Edward Gibbon Wakefield : the colonization of South Australia and New Zealand

Chapter V

Project for Colonization of New Zealand—Condition of the Islands in 1837—The New Zealand Association—The Church Missionary Society—Lord Durham—Lord Howick—The New Zealand Company—Obstruction from the Government—First Expedition

'When they persecute you in one city, flee to another.' The salutary ingratitude of the South Australian Commissioners had prevented Wakefield from wasting his energies upon an undertaking at the time presenting no adequate outlet for them, and urged him to a new enterprise which he might hope not only to shape but to control. So late as December 1835, indeed, he had not renounced all idea of active participation in the South Australian project. He tells his sister Catherine that the first ship is to sail next month, and adds: 'I have half a mind to go myself for a year to tell the tale of the beginnings.' But that ship sailed without him, and if he had any intention of following in another, this must have been diverted by the highly important Parliamentary inquiry into Colonial Lands, under the chairman-page 126ship of Mr (afterwards Sir) Henry George Ward, probably set on foot at his instigation, but before which, at all events, he was the most important witness. Its report, to which we shall have to recur, was a great victory for his ideas; at present we have only to cite a passage from his evidence, showing distinctly in what direction his thoughts were tending. In the course of an eloquent exposition of suitable fields for emigration, including the elevated interior of Ceylon, and what we now call British Columbia, he says:—

'Very near to Australia there is a country which all testimony concurs in describing as the fittest country in the world for colonization; as the most beautiful country, with the finest climate and the most productive soil, I mean New Zealand. It will be said that New Zealand does not belong to the British Crown, and that is true, but Englishmen are beginning to colonize New Zealand. New Zealand is coming under the dominion of the British Crown. Adventurers go from New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land, and make a treaty with a native chief, a tripartite¹ treaty, the poor chief

¹ So printed, but Wakefield must have said triplicate. He was evidently thinking of the remarkable deed, executed in triplicate, by which, on 6th June 1835, Mr John Batman conceived himself to have acquired, in consideration of certain blankets, knives, tomahawks, etc., the entire site of the future city of Melbourne from the chiefs Jagajaga, Cooloolock, Bungarie, Yanyan, Moowip and Mommarmalar, whose marks and seals are duly appended, and who must be supposed to have declared in the Australian language, 'I deliver this as my act and deed.' One of the three copies is exhibited in the Manuscript Room of the British Museum—the nearest modern representative of the bull's hide wherewith Dido encompassed the site of Carthage.

page 127not understanding a single word about it; but they make a contract upon parchment, with a great seal: for a few trinkets and a little gunpowder they obtain land. After a time, after some persons have settled, the Government begins to receive hints that there is a regular settlement of English people formed in such a place; and then the Government at home generally has been actuated by a wish to appoint a governor, and says, "This spot belongs to England, we will send out a governor." The act of sending out a governor, according to British constitution, or law, or practice, constitutes the place to which a governor is sent a British province. We are, I think, going to colonize New Zealand, though we be doing so in a most slovenly, and scrambling, and disgraceful manner.'

This evidence was given in June 1836. The step from denouncing the actual irregular colonization of New Zealand as slovenly to proposing an orderly and systematic method was so short, that Wakefield must have taken it in his own mind ere he had left the committee room. The effect of his words upon others was equally immediate. 'In consequence of that statement,' he told the New Zealand Committee of 1840, 'a member of the committee' (Mr F. Baring) 'spoke to me upon the subject, and afterwards other persons, and we determined to form an association.'

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To enlist influential support and organise the means of carrying the project out would evidently be a work of time, and it is not until May 1837 that we obtain unequivocal evidence of its being actually on foot. On 12th May Wakefield writes from his then residence in Hans Place, Chelsea, to his brother-in-law, the Rev. Charles Torlesse:—

'I have set on foot a new measure of colonization on the principles which have worked so well for South Australia. The country is New Zealand— one of the finest countries in the world, if not the finest, for British settlement. A New Zealand Association is now in course of formation; it will comprise a more influential body than that which founded South Australia. The colony, that is, the body of capitalists who will first emigrate, is already considerable, and comprises persons qualified for every occupation but one. We have no clergyman.' After dwelling on the grievousness of this deficiency, and exhorting Mr Torlesse to ferret out a suitable ecclesiastic, not 'unequally yoked'—'He must be a superior man, and if he have a wife she must be superior too'—Wakefield continues: 'Captain Arthur' [the third brother, born in 1799, and in Place's opinion 'the flower of the flock'¹] 'thinks

¹ Arthur Wakefield, his nephew Jerningham says, 'first went to sea at ten years of age, with a pay of £20 a year, and never afterwards occasioned his family the expense of a shilling. He never owed anybody a farthing, and yet always seemed to have money in his pocket for a generaus purpose.'

page 129of commanding the first expedition, and my own thoughts are turned in that direction. For me, all will depend upon the manner in which the foundation shall be laid: if it be very good, superior to any other thing of the sort, then I become one of the builders of the superstructure.'

