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History of New Zealand. Vol. II.

Chapter xii. — State of the Maoris

page 148

Chapter xii.
State of the Maoris.

The early history of New Zealand is a story of the relations between the Maoris and the English. They form the current which carried with it the hopes and the fears of the visitors, the suspicions and resentment of the tribes. A faithful narrative, in order to depict the fortunes of the colony, must busy itself mainly with the administration of native affairs. On the eve of the struggle—provoked so often and so long by the cupidity of a section of the English, and courted by the wilder and more savage among the Maoris—it is good to ascertain the relative forces which could be brought into the field. Though the Maoris were outnumbered by the invaders of their soil they claim first notice. In 1858 they were estimated at 56,049, of whom 31,667 were males and 24,303 were females. In the North Island there were nearly 30,000 males and nearly 23,000 females. The total Maori population in the Middle Island was 2283, in Stewart's Island and Ruapuke 200, at the Chatham Islands 510. In 1864 the number was known to be much diminished. Dr. Thomson, the historian of 1859, had after careful inquiry on the spot added his mournful testimony to the rapid decrease of the Maoris. Inattention to the sick; infanticide; sterility; new habits; new diseases; intermarriage with relations—were the causes he assigned. All but the first and second had fallen upon the race after their intercourse with the Europeans. Four thousand were victims to the outbreak of measles in the North Island in 1854. The musket was supposed to have destroyed 20,000 lives in tribal wars. After contact with Europeans a practice of steeping decaying grain, and making it apparently fit for food, was believed by many persons to have been fatal to thousands. Dr. Thomson page 149 attributed the decay of the race principally to marriage of blood-connections. Yet about a score of generations after colonizing the islands with 1000 souls, the Maoris had multiplied to more than 100,000, and it was after intrusion of foreigners that in twenty years they declined from that number to less than 60,000. Mr. Maning assigns a more potent cause for a decrease so sudden as to outrun all possible rate attainable by reason of intermarriage of blood-connections. He observed that a second plague followed the use of the musket, and swept away more victims than the first. The ancient weapons were powerless against the inmates of pahs built on precipitous hill-tops; and in selecting safe situations, the Maoris had chosen healthy ones. Day and night free air coursed over habitations placed beyond reach of exhalations from marshes. Troops of the dwellers therein descended to their cultivation fields, with club or spear in one hand, and an agricultural implement in the other. The women followed. In the evening the women led the way home, and the men kept that which was the post of danger in case of attack.

When the crops were growing the tribe or hapu would often wander to some fortified elevation near a river or sea, and obtain variety of food by fishing. Their growing crops were deemed safe even from enemies. When the musket became the principal weapon a change came over the scene. To avoid the toil and loss of time incurred in the long procession from hill-top to field, and the carrying of fuel, provisions and water, the Maoris, relying on their new weapon, transferred their “whares” or abodes from the airy eminence to the damp fields below. They built their oven-like houses in mere swamps, spongy even in summer-time. With rushes rotting underneath them; in low dens, heated like ovens at night and dripping with damp in the day, drinking noxious exhalations in unventilated artificial caves, they were cut off in thousands. They would take no advice. They could not see the devouring enemy, and would not believe Europeans who warned them.

“Twenty years ago, a hapu, in number just forty persons, removed their ‘kainga’ (village or head-quarters) from a dry healthy position to the edge of a ‘raupo’ (bulrush) swamp. I happened to be at the place a short time after the removal, and with me there was a medical gentleman who was travelling page 150 through the country. In creeping into one of the houses, the chief's, through the low door, I was obliged to put both my hands to the ground; they both sank into the swampy soil, making holes which immediately filled with water. The chief and his family were lying on the ground on rushes, and a fire was burning, which made the little den, not in the highest place more than five feet high, feel like an oven. I called the attention of my friend to the state of this place called a ‘house.’ He merely said, ‘Men cannot live here.’ Eight years from that day the whole hapu were extinct, but, as I remember, two persons were shot for bewitching them and causing their deaths.”1 The drinking of ardent spirits, the bane of European countries, claimed its victims. The king-maker and his friends endeavoured to bar the poison from their territories, but the dissolute and debauched evaded the prohibition. Europeans did not always assist Waharoa's efforts. Bishop Selwyn confessed the shame with which he sometimes saw the demoralizing effect of remitting the chivalrous chief to scenes and company likely to lead to his ruin. It was not possible that an imaginative and thoughtful race should see these things without despair. It was natural that a daring race should say—” Rather let us die in battle for our country than pine away, the slaves of the Pakeha.” Proud also and boastful,—admitted by speakers in the Assembly to have been undefeated if not successful in the Taranaki war—they might in some cases be fooled by the idea that they could drive the Pakeha into the sea, in spite of their having only fowling-pieces or muskets to oppose to rifles, rockets, Armstrong guns, and powerful mortars, and of ammunition being difficult to procure for the weapons they possessed. The superstition which doomed sorcerers to destruction because the dwellers in a marsh had died, was prompted to some deed of daring before the swarms of immigrating Englishmen might make all daring vain. But the English were already swarming. The early massacre at Wairau and the failure of the company's schemes had arrested immigration in old time; but it had been resumed. It is difficult even for misgovernment to arrest the material advancement of a young community. The resolution of the individual Englishman, who, though he grumbles with or

1 ‘Old New Zealand.’

page 151 without cause, yet works to make himself a home, had conquered natural obstacles; and farms, agricultural and pastoral, had been pushed by slow degrees farther and farther from the several provincial capitals. Taranaki was an exception. In a memorial (April, 1863) the settlers bitterly complained that after 1844 no more than 70,000 acres had been secured by purchase. Even from these they had been driven; and the settlement was, in the Assembly and elsewhere, spoken of as for the time destroyed. But at the Middle Island the tide of immigration had been such that in 1863 more English stood on Maori land than there had ever been Maoris. On the 31st December, 1860, the whites were estimated at 83,919 in the islands. In December, 1861, they were deemed to be 99,021. In December, 1862, there were 125,812. In December, 1863, there were 164,048. And still the yellow slave of commerce drew shoals of gold-seekers to Otago.

In June, 1861, after various minor discoveries, the first redundant gold-field had been found by one Gabriel Read at Tuapeka. The first escort from “Gabriel's Gulley,” as the thronging miners christened the place, took away 5056 ounces of gold. Not only from the Northern Island and other parts of New Zealand crowds rushed to the spot. The Australian colonies caught the infection; the restless element at the populous gold-fields in Victoria cast itself loose from a soil to which it had never intended to attach itself, and exhausted all available means of procuring conveyance to Otago. For a short time it seemed that the adventurers had been drawn thither by a will-o'-the-wisp. They were too numerous for the known gold-bearing situations. The weather was colder than any they had encountered in Australia. A panic disturbed them and they began to fly. The Superintendent of the province issued a proclamation in September, 1861, warning intending miners not to make matters worse by rash immigration. In midwinter (July) there had been a retreat so rapid that only 7000 persons were supposed to be left at the mines. More than 16,000 returned to Australia. At the end of that month two men produced, in Dunedin, 1047 ounces of gold, and offered to divulge the spot where they had found this treasure if the Government would guarantee them a reward of £2000 if within three months 16,000 ounces should be brought down by the page 152 escort. The bargain was made; and the Dunstan Gold Fields on the Clutha river were no sooner made known than the vagrant crowd returned. Before the end of the year 70,000 ounces of gold were obtained from the neighbourhood of the Clutha river. More fields were found at the valley of the Cardrona, and in the gorges of the Arrow river. At the Shotover river some miners were found at work by a Maori, Haeroa, and a half-caste, natives of the North Island. On the west bank of the river was a point which the miners yearned to examine; but they shrunk from the foaming torrent between. The Maoris plunged in and reached the coveted shore. A dog which attempted to follow them was swept to a rocky point below. One of them went to assist the dog, and observed gold in the crevices of the rocks. Before nightfall the two swimmers had scraped together 300 ounces of gold. The small province of Southland, under influences which had magnified Otago, increased its population from 1876 in 1861, to 8085 in 1864. In the Middle Island, which thus opened its maw to receive the coming thousands, there was no risk of Maori attacks. Never in that island, except at the Wairau in 1843, had there been collision between the two races; and the Maori champions then were Rauparaha and Rangihaeata, whose ordinary residences were in the North Island. The fertile plains of which the New Zealand Company had endeavoured to rob them with the policeman's staff was now the rich possession of a new province—Marlborough—carved in 1859 out of the original province of Nelson. The population of Marlborough had risen from 2299 in 1861, to 5519 in 1864. At Nelson, after the loss of Marlborough, the Europeans had increased from 9952 in 1861, to 11,910 in 1864. In Canterbury progress had been steady. The population had risen from 8967 in 1858, to 32,276 in 1864. At Wellington in the same period it had advanced from 11,753 to 14,987. Hawke's Bay in the same time had grown from 1514 to 3770. About 4000 Europeans were cooped up in Taranaki. Auckland, the capital, had steadily advanced. Though not so populous as the gold-producing Otago, its numbers had increased from 24,420 in 1861, to 42,132 in 1864. Everywhere except at Taranaki enclosures and agriculture had rapidly increased. The total of acres enclosed was 409,763 in page 153 1861, and in 1864 it was 1,072,383. Including sown grasses the acres under crop had been 226,219 in 1861; they were 382,655 in 1864. But all this progress availed the war-party nothing, so long as the Maori sat in his king's gate. Yet the decay of the Maoris might have satisfied their enemies. There were not 50,000 of them, while the Europeans were more than three times as many. But nearly all the Maoris were in the North Island, in which they formed nearly two-fifths of the whole population. Many tribes were friendly, but it was not known how many would join the standard of the Maori king. That there would be, as in fact there were, large numbers of the natives fighting on the side of the English might be hoped, but could not be predicted with certainty. The causes which had so rapidly created a numerical preponderance of Europeans in the islands involved momentous financial considerations. Armies must be paid for, and wages had risen. Any highly-paid occupation absorbs labour to itself, and employers in danger of being deserted have to compete in price with temptations offered elsewhere. This maxim, true everywhere, is strained to the extremest verge when the glittering bait of gold, for mere grubbing, is the distracting magnet. The greed of the gambler is associated with honourable toil, and the measure of wages is unsettled by the quality of hope. The man who of all men in New Zealand had the most subtle brain for comprehending problems in political economy at this time passed away. The mover of so many puppets in his prime, he had become, like Swift, capable only of wondering at his former achievements. Secluded in ill-health, Gibbon Wakefield, long absent from the scenes of his activity, died at Wellington in 1862.

The Ministry, in a careful document, laid before Sir George Grey at Taranaki, in May, 1863, had urged that the pay of the militia there (2s. 6d. a day with rations) was not too high, because “the ordinary wages of labour of the simplest kind, such as working on roads, was 8s. a day at that time at Nelson and Canterbury.” Under such circumstances the cost of an army was an apparition which might well disturb even a bold financier. Already two Waikato regiments had been raised in Australia. A third was in course of formation. Before the meeting of the Assembly the Ministers drew up a page 154 voluminous description of their plans (5th October, 1863). Roads were to be made. The road from Auckland to Taupo was to pass through the heart of Waikato. About 1000 miles of roadways were proposed. The war was to be the last. “No opportunity of renewing it with any chance of success must be left.” Twenty thousand men would be required. Half of them would be wanted “from Waikato Mouth and Raglan to Tauranga and Thames.” The rest were to be located in bands of 1000 or 2000 at Taranaki and elsewhere. Two thousand were to go to Wanganui, where Dr. Featherston had been adjured by the chiefs to let no soldiers appear. They were to be imported to work on the roads, but to be armed with Enfield rifles. They would cost the country about £1,500,000 if they worked for nine months in the year on the roads. They would cost somewhat less if paid as militia. The scheme, with sundry accompaniments, would cost about £4,000,000. The money ought not to be raised by immediate taxation. It must be borrowed. Confiscated lands would be sufficient security. It was an ancient Maori custom for a chief to gloat over conquest of lands. The Romans gave away territories beforehand.

That there was a treaty of Waitangi in existence was a parchment bug-bear. The recollection of it had faded. It was not wanted to interfere, like Banquo's ghost, with the feast. There were, in the Waikato and Thames district, 2,292,000 acres; at Taranaki, 500,000 acres, = 2,792,000 acres. Let them be seized. Let the natives, if any be left at Waikato after the war, have 500,000 acres of their own lands. One hundred thousand acres would suffice for the Taranaki Maoris. Military settlers would have 500,000 at Waikato, and 200,000 at Taranaki. There would remain 1,492,000 acres to be sold, and they would realize more than £2,000,000. Increasing revenue would yield profits in the long run, even without taking into account the influx of prosperity attendant on expenditure of so many millions sterling. They hoped for a guarantee from the Imperial Government for, at least, £3,800,000 out of the £4,000,000. “It may be objected that these plans are based solely on the idea of force; and it is true that physical power is the main element of the conception.” But the Ministry could only rear moral sway on a basis of physical power. “The axe and the fire are wanted,” page 155 they said, “before the plough and the seed-corn.” Mr. Domett signed the paper on behalf of his colleagues. It was laid on the table of the House. It must have intensified the hostility of the Maoris. It may have been one of the early causes of a general feeling which by degrees spread amongst Her Majesty's regular forces, that the war was sought, not as a necessary act of justice, but as a means of spoliation, and a stimulant of the expenditure which enriches traders. Debt never had horrors for the colonists. Under Mr. Stafford, in 1856 and 1860, the Assembly had raised £650,000; under Mr. Domett, in 1862, £500,000 more. The Provincial Governments had raised for various purposes no less than £2,454,239. Mr. Domett and his colleagues hoped, in 1863, to drown the new debt by spoliation; for they valued the land of which they intended to rob the Maoris at little less than the proposed loan. The Representatives lost no time in devoting themselves to the amendment of the Colonial Defence Force Act of 1862. They postponed their acceptance of responsibility for native affairs.

