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

The Governor's Triumph

The Governor's Triumph.

The entangled affair issued in a victory for the militant Governor. The peccant missionaries were stringently dealt with by their ecclesiastical superiors and by the New Zealand courts. In 1849-50 Henry Williams was dismissed by the Church Missionary Society, and one of the most potent influences for good was for a time partially extinguished. The account of his departure from his "old and much-loved home, all untouched in Sabbath peace,'' reminds one of the departure of the seceding Free Church ministers from their manses only seven years before, which has been pathetically painted by Sir George Hervey. The root of both severances was the same—collision with the civil power; but the Scottish Presbyterian went out with clean hands, while the Anglican went out gorged with the spoils of the Maori. If the biographers and historians vindicate Williams, they fling the other missionaries to the wolves. Clarke, who had been a catechist, and then was appointed Chief Protector of the Aborigines, a capacity in which he rendered them signal services, was likewise dismissed, though a legal decision had been, given in his favour. He offered to surrender the excess, provided it could be held by the Church in trust for the education of the natives, and when this condition was rejected, he divided his estates among the members of his family and was again condemned by his society for so doing. Fairburn was also dismissed, and he too offered to surrender his excess land on similar page 50terms, but in his case the Government acted with a stringency that no legal decision impeded. It seized the greater part of his 30,000 acres, which had been a bone of contention between two hostile tribes, and were bought by him at the instance of Williams (who refused to purchase them for himself), because on no other terms could peace be made. Some grasping Wesleyan missionaries, who had yielded to the same overpowering temptation, were also dismissed. The Governor had triumphed. Shall we condemn him? For once at least in his life his motives were pure. A professing Christian and an Anglican, he can have had no prejudice against either Anglican or Wesleyan missionaries, and it is surely doubtful whether he was animated, as Mr. Rusden alleges, by jealousy of the power wielded by the consecrated band. He saw the natives being robbed of their chief, almost their sole, possessions by men whose offence was all the deeper that they were self-dedicated to an unworldly life, and whose influence over the Maoris was the more irresistible. He stood between the helpless natives and his own conscienceless countrymen; should he not stand between them and those of his fellow-countrymen who ought to have been the living embodiment of the conscience of their race? We shall not condemn him. The whole episode forms almost the brightest chapter of a life where pure motives, noble passions, and high ends were strangely mingled with egoist aims, vindictive passions, and unworthy means