On the same day Arthur Wakefield, a lieutenant in the navy, who, after serving twenty-five years with high credit in various parts of the world, had just seen sixteen other lieutenants put over his head, writes from his brother's house to Catherine Torlesse:—

'You will recollect that I mentioned to you at Stoke that Edward had his eyes upon New Zealand. I am so far interested about it that I fancy I see an opening for useful and active employment. I have made up my mind to go, if not previously employed. I have been reading a great deal on the subject, and am delighted with the accounts of the country. I think anybody you could enlist with the qualifications stated by Edward would receive very powerful aid in the furtherance of his objects, although they would probably be advanced more from philanthropic motives than religious ones. The influence is great which will be brought to bear in establishing the settlement, and I fancy it may become a very grand undertaking.'

Arthur was right. The possibilities of New Zealand were unlimited, but it was a seed-field in great danger from its weeds. It will be convenient to page 130take a brief survey of its actual condition when the New Zealand Association came to the rescue.

Colonization in New Zealand had one advantage over colonization in South Australia, that the capabilities of the country were well attested. None doubted or could doubt that the sombre, fern-covered land of silent evergreen forests, snowy peaks and boiling springs, inconspicuous for the floral growth of the soil, but brilliant with creepers and flowering trees, fulfilling in its strangeness and its charm the ideal of an antipodal country, was in the main fertile, pleasant and well-watered. Discovered by the Dutch in 1642, and afterwards more thoroughly examined by Cook, distance and the dread of its stalwart cannibal population had kept it from European intrusion until the settlement of New South Wales, when sealers and whalers began to frequent it, and by commercial intercourse paved the way for a drift of the worst and best elements of Australasian society; convicts and missionaries. The native population, according to their own tradition, arrived from the north-east, probably Tahiti, about the beginning of the fifteenth century,¹ and in the nineteenth was declining in numbers so seriously

¹ That they have been long separated from the other Polynesian tribes appears from the fact that although the kawa plant grows in New Zealand, and is called by the same name as elsewhere, they had not learned to use it as a stimulant. It may, perhaps, be conjectured that kawa (which literally means bitter) is cognate with the Arabic kahwin, wine, probably in some other Semitic form the origin of bwos and vinum, and undoubtedly of our coffee.

page 131that, in the words of Mr Busby, the Resident, 'the population is but a remnant of what it was in the memory of some European residents. All the apparent causes in operation,' he adds, 'are quite inadequate to account for the rapid disappearance of the people.' Everything invited the advent of a more vigorous race. Already, in 1825, a company had been formed with the support of Mr Huskisson, President of the Board of Trade, to colonize a large land-purchase near Hokianga, on the coast opposite to the Bay of Islands, perhaps the sanest speculation of that crazy year. The land, though legitimately acquired, remained unused, the leader of the expedition being intimidated by what he took for a war-dance of the natives, which others interpreted as a welcome. In 1829, the Duke of Wellington received a deputation on the subject, but he who was virtually to add South Australia to the empire then thought that 'we had enough colonies.' The issue thus lay between the company which Wakefield had so nearly brought to maturity in May 1837, and the vis inertiæ of the British Government. A mass of information respecting the condition of New Zealand when the New Zealand Association commenced its operations is to be found in the report of the House of Lords Committee, 1838, presided over by the Earl of Devon. Much of it is ably digested in Surgeon-Major Thomson's instructive and entertaining Story of New Zealand (1859). The Committee, contrary to the wish of their chairman, page 132made no recommendation on the subject of the extension of British authority over the country, holding this to be a matter of public policy to be decided by the Government, but the evidence they collected spoke sufficiently for itself. Population, as already stated, was on the decline. The European element, settled and afloat, consisted of seven classes, only one of which could be considered an entirely satisfactory contingent—'beachcombers,' now familiar to the English reader in the pages of Stevenson and Louis Becke; runaway convicts; traders; whalers; sawers of kauri timber; Pakeha Maoris,' or tame whites maintained by the native chiefs, frequently loose characters, but pioneers of civilization in many ways; and missionaries. It had to be owned with shame that evil had in general followed in the track of the white man. Where, as was frequently the case, a fine harbour was rendered useless by a bar, and whites accordingly came but sparingly, things were far more satisfactory than at the magnificent haven of the Bay of Islands, where ships could work in and out with any wind. There a town had sprung up named Kororareka, which in 1838 contained a floating European population of a thousand persons, with 'a church, five hotels, numberless grog-shops, a theatre, several billiard tables, skittle-alleys, "finishes" and hells.' There was a British resident, 'a man-of-war without guns,' solely dependent upon his moral influence, and no other restraining force except the missionaries; although page 133the Committee had scarcely ceased its sittings when this very community of Kororareka, finding itself in danger of dissolution, established a Vigilance Committee, made a sea-chest with gimlet holes do duty for a gaol, and arrayed minor malefactors in what Sydney Smith called 'the plumeo-picean robe of American democracy.' One point of much importance, not sufficiently attended to, came out in the course of the investigation. The natives could not flee from these demoralising influences, for they were a nation of fishermen. They could not, like the inhabitants of other parts of the world, subsist by hunting, for there was nothing to hunt except rats. They had not generally learned to cultivate useful vegetables, and but for fish would have had little to live upon but fern roots, a diet which produced the same effects upon them as Mr Perceval, according to Peter Plymley, expected the prohibition of the export of prunes and senna to produce upon Napoleon's grenadiers. Hence they were confined to the coast line, exposed to contamination from the lowest class of Europeans, who must continue what they were until some government should be established capable of encouraging the advent of decent people. Meanwhile, the cultivable lands in the interior remained waste, and the greater part of the Middle Island was almost uninhabited. Several courses lay before the Government. They might take the country over themselves as a Crown Colony; they might grant the New page 134Zealand Association a charter, like the East India Company; they might recognise the independence of the native chiefs and govern them through the missionaries; or they might wait until France annexed the islands, or the Vigilance Committee at Kororareka declared them an independent republic. This last course, the last which they could have wished to take, was the one to which their vacillation would have conducted but for the daring and determination of Edward Gibbon Wakefield.