Several fresh members were added to the Council. Among them was Major G. S. Whitmore. When the Council met there was no representative of the Government in it. Mr. Swainson, the Attorney-General of former days, called attention to the fact by moving (22nd October), “That this Council do not proceed to any business of serious importance until there be a representative of the Government in the Council, and that it do now adjourn.” Subsequently, a member informed the Council that in consequence of pending changes in the Ministry, no representative of the Government had been appointed in the Council, but that, as soon as changes had been completed, no time would be lost in making an appointment. Mr. Swainson was not silenced by this promise. He gave notice of a motion, casting grave censure on the Government for neglecting to secure the presence of one of their number in the Council. On the 29th, the Council was informed that the Ministry had resigned. Mr. Swainson withdrew his motion; and on the 2nd November, Mr. Whitaker announced that Mr. Fox had formed a Ministry, of which Mr. Whitaker was Premier and Attorney-General, representing the Government in the Council. An old colleague of Mr.C. W. Richmond, and a traitor to the treaty of Waitangi, he had found page 156 convenient colleagues. Mr. Reader Wood as Treasurer, and Mr. Thomas Russell as Minister of Defence, retained their offices in the new Ministry, which was considered a war Ministry, and by its conduct justified the belief.

An Act was passed to enable Provincial Legislatures to pass laws authorizing the compulsory taking of land for works of a public nature. This was a repetition of the scheme arrested in 1862 by the warning of Mr. Fenton, the reference to England, and the exceptional prudence of the Duke of Newcastle. Mr. Whitaker called no special attention to it. It was to remove doubts which had been suggested. Mr. Cardwell saw the contemplated injustice, and declined to advise allowance of the Bill unless native lands were excepted from its operation.1 A Bill was passed by the Representatives to raise £3,000,000 sterling by loan, for the vigorous prosecution of the war. Mr. Fox took charge of the Colonial Defence Bill introduced by Mr. Domett, and on the 5th November carried the second reading of a Suppression of Rebellion Bill by the large majority of 26 against 10. Amongst the minority was the name of a new adventurer in New Zealand politics. Mr. Julius Vogel, having kept a small shop at a rural township in Australia, had taken flight with the migration to Otago. Having talent for intrigue, and sufficient literary ability for the local press, he obtained a position in the Provincial Government, and was elected to the Assembly for the district of Dunedin and suburbs north. Those who saw him enter the House would probably have repelled with scorn the idea that he would afterwards become their leader. Mr. Weld was not present at the commencement of the session, but took an early opportunity to protest against the Suppression of Rebellion Bill as “quite unnecessary and unconstitutional.” It was a singular spectacle. The admirer of Mr.C. W. Richmond, the supporter of the rape of the Waitara, was compelled to denounce the injustice and harshness of Mr. Fox, by whom that rape had been opposed. Mr. Whitaker shone with baleful but consistent lustre. In 1860, as in 1863, he was Minister, and urged on each occasion the measures which were alternately shrunk from by Mr. Fox and Air. Weld.

After amendment by the Legislative Council, the Suppression

1 P. P. Despatch; 26th May, 1864. Vol xli. 1864.

page 157 of Rebellion Bill was passed. The same fate attended a Defence Bill. The Defence Bill of the former year had elicited an opinion from the law officers (Sir W. Atherton and Sir Roundell Palmer) in England as to the powers of the Legislative Council. They were “of opinion, that if in a Bill introduced into the House of Representatives and passed through that House, a certain tax or duty has been imposed upon a Crown grant, or an instrument in the nature of a Crown grant, it is competent to the Legislative Council, without any breach of the privileges of the House of Representatives, to make the efficacy for any given purpose of another class of instruments, intended to affect native lands under the provision of the same Bill, dependent upon their assuming the form of Crown grants, or of those instruments in the nature of Crown grants, on which the tax or duty has been so imposed by the House of Representatives.” They said it was never supposed in England that the privilege of the Commons as to originating taxation was attended with such a consequence as that the Commons could, by imposing a tax or duty on an instrument, exclude the other House from the power of originating or amending Bills relating to such instruments. But the suppositions known to jurists are not those of clutchers at unconstitutional control; and elsewhere as well as in New Zealand, members of parliament have contended, not for what custom or law could justify, but for all that could by argument or intimidation be extorted.

The Suppression of Rebellion Bill might have seemed sufficient violation of justice for one session. The Governor in Council, with Whitaker and Fox, might issue orders for the arrest of all “suspected” persons, and try them by court-martial. Death or penal servitude gleamed ominously amid the words of the Act. Nothing done under it was to be questionable in the Supreme Court, and to prevent the law so dear to Englishmen from being recurred to by a Maori, it was to be sufficient for the Governor to declare that anything done had been done in accordance with the Orders made under the Act. The bulwark of the Habeas Corpus statute was destroyed by a clause declaring that a writ under it should be satisfactorily met by a return that the body sought was held under the local Act. Indemnity was given for all unlawful things already done, page 158 The reader who gasps for freedom is doubtfully consoled only by the clause which limited the duration of the disgraceful Act to the end of the next session of the Assembly. But something more than the taking of life has been shown to be at the bottom of Maori troubles. As at Taranaki, so at Waikato, Mr. Whitaker's mind was bent upon acquiring land. The land for which the settler lusted, the land to which the Maoris clung, was to be acquired, not by troublesome bargains, but by confiscation. For this purpose “The New Zealand Settlements Bill, 1863,” was introduced. Its preamble declared that, for prevention of rebellion, and to maintain “law and order throughout the colony,” settlers must be procured “able to protect themselves and preserve the peace of the country.” To obtain land for them the Governor in Council might declare any district in which “any native tribe, or section of a tribe (after 1st January, 1863), or any considerable number thereof, had been engaged in rebellion,” a district within the provisions of the Act. Within such district the Governor in Council might from time to time seize upon lands for settlement. Compensation might be awarded to owners, excepting such as had levied war after 1st January, 1863, or those who had comforted such warring owners, or “counselled, advised, induced, enticed, persuaded, or conspired with any person” to levy war, or who had been ‘concerned in any outrage against person or property,” or who, after proclamation in the Government Gazette, failed to surrender their arms. As suspected owners might be hanged under the Suppression of Rebellion Act, the compensation provided by the Settlements Act could be kept down to a low rate; but the astute Whitaker devised a mode of defeating the operation of the compensation clause. It was provided that no claim should be entertained unless preferred in writing to the Colonial Secretary within six months (if the claimant were residing in the colony) after proclamation of his land by the Governor under the Act. Under restrictions which all men knew to be destructive of the principle of compensation, the proud Maori might obtain such compensation as the robbers of his country might choose to award him through new Compensation Courts. The Governor in Council was to appoint the Judges of the Compensation Court, and in flagrant violation of principles which had become part of the life of Eng- page 159 land, it was enacted that he should also have power at any time to remove any Judge. Thus an upright Judge could be got rid of, if his decisions should thwart the wills of Whitaker and Fox.

The New Zealand Settlements Act was a fit complement to that for suppression of rebellion. Robbery was to be sanctioned by law. It devolved upon Mr. Whitaker to prepare an official defence of the prostitution of the power of a Government for the purpose of pillage. In a paper to be submitted to an English Secretary of State, he said, that as, for the most part, Maoris possessed “little personal property,” the “permanent loss of their lauded possessions” was that which they would feel the most. Of love of country his black-letter intelligence took no heed. Comment cannot heighten the criminality of his advice. The following sentences gibbet their writer: “It will be observed that the provisions of the Act may be made to include lands belonging to persons who have not justly forfeited their rights by rebellion. In order to carry out the scheme this is absolutely necessary.… The New Zealand native tenure of land is, for the most part, in fact with little or no exception, tribal; and if the principle were admitted that the loyalty or neutrality of a few individuals would preserve the lands of the tribe, the Act would, for the most part, be a dead letter, and that in districts in which it is most required, and in which its operation would be perfectly just.” He who runs may read in these words an absolute condemnation of that Act by which Colonel Browne, abetted by Whitaker and others, attempted to set aside in 1860, with a high hand, that tribal tenure of the existence of which Whitaker was aware, and which he was fain to plead as an excuse for wholesale robbery in 1863.

Sir George Grey did not reprobate his adviser's immorality. Professing his trust that he could infuse some spirit of equity into the administration of the Acts, he recommended their allowance. If the weak Duke of Newcastle had remained at the helm they might have been simply allowed. But the good Sir William Martin drew up a paper “on the proposal to take native lands under an Act of the Assembly,” and sent it to Mr. Fox, with a request that it might be transmitted to the Secretary of State. Mr. Fox complied, and sent his own comments. He was unshaken in his resolution to abandon the sentiments he had professed in 1860. If the North Island was to be held by page 160 the English, confiscation must take place. There was nothing unjust or “unusual in the history of national conflicts” in it, and it was “in conformity with the customs of the Maoris themselves.”… To allow “natives, rebel or others, to retain possession of immense tracts of land, that they neither use nor allow others to use, and which maintains them in a state of isolation from the European race and its progressive civilization,” was “most prejudicial to the natives,” and contributed “to the rapid decay and extinction of the race.” Sir George Grey, for reasons which he did not state, avoided comment on Mr. Fox's paper. He equivocally justified the invasion of the Waikato territory, which Sir W. Martin's paper seemed to condemn, but hinted that Sir W. Martin's views “would probably agree with” his own on the point. In recommending the Acts for allowance by Her Majesty, he declared his own belief that generosity in dealing with rebels had been more successful than severity in the past. It is but just to Mr. Sewell to record that, in a letter to Lord Lyttleton1 (December, 1863), he animadverted severely upon the Suppression of Rebellion and the Settlements Bills. The first purported to make that law which is in itself a “violation of all law.” The second had all the vices of the worst ex post, facto legislation, and was a breach of Imperial and moral obligations.

An Assembly with an over-weening sense of its importance, was likely to resent Sir George Grey's decision to renounce as unjust the Waitara purchase which the Representatives had condoned. It had endorsed Richmond's and Governor Browne's repeated and positive assertions that Teira's title had been fully proved and found good. On the 28th October a petition from Teira and his friends was presented by Mr. Atkinson. It expressed loyalty to the Queen, and a desire that the Waitara block might be taken by the Pakehas. On the 11th November, Mr. Stafford moved for correspondence about the return of Te Rangitake to Waitara in 1848. Mr. Weld, as an admirer of Mr.C. W. Richmond, obtained on the 24th an order for other papers relating to Waitara. On the 17th November, Mr. Fitzgerald obtained leave to introduce a Bill to constitute a High Court of Inquiry on the events at Waitara. On the 25th November, the

1 ‘The New Zealand Native Rebellion.’ Letter to Lord Lyttleton. Auckland: 1804. Printed for the Author.

page 161 storm, such as it was, broke on the Governor's head. A recent success at Rangiriri under General Cameron diminished its force. At a crisis where, if ever, united councils were needed, it was more important with some members to adhere to an old injustice than to give loyal support to the representative of the Queen. On Mr. Weld's motion it was resolved: “That this House having supported the measures taken by his Excellency the late Governor of New Zealand to repress the armed interference of Te Rangitake1 at Waitara, because, as set forth in its resolution of August 6th, 1860, in the opinion of this House such measures were indispensable for the due maintenance of Her Majesty's authority, considers that the renewed and definite recognition by his Grace the Duke of Newcastle in his despatch of August 25th, 1863, of the justice of exerting military force against Te Rangitake and his allies, has happily rendered it unnecessary for this House to controvert or supplement statements made by his Excellency Sir George Grey in his despatches on the Waitara question.” A second resolution declared that good faith required that Teira should be protected, and investigation made of title to the block. The Governor was requested on the 1st December to transmit the resolutions to the Secretary of State. The insolence of the first resolution did not provoke him to a rash rejoinder, and the courtesy of Mr. Weld's speech was such as to justify moderation in reply. On the 2nd December, Sir G. Grey informed the House by message that his statements had been “made advisedly, and after long consideration,” and that he was satisfied of their entire accuracy. He trusted, therefore, that the House would inform him which of those statements it was prepared to controvert, and the grounds on which it did so, in order that he might have an opportunity of showing the accuracy of his statements, when transmitting to England the resolutions of the House.
On the 3rd December, Mr. Fox moved for a Select Committee to report on the Governor's message. Mr. Weld moved an amendment in which a long citation from the Duke of Newcastle's despatch was adroitly put forward as sufficient answer to the Governor. The debate was adjourned. On the 5th, Mr.

1 It is convenient to state once for all, that in this work the Maori name of Te Rangitake is used in the text; though the documents quoted often call him Wiremu Kingi.

page 162 Weld was allowed to withdraw his amendment in favour of one moved by Mr. Gillies, viz.: “That this House, in supporting the measures of Governor Browne, did so on the ground that the quarrel between the Governor and Te Rangitake was clearly not as to title to land, but as to whether the course taken by him was justifiable, and the resort to arms by him and his allies in defence of that course compatible with the Queen's sovereignty. That, on the other hand, it appears to this House that the tenor of his Excellency's despatches on the Waitara question leads to the inference that the quarrel was one as to land and not as to jurisdiction and sovereignty. That this House adheres to its former opinions, and controverts the accuracy of the various statements by which it appears that his Excellency has been led to take an opposite view, and especially those statements which are referred to in the Duke of New-castle's despatch of 25th August, 1863.” In reply, the Governor transmitted copies of the statements alluded to in the despatch, and requested the House to be good enough to inform him whether they were the statements alluded to by the House; and if not, which were the statements controverted by the House, and on what grounds they controverted them.

The House read Mr. Fitzgerald's Waitara Inquiry Bill a second time on the day on which the Governor's message was received, and a third time on the following day. Mr. Fox, before the passing of the Bill, laid on the table the Governor's reply to the despatch of the Duke of Newcastle, which had furnished so rankling a subject for debate. Appended to the Governor's despatch was a memorandum, “which” (he had said) “if your Grace thinks fit to read, will, I am sure, satisfy you.” It was irrefragable, both as to the wrong-headed conclusions of Colonel Browne's advisers, and the equally perverse decisions of the Duke of Newcastle.

How prone the Representatives had been in 1860 as well as in 1863 to make assertions incapable of proof was now shown by Mr. Stafford's conduct. Unable to refute Sir George Grey he was obliged to move, and the House passed without a division, a resolution (11th December): “That this House did not, by its resolutions of the 25th November last, desire to express any opinion as to the accuracy or otherwise of the three statements page 163 specified in the enclosure to the Governor's message, inasmuch as those statements do not appear to affect the question of the justice of exerting military force against Te Rangitake and his allies; but this House does controvert the statements on the part of the natives as to the cause of the quarrel.” The field of argument which could not be maintained with the Governor was abandoned, and the challenge to the natives was not likely to be accepted when they were already engaged in the bloody arbitrament of war.

