granted a warrant against Rauparaha and Rangihaiatea for the offence, and the police magistrate (Mr Thompson), Arthur, and several gentlemen volunteers left Nelson, accompanied by about forty labourers, to execute the warrant. They found the natives assembled in a strong position, where the police magistrate, very rashly and against the opinion of others, insisted upon carrying his point of arresting the chiefs. An accidental shot brought on a volley from each side, after which the white men, being country labourers, unused to arms and discipline, fled, in spite of the urgent efforts of Arthur and Mr Howard to rally them. A truce was most unadvisedly demanded by means of waving a white handkerchief, the whole party of Englishmen surrendered to savages flushed with victory and inflamed with the taste for blood. The consequence is soon told. The native chiefs, surprised at their own success, and unused to give or receive quarter on the field, slaughtered the prisoners with their tomahawks. Nineteen victims have been buried on the field of action.'
Colonel Wakefield shortly afterwards wrote: 'For myself, having been four years here and having fought an uphill game with some success, I should be glad to finish my work and see the settlement established prosperously, but the loss of poor Arthur and the disgusting opposition of the Government, which has led to it, have nearly upset me, and incline me to go home myself.' In fact, Admiral Fitzroy upon his arrival found British prestige drooping, and it is only just to admit that he had not the material force which would have enabled him to revive it. But he need not have trailed it in the dust. He sought an interview with the revolted chiefs, told them that the English were in the wrong, and that he should not endeavour to avenge their deaths, gently blamed the savages for having massacred their prisoners in cold blood, and concluded by exhorting all and sundry to live in peace for the future. Rauparaha very naturally observed next day that 'the man had been talking a great lot of nonsense to him, but it was all lies, and that, in fact, he was afraid of him.' Such was indeed the fact. Admiral Fitzroy, afterwards renowned as a meteorologist, had been a man of mettle and a famous circumnavigator, and although Lord Stanley courageously pronounced his conduct not only wise but bold also, he must have been entirely unnerved by a sense of responsibility.
The consequences were soon manifest. In the following year Heke, a powerful chief of the Northern Island, entered the town of Kororareka (newly christened Russell) and cut down the staff which displayed the British flag. Encouraged by Fitzroy's vacillation, he again invaded the settlement, and this time plundered and burned it, the inhabitants escaping on board ships in the bay. An assault upon his fortified pah failed, and British prestige disappeared for the time being. Fitzroy's finance had been as unsuccessful as his fighting. He issued £15,000 in Government promissory notes, and, finding that nobody would take them, declared them legal tender. Money could not be raised at fifteen per cent. Lord Stanley's tracasseries had compelled the Company to suspend its operations, to the ruin of the labourers and others dependent upon it, and the colony's condition seemed hopeless when, in November 1845, Fitzroy was replaced by Sir George Grey, the saviour of South Australia. The Home Government, now thoroughly alarmed, gave Grey more support than they had accorded to Fitzroy. Something, too, he owed to good fortune, but in the main it was his energy and wisdom which restored peace and solvency within a year.
Grey's appointment marks a new era in New Zealand history. When, after an enforced withdrawal for a season, Wakefield returned to New Zealand politics, it was to act upon another stage.
During 1842 and 1843 his attention, as we have seen, had been largely engrossed by the affairs of Canada. The Wairau massacre brought him back, and the next three years, the most laborious of his life, tried him until, he said, it made him dizzy to look at New Zealand House. In the next chapter, mainly devoted to his activity as an organiser behind the scenes, we shall have to describe his contest with the Colonial Office in the Parliamentary Committee of 1844, and in the great debate of 1845. At the end of this year Lord Stanley's retirement brought Mr Gladstone to the Colonial Secretaryship, and Wakefield saw a chance. 'Deeming Mr Gladstone perfectly able to seize, and not likely to despise, the opportunity of establishing in one instance a system of colonization and Colonial Government that might serve as a model for the reform of other colonies and for after time, I submitted to him by letter a plan for the settlement of New Zealand affairs, but too late for enabling him to come to any official decision upon it.' By so doing, as Wakefield believed, but most erroneously, if Sir Henry Taylor is justified in crediting the Minister with 'more freedom from littlenesses of feeling than I have met with before in any public man,' he gave mortal offence to Mr Gladstone's successor, Earl Grey, who had recently rendered the New Zealand Company much service, but all of a sudden 'seemed incapable of deciding officially any one of the points which, out of office, he had so lately and so completely determined in his own mind.' An interview between Wakefield and the Earl gave no satisfaction to either. Wakefield, whose health had shown signs of succumbing to excessive toil in the autumn of 1844, at the time could hardly stand or speak from illness. A few days afterwards his long-overtaxed physical and mental powers forsook him. On 18th August 1846, walking in the Strand, he was struck down by paralysis of the brain, and his life was probably saved by the presence of Charles Allom, who refused to allow him to be bled. Nursed by his faithful friend, Mrs Allom, he long lay suspended between life and death.