Nervous shrinking from responsibility, and a disposition to let things drift until difficulties have become dangers, are common faults of the official mind in all departments of State, and, until counteracted by the recent development of Imperial sentiment, were especially characteristic of the Colonial Office. To this must be added that the then Colonial Secretary, Lord Glenelg, was probably the weakest man who had ever held the post. He thought that the jealousy of foreign powers might be excited by the extension of British colonies; that England had colonies enough; that they were expensive to govern and manage, and not of sufficient value to be worth developing. Other influences, moreover, weighed with him and his far stronger Secretary, Sir James Stephen, by no means improper or discreditable in themselves, but to which they allowed undue weight. Both were fervent Evangelicals, and actually officials of the Church Missionary page 135Society, of whose interests, as a consequence, they were exceedingly tender. Both were philanthropists, and, with very good reason, greatly dreaded the contact of Europeans with the natives. It was not in human nature that the missionaries should omit to take full advantage of the official bent of mind to protect what they had learned to regard as their special preserves in New Zealand. From their own point of view they had a strong case. They and they only had laboured to benefit the people. They had now been upwards of twenty years in the country, where they had originally gone at the risk of their lives, and the position they held in the esteem of the natives was entirely owing to their virtues and their beneficence. They had taught useful arts, introduced useful products, combated native diseases, too often derived from Europeans, with European medicines, laid the foundation of education, reduced the native speech to writing, translated the Scriptures into it, done much to abolish cannibalism and other barbarous practices, and made their own dwellings object-lessons of the beauty and advantage of a wellordered home. Darwin writes on 30th December 1835: 'New Zealand is not a pleasant place. I look back to but one bright spot, and that is Waimate, with its Christian inhabitants.' At the same time they were open to criticism for having done so little to improve the domestic arrangements of the natives, and Captain Fitzroy could not but remark that they page 136showed a comparative neglect of their white congregations. Doubtless they followed 'the line of least resistance,' and the fact explains their extreme repugnance to an extensive immigration of European settlers, who, even if moral and religious, might have little affection for a theocratic regime. The missionaries also had very good reason to fear that white colonists would soon get into land disputes with the natives, and that the latter when exasperated would make no nice distinctions between laymen and ecclesiastics of the obnoxious hue. The opposition, therefore, which found expression in the pamphlets (dated November 1837), one public, the other private and confidential, of Mr Dandeson Coates, lay secretary to the Church Missionary Society, was by no means unnatural, but must, nevertheless, be condemned as unpatriotic, ill-considered and short-sighted. It was unpatriotic, because it contested the sovereignty of Great Britain over a region of so much importance to her. It was ill-considered, because it failed to suggest any other remedy for admitted evils than the multiplication of consular agents as helpless as the existing Resident, and the stationing of a small coastguard ship off the coast to awe delinquents on dry land. It was doubly short-sighted, inasmuch as, by denying Great Britain's right of sovereignty, it denied her jurisdiction over any of her subjects domiciled in the country who might choose to set up a republic little likely to be conducted agreeably to missionary page 137principles; and because it left the door open for French annexation, a real peril to which the missionaries themselves awoke shortly afterwards. They certainly had a case in the deplorable results which had so frequently attended the contact between Europeans and aborigines; but they ought to have seen that this contact was inevitable, and that the mischief could best be counteracted by a cordial understanding with the Association, whose interest in the well-being of the islands was not less than theirs; the pity was that while one party wanted none but the best class of settlers, the other wanted none at all. Mr Coates frankly told the deputation from the Association which sought to conciliate him that 'though he had no doubt of their respectability and the purity of their motives, he was opposed to the colonization of New Zealand in any shape, and was determined to thwart them by all the means in his power,' and 'exclude colonization,' or some equivalent phrase, continually occurs in his pamphlets. It may be guessed that other motives concurred which could not well be avowed. Mr Coates was obliged to acknowledge before the Committee that one effect of annexing New Zealand would be to open it to the evangelising efforts of the Propagation Society, whose charter restricted its operations to British possessions. No objection could decently be made to the introduction of another Christianising and civilising agency, but the Church Missionary page 138officials were hardly likely to welcome a rival society with enthusiasm.