Mr. Dillon Bell assailed Sir George Grey in the House. He denied that the fact of Te Rangitake's residence on the Waitara block could have been “not before known” to Sir George Grey. Mr. Bell lamely pleaded that he in 1860 thought that Te Rangitake's dwellings had been respected, and Donald McLean made a similar untrustworthy averment.1 Colonel Browne was privately appealed to, and wrote to Mr. Stafford that he was aware in 1860 that Te Rangitake had a residence on the block. Such a confession was all that was required to convict him of bad faith in signing the despatch (4th December, 1860), which was framed to persuade the Secretary of State that Te Rangitake's claim was only seignorial, and that he had put forward none other. On the charge that the discovery of Lieutenant Bates could have afforded him no information, Sir

1 Concernment with the Waitara seemed to deprive public men of precaution in the floundering statements they made from time to time. McLean, who was Chief Commissioner of Land Purchase, was asked at the Bar (in August, 1860), “Has Te Rangitake ever made a claim of proprietary right?” and replied, “He has never made such a claim to my knowledge.” Mr. Bell, who prepared Governor Browne's voluminous despatch on the subject, included McLean's evidence in the despatch (4th December, 1860), which asserted that Te Rangitake had “failed then and failed ever since in establishing a proprietary right” on the block (which was purchased without any reservation of dwellings, &c., though such reservations were admitted by Bell himself to have been invariable previously). When Sir W. Martin's pamphlet exposed the fact that there were two pahs on the block, Dillon Bell assisted Mr. Richmond in drawing up ‘Notes’ in reply. They admitted the existence of the pahs, but denied Te Rangitake's proprietary or tribal title to his home, constructed (they said) by permission of others. In April, 1863, Bell joined in a ministerial statement that it was difficult to conceive that if the facts had come out clearly at the time of the sale “the practice of reservation universally followed… would not have been adhered to in this particular instance.” In December, 1863, Bell and McLean professed that in 1860 they believed the pahs had been respected.

page 164 George Grey informed the Secretary of State (19th December, 1863) that he had been hospitably entertained at the Waitara in 1850, but he did not know, and it would have been sad to think, that such was the site bought by Colonel Browne—to screen whom, he added, “I ought therefore to mention that though I am quite satisfied from authority I cannot doubt that, although my predecessor's despatch (on which reliance seemed to be placed in England) was really written by Mr. Bell, he was at the time he wrote it entirely ignorant of the circumstances connected with the Waitara purchase which have recently been brought under your Grace's notice.” In conveying (5th January, 1864) a full narrative of the transactions in Parliament, the Governor added: “When I received the closing resolutions from both Houses, and felt that the only answer I could return was, that after the most careful consideration of the subject my conviction was that the natives were in the main right in their allegations regarding the Waitara purchase, I feared if this reply was published at the present time, when a rebellion is raging, it might have produced weighty consequences as regards the native race, and might have very much embarrassed the Colonial Ministry who did not at all agree upon this subject. I therefore thought I should act best by requesting my Ministers to advise me as to the nature of the reply I should return, and in accordance with their advice I assented to their simply making a statement in each House to the effect that they had advised me that in their opinion it was not necessary for me to reply to the resolutions.” A more lame and impotent conclusion was probably never arrived at by a representative of the Queen under advice. The subterfuges and misrepresentations of McLean and Parris, the wily seductions of Whitaker and Richmond, the bold contempt of truth in Governor Browne's prompted despatches, were pointed out by the honest examination of Lieutenant Bates, but exposure was arrested by the aversion of the General Assembly to confess the wrong it had sanctioned in 1860. It remained for a judicial inquiry in a later year (1866) to scatter finally to the winds the flimsy pretext that the title of Teira enabled him to sell to Colonel Browne the “carefully chosen” seed-plot of war. By a singular retribution that inquiry was instituted (while Mr. Stafford was Premier) with no intention to page 165 analyze the rights of Te Rangitake, which were found irrefragable. Perverse to the last, the Ministry, by privately compounding the matter before the Court, evaded the delivery of a formal judgment; but happily the facts became known under the hands of the Judges in official reports to the Government. As late as 1869 a further judicial inquiry (on the Rangitikei-Manawatu case) proved that even if Te Rangitake had had no tribal claims to the south of the Waitara previously, his occupation there by tribal arrangement constituted himself and his companions “owners according to Maori usage and custom.” It may be admitted that until the scales of justice were applied, Colonel Browne and his advisers could not know how grossly the treaty of Waitangi was violated by his act at the Waitara. But their ignorance confers no moral relief; for the prayer of Te Waharoa, of Bishop Selwyn, of Sir W. Martin, and Archdeacon Hadfield, was that the law might be resorted to, and their prayer was roughly refused.

One of Colonel Browne's advisers had in 1863 quitted the political arena. Mr.C. W. Richmond had become a Judge of the Supreme Court. But he was unable to keep aloof from the Waitara question in which he had such bad eminence. In October he asked his old colleague, Stafford, to make known to one or both Houses his willingness to submit to any further investigation. He wrote to Sir George Grey: “I have taken this step in consequence of certain statements in your Excellency's recently-published despatch announcing your determination to relinquish the position assumed by your Excellency's predecessor in reference to the Waitara purchase.” As to the new evidence elicited, and doubts whether Governor Browne knew the true facts of the case—whether indeed they had been concealed or kept back from him—Mr. Richmond said: “I see no reason to suppose that your Excellency's suspicions point particularly to myself… nevertheless I find that it has appeared to others as well as to myself that your Excellency's surmises may be deemed to point at or include myself, as I then held the position of Minister for Native Affairs.” Therefore he courted inquiry and volunteered explanation in the colony or to the Imperial Government. He was not accused. By coming forward at such a time he seemed to accuse himself. Prima est page 166 hœc ultio, quod, se judice, nemo nocens absolvitur.1 The Governor sent the letter to England, where its receipt was simply acknowledged. To prove that Governor Browne, or Mr.C. W. Richmond, or both, had been deceived, was of little use. The wrong they had done was past recall, and no one accused them of other than official wrong-doing. The historian must inculpate them with mingled regret for the culprits and for their countrymen, and pity for their fellow-creatures whom they wronged. Resolutions carried in the Legislative Council (4th December, 1863) were similar to the resolution of the Representatives, with the exception that the Council thought it “happily unnecessary further to discuss the Waitara question,” and did not speak of controverting the Governor's statements. When the Governor's last despatch on the subject was laid before the Council, an attempt was made by Mr. Swainson to express the regret of the Council that a document which might have influenced their decision was unknown to them when asked to vote on the 4th December. Mr. Whitaker opposed Mr. Swainson, whose motion was lost by 6 votes against 4. Mr. Gilfillan, who had supported Mr. Swainson, was immediately permitted, however, to quash the Waitara Inquiry Commission Bill, by shelving it in Committee for three months. Members may have seen an incongruity in inquiring about the justice of the Waitara war of 1860, while the war of 1863, its direct result, was being prosecuted with vigour. In the North Island nearly all males were enrolled. On the 5th November, it was resolved that the provisions of the Militia Act should be strictly carried out in the Middle Island, till the whole male population between the ages of sixteen and fifty-five, not exempted by law, were organized and drilled.

The ambiguous manner in which the Representatives had received the invitation to manage native affairs was removed on the 6th November. The change was brought about by military success. The Governor having received sanction from England (and in a qualified sense from the Assembly), and more than 2000 armed men having been raised in Australia under Colonel Pitt for the Waikato regiments, the General advanced towards the stronghold where the Maoris were assembled at Mĕrĕ-mĕrĕ. Skirmishing bodies were abroad, and on the 23rd an officer

1 Juvenal, lib, xiii.

page 167 commanding the English outposts at Mauku (near Manukau and far in rear of General Cameron) was compelled by a large body of natives to retire with loss of an officer and five men killed. Reinforcements arrived, but the enemy escaped. Rewi and his guerillas had the reputation of instigating the numerous raids made at this period in the Hunua forest (between Auckland and the Waikato river) through which the unclothed Maori glided with an ease unattainable by encumbered soldiers. On the 29th October, General Cameron, with Commander Wiseman, reconnoitred Mere-mere. Two 40-pounder Armstrong guns had been previously landed at Whangamarino to command the landing-place at Mere-mere. That stronghold was on a low ridge which approached the Waikato river. Traversed rifle-pits occupied the descent of the ridge to the river. Swamps almost encircled the ridge, and the Whangamarino and Maramarua rivers, or creeks, were available to the east for the possible retreat always aimed at by Maoris in their plans of fortification. The swamps were more water-laden than usual. The Maori flag floated in a pah where the ridge was 130 feet high. Every slope and projection from the ridge to the swamps was traversed with rifle-pits. Growth of scrub-pine and scrub, from six to ten feet high, was interspersed with the surrounding swamps. There was a horse-track leading by a spur of the ridge towards Rangiriri about twelve miles higher up on the right bank of the Waikato river, but swamps and curving hollows with swampy bottoms made all tracks sinuous. The General and Commodore found no convenient place for the landing of troops. The Maoris fired at the steamer, the ‘Pioneer.’ By immense exertion they had dragged a gun from the west coast to the Waikato. The resistance to be expected from the nature of the defences led the General to proceed up the river as far as Rangiriri in search of a point at which troops might be landed to turn the enemy's position, while attention was occupied in front by the steamer and gunboats. A point six miles above Mere-mere was selected. Secretly, at half-past two o'clock on the morning of the 31st August, the ‘Pioneer’ and ‘Avon,’ with four gunboats, transported a force nearly 700 strong to the place. No opposition was made, and the troops took up what the General called a commanding position about 400 yards from the page 168 bank of the river. He intended to take up an additional force on the following night, and a breastwork was constructed to defend the camp, which was left under command of Colonel Mould. What the General supposed the Maoris were doing while he was sending hundreds of soldiers to the north of them, his despatches do not tell. He does say that, while he was busy with his preparations, the officer in command at Whangamarino reported that the natives were escaping in canoes by the Whangamarino and Maramarua rivers. He embarked at once in the ‘Pioneer,’ and found that Mere-mere was abandoned.

Mr. Fox in his narrative bewails the catastrophe. “Our troops appear to have been able to do nothing except look on from a distance.… It was a great disappointment to everybody.” Nevertheless, though the Maoris left only empty rifle-pits behind them, they seemed to have admitted their inability to cope with the troops, and Mr. Fox lost no time in moving (6th November) a resolution pledging the Representatives to accept the control of native affairs. It was far more absolute and binding than the proposition which he failed to carry in the previous year, and which led to his retirement. But he carried the stronger resolution without division. The cause of the change in the opinions of the House may be read in the terms of the resolution. Imperial troops had won colonial affection. Having considered the Duke of Newcastle's fixed determination not to control native affairs, the House recognized with the deepest gratitude the great interest always taken by the Queen in “the welfare of all races of her subjects, and the thoroughly efficient aid which Her Majesty's Imperial Government is now affording for the suppression of the rebellion unhappily existing, and the establishment of law and order in the colony. And, relying on the cordial co-operation of the Imperial Government for the future, cheerfully accepts the responsibility thus placed upon the colonists, and at the same time records its firm determination to use its best endeavours to secure a sound and lasting peace, to do justice impartially to both races of Her Majesty's subjects, and to promote the civilization and welfare of all classes of the inhabitants of these islands.” The Council on the 9th November adopted similar resolutions. It must be confessed that the vain efforts which the House made soon afterwards to page 169 strangle the truth with regard to the seizure of land at Waitara formed an unhappy commentary on these professions. The address was promptly transmitted to England and acknowledged with great pleasure by the Secretary of State. The pledge to accept responsibility was no sooner made than it was repented, and by some sought to be evaded. In many contemporary writings and speeches it was spoken of as a “fatal acquiescence.”

The session did not close without a notable triumph for the war-party. The Maoris after evacuating Mere-mere occupied Rangiriri, higher up the river than their former position. The Waikare lake was there separated only by a narrow belt from the river, and numerous swamps and ana-branches facilitated the use of canoes. The Maoris had constructed their main line of entrenchment “across the isthmus which divided the river from the lake.” The line had a double ditch and high parapet, and was “strengthened in the centre by a square redoubt of very formidable construction. Behind the left centre of the main line, and at right angles to it, there was an entrenched line of rifle-pits parallel to the Waikato river, and obstructing the advance of troops from that direction.”1 The General reconnoitred on the 18th, and resolved to land a force above the position “with a view of turning and gaining possession of a ridge 500 yards behind the main entrenchment, and thus intercepting the retreat of the enemy.” Three hundred of the 40th Regiment were embarked in the ‘Pioneer’ and ‘Avon.’ They were to land at a selected point on a preconcerted signal. The wind and currents delayed their movements. The number of the Maoris was thought to be between 400 and 500. The total British force was about 1300. The enemy's position was shelled till nearly five o'clock. Armstrong 12-pounders on land aided the fire from gunboats. The General was weary of waiting for the preconcerted signal of the landing of the men of the 40th Regiment sent to the rear by water, and he ordered an assault, which was gallantly executed. The entrenchment was scaled, the line of rifle-pits facing the Waikato was forced, and the Maoris were driven to their centre redoubt, which they “defended with desperate resolution,” behind a parapet 21 feet high. At this time the General saw that the 40th had

1 General Cameron's despatch; 24th November, 1863.

page 170 occupied the ridge in the rear, and were pouring a heavy fire on a body of the enemy who fled by the Waikare swamp. Two assaults on the centre redoubt were made separately by 36 of the Royal Artillery, and by 90 seamen, armed in each case with revolvers. Both were driven back with loss; and hand-grenades were vainly thrown into the work to dislodge the besieged. It was then growing dark, and satisfied with his position, in which he said “the troops almost completely enveloped the enemy,” the General resolved to wait till daylight. The force under the Commodore endeavoured to prevent an escape to the Waikare lake. Shortly after daylight the Maoris hoisted a flag of surrender. One hundred and eighty-three men and two women became prisoners of war. The General was unable to ascertain what had been the original force, or what was the loss of the natives. “Their wounded must have been removed in the night, as there were none among the prisoners.” Thirty-six dead Maoris were found and buried, and it was believed that numbers were drowned or shot at the Waikare swamp. The General's despatches gave a return of 39 English killed, and 89 wounded. Amongst the dead was Captain Mercer who led the Royal Artillery in their desperate assault on the redoubt. When he fell in a position exposed to the fire of Maoris and of English, Te Oriori risked his own life in carrying him to a place of safety within the pah. It had been supposed that the king and the king-maker were in the camp; but they were not among the prisoners. A native afterwards said that the king-maker and others escaped between the Waikare swamp and the river to the south of the redoubt, in which case they must have passed almost through the English lines. A letter from the king-maker on the 4th December, asserted that 36 escaped by swimming across the Waikare lake. Many, including women, were drowned. Among the prisoners were many important chiefs.