That the New Zealand Association might well have gone hand in hand with any religious society appears from the most important evidence given on its behalf before the Lords' Committee. The soul of the company and its official head were absent with Wakefield and Durham in Canada, and it was chiefly represented by Dr Samuel Hinds, chaplain to Archbishop Whately, and afterwards Bishop of Norwich ('almost the most agreeable and sensible man I have met,' says Arthur Wakefield in a letter to Catherine Torlesse), and by Dr G. S. Evans, a barrister versed in international law, not more of a Vattel than of a Stentor. Dr Hinds gave a luminous statement of the circumstances under which a civilised state is justified in extending its authority over barbarous countries, dwelt on the humane intentions of the Association towards the natives, and thus put the case against the Church Missionary Society from its own point of view: 'A missionary station will spread Christianity immediately about; but when you come to contemplate the civilisation of a whole country you must look for a stronger and more effective measure. What the savage wants is to have before his eyes the example of a civilised and Christian community.' Mr Dandeson Coates's panacea, on the other hand, was the recognition of Maori New Zealand as an independent power. He pointed out that the chiefs and page 139heads of tribes in the Northern Island, probably under the influence of the British agent, had already, on 28th October 1835, declared themselves a nation under the title of 'the united tribes,' but he did not say, perhaps did not know, that this ridiculous farce had been denounced by the Governor of New South Wales as 'silly and unauthorised.' He could not deny that the missionaries themselves had petitioned for protection, to meet which necessity he recommended that the natives should be induced to adopt a code of laws, and that this New Zealand jurisprudence should be administered by a visiting judge from the Supreme Court at Sydney. Dr Evans, for the Association, easily showed that no respectable person could settle in the colony under such a system, unless he went with an armed party of squatters, without authority from the Crown. Still the Government deferred taking action, and it cannot be doubted that they were at heart hostile to all colonization. This jealous and unsympathetic attitude was the cause of all the early misfortunes of the colony, and of everything questionable in the proceedings of the Association itself. If the Government could have found it in its heart to have treated the Association as Elizabeth treated the East India Company, the difficult path to the existing prosperity of the colony would have been in comparison brief and easy.

Apart from the testimony of these principal witnesses, the entire report of evidence has permanent historical page 140value. It throws great light on the tribal customs and the difficulties connected with the transfer of land; upon the resources of the country, not then adequately appreciated; upon the simultaneous and corresponsive development of the organs of benevolence and of acquisitiveness among the missionaries. Mr Flatt, a discarded catechist, revealed that many of them had become great landholders and stockholders: 'What meaneth this bleating of the sheep in mine ears ? and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?' The most remarkable witness was a native named Nayti, who had been living some time in Wakefield's house, where he passed for a prince, but who on his return to his country was proved to be a man of low birth. His imposture, however, probably did not impair his trustworthiness as to the manners and customs of his countrymen. The last question asked him is: 'How many children will a New Zealand woman have before she kills any ?' To which he replies: 'Some seven and some eight; then they begin.'

The endeavour to present a view of the condition of New Zealand at the commencement of regular British colonisation has carried us some time past the formation of the original New Zealand Association, which met for the first time at 20 Adam Street, Adelphi, on 22d May 1837, a day exactly midway between Carlyle's first lecture, 1st May, and Cooke and Wheatstone's first patent for the electric telegraph. Its origination and initial proceedings are page 141thus described by Wakefield in his evidence before the Parliamentary Committee of 1840:—

'We met and formed a society. The first principle which we laid down was that the society should be rather of a public than of a private character; and that at all events no member of it should have any pecuniary interest in the object in view. The only object of the society was to bring the subject before the public and Parliament, and not to take any part as individuals in what might be the result. After putting forth to the public a printed pamphlet in which was published a statement of the objects of the society, the next step which they took was to get together a number of persons who wished to go out to New Zealand and settle there. Those persons formed themselves in a body, which may be properly called an intending colony. They were a body of people who separated themselves from society here, and formed themselves into a distinct society for the purpose of establishing themselves in New Zealand, provided the Association should succeed in its public object. As soon as this body was formed, which comprised a number of persons of some station, of good education and considerable property, the association made its first communication to the Government.'

We must distinguish, therefore, between the Association formed for the purpose of promoting colonization, but whose members, united for a page 142public object, were in this capacity entirely disinterested persons, and the body of actual settlers constituted under its auspices. The plan¹ proposed to the Government contemplated the annexation of New Zealand and the entrusting of its administration for ten years to a council elected by the founders, which should have full authority, subject to disallowance by the Colonial Secretary and by Parliament, to whom its proceedings must be reported.

The Association was indeed an influential body; its first chairman, Mr Francis Baring, was of worldwide fame as a banker and merchant prince; many of the directors were of the same type; others were theoretical colonial reformers like Buller, Hutt and Molesworth. A name more calculated to impress the popular imagination was then in the background. Lord Durham returned from his St Petersburg embassy on 24th June, and forthwith joined the direction. The biography of this remarkable man is in the able hands of Mr Stuart J. Reid; it will suffice for us to briefly describe him as an example of the patrician democrat whom the juxtaposition of caste and freedom have made more frequent in England than elsewhere, but of whom Alfieri is perhaps the standard type, an enthusiast for the rights of humanity in the abstract, disdainful of humanity

¹ The draft of the scheme will be found in the appendix to the report of the Committee of 1840, p. 163.

page 143as impersonated in individuals, too impatient of the mass of men to make a satisfactory colleague, and, though falling short of the intellectual superiority that would have made a great leader, in every thought and action magnanimous, disinterested and sincere. He was the only statesman of the day outside of Wakefield's immediate circle who had arrived at a conception of the Imperial character of the colonies, and differed even from these in so far that, while they mainly thought of colonization as a remedy for the ills of the State, Durham took it up rather on the positive side, and dreamed and more than dreamed of reviving the glories of Elizabeth. 'Through every page of his famous Report,' says Mr Egerton, in his recent interesting volume on British Colonial Policy, 'there breathes a passion of Imperial patriotism, strange enough at the time.' The date of Wakefield's first acquaintance with Durham is uncertain. Had he known him in 1834 he would probably have succeeded in interesting him in the South Australian project; and as in 1835 and 1836 Durham was mostly absent on his Russian embassy, it seems not improbable that Wakefield may have visited him at St Petersburg, a conjecture slightly supported by Wakefield's possession of Russian silver utensils given him by Durham. In any case, Durham's directorship in the abortive New Zealand Company of 1825, and consequent claims to landed property in the islands, marked him out as a fit director of the new page 144Association; while his position as leader of the more advanced section of the Liberal party, to which almost all Wakefield's political friends belonged, and his prospect of the Premiership should this prevail, must have seemed more powerful recommendations still. But a serious drawback to his usefulness existed, for which he himself was in no way responsible.

Wakefield and his friends had a great horror of the Colonial Office, which they looked upon as a demesne of the Church Missionary Society. In endeavouring to avoid Scylla they ran into Charybdis. They addressed themselves to Lord Melbourne, the Prime Minister. Save for an honourable sense of public duty on especial occasions, Lord Melbourne was a second edition of Charles II., with more sense, discernment and shrewdness than anybody about him, and less inclination than anybody to fatigue himself with dry details. He received the representatives of the Association graciously, and turned them over to Lord Howick, afterwards Earl Grey, then Secretary at War. But for Lord Durham's connection with the Association this might have been a judicious step. Lord Howick was a very remarkable person, a true statesman and excellent administrator, whose weight of character and fearless candour made him at a patriarchal age a valuable counsellor on public affairs long after his retirement from active political life. But he had the worst temper of any statesman of his age except Roebuck, was in some measure estranged from Lord page 145Durham, who was his brother-in-law, and, in Wakefield's opinion, was embittered against Wakefield himself, by old misunderstandings concerning the South Australian scheme, aggravated at a later period by Lord Durham's rejection on Wakefield's advice of a plan of Howick's for the administration of Canada.¹ Wakefield's statements on this point (Art of Colonization, pp. 27, 28) having never been admitted or contradicted by Earl Grey, remain ex parte, and Grey always denied that he had given the Association reason to expect his aid. That he did become hostile is as certain as it is lamentable. An alliance between him and Wakefield would have done more for the colonial empire of Britain than any other of the many excellent things that might have been. If Wakefield could effect so much by the aid of opponents or dubious supporters of the Ministry, what might he not have achieved with the support of a Minister like Howick, who could have had carte blanche, the Church Missionary Society and its acolytes in Downing Street notwithstanding ? Unfortunately Howick, though a most able man, was not, like Wakefield, a man of original ideas. Wakefield wrote truly of him: 'With more than a common talent for understanding principles, he has no origin-