Mr. Gundry, interpreter, in his report to the Native Minister, mentioned a fact which found no place in the General's despatches, but which marks the true nobility of English soldiery. Far from thirsting for the blood of the gallant foes who had rent their ranks so fearfully the evening before, they respected the courage with which, under a storm of shot and shell, that page 171 small band of men had defended their ramparts. The simple narrative of the interpreter must make every Englishman proud of his countrymen. “A Maori came forward with a white flag, when the soldiers sprang in amongst them, and commenced shaking hands with the Maoris. Soon after, the General came, and ordered them to give up their arms and he would treat them well as prisoners because of their brave conduct.… Te Wheoro accompanied the General from Mere-mere to Rangiriri, and was very useful as a guide.” On the morning of the surrender the king-maker approached with a large party of Maoris with a flag of truce. The interpreter found the leader inclined to surrender, but his followers unwilling. The king-maker sent his “mere,” a weapon of green-stone, but the General could not tell whether it was in token of peace. General Cameron wrote: “I hope the prisoners will be treated generously, for every one must admire the gallant manner in which they defended their position to the last.” The captives proposed to make peace, but the General told them the Governor only could arrange it. They wrote to the king-maker to urge the tribes to make peace, and abandon the “mana” of the island. One of the chiefs who had escaped wrote to the Governor soliciting the release of the prisoners. “Let it suffice for you—the men who are dead. Return to us those who live.” He was told by Mr. Fox that the Governor could make no terms till their arms were laid down. The chiefs wrote again to the Governor. He answered (6th December): “Your letter has reached me. Sons, my words to you are these. The General must go uninterrupted to Ngaruawahia; the flag of the Queen must be hoisted there. Then I will talk to you.”

On the 3rd December, Wiremu te Wheoro went from the General to Ngaruawahia. As he approached he was greeted with firing on both sides of the road. He reached the house of Matutaera, and the chiefs said, “Come and see your fallen tribe and your broken canoe.” In like figurative words he addressed them and recommended peace. The king-maker was sent for from Tamahere. There was a council. They said, “If we give up the guns we shall perhaps be made prisoners.” The Ngatimaniapoto were about to cut down the flagstaff. “Waikato would not allow them. The quarrel was great. page 172 Both sides fired without aiming. Then Tamati Ngapora, Mohi te Ahiatengu, Patara te Tuhi, and the king-maker, gave the flagstaff to me, Wiremu te Wheoro, with these words: ‘Wiremu, we give over this flagstaff to you, with those buried here and at Ngaruawahia, for you to give over to the General and to the Governor. Especially let not the remains of the dead be ill-treated by the soldiers.’”1

It cannot be asserted that this act of submission would, if wisely received, have terminated wars in New Zealand. It is plain that it was not wisely availed of by the Governor and his advisers. At Rangiriri was found a proclamation by the Maori king, dated 3rd October. It called for one-fifth of the tribes of the island to assemble as warriors at Ngaruawahia. It commanded them not to despoil the slain of their clothes; but “guns, powder, bullets, copper caps, cartouch-boxes, watches, money, rings, hats,—these take.” Such spoil was to be “brought to one heap,” and marked with the name of the depositor and the king's seal. The arms and ammunition would be given back to the captor, the other property was to be “left alone till the end, when his own will be restored to each man.” How far this summons had been obeyed no European could tell. The General had crossed the Waikato frontier more than two months before it was issued.

To the letter from the captive chiefs the king-maker replied ambiguously on the 4th December. He was unable to fulfil their word, to make peace. “We have not yet taken breath, both on account of your (ma-te) misfortune, and on account of the enemy constantly driving us from place to place. We are quite out of breath. What we have done, since you left, is to think over your word and continually retire; as the steamer moves this way we move also.” The steamer ‘Pioneer’ moved with an important freight. The General, the Commodore, and 500 men were with her. The Governor detained the English mail for twenty-four hours, to announce the occupation of Ngaruawahia on the 8th December, and the establishment of head-quarters at the rebel capital. The Maoris had evacuated it, taking with them the bones of Potatau, their first king. In

1 The atrocities committed by the volunteers at Papakura had made their mark.

page 173 a few days the success of the Thames expeditionary force, 900 strong, was assured by establishing military posts from the firth of the Thames to the river Waikato. Near Paparata Colonel Carey built a redoubt on a hill, which, commanding a view of the Queen's Redoubt at Te Ia, of the Waikare lake and of the firth of the Thames, enabled him to establish a system of telegraphs. An exploit of Captain Jackson, of the Forest Rangers, at Paparata, attracted attention in December. Smoke was observed on Sunday morning, and a stealthy advance was made. The voice of a Maori leading the devotions was heard, and the approach of the Rangers was unnoticed. At thirty yards' distance a volley was poured upon the congregation, and the assailants rushed up to finish their work with revolvers. “The panic was intense. One man stood upright, without making an effort to escape or defend himself, and was shot down. Another was wounded in the shoulder by Smith; the native fired at him in return, but missed; he then clubbed his double-barrelled gun, and struck at Smith, who parried the blow and closed with the native. Although the Maori was wounded, he would have proved match enough in this hand-to-hand struggle, but for Ensign Westrupp, who came to the relief of his man, and shot the native in the head; he fell, but again rose to his legs, when another man blew his brains out. This was the only instance of resistance, except a few shots which did no harm. Four of the Maoris were left dead on the field, and several wounded men were carried away, principally by the women of the party. There was an order given not to fire at any of the women.” Such was the account in a newspaper, which regretted that the fugitives were not followed and punished more severely; but “on the whole (thought) a highly successful affair had occurred to enliven the monotony of the war, and this time it is entirely by civilians.” It transpired that women had not been spared, and the commander admitted that one woman was wounded. The Rev. R. Taylor in his ‘New Zealand, past, present, and future,’ singled out Jackson's Sunday performance as one which ought to make the colonists blush.

The readiness of the Maoris to discuss their plans showed how utterly they had been defeated. They had intended to operate, in guerilla bands, upon the rear of the General's forces. page 174 From the Thames to Manukau, and especially in the Hunua forest, they had hoped to harass their invaders. They had not believed that supplies for a large invading force could be depended upon, but were disappointed. The destruction of the war-party at the Wairoa river, in September, had signally foiled their schemes on the General's left rear, and when the redoubt was constructed near Paparata, and the road through the Hunua forest to Maungatawhiri was held by efficient detachments armed with rifles, the inefficiently-armed Maoris were powerless for offence. The Parliament unanimously thanked the General, the Commodore, and Major-General Galloway, the commander of the colonial forces.1

A serious question had occasioned much debate in both Houses. The remoteness of Auckland from many populous parts of the Middle Island had always obstructed members in attending the General Assembly, and was an obstacle to communication with the General Government. It was resolved in the Lower House that the seat of Government should be transferred to a suitable locality in Cook's Straits, the selection of the site being left to an impartial tribunal. After opposition the motion was carried. On the 25th, in spite of vigorous efforts by Mr. Stafford, it was resolved, by 24 votes against 17, to ask the Governor to seek the aid of the Australian Governments in selecting impartial Commissioners to choose the site. The Governor expressed his willingness to comply with the address, but further debate was raised on the question of providing funds, which were nevertheless voted, on the 4th December, by 23 votes against 11. A similar motion was carried in the Legislative Council by 11 votes against 8; Mr. Whitaker, the Premier, being in the minority, although his colleague, Mr. Fox, had voted with the majority in the House of Representatives. The early project of Gibbon Wakefield's friends was thus resumed after many years, for it would hardly be doubted that Wellington would be chosen as the most suitable position in the Straits. To compel a removal from Auckland, the Representatives

1 Major-General Galloway, recently promoted from the command of the 70th Regiment, had, at Governor Grey's request, consented to remain for a time in the colony to command the militia and volunteers (Despatch; 10th August, 1863).

page 175 resolved that if proper accommodation should not have been made at the seat of Government, it would be expedient that the Assembly should hold its next sitting at Christchurch.

During the session a subject which had in former years aroused the Legislature of the colony of Victoria was brought before the Assembly. As in Victoria, so in New Zealand, the gold-fields drew crowds of harpies from the criminal classes in Tasmania, the last gathering-ground for English convicts in the south-eastern group of Australian colonies. After discussion, disallowance, and difference, the Victorian Convicts Prevention Act found a home in the statute-book. In Otago the vultures which prey upon their honester fellow-creatures hovered so thickly that Major Richardson, the Superintendent, emitted a piteous cry. Criminals of desperate character were setting in like a tide, which, if not arrested, would “inevitably make the province one vast penal settlement.” In 1861 and 1862 the Provincial Council passed ordinances to prevent influx of criminals. They were severally disallowed by the Governor, the opinion of the Judges being taken as to their repugnance to law and to the Constitution. A similar Bill was passed by the House of Representatives in 1863; was carried, by a majority of four on its second reading, in the Council; but was, on the motion of Mr. Swainson, ordered to be “read a third time this day six months.” The Ministry urged that an Imperial Act should be passed, either to meet the evil, or to empower the Assembly to do that of which, in the opinion of the Judges, they were then incapable. Mr. Cardwell replied that as the Government “did not advise the disallowance of the Act passed to prevent the entrance into Victoria of persons formerly sentenced to transportation in the United Kingdom, but whose sentences had expired, so neither would they now advise the disallowance of a similar Act if passed by the New Zealand Legislature. They would, however, see the passing of such an Act with regret, and they certainly would not advise that Parliament should be invited to pass a law for the express purpose of enabling a Colonial Legislature to enact a provision so little in accordance with Imperial policy, and which, in the opinion of their own Judges, is not called for by any proved necessity.” On the 14th December the session closed. The Governor gave the Royal assent to the Suppression page 176 of Rebellion Act, the New Zealand Settlement Act, and a Loan Act for three millions sterling. The members were dismissed in triumph to their homes, with the Governor's thanks for their liberality, and an assurance that the unusual powers granted to the Executive in a time of great public danger should be used so as to encroach as little as possible on the ordinary domain of law. They had provided in their Loan Act for a reduction of interest on so much of the loan as the Imperial Government might guarantee, and Mr. Reader Wood, the Treasurer, sailed in January to advocate the interests of the colony in England. Among the Acts reserved for the Queen's pleasure was one “to enable Provincial Legislatures to pass laws authorizing the compulsory taking of land for works of a public nature.” Mr. Whitaker was determined to effect the object in which he had previously been thwarted by the decision of the Secretary of State. By the Constitution of New Zealand, as in Australia, power was reserved to the Crown to disallow a Bill (although assented to by the Governor) within two years after the receipt of the Bill by the Secretary of State. Mr. Whitaker, at the close of the session, protested against the exercise of this power of disallowance with regard to the Rebellion and Settlement Act. His main plea was that native land tenure “was with little or no exception tribal,” and if lands of a tribe could be preserved because loyal occupants were incapable of eviction, the Act would be for the most part a dead letter. Already 3000 men had taken military service with the hope of obtaining land, and it was intended to enrol 20,000. Difficulties in the way of confiscation would be intolerable. Such was Mr. Whitaker's argument in 1864. A more elastic construer of rights and powers can hardly have held office as Her Majesty's Attorney-General amongst the numerous dependencies of the Crown, nor one who, under the guise of quiet simplicity, affected to be ignorant of guile until concealment became no longer possible. The tribal rights he had advised the ignorant Governor Browne to reject as baseless, at Waitara, could scarcely be denied before the learned Governor Grey. Their existence was therefore made a plea for a larger measure of confiscation than any but special enactment could permit, though it could not justify. Some of those who supported the ministerial measures had misgivings. Mr. Weld page 177 protested against them as unconstitutional and tyrannical. Mr. J. C. L. Richardson, who became a Minister at a later period, recorded the fact “that the doubtful supporters of the Ministry of Mr. Fox gave a hesitating and timid adhesion to the Bills,” savouring, as they did, of the “darkest periods of English legislation.”1 Sir George Grey told the Secretary of State that, of the two modes of dealing with subjects after rebellion, generosity would generally be found most successful; and that, in New Zealand, generosity has so far prospered that former enemies, who might have inflicted serious injury in 1863, had not only refrained from joining the rebels, but had volunteered to aid the English. But the same policy could not now be relied upon. The belief of large numbers of Maoris that a new principle was to be established in procuring land, and dealing with the natives generally, had bred distrust in the Government, and the successes at Taranaki in 1860 had em-boldened the young men of the tribes which had acquired arms and ammunition in great quantities. It was needful now to inflict punishment by taking land. But, recognizing the wisdom of a large generosity to the defeated, he would not carry the system too far. Magnanimity was not a virtue which abounded in New Zealand Ministries, and the want of it was to breed endless confusion. Yet a warning was received in January. In November, 1863, the Duke of Newcastle, while acquiescing generally in the seizure of lands from rebels, deprecated such wholesale confiscations as would lead the Maoris to believe that land-grasping was the motive for war. Even friendly tribes might thus be shaken in their allegiance, and wider and more desperate struggles might ensue. Her Majesty's Government would view with gravest apprehension a policy which might intensify the spirit of disaffection.

Timely words were lost on the dull surface of Mr. Whitaker's sensibility. He had little to say except that he had no apprehension that confiscation could not be confined within proper limits, and that the General Assembly would disapprove undue extension. The careful ‘Observations on the proposal to take native lands under an Act of the Assembly,’ drawn up by Sir

1 Printed address to electors of Dunedin and suburbs north, by Major Richardson.

page 178 William Martin in November, 1863, were sent by Sir George Grey in January, 1864, to the Secretary of State with the ‘Memorandum’ by Mr. Fox, already mentioned as contending for confiscation on the grounds of necessity, of justice, and the interests of the Maoris, who were possessed of too much land for their own good. It is noteworthy that Fox took up a different position from that of Whitaker. Whether he hoped to be believed may be doubted. He wrote: “The Government proposes to confiscate (that is, to take without compensation) no lands except those of which the owners have been engaged in open rebellion, or actually aiding and abetting it by overt acts.” He denied the existence of that for which Whitaker pleaded as absolutely essential. He concluded his paper with a declaration that “Mere technical difficulties (if there be any, such as govern feudal liability to forfeiture, or the necessity of conferring political franchise, which is alleged to be a condition precedent to the right to enforce submission to law), however interesting as abstract questions for discussion, cannot be entertained by a Government on which the responsibility rests of saving to the British Crown a dependency in imminent peril, and preventing for the future the renewal of a similar crisis.”1 To Sir William Martin's remonstrance that the Government ought to discriminate between the various sections of the Waikato tribes—the loyal and disloyal—Mr. Fox replied not a word. Sweeping confiscation was the long-coveted remedy for the woes of colonists who deplored the recognition of Maori rights by the Queen. They would undo by proclamation what she had sanctioned by solemn treaty. Whitaker's reasoning,— that the rebellious could not be properly punished if the rights of the loyal were respected,—furnishes an explanation of the silence of Fox. Sir William Martin's paper, written by him with a “feeling of sorrow, if not of shame,” remained unanswered by the Ministry, and received unworthy treatment at the hands of Sir George Grey. He, who well knew that the crossing of the Maungatawhiri was a declaration, and an act, of war,

1 As Mr. Fox had the effrontery, in 1879, to publish a letter in which he declared that his influence was not exerted to bring about confiscation of Maori lands, it is well that his advice in 1863 should be recorded in his own words.

page 179 was not ashamed to urge that it was an act of self-protection. He could not answer Sir W. Martin, and he was too prudent to resort to the hollow immorality of Mr. Fox. He insidiously said (with regard to the invasion of Waikato): “I say this, not in answer to Sir W. Martin's views, which would probably agree with my own on this point, but because I fear that his remarks might, as they stand, be misunderstood by persons at a distance.” He did his best to cause them to be misunderstood, lest the injustice of confiscating the goods of loyal subjects should be perceived in England, and the Waikato campaign should be marred. One thing he had the grace to avoid. He did not adopt the ethics of Whitaker and Fox; nor did he comment upon them. Anise and cummin his advisers could supply. The weightier matters of righteousness and mercy were beyond their ken. The law they worshipped was not like the ancient Themis, offspring of heaven and earth. It was altogether of the earth, earthy, and was centred in a craving for Maori land. The law to which Sir William Martin appealed, whose “seat is in the bosom of God, whose voice the harmony of the world, to which”1 all things in heaven and earth do homage, “the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest not exempted from her power; both angels and men and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy”—such a law was unfitted for the designs of the heirs of the rapacious crew whom Lord Stanley had abashed, when, for the credit of the English name, he conveyed to New Zealand the commands of the Queen. They ruled, however, in New Zealand in 1864, and the majority of the increasing population, ignorant (as Sir W. Martin admitted) of Maori history and rights, and therefore comparatively guiltless, were hurried by their leaders into acts of crime.2 The

1 Hooker.

2 Contrast the excuses of Whitaker and Fox with the straightforward common sense of Acting-Governor Shortland, when “taking payment in land” was urged upon him. “I do not at all approve of the system of taking payment in land from the natives for acts of aggression on British subjects, being of opinion that it would tend to encourage a frequent repetition of similar offences (against Maoris) and to render the lower class of settlers more and more abusive towards the natives” (Despatch to Lord Stanley, No. 53; 15th June, 1843).

page 180 Governor's disingenuousness did not improve his position, which was, without doubt, difficult. Mr. Fox had been his ancient enemy, and had gone to England to assail him in former years. There was still some animosity.

The Ministry in various ways showed jealousy of the Governor's ability and knowledge of Maori character. It was revealed in characteristic and trivial ways, which made the course of affairs a maze of pettiness, encumbering hundreds of pages in the New Zealand blue-books. A few specimens are necessary to explain the state of affairs. It will be remembered that the rebels had been told that the Governor could only talk to them when the Queen's flag had been hoisted at the rebel capital. When the General reported the occupation of Ngaruawahia on the 8th December, his Ministers urged Grey to go thither with them and promulgate terms of peace. Those terms were discussed at great length. Surrender of arms, oath of allegiance, confiscation of all the land of rebels, followed by restitution to each man of a limited portion, so that his family might not starve,—prosecution of all murderers—were the main points. The Ministry insisted on going with the Governor. He thought it better to go alone. They would not yield, and he did not go with them. A notice, 16th December, was sent to the chiefs telling them that their reluctance to give up arms lest they should be made prisoners (as reported by Te Wheoro), was needless, for that none of them should be molested, except actual murderers. No act of war would be punished. If they wanted to know more of the Governor's intentions, he would receive a deputation in Auckland, treat it kindly, and allow it to return in peace. They must decide quickly, for the General would not stay his advance. Mr. Fox, in his account of the war, condemns the Governor for inability to make up his mind about going to Ngaruawahia; but a memorandum furnished by Sir G. Grey to his Ministers on the 18th December, at their request, explains his proceedings in a different manner. For a Governor, with the General and his Ministers, to make overtures and fail, would injure his position in the eyes of Europeans and of Maoris. The natives ought to make overtures to him. Either the Governor ought to be with the General, making no overtures to the natives, but on the spot if they should choose to make them to him;—or, if his page 181 advisers preferred another course, they might be with the General ready to receive overtures. On the 19th December, Mr. Whitaker summed up a reply in the words: “Most of the cogent reasons given by his Excellency against his going with some of his Ministers appear to them equally cogent against either party going without the other.” Mr. Fox declares that it was unfortunate that the Governor1 did not go with his Ministry, and that his refusal led to his being charged by the natives with breach of faith and responsibility for further war. He even says that the king-maker positively asserted, that if the Governor had gone to Ngaruawahia peace would have been made. But the king-maker's letter which Mr. Fox quotes makes no such assertion. It declares, on the contrary, that if the war had been allowed to stop at Rangiriri—if the proposals of the prisoners had been accepted by the English—there would have been peace. But neither the Governor nor his Ministry agreed to the captives' suggestions, though the king-maker wrote at the time that it was not proper for him to carry on war while his imprisoned friends were proposing peace.

As early as in December, 1863, there was a feeling that the Governor might be unwilling to confiscate lands so sweepingly as his Ministers might demand. On the 17th, he showed them a draft of a despatch to the Secretary of State, asking whether it was wished that he should assent to any advice from his responsible advisers; or whether the English Government proposed to issue any instructions. Pending the receipt of instructions he would act on his own judgment. Judging from the tone of the press, some persons desired—not that land should be confiscated as an example and check upon rebellion,—”but that a magnificent and extensive territory might be thrown open to any amount of prosperous colonization.” Mr. Whitaker and his colleagues demurred to the despatch, and reserved their rights “as Ministers responsible to the General Assembly and

1 Mr. Fitzgerald urged that proper efforts were not made to arrange terms when the General reached Ngaruawahia, and that the further advance of the army compelled the Maoris “to fight with the courage of despair.” Sir G. Grey denounced this statement as “untrue” (Despatch 46; 7th April, 1865); and arrayed many dates to controvert it; but the bickerings between Sir G. Grey and his advisers tend to confirm Mr. Fitzgerald's opinion.

page 182 the colony.” After exchange of minutes, in the course of which Mr. Whitaker “feared that the conclusion was inevitable that the views of the Governor and his Ministers differed essentially as to the practice of responsible government,” the document was not sent to England, and Mr. Cardwell in due time furnished the Governor with instructions on the subject matter of the cancelled despatch.

The ceremony of handing the king's flagstaff to Te Wheoro bore no fruit. The wrangling of the Ministry with the Governor neutralized the tender of submission.

The advance of the Queen's troops made peace impossible. It was ascertained afterwards that the Maoris on no occasion had more than 2000 men in arms throughout the island. They had never more than 600 men assembled at one place during the war, and they were too wary to oppose them in the open field to far larger numbers aided by superior weapons. Rifle-pits and concealment were their defences. Thus they might hope that their assailants might be brought within the short range of their guns. Retreat from fortress to fortress was their plan of operation as General Cameron marched forward. To the General, meanwhile, looking round for strategic advantages, and heedless of national rights, it occurred that it would be wise to conquer the Tauranga district on the east coast. The Maoris to the east of the harbour were comparatively friendly. On the west the Ministry said they were decided enemies. Some had been to the war; some were preparing to go. Their crops were ready to be gathered. The loss of them would be a heavy blow. Writing on the 19th January, the Ministry said it was already publicly known that the expedition was contemplated, and to delay it would be considered a proof of weakness. The Governor yielded with professed reluctance, feeling that “under the present form of government” he ought to comply with the demands of his advisers. Again, therefore, an expedition was undertaken which could only be accepted as a token that the Government raised quarrels in order to seize upon lands.

It was believed that in 1863 as in 1860 the warlike youth of Tauranga had swelled the ranks of men in arms against the Queen. It was also true that the king-maker had much influ- page 183 ence over the Maoris between the east coast and the waters of the Thames. Nevertheless, though the man who looked only from a military standpoint might be excused for favouring such a marauding expedition, the Civil Government, charged with equal care of both races, in recommending the expedition, were worse than pirates, for pirates have not sworn to do right to those whom they rob. The Civil Commissioner at Tauranga had furnished a return of the warriors supposed to have gone to the Waikato district to help the king. From the east side of Tauranga, 30 out of an adult population of 212; from the west, out of 542 no less than 260 were said to have gone. Over them the king-maker's influence was great. Mr. Whitaker drew up (19th January) short instructions for the Colonel (Carey) in command. One sentence was: “The crops and cattle and other property of the natives on the west side should be taken possession of and the crops gathered in.” Mr. T. H. Smith, the Civil Commissioner, waited on Colonel Carey on the 22nd. Before doing so he had intimated to the Maoris in conformity with the exact words of a memorandum from Mr. Fox (the Native Minister), “that the object of the expedition is to act as a check on the movements of the Waikato sympathizers, but that unless forced upon them, active hostilities are not contemplated, and in any case will be only carried on against open rebels.” Shocked at the variance between these words and the instructions given to Colonel Carey, Mr. Smith by words, and in writing, entreated him to stay his hand till the Government could be consulted. Ruthlessly to seize the property of the innocent would rouse peaceful tribes to take arms against the Queen. Colonel Carey waited while Mr. Smith's appeal was sent to Mr. Fox. On the 25th, two letters from Auckland were sent to Mr. Smith. The Governor wrote privately: “Colonel Carey sent me a copy of your letter to him regarding the error I had fallen into, in issuing such instructions as I did for treating all the natives on the western side of the harbour of Tauranga as enemies, seizing their crops, cattle, &c. I feel very much obliged to you for the fearless and honourable way in which you did your duty on this occasion, thereby preventing me from being the cause of bringing much misery upon many innocent people.” The other letter, from Fox, was sevenfold more lengthy, page 184 and upbraided Mr. Smith for circulating the former instructions among the natives. If the Government had desired their circulation Mr. Smith would have been told. “As you have acted entirely without instruction, the responsibility must rest solely with yourself.” Mr. Smith's humane conduct appeared inconsistent with his verbal statements to Ministers in Auckland about the hostility of the tribes, and he was ordered to explain it. Sir George Grey (25th January) took prompt measures. He thanked Colonel Carey for staying his hand as to ravages, and told him to undertake no aggressive movement. If possible he was to intercept armed parties passing by the Tauranga route to join the natives in arms in the interior. Most civilians are as unfit to control military events as children are to be trusted with gunpowder; and when thwarted in mischief will like children complain. Mr. Smith furnished a satisfactory explanation, but Fox and Whitaker were discontented. They roundly rated the just officer for interfering to save the property of the innocent. At a later date (3rd February) in a memorandum on responsible government they complained of the Governor's “correspondence with their subordinate officer Mr. Smith.”

On the course to be adopted with regard to the Maori prisoners, Mr. Dillon Bell had, on the 1st December, 1863, moved in the House that it was important that the policy of the Government should be announced. The Ministry were unprepared to make any statement and the motion lapsed, although seconded by Mr. Weld in a few words in which he expressed his opinion that though technically the prisoners were rebels, morally they were not, and ought to be treated neither with maudlin philanthropy nor with “vengeance and hostility.” The Ministry soon showed that they were incapable of generous discrimination. Retained for some weeks on board of H.M.S. ‘Curaçoa,’ the Rangiriri prisoners were after the 24th December confined in the hulk ‘Marion,’ moored under the guns of a man-of-war in the Auckland harbour. Sir George Grey, on the 29th February, 1864, urged the Ministry to release on parole Te Oriori, a chief who had on numerous occasions acted nobly towards the English, and who was believed to have been wounded at Rangiriri while placing Captain Mercer in a place of safety. He had also been friendly to Mr. Gorst at Awamutu, page 185 when that gentleman's life was in danger. Looking to the rank and generosity of Te Oriori, Sir George Grey thought that his release would produce an excellect effect upon the natives. After many days Mr. Fox declared that the Ministry objected to Te Oriori's release. Mr. Fox was about to visit Kaipara, and on his return “Ministers would be prepared to take the case of all the prisoners into consideration.” It was not until the 7th April that Fox could be brought to make any proposition; and then in reply “to his Excellency's request more than once repeated” the ministerial junto said, they considered the trial of the prisoners ought to take place, if at all, under the Suppression of Rebellion Act of the recent session. But as that Act had not received Royal allowance they feared to use it lest after trial the disallowance of the Act should bring about serious complications.1 “But as his Excellency has pressed so strongly (that the course to be adopted should be considered), Ministers are prepared to surrender their own views, and acquiesce in that of his Excellency.” Let the prisoners, therefore, be tried by a military tribunal under the Act not yet allowed. Sir George Grey replied that he was not pressing that “the prisoners should be all brought to trial, but that some decision should be come to as to their future disposition.” Uncertainty was producing a bad effect upon the natives generally, many of whom thought that all the prisoners were to be put to death. Some might be tried, and others released on conditions. Moreover, he wished the trials to take place before the ordinary tribunals, and not before Courts composed of military officers. Mr. Whitaker then (19th April, 1864) took up the argument. Ministers were of opinion that all the prisoners should be tried, “and that none should at present be released,” and that the most convenient mode would be under the Suppression of Rebellion Act. Militia officers might be mingled with military in the composition of the Court.