¹ Wakefield writes to Lord Durham in February 1839: 'Though one should think it was just over, the time is now come for your receiving all sorts of suggestions as to the best mode of settling affairs in Canada. Every man who has a scheme will hope to persuade you to adopt a bit of it. But Lord Howick would substitute a whole plan of his own for the whole of your plan.'

page 146ality of thought—which compels him to take all his ideas from somebody; and no power of working out theory in practice—which compels him to be always in somebody's hands as respects decision and action.' Wakefield, parentally affected towards the ideas which he had himself evolved, welcomed as an angel from heaven anybody who would help to translate them into facts. Howick, uninspired and critical, was unable to put aside the dislikes and prejudices which beset him from the first, or to see that much ought to be forgiven to the faulty persons or faulty companies by which such conceptions were to be realised. Thus he lost the fame he might have had as a builder of the Empire, and ranks only among its eminent administrators.

Durham's support, nevertheless, for a time helped the Association much in the same way as Howick's might have done. The Government, fearful of his heading an ultra-Liberal secession, was disposed to humour him in a matter so comparatively unimportant as the foundation of a colony. Before his return from Russia, a draft of the proposed bill had been submitted to Lord Howick, who took objections and proposed amendments, all of which, Wakefield declares, whether approved or not, were accepted to conciliate his support. The death of the King on 20th June, and the consequent dissolution, deferred further negotiations until the winter; but the Association was not idle, and in October a little treatise called The British Colonization of New Zealand, partly page 147written and partly compiled by Wakefield, was issued from its office in Adelphi Terrace Chambers. The larger portion of the book is devoted to a description of the islands, but it has also a valuable account of the system of government proposed by the Association, a sketch of the method to be followed in the application of the Wakefield system of land sale, and an appendix (by the Rev. Montague Hawtrey) on the principles to be observed in intercourse with the natives, which Wakefield justly terms 'beautiful.' Another chapter, written by Dr Hinds, holds out hopes of the appointment of a bishop, which, to say nothing of the attendant spiritual advantages, 'will obviously increase the respectability of the colony.' No religion and no respectability, however, could conciliate the missionary party. Mr Dandeson Coates attacked the Association and its scheme in the two pamphlets already referred to, to which Wakefield replied in another (dated 12th December), pointing out that colonization of a very undesirable sort was proceeding already, and that Mr Coates virtually proposed a scheme of colonization himself.

Mr Coates's influence with Lord Glenelg appeared to be paramount when, on 9th December 1837, a deputation from the Association was again received by Lord Melbourne, and this time Lord Glenelg was present. 'Lord Melbourne, who appeared to have forgotten what had passed on the former occasion, referred to Lord Glenelg. Lord Glenelg, without page 148any reference to what had passed before, stated, partly from memory and partly by reading from a paper, a number of objections, which, if they had been valid, would be quite fatal to the scheme. He objected to it on almost every possible ground. It appeared then to the members of the Association that they had been rather hardly treated in being allowed to proceed as they had done in encouraging the public to prepare a colony for emigration to New Zealand. One of them was described to Lord Melbourne as having taken steps with a view to emigration, and as being likely to suffer very seriously from now finding himself not able to carry his plan into effect. Lord Melbourne, not knowing that he was present, said that he must be mad. The gentleman got up and said that he was the madman. All this excited a good deal of feeling.' Within a week, however, a complete change seemed to have come over the mind of the Government. Lord Glenelg received another deputation at the Colonial Office, to which he declared that the Government would grant the Association a charter of incorporation on condition of its transforming itself into a joint-stock company. To this the directors, who had made it the very foundation of their scheme that they should have no pecuniary interest in it, declined to agree.

The objection was doubtless sincere, yet it can be no breach of charity to conjecture that even stronger objections may have been thought to apply to other page 149propositions of Lord Glenelg's conveyed in a letter to Lord Durham, dated 29th December. The first portion of this letter, by admitting, on the strength of despatches stated to have been just received, the absolute necessity of establishing British authority in New Zealand, threw the case of the Church Missionary Society overboard, but it went on to restrict the Association's area of occupation, to reserve the right of incorporating new companies, and to prohibit purchases of land from the natives without the assent of a Government Commissioner—a reasonable proposal if the Government and the Association worked hand in hand and agreed on first principles, but which might otherwise nullify its power to make any investments. An able reply signed by Durham, but evidently drafted by Wakefield, was returned next day; and after further correspondence between the two peers, which Wakefield says was too confidential to be made public, the Association determined to introduce a bill to carry out its objects on their original basis. In taking this step it professed itself confident of the support of Lord Howick, who, having seen the original draft of the project (and not, as he afterwards mistakenly alleged, an abstract of it), and having returned it with amendments accepted by the Association and incorporated in their new bill, was thought to have incurred a moral obligation to support it. He denied the existence of any such obligation. Wakefield had apparently the best of page 150the argument before the Committee of 1840; it nevertheless appears to us that the expectation of Lord Howick's support was a kind of Mambrino's helmet which the Association put up for a show, but took care not to test. The bill was not introduced until June 1838, when Lord Durham and Wakefield were both in Canada. It was thrown out by 92 to 32, Lord Howick and Sir George Grey leading the opposition on behalf of the Government. As this destroyed all hope of the scheme being adopted in its original and preferable shape, the Association determined to dissolve, and reconstitute itself as a jointstock company.¹ All its expenses had hitherto been defrayed by Dr Evans and Wakefield from their private means, and had amounted to about a thousand pounds apiece. Compensation was voted to them. Evans, who had a family, very justifiably accepted it. Wakefield declined to receive a penny.

The chief ostensible ground on which the Government had opposed the bill of the Association had been 'the want of an actual subscribed capital,' to obviate which it was necessary for the Association to condescend to the status of a joint-stock company.

¹ In Thomson's Story of New Zealand, it is stated, on the authority of an anonymous colonist, that this dissolution was occasioned by a dispute, developed at an entertainment given by Lord Durham to the Association, whether the administration of the company's settlements in New Zealand should be conferred upon Wakefield or Major Campbell. The groundlessness of the tale is proved by the fact that both Wakefield and Lord Durham were in Canada at the time.

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Durham and Wakefield were still in Canada, but provision had no doubt been made for the emergency. In October the 'private and confidential' prospectus of the New Zealand Colonization Company was issued, with a paid-up capital of £250,000, and power to extend it to half a million. The names on the directorate were principally of City men, and the element of colonial reform was barely represented. In fact, the mission of this new company was no more than to form a rallying point for intending emigrants, and prepare the next year's expedition. Much subterranean activity was no doubt rife, but the company made no overt demonstration until March, by which time interesting incidents had occurred. Much had been heard before the Lords' Committee of the proceedings of a French adventurer, the Baron de Thierry, who had claims to land in New Zealand, worthless in themselves, but quite good enough for the French Government to buy if it desired to set up a claim to the country. The Baron's brother, seeking support in England, called upon Mr Angas, of South Australian reputation, who, justly alarmed at what he elicited, wrote to Lord Glenelg, forcibly pointing out the necessity of prompt action. His advice was to proclaim British authority in New Zealand without further delay, and the neglect with which it was treated affords, unintentionally on his part, for he was no friend to the New Zealand Company, the fullest justification page 152of the latter's subsequent action.¹ The feeble Glenelg was removed by his own colleagues in February, and was succeeded by Lord Normanby, a nobleman who had earned an enviable reputation for tact and conciliatory spirit as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and might therefore have made an excellent colonial governor, but was far below the calibre of a Secretary of State. On 4th March the Colonization Company addressed him, pointing out that the conditions required by Government had been complied with, to which Lord Normanby replied that they had been rejected once, and that the Government was free from all responsibility. In plain English, the Government had broken with Lord Durham, and were no longer afraid of him. Silence ensued until 27th April, when the company, now developed into a 'New Zealand Land Company,' formed by the amalgamation of the Colonization Company, the old Association, and the Company of 1825,

¹ Hodder's Life of G, F. Angas, pp. 208-212. The real motive of the Government's opposition, vis inertia and horror of colonial extension apart, is naively intimated in a passage from Mr Angas's diary: 'If it were possible to get a hundred pious persons to advance £1000 each, I think Lord Glenelg would give them a charter.' Dr Dunmore Lang, the eminent New South Wales colonist, published four letters to Lord Durham recommending immediate annexation, and the honour of preserving New Zealand for Britain is awarded to him in the Dictionary of National Biography. But as his pamphlet was published in July 1839, and the company's expedition had sailed in May, he was but knocking at an open door as concerned Lord Durham, although his letters were no doubt serviceable as a stimulus to public opinion.

page 153Lord Durham in its chair, and a paid-up capital of a hundred thousand pounds in its pocket, gave a splendid dejeuner, accompanied with much oratory, at Lovegrove's Tavern at the West India Dock. On 29th April the Colonial Secretary was the dismayed recipient of a communication informing him that he was aware that the company intended to form a settlement in New Zealand, which information his Lordship declared to be great news to him. It further stated that the first ship was actually to sail upon 1st May, and requested letters commendatory to the Governors of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land, This application, as was probably intended, forced Lord Normanby's hand, and compelled him to almost pledge the Government to obtain territorial rights over New Zealand by negotiation with the natives; while declaring that meanwhile the Company could not be recognised, and that no guarantee could be given for the validity of its land purchases. The good ship Tory, of 400 tons, armed with eight guns and with thirty-five souls aboard, none the less sailed from London on the 5th May, the anniversary of the memorable day that ushered in the French Revolution, and of the death of Napoleon. She carried among other passengers Colonel William Wakefield, agent of the Company, late of Lancaster Castle, but more recently still of the Portuguese and Spanish services, where he had won honour as a brave and able soldier; Wakefield's page 154son, Edward Jerningham, who had in the preceding year accompanied his father to Canada, a youth of more ability than conduct, notwithstanding the steadying influences of Bruce Castle School and King's College; Dieffenbach, afterwards famous as a naturalist; and that poor bedizened daw, 'Prince' Nayti. The commander, Edmund Chaffers, had been master of the Beagle in the memorable six years' voyage through which Fitzroy carried Darwin. The expedition was merely a precursor of the despatch of the general body of emigrants, which was to follow in time to effect a junction with it at Port Hardy, in Cook's Straits, by 10th January 1840, the height of the New Zealand summer.