1 Mr. Fox's condition of mind was strange. He opposed the Waitara war in 1860 as unjust. He advocated the advance into Waikato territory in 1863, knowing that it would be accepted by the Maoris as a declaration of war. He passed the Suppression of Rebellion Bill subsequently, and then desired to try the prisoners of war who surrendered at Rangiriri under an Act passed after General Cameron had carried war into their territory. Not the injustice but “complications” in case of disallowance of his unjust Bill alarmed him.

page 186 Sir George Grey pointed out that already the imprisonment had lasted five months. Arms had been taken, houses and crops destroyed. The prisoners had lost the means of life. Their lands were deemed forfeit, and, though it was contemplated to give back small portions, without implements or stock the restitution would be of little worth. “In addition to these punishments it is now proposed to bring all these prisoners, without reference to degrees of guilt, or services, or conduct (prior to the disturbances), to trial before military courts for high treason, and then the trial being over to determine what their ultimate disposal shall be, keeping them however in safe custody until peace is established. The Governor much regrets that his Ministers should have rejected his earnest solicitations in favour of the chief Te Oriori. He believes that many lives would have been saved by a compliance with his request.… The course pursued in this matter has driven many natives to desperation, and has filled others, who have as yet taken no part in the rebellion, with distrust.” No captive New Zealand chief generously treated would break conditions on which he might obtain his liberty. On the whole, believing that what his responsible advisers proposed surpassed in severity any punishment which Great Britain had inflicted in like cases, he would not take upon himself the responsibility of giving effect to their advice. He appealed to them to consider his position. In England the Crown was not active in giving the absolute orders to suppress riot or rebellion. Some functionary was held responsible. In New Zealand, the Governor was compelled to issue orders to the military and naval authorities. Ostensibly the orders were his, really they were those of Ministers. Yet no doubt he would be held responsible by the Home Government if any act of his should “appear to the Government and people of England unnecessarily severe or unjust, or to have a tendency to prolong, without sufficient object, a civil war.” If he remembered at this juncture his acceptance of the resolutions of the House in August, 1862, on the ground that practically while he was in New Zealand the result would be the same, his reflections must have been bitter. Mr. Whitaker replied that the objection to release any prisoner on parole was insuperable; that Te Oriori had claims for consideration, but was infirm of purpose, and page 187 could not therefore be trusted; and that Ministers had not such an exalted opinion of the parole of a New Zealand chief as the Governor had. With taunting truth the arrest and long imprisonment of Rauparaha by Sir George Grey, in 1846, was now thrown in his teeth by the men who had used his influence in obtaining troops and his administrative ability in the commencement of the war, and would make him their slave when they were presumptuous of success. As for the general question of responsibility, there were differences between the English and Colonial Government; “but if his Excellency means that responsibility for the acts of the Government in New Zealand rests with him, and not with Ministers, they feel it to be their duty respectfully to express their dissent from that view.”

A dreary correspondence of this kind was protracted for months. In vain Sir George Grey furnished a report from the interpreter serving with the forces (28th April, 1864) showing that Rewi though anxious to make peace was deterred by the treatment of the prisoners,—and distinctly complained that they had been led to believe that on giving up their arms they would be permitted to live freely within the lines of the troops. This rumour Mr. Whitaker said was not to be disregarded, but too much weight should not be attached to it. Friendly chiefs piteously entreated, but in vain, that the captives might be allowed to leave the hulk and live on shore. Sir George Grey (29th April) said that he feared the recent slaughter at Orakau, including women, might with justice be traced to the unexplained detention of the prisoners, especially of Te Oriori. He felt a serious responsibility, and dreaded a recurrence of such events. “He has done his utmost at all times to promote the views of his Ministers, and wished to show that on a point where he felt so strongly, a responsibility really rested on him, which gave him a strong claim on their consideration, which he hopes they will yet recognize.” He might as well have appealed to the timbers of the hulk in which the prisoners were immured. Mr. Whitaker, professing a desire to be compliant, regretted the difference which had arisen, but would not consent to release any one of the prisoners. Mr. Fox asserted that they were very comfortable and in excellent health in the hulk; but the principal medical officer in the colony, and the sanitary officer for the page 188 troops, reported otherwise, and that the seeds of disease were being sown in the captives by reason of the unfitness of their prison. A special request was made to Mr. Fox in May for straw mattresses, in order that these prisoners of war might not be compelled to sleep upon hard boards. (In the same month the surgeon in charge reported that Te Oriori and six others should at once be removed to the shore, where with “exercise and other hygienic measures they will be allowed a fair chance of renovating their shattered constitutions.”) It was not until nearly a month after this request was made to the hard-hearted Minister that it became known to the Governor. Mr. Fox, when reminded of this concealment, roundly told Sir George Grey (June, 1864) that the Ministry only were responsible, and that it was not customary to lay before the Governor reports on “other prisoners in the various gaols of the colony.” On the 4th June, the first winter month, the sanitary officer of the troops reported that “None of the prisoners had anything to lie upon save the deck of the ship.” Such being the conduct of his Ministers it was well that Sir George Grey referred the question of principle to the Secretary of State. On the 6th April he had narrated the facts up to that date. On the 7th May he had asked that, if it were deemed necessary, he might receive commands on the subject. He wrote to the Duke of Newcastle, but that nobleman did not receive his letter. Early in 1864 the Duke's health failed, and he retired. He was succeeded in April by Mr. Cardwell. It would have been well for humanity, and might have restored the feeble statesman, if he had retired earlier, and left to the firmer grasp of Mr. Cardwell the reins which he had held to so little purpose. As it was, he died in a few months. The evil effects of his sanction of the Waitara rapine could neither die nor be forgotten.

Mr. Cardwell's decision as to the captives may be told here. To Sir George Grey's first recapitulation of his difficulties he replied (June, 1864) that he was led to conjecture that if the Ministry had concurred in a definite and generous course, evils and loss of life might have been avoided. “On this I think it necessary to observe, that while I fully recognize the general right and duty of the Colonial Government to deal with matters of native policy, properly so called, I consider that while active page 189 operations are being carried on under the conduct of Her Majesty's officers, and in the main by Her Majesty's military and naval forces, it is for the Governor personally as representative of the Imperial Government to decide upon the fate of persons who are taken prisoners in the course of these military operations. And although, before adopting any such decision, I should wish you to obtain the advice, and if possible the concurrence, of the Ministers, I do not consider that concurrence indispensable. But, subject always to the positive law of the colony, I hold you entitled to determine, and I look to you for determining, whether such prisoners or any of them shall be released on parole or otherwise, or whether they shall be kept under such control as may legally be applied to them as prisoners of war, or whether they shall be handed over to the civil authorities to be dealt with as criminals. I shall therefore be fully prepared to support you, in case you should have thought it necessary, with or without the consent of your Ministers, so to deal with these prisoners as, in your opinion, the public interests may have required.” At a later date (26th July) Mr. Cardwell treated the subject at greater length. Adverting to Sir George Grey's statement that the Governor would be held responsible in England if needless severity were used, Mr. Cardwell said: “You appear to me rightly to interpret your position in the observations you have addressed to your Ministers.” On the 26th May, he had written: “I entirely anticipate that your Ministers will be animated by a just sense of the exertions and sacrifices which have already been made by the mother country, and that on colonial grounds they will be as anxious as you can be yourself to terminate the present hostilities. But it is my duty to say to you plainly that, if unfortunately their opinion should be different from your own as to the terms of peace, Her Majesty's Government expect you to act upon your own judgment, and to state to your Ministers explicitly that an army of 10,000 English troops has been placed at your disposal for objects of great Imperial, and not for the attainment of any mere local, object; that your responsibility to the Crown is paramount, and that you will not continue the expenditure of blood and treasure longer than is absolutely necessary for the establishment of a just and enduring peace.” Of these words he now page 190 reminded the Governor. As to the wisdom of releasing Te Oriori, only presence on the spot could justify an opinion. Mr. Cardwell gave none. “What I do feel it my duty to say to you plainly is, that the aid of the mother country in men and money is given to the colony on the understanding that the military measures which have unhappily become necessary shall be directed by you in concert with the distinguished General in command. I shall be perfectly ready to support you in any measures which, not breaking any positive law of the colony, and after consulting with the General, you may have thought it necessary to take.” The Whitaker Ministry would not consent to the publication of these despatches in the usual prompt manner. They doubtless deplored the events which had placed in the Colonial office so clear a judgment as that of Mr. Cardwell. On the general policy to be pursued he was equally decided, and a remarkable despatch (26th April, 1864) will demand special consideration.

At the resumption of warlike operations, the state of the tribes may be summarily stated thus: Dr. Featherston, Superintendent at Wellington, visited the west coast, and found Wi Tako friendly to the English, although not severed from loyalty to the Maori king. The capture of Rangiriri was commented on with evident knowledge of the scene of operations. The chiefs “were highly pleased at the fraternizing of the soldiers with the natives at Rangiriri, with the compliment paid them by General Cameron, and the kind treatment (as they believed) the prisoners were receiving.” Dr. Featherston temporarily adjusted a dispute about land between the Ngatiapa and the Rangitane and Ngatiraukawa tribes. At the discussions the natives showed “calmness and moderation.” For a time, as far north as Wanganui, the west coast was, in February, 1864, deemed safe. In March, Colonel Warre, commanding at Taranaki, captured without loss the rebel positions at Kaitake, near Oakura, and at Au Au. “The beautiful practice of the Armstrong guns set fire to a whā-rĕ” at the very hour fixed for an advance, and availing themselves of the “fortunate accident,” under cover of the smoke assaulting parties entered the works, from which the Maoris rapidly escaped, having wounded only two soldiers by a sustained fire. In April, having employed page 191 flying columns to destroy the Maori crops and cultivations, Colonel Warre reported that “every acre of cultivation was cleared within twenty miles to the south of Taranaki.” In the same month, Captain Lloyd, 57th Regiment, with a reconnoitring party of about 100 men, in the act of destroying a Maori plantation, was surprised by an ambuscade at Te Ahuahu. He and six others were killed in the retreat, and twelve were wounded. The heads of Captain Lloyd and five others were cut off and carried away. There was a rumour that this atrocity was provoked by the taking of the head of a Maori by a European for scientific purposes; but on investigation the occurrence was not proved. At the end of the month a large body of Maoris, after dancing their war-dance, attacked a redoubt at Sentry Hill. Captain Shortt, 57th Regiment, had ordered his men to sit concealed till told to fire. When the Maoris approached they were met by heavy volleys and shells from a cohorn. They fled, leaving more than thirty dead and many wounded. Only one soldier was wounded. Colonel Warre reported that the confidence shaken by the death of Captain Lloyd was entirely restored. “Our vengeance has been at least five-fold; and to show how we appreciated the desperate gallantry of the natives I sent to offer to return them their dead, but they had not the courage to send for them, and they were buried near the redoubt.”

It was noticed that in the advance of the Maoris they had halted strangely, and the reason was afterwards discovered. Sir William Martin's prediction had proved true. The faith of the perfidious Pakeha was discarded. A new creed had been coined to stir the tribes to battle and murder. The sword of the Lord and of Gideon was in their hands to smite the Pakeha and all unfaithful to the Maori king. The great day of deliverance was to be in December, 1864. The followers of the new religion were to be called Paimarire. It was called Hau Hau from the use of that sound in its ritual. It was said that when Captain Lloyd was slain, the infuriated Maoris had reverted to their national atrocity of cannibalism; and that the blood of some of the victims was drunk in savage triumph. Then the heads were buried. In a few days they were dug up, and a mad or knavish Maori, Te Ua, declared that the Angel Gabriel page 192 had communicated to him a new religion, of which the officer's head was to be a notable symbol. When false reports were daily mingled with truth, when Maoris were maddened by the burning of their homes, and were more willing to die than to submit, the new faith was hailed as an excitement like the dram of the drunkard. Emissaries were sent to distant tribes to pave the way for it. Mr. Fox insisted that the king-maker was a convert. Letters attributed to him were produced with the concluding word Paimarire. Te Oriori, however, assured Sir George Grey that some of them were not written by the king-maker; and in December, 1864, a Maori averred that he was opposed to the Paimarire. The man, Te Ua, was not alone in his crazy confidence. There were other mad prophets. One of them, Hepaniah, officiated at the attack on the Sentry Hill redoubt. He professed to be invulnerable. On a moonlight night, with wild gestures, and singing a psalm, he walked to the parapet of the redoubt and sat down. A serjeant and a few men went out to capture him. The prophet threw a stone at the serjeant, hitting him on the throat, and then—ran away. The surprised men fired a volley. The prophet sat down and resumed his psalm. After another volley he retreated. Having thus confirmed the faith of his followers, if not his own, he led them to assail Captain Shortt in the redoubt. In their advance they relied on the incantations of the prophet, and a man, like the hero of the night adventure, moved in front of the main body. When grape and musketry poured deadly hail among them, at first they stood calmly, and their strange leader again sung and waved his arms. A rifle-bullet dispelled the charm, and when nearly two score had fallen the Maoris fled. The brother prophets declared that Hepaniah had offended the Angel Gabriel, and one of them, Matene, went southwards to make fresh converts, and attack the settlement at Wanganui, which so recently was thought by Dr. Featherston to be safe. Matene applied to the Wanganui natives for permission to pass down the river. It was refused. The prophet was willing to wait two months, but Hemi Nape, Mete Kingi, and others, tired of negotiations, challenged him to battle on the island of Moutoa, in the river Wanganui. There was apprehension in the English settlement, where the real force of the rebels was unknown. It page 193 was supposed that some of the Waikato natives had joined them. In the settlement there was a garrison of 300 soldiers. Matene accepted the challenge sent to him. Neither army was to surprise the other. The time appointed was daybreak on the 14th May. The island was about 300 yards long, 20 wide, and about 15 high. At daybreak Hemi Napi was posted at the place where the Hau Haus were to land. Mete Kingi followed with the reserve. The advance party was in three bands: ten men were commanded by Kereti, nine by Hemi and Riwai, fifteen by Aperaniko and Haimona. The river was low, and the friends of the English on the left bank could wade easily to and from the island. From the right bank the Hau Hau fanatics had to move in canoes, from which they were allowed to land without opposition. They also formed advance companies with a reserve in the rear. There were not 150 of them, and many were boys. The Wanganui army was nearly 300 strong. When the Hau Haus had formed their battle-array within twenty yards of their enemies, they commenced their incantations, and continued them for two hours. Like Hepaniah they thought themselves invulnerable, and believed that their enemies would be nerveless. A Hau Hau fired a shot. The forces slowly advanced, and when within ten yards of each other fired volleys with mutual effect. Kereti's fall dispirited his friends. When Hemi and Riwai were also killed, the army fled in terror, and some crossed to the river-bank. Haimona reaching the end of the island, shouted, “I will go no further,” rallied a few less superstitious than the rest, poured a volley into his pursuers, was joined by Mete Kingi with the reserve, and drove the enemy with loss to the end of the island whence a few escaped in a boat, the swimmers being shot in the river. Matene, wounded thus, reached the bank, but was followed by a swimmer, Te Moro, who tomahawked him on land. Forty were left dead on Moutoa: many sank in the river. Among the friends of the English twelve were killed, and thirty wounded. The Wanganui settlers breathed freely, and in due time the Provincial Government erected in the market-place a monument “to the memory of those brave men who fell at Moutoa in defence of law and order against fanaticism and barbarism.”