The Tory sailed from London, as has been seen, four days after the appointed time, a delay doubtless inevitable, for the Company's directors and the power behind them¹ must have well known that no time was to be lost. She cast anchor at Plymouth, and as she did so a stout, fresh-complexioned, middle-aged gentleman, with a countenance expressive of intelligence and resolution,² left London in a post-chaise, driving rapidly to the south-west. This was no other than Edward Gibbon Wakefield, whom rumours had reached that Government intended to stop the departure of the vessel. He urged the Tory off, and she

¹ Wakefield did not become a director till some time afterwards.

² 'A countenance expressing in turn a sort of playful cunning, warm sensibility, clear insight and firm, resolute purpose.'—Thornton Hunt.

page 155sailed unmolested on 12th May. Whether Government could have worked itself up to an act of such courageous cowardice cannot be known. If it had, what a theme for epigram at the expense of a country that stopped the Tory and did not stop the Alabama! In any case, Wakefield's vigorous action was the fitting crown of a series of vigorous actions which won for our Queen as bright a jewel as any of her diadem, and saved the Britain of the South from becoming a French convict settlement, a nuisance hateful to God and man, only to be abated at the cost of a bloody war.

While the Tory was ploughing the waves, the Company was not idle on shore. Their prospectus had already appeared on 2d May. On 14th May they held a meeting, the agenda for which, extant on a sheet of paper in Wakefield's writing, afford the liveliest picture of the Hero as Company Promoter. The most important of the nine items also convey the Company's apology for its energetic action:—

'To suggest, in general terms, the expediency of vigorous action as the best means of inducing Parliament to legalise and regulate the colonisation of New Zealand; showing that nothing will be done by Government unless individuals act, and how nearly all the colonies of England originated in the activity of individuals; explaining the necessary preoccupation and indifference of Government, and the necessity for legislation which arises when numbers emigrate page 156directly from England to establish themselves in a distant country.

'A despatch from the Governor to the Colonial Secretary explanatory of the state of the question, pointing out the reasons for legislating, suggesting the best mode of proceeding for national purposes, and asking for an interview for the directors.'

Lord Durham accordingly wrote on 22d May soliciting an interview with Lord Normanby. Deputations were received on 1st June and 13th June; yet Lord Normanby thought himself justified in stating on 12th August that he had 'no knowledge of the proceedings of the New Zealand Company.' They had in fact stirred him up to announce by a letter to the Treasury on 13th June his intention 'of adding certain parts of the islands of New Zealand to the Colony of New South Wales as a dependency of that Government,' and of exalting Captain Hobson, R.N., the new British consul, known for gallantry in the West Indies, and as the layer-out of Melbourne, to the dignity of Lieutenant-Governor. Circumlocutionary correspondence between the Treasury, Colonial Office and Foreign Office delayed Hobson's appointment until 14th August, two days before the Tory, which had enjoyed a splendid run without sight of land save a distant part of the Canaries, 'saw the high land of New Zealand.' She anchored at Port Nicholson, on the northern side of Cook's Strait, on 20th September. Hobson left England shortly afterwards, and arrived in page 157the Bay of Islands on 29th January 1840. The instructions given to the leaders of the rival expeditions, and the proceedings of each, will be best related in a subsequent chapter. The narrative will be a joyful history in so far as it records that the one absolutely indispensable object was accomplished by New Zealand being preserved to the nation and becoming the home of prosperous colonists; a lamentable one in so far as it recites the disfigurement of what might have been an ideal chapter in colonization. The fault lay entirely with the Government, an excellent administration in many respects, but neither sufficiently large-hearted to meet the Association in a generous and confiding spirit, nor (which would have been equally indispensable) sufficiently resolute to subject its doings to the control of a strong but sympathetic representative of the Crown. It let things drift until they could drift no longer, and then in a panic created an authority antagonistic to the original colonists, the source of endless dissension, scandal and damage, material and moral. Abler men succeeded Lords Glenelg and Normanby at the Colonial Office, but they could never get out of the groove traced for them when their predecessors compelled the high-principled and disinterested directorate of the New Zealand Association to descend to the level of a joint-stock company.

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Edward Gibbon Wakefield : the colonization of South Australia and New Zealand

Chapter V

Chapter V