Meantime, rumours of the intended attack had brought Dr. page 194 Featherston with a band of the Colonial Defence Force, to Wanganui. Landing there the day after the battle, he found the settlers enthusiastic in praise of the heroism of their allies. On the 17th, Hori Kingi and others proceeded up the river in canoes. Dr. Featherston followed, lamenting that some settlers grudged the supply of arms and ammunition to the friendly chiefs. The voyage was prolonged by repeated (tangi) wailing for the killed, in which the chiefs indulged. The victorious natives were found at Ranana. They wanted ammunition and guns. Hori Kingi wanted something else. He besought Dr. Featherston to release the prisoners, or at least Te Raimona. “We have fought for the Queen and to protect the Pakeha. We have killed in battle many of our nearest relations and friends. We have taken others prisoners. Have we not done enough? Must we surrender them to be sent to Auckland, or Wellington—to gaol? But if they must be surrendered, whatever you say shall be done. Cannot Te Raimona be given up to us? He is nearly related to every chief of the river.” Dr. Featherston replied that he was bound to insist on the prisoners being handed over to him. As the fleet of canoes, with 150 armed men, passed the place where Te Raimona lay, Hori Kingi said: “Featherston, my heart is very dark about my children, especially Te Raimona. This is the first time I have passed this place without calling; the hearts of all the chiefs and their people are dark… many of our people prayed this morning that they might be excused from joining in this expedition. You have said they are the Queen's prisoners and must be surrendered to her. We come to surrender them. But still our hearts are sad.…” At this appeal the man overcame the official in Dr. Featherston. “To understand and appreciate its pathos (he wrote) every word must have been heard and the speaker seen.” He promised that if Hori Kingi and other chiefs would write to the Governor he would support their prayer for a pardon. The old chief's eyes glistened with delight; he sprang up, hailed the five canoes in advance to stop, and gave them in a few figurative words what appeared a mere hint of what Dr. Featherston had said. “But this was quite sufficient; the gloom which had hung over them instantly disappeared; a cry of joy burst from the whole of them, and off they started, plying page 195 their paddles with tenfold vigour, and there was no longer silence, but the usual cries and songs resounded from every canoe.”

There were discussions with Pehi, a chief friendly to the Maori king. He had dissuaded the prophet Matene and the “mad dogs” who were with him, but he was urgent against the surrender of the prisoners. They were surrendered. In Wanganui there was public grief when Hemi Napi and a brother chief were buried. The garrison, the civilians, and many settlers were in the funeral procession, and the general sympathy deeply affected the Maoris. Dr. Featherston reported that “kingism was doomed, and that there was never so little prospect of the peace of the west coast being disturbed.” Hori Kingi's eloquence was not spent in vain. Sir George Grey, with the concurrence of his Ministry, handed over all the prisoners to the friendly natives on parole. The light and darkness of Maori life were never more strangely exemplified. At the pah where Te Raimona was delivered to Dr. Featherston, Matene's men had dug two large ovens in which to cook the foes, at whose intercession the Hau Hau prisoners were now to be released. Dr. Featherston's influence did much to ensure peace. Wi Tako Ngatata, who had leaned to the Maori king, would not ally himself to the “mad Hau Hau prophets.” “My kind of kingism,” he said, “would never have ended thus. It was calculated to bring forth good fruits only. I have nothing to be ashamed of when I meet the tribes. I was faithful to kingism till it died, and I had no hand in its death.” In a clear and distinct voice, on the 3rd June, 1864, he took the oath of allegiance, and his subsequent exertions mainly contributed to suppress disaffection in the southern parts of the island.

Captain Lloyd's head was supposed to have been lost in the river at Moutoa. In June, the interpreter to the troops at Wanganui (Mr. Broughton) heard that it was at Waitotara in the hands of Te Ua. He went alone to ask for it, and saw 100 armed men led by Hapurona, Te Rangitake's fighting chief. Te Ua gave to him a head which officers of the 57th Regiment believed to be that of their late comrade. Mr. Fox, meanwhile, was warmly welcomed at Kaipara by a tribe, which in ancient times had suffered much at the hands of the Waikato, page 196 and some amongst whom gloated over the defeat of their former foes. He encouraged their triumph.

Must not the prophecy of Sir William Martin have run like iron into the hearts of any who were capable of remorse for provoking the war? Eighteen years had passed since he had said that the confiscation and seizure of land proposed by Earl Grey would, if adopted, make Maoris think the English a nation of liars, and cause them to abandon the faith they had accepted, and which the givers so unworthily departed from. The deed done at Waitara had justified the fears, and the wild orgies of the new sect convinced the most sceptical of the wisdom, of the good man whom Colonel Browne, and Mr. Richmond, and at a later date Fox and Whitaker, refused to regard. In 1864, the Government forces took possession of various places in the Waitara district. A strongly-fortified pah, Manutahi, was abandoned after trifling resistance, and Te Arei at Pukerangiora, which the General had approached by sap, in 1861, fell into Colonel Warre's hands in October, without a struggle. He was piloted by the friendly natives, and the enemy were few in number. Neither Rewi, nor Te Rangitake, nor Hapurona were there. Rewi and the men of Ngatimaniapoto had serious work at their own homes. Colonel Warre scoured the country, destroyed villages wherever he could find them, and having driven men, women, and children from their homes to fastnesses or wilds in the interior, formed a redoubt at Te Arei, with a strong garrison.

The attitude of the Ngatikahungunu tribe, whose territory extended on the east coast from Wellington to Napier, was an object of concern to the Government. There were feuds between the tribes on the Wairoa river. Major Whitmore, Civil Commissioner at Napier, urged them to be reconciled and accept one law for all. As to the Maori king, he did not complain of their sympathy with the idea of native union; but let them not add flames to war. In Waikato the English were at war merely because Englishmen had been murdered. Let not the east coast tribes interfere. The Maoris were at the time troubled by cases of adultery, and wished Major Whitmore to help them to a law of divorce, but he was unable to give them comfort. At the meeting no less than 600 Maoris were page 197 guests. Major Whitmore reported that it was possible to keep on good terms with the Ngatikahungunu, but that men had gone to the war at Waikato from the Ngatiporou at the East Cape and from the rugged Uriwera territory. The Bishop of Waiapu (William Williams) reported much ferment in February at Poverty Bay on the subject of land confiscations. The natives wanted to see the Governor. Meanwhile, the war at Waikato, and the intended devastation at Tauranga, which was frustrated for a time by the Civil Commissioner's prudence, occupied attention. Having occupied Ngaruawahia without opposition in December, 1863, General Cameron, after a few weeks, advanced along the Waipa river to Te Rore.

The Maoris were entrenched at Paterangi, situate in a country where, in what was called the great Waikato plain, low ridges and mounds are surrounded or intersected by swamps and winding valleys with swampy hollows. High fern intermingling with flax and low manukau scrub gave cover to scouting parties. A few miles to the south-east were Te Awamutu, whence Mr. Gorst had been expelled, Kihi Kihi (Rewi's chief residence), and Rangiaohia, all situate in one of the richest parts of the Waikato champaign. Thence large quantities of wheat had been sent to Auckland in years gone by, ministering to the wants of the colonists, and supplying the Maoris with means to procure fire-arms. The Paterangi works of the Maoris were unusually intricate. Line upon line of zigzag rifle-pits intersected the slopes of fern-covered ridges. The General bombarded from a distance, but made no impression, and his Maori allies advised him not to attempt to storm. The Bishop, writing from the camp at Te Rore on the 4th February to a son. said that the Maoris had “so strengthened their position by earthworks that the General is obliged to proceed cautiously and systematically. The popular idea of ‘rushing’ seems to have been abandoned since Rangiriri.” On the 11th February, about 50 soldiers were fired at on their way to bathe in the Mangapiko river. Colonel Waddy sent reinforcements, and the Maoris only escaped destruction in consequence of the uneven and fern-covered nature of the ground. The General witnessed the skirmish, and highly praised the officers engaged. Lieutenant- page 198 Colonel Havelock reported that the action cost the Maoris 28 men killed, and two wounded prisoners. Of the English, six were killed, and a few wounded. The hero of the assault upon the Maoris engaged in religious service at Paparata was lauded for his activity on this occasion, when those whom he attacked were not principally women and children. As regarded the inclusion of women in the horrors of war, the General, with the aid of the Forest Rangers, was about to do a deed which contributed to forfeit for Bishop Selwyn his place in Maori affections. The Bishop hoped, by accompanying the troops, to soften the rigours of war, and to administer consolation to the wounded without regard to the side on which they had fought. But the Waikato tribes would not believe that man to be their friend who marched with their enemies.1 He was fired at as he rode from post to post, but as of yore at Kororarika he went about the field of battle to succour the wounded. On one occasion he was with an officer carrying a wounded enemy to the camp, and meeting two soldiers received their help. As he carried the relieving soldier's rifle, he was reproached for having acted in so warlike a manner.

Wiremu Nera strove to induce the tribes to make peace. He found the king-maker at Maungatautari, willing to remain quiet if not attacked. Others were more warlike. But at Paterangi neither the Ngatimaniapoto, under Rewi, nor the Ngatiraukawa, nor any others, would listen to persuasion. One chief stood up and said, “Welcome, welcome, son. Peace shall not be made. If we are to die we will die in Waikato.” Unable to influence his brethren, Wiremu Nera returned to the General and provided him with guides. One service rendered to the General by the friendly Maoris was in deterring him from assaulting the intricate lines of Paterangi. Within them the Maoris, provided with potatoes for immediate wants, longed to be attacked. Their chief depot for food was at Rangiaohia, and

1 Writing to a brother Bishop, Selwyn said in 1863: “I have now one simple missiouary idea before me, that of watching over the remnant that is left. Our native work is a remnant in two senses,—the remnant of a decaying people and the remnant of a decaying faith. The works of which you hear are not the works of heathens; they are the works of baptized men whose love has grown cold from causes common to all churches of neophytes from Laodicea downwards.”

page 199 thither the General proceeded at midnight on the 20th February with a force of about 1100 men, to surprise the encampment, and annihilate the Maori commissariat. Colonel Waddy, with about 600, remained at Te Rore in front of Paterangi. At daybreak the General pushed on from Te Awamutu to Rangiaohia. “The few natives who were found in the place,” he said, “were quickly dispersed, and the greater part escaped, but a few of them taking shelter in a whā-rĕ made a desperate resistance until the Forest Rangers and a company of the 65th Regiment surrounded the whā-rĕ, which was set on fire, and the defenders either killed or taken prisoners.” This was the official method of telling, or concealing, that women and children were burned to death. For the credit of General Cameron it may be hoped that when he thus wrote, four days after the occurrence, he did not know the truth which was subsequently notorious.

Of what avail was it to preach peace to the Maoris, and tell them to be merciful, when a British force, commanded by a General, and accompanied by a Bishop, burnt women and children in a Maori house? Was it to be wondered at that a great grief came upon the Bishop when he heard that a plot was laid by the enemy to take his life? The successful General returned to Te Awamutu with 21 women and children who were not burned. He had fluttered the Maoris effectually. Though their men of war were at Paterangi and Maungatautari, their principal food stores, such as they were, were at Rangiaohia. That food was now destroyed, though the General did not think it worth his while to mention the fact in reporting his exploits. The grief of the Maoris at Paterangi was intense. They had expected the General to fight according to Maori principles with the foe ready to meet him. They had not dreamed that heavy guns and a large body of troops would be turned aside against women and children. Their rage at being outwitted by the flank-movement which left them idle, and destroyed their food and plantations, was exaggerated by the burning of their wives and children. Gathering their ammunition together they evacuated Paterangi, and were seen moving to Rangiaohia on the morning of the 22nd February, at which time also Colonel Waddy and his forces found Paterangi empty. The General marched against a band of page 200 Maoris between Rangiaohia and Te Awamutu in the afternoon of the 22nd, and thought that at least 30 of them were killed. But for the fern it would seem strange that all were not destroyed; for only by concealment could a Maori hope to see an enemy within the range which his fire-arms could cover, while rifles laid the Maori low at long ranges. The main body fled through a swamp towards Maungatautari, where a pah was in course of construction. On the 21st eight, and on the 22nd twenty-one, English were included in the returns of killed and wounded. The General's camp at Te Awamutu was but a short distance from Rewi's Kihikihi settlement, and both were near Orakau, soon to be rendered famous in New Zealand story by deeds which extorted admiration from enemies.

Two documents written at this period may be referred to with advantage. Mr. Whitaker, on the 29th February, to allay the Duke of Newcastle's apprehensions lest the Maoris should be embittered by confiscation of land, stated—in a formal minute drawn up for transmission to Downing Street— that “though the proceedings of the Government were at first naturally looked upon with some anxiety and distrust by the natives, those feelings have much subsided generally, and in some instances complete confidence has been established in the intentions of the Government;” and that “every means have been taken to persuade the Maoris in general, that the property of innocent persons and tribes will be strictly respected, and that the measure of punishment will be apportioned to the degree of guilt.”

Sir George Grey transmitted the minute with an intimation that it showed that the Ministry fully recognized the wisdom and propriety of the Duke of Newcastle's views, and would fulfil their duties prudently and justl. Yet, at that date, Sir George Grey was vainly imploring for the release of Te Oriori; and Mr. Whitaker had officially urged, with regard to the Settlements Act of 1863, that, if innocent native occupants could not be evicted under it, the Act would be almost useless. Mr. Whitaker's false minute was scarcely dry when Ahipene, a loyal chief, wrote from Waiuku (1st March) to Mr. Fox, saying, that he heard from trustworthy sources that the obduracy of page 201 Waikato was caused by distrust of the Government, and fear that if the chiefs should submit they would be tried, transported, and put to death. “This is the cause of their sadness, and in persisting in their evil course unto death. The heart of our sister Ngawai, when she heard these words, started with love to her people, and a desire to hear your words and those of the Governor, and to go to Waikato to suppress the evil, and cause the fighting to cease. … It is for you to decide.… If you think well, I and Waatu Kukutai would take our sister to make peace with the chiefs, and cause their king to be suppressed, their flag to be given up, and the instruments of war to be surrendered.”

Mr. Fox paid no attention to Ahipene's entreaty, but on the 9th March said that on his return from Kaipara Ministers would think about the prisoners. He sent a draft proclamation which might be issued after the taking of Maungatautari. It was addressed to the hostile tribes, who “have been very obstinate, and now their land, the land of Waikato, is gone.” The Government would give them “one more chance.” Let every man bring in his weapons and sign a declaration of submission. “Then let him go to whatever place the Government shall tell him to go to; let him live there till it shall be pointed out to him where shall be his permanent place to reside.” But “murderers shall not be forgiven.” This announcement it was proposed to make to the widowers and orphans of Rangiaohia. Burial-places and homes, however venerated and beloved, were to be abandoned to the invader, at whose dictate the exiles were to be permitted to breathe. Subsequently (6th May, 1864) Mr. Fox vilipended Ahipene's appeal. The chief was not “trustworthy or disinterested;” some of his “immediate relatives” captured at Rangiriri were on board the hulk, and his assertion as to the injurious effect of their confinement was only made to procure their release, and was “not in the opinion of Ministers of the smallest value whatever.” It was time for Mr. Cardwell to come to the rescue when Whitaker and Fox, dressed in brief authority, were prepared to use Her Majesty's name and wield Her Majesty's army in enforcing such behests. But pervicacious as they were they could not shake off all regard for public opinion. England could not be page 202 expected to thrust injustice upon the Maoris at the point of the bayonet.

The vigilant Aborigines' Protection Society in London wrote in January to Sir George Grey, urging that the war might be concluded by negotiation, and expressing alarm at the whole-sale land-confiscation proposed in some quarters. Such a policy would add fuel to the flames, and drive the Maoris to the madness of despair. The philanthropic names of Fowell Buxton, Joseph Pease, Newman Hall, S. Gurney, M.P., William Howitt, were attached in union with those of the Earl of Chichester, Lord Ebury, Sir Walter Trevelyan, Sir Wilfrid Lawson, General Perronet Thompson, Mr. F. W. Chesson, and many more. Sir George Grey showed his reply to Mr. Fox. Premising that some confiscation was needed as an example, he added: “That these measures will be carried out in a spirit of liberal generosity and of mercy I earnestly hope, and will do my best to ensure, and in my efforts to this end I believe that I shall be supported by a large majority in this colony.” Mr. Fox wrote: “The Colonial Secretary entirely concurs in his Excellency's observations, and does not think it necessary to offer any on the part of the Ministry.” But the Ministry after a month's reflection changed their minds. They drew up a lengthy memorandum on the 5th May, and at Sir George Grey's suggestion sent a copy to the Earl of Chichester. They justified sweeping confiscation as essential to enforce a moral lesson. “The deliberate opinion of Ministers is, that to terminate the present insurrection without confiscation of the lands of the rebels, making of course ample provision for their future, would be to surrender every advantage that has been gained, and practically to announce that British rule over the Maori must cease, and the Northern Island be abandoned as a safe place of residence for Her Majesty's European subjects.”1… Ministers

1 When first shown to Sir George Grey, the memorandum contained a quotation from a work by the Rev. Mr. Taylor, in which the author was quoted as blaming Governor Fitzroy for not having claimed the district of Waiaru in 1843, as having been paid for with blood. Sir George Grey informed Mr. Taylor (then in Auckland) that from his work an inference had been drawn that the natives would not consider themselves conquered unless their lands were confiscated. Mr. Taylor pointed out that the condition of affairs in 1843 had no analogy to that of 1864. Independent tribes had taken up arms under an impression that their lands would be seized, and the knowledge of an intention to confiscate the entire territory of the hostile tribes would prolong the war to the last extremity in every corner of the island, whereas if honourable and liberal terms were offered it was probable that so shrewd a race as the Maoris would lay down their arms. With ill-concealed chagrin Mr. Fox, after numerous minutes, withdrew Mr. Taylor's name from his letter to Lord Chichester.

page 203 believe that nothing has been, or can be, more “pernicious to the native race than the possession of large territories under tribal title, which they neither use, know how to use, nor can be induced to use.” They animadverted upon the “pernicious system of tribal right,” but were prudently silent about the fact that its maintenance had been guaranteed by the treaty of Waitangi. To flourish their determination in the eyes of the colonial public, the Ministry resolved to publish their memorandum, and asked the Governor's permission to publish his letter to Lord Chichester. Sir George Grey preferred that the publication of his letter should be determined upon by those to whom it had been written. Mr. Fox considered that as Lord Chichester's letter had been published in the ‘Times’ before its receipt, the Governor was released from the ordinary rule, but Sir George Grey declined to imitate an informality.

It is necessary to revert to the operations in the field, for his “invaluable services,” in which at “great personal risk and convenience” the Secretary of State, in acknowledging military reports, rendered to Bishop Selwyn his “sincerest thanks.” The Department which had spurned the Bishop's counsel at Waitara was proud of his countenance at Paterangi. The General, meanwhile, hearing that the Maoris were gathering together for a final struggle at Maungatautari under the guidance of the king-maker, resolved to reduce their stronghold ther—Ti Tiki o te Hingarangi. His own head-quarters were at Pukerimu, where spurs from the Maungatautari range trend to the left bank of the Waikato river, above the modern town Cambridge. He could there obtain supplies by the waters of the river. The Maoris had miscalculated the facilities with which ample resources could provide the military commissariat at points remote from Auckland. Their own scanty stores had suffered in the ravages at Rangiaohia. After evacuating page 204 Paterangi many of them appear to have been scattered in various bands near the Puniu river. Most of the women and children were removed southwards towards the upper waters of the Waipa. Some ammunition was secreted in convenient places, but the Maoris did not at once select a new place of defence. Brigadier-General Carey was stationed with a large force at Te Awamutu. A band of Maoris roving over their desolated land were passing Orakau, about three miles from Kihikihi (and as far from Te Awamutu), when one of them said: “This is my father's land. Here will I fight.” The chiefs began to discuss the matter, but he was resolute, and his impetuosity prevailed. There was no apparent strength in the position. It was one of those low rolling mounds which characterized the country. Northwards the land sloped downwards almost imperceptibly to a patch of forest. Westward it was almost level with Orakau. From the south-west a ridge curved round by the south to the south-east at a distance varying from 250 to 350 yards, leaving a hollow between the pah and the crest of the ridge at the south-east. Eastward there was a gentle slope, and across a gully at a distance of several hundred yards the land rose again to the level of Orakau. Beyond the curving ridge was a swamp, at the other side of which, at the south-east, rose a steep but not very high mound which narrowed the swamp in that direction. Southwards the ridge was steep, and about 40 feet high, where it overlooked the narrow swamp which separated it from the mound which was higher than the ridge. Almost at the southern foot of the ridge there was a deep ditch with a steep bank above it, which had been made in former times to keep cattle from Maori cultivations. The ground was covered with fern and occasional flax-plants. On the 30th March, General Carey heard that the enemy were constructing rifle-pits at Orakau. They had fired upon a party of the colonial forces who stumbled by chance upon the spot. He made a reconnaissance and resolved to surround the position before it could be fortified. He sent 250 of the 40th Regiment by a circuitous route to occupy the rear of the enemy. At three o'clock in the morning, with about 700 men, composed of Artillery, Engineers, 40th and 65th Regiments, and about 25 of the Forest page 205 Rangers, he marched past the Kihikihi Redoubt to Orakau, taking 150 men from Kihikihi on the way. Captain Blewitt was ordered to move from Rangiaohia to the east side of Orakau with about 114 men, composed of the 65th Regiment and the 3rd Waikato Militia in about equal proportions. The three forces were to converge upon Orakau simultaneously at daylight. The combined forces were more than 1250. The Maoris have been variously computed at from 300 to 400,1 including women and children. The Brigadier was in front of Orakau at day-dawn.

The experience gained by Rewi at the Waitara in the construction of gabions and sap-rollers was used at Orakau. From the ridge at the south-west a heavy gun hurled its shot upon the pah. Instantly, under his orders, long bundles of fern were cut and bound with strips of green flax until an enormous mass of yielding fern received the harmless cannon-balls and guarded the earthworks. Then he turned to other tasks. Firing was kept up throughout the day and night both upon the sap and elsewhere. Thus did the beleaguered Maoris spend the night. They had no water. Their food was a scanty store of raw potatoes and a few gourds. Though taken by surprise, they were already, according to Carey's narrative, posted behind earthworks, with flank defences, deep ditches, posts and rails; and were sheltered from view by flax-bushes, peach-trees, and high fern. The English advanced guard under Captain Ring was fired upon, and rushed to the assault. Driven back, it was re-enforced and renewed the assault with similar result. Captain Ring fell, mortally wounded. Captain T. D. Baker, 18th Regiment, dismounted, called for volunteers, and led an attack which was again unsuccessful. The Brigadier, knowing that his subordinates were at their appointed posts on the right and in rear of the enemy, determined to take the place by sap, the artillery having failed to make an impression on the works. Care was taken to prevent escape, and it was deemed certain that the enemy thus surprised could have no store of food. In the afternoon a large band of Maoris appeared in the Maungatautari direction. They had come to relieve, but could only fire

1 General Cameron reported that “they had probably not less than 150 men killed “out of a garrison not exceeding 300.” Despatch, 7th April, 1864.

page 206 volleys and dance their war-dance to encourage their countrymen. The English lines were too strong for them, and shells were thrown upon them. The Brigadier himself was re-enforced by about 400 men in the course of the day and ensuing night. The sap was carried on without intermission. Carey reported that futile efforts to escape were made in the night by a few Maoris who when fired upon retreated to their works. In the morning they fired resolutely at the sappers, but the relentless work went on unchecked by casualties. Thus another day and another night were spent.
On the 2nd April, Lieutenant-Colonel Havelock arrived with hand-grenades which were thrown “with great effect” amongst the besieged. At noon an Armstrong gun was carried into the sap. It made a breach, and silenced some of the Maori fire. Women and children were in the pah, and the enemy were called on to surrender with a promise that their lives should be spared. They answered: “Ka whawhai tonu—ake, ake, ake.”— “We will fight to the bitter end, for ever and ever.” The interpreter urged them to send out the women and children. They answered: “The women will fight too.” But they suffered severely in the rifle-pits which they had not had time to construct carefully. The oblong rifle-pit of the Maori held five or six men. At two of its angles it communicated with other pits so that men could pass from pit to pit along the line. Thus was formed a double line of pits with intervals of solid earth between each. The hastily-formed Orakau pits did not in all cases afford such facilities, and the hand-grenades thrown into them so rent the bodies of the Maoris that many were unrecognizable. Weary with incessant work, decimated by the riving grenades; athirst, starved, and girt by a ring of fire, the garrison would “not yield to kiss the ground beneath the feet” of Whitaker and Fox. Though reluctant to see gallant blood hopelessly shed, the Brigadier (with whose operations Cameron, though present, did not interfere), when the sap was completed, ordered an assault. Of a score of men who entered one breach, half fell beneath a volley which the Maoris delivered before they rushed to their inner works. A second assault at another breach fared in like manner. The British officers were consulting as to the next step to be taken, while the Maoris faced page 207 the fearful truth that their ammunition was almost spent. Powder they had, but their bullets were few. And Rewi had a store of them buried in the fern some miles away! Famished and athirst—apparently without a loophole of escape—no Maori thought of yielding. In their distress they sang one of the hymns taught them by the Christians. Perhaps the Christian God would look down in pity. But still the Pakeha pressed on. Then sterner, bloodier thoughts succeeded. The superstitious savage confounded the Christian God with the deeds done by those who profaned His name. The Maori noble would discard the creed taught by the robbers of his land. They were a nation of liars. While the Bishop and his friends invited the Maori to look to heaven, the Pakehas had vilely stolen the land from under his feet. The Bishop calling himself a man of peace, marched with the soldiers. The Maoris would scorn him and all his works. They would appeal to their own god of fierce man. Tu-matauenga, with dreadful aspect; Tu-ka riri, the angry; Tu-ka nguha, the fiery; Tu-ka taua, the war-lover; Tu whakaheke, the man-destroyer; Tu-mata waita, eye-piercing; —surely, by one of his attributes, the great Tu would aid his children, or confound their enemies. They chanted a karakia, or imprecation of old days, long disused in Maori land. Their voices were heard by the wondering English, who were to marvel still more at their daring. At the rear, where the thunders of the great gun had been foiled by the flax-bound fern, a double line of the investing troops had been thrown back1 under cover to enable the gun to open fire. Through that opening, about four o'clock in the broad day, chanting their appeal to the god of battles, and moving steadily as in scorn of their foes, the Maoris marched towards the narrow neck of swamp between the ridge and mound. Carey said they rushed. Mr. Fox writes that an eye-witness told him, “They were in a solid column, the women, the children and the great chiefs in the centre, and they marched out as cool and steady as if they had been going to church.” Rewi ordered that no shot should be fired. The little ammunition left was needed for defence in the desperate course through the swamp to be crossed on the way to the Puniu river. Ere he left his blood-spattered fortification

1 Brigadier-General Carey's Official Report, 7th April, 1864. P. P.

page 208 he must have cast a lingering look on the home of his ancestry. On his right to the east stood Maungatautari about fifteen miles away, like a sentinel guarding the land on one side of the great Waikato plain; Pirongia at similar distance westwards seemed to hold like function by the Waipa. Close to him, on his left, was his own abandoned settlement Kihikihi, where his fore-fathers' burial-places were now ravaged by the Pakeha. Could he but cross the Puniu he might find shelter in the friendly forests of Rangitoto looming large in the south. But when all looked to him for guidance, prompt action was required. Some accounts state that, as if to deceive the troops and gain time for the fugitives, a Maori, while his countrymen departed, sprung with a white flag on the parapet and was riddled by bullets. One chief, more successful, diverted the English for a few moments. Wiremu Karamoa walked coolly towards the troops and surrendered.1 Suddenly the truth was known. “They are escaping,” was echoed amongst the English. Before the Maoris reached the ridge in rear, on right and left the soldiers converged upon them in the ferny hollow, and many fell under a cross fire in which some soldiers shot their comrades, and it was thought that the Maoris were returning the fire. But Rewi husbanded his ammunition still. The devoted band gained the ridge, thinned in number, but pressing forward like one man. At the base of the outer side of the ridge were a few of the 40th Regiment keeping outer guard. As the Maoris leaped over the old ditch which once protected their plantations a bugler sounded a call. “May I not shoot him?” said one man. Rewi said No: but another Maori as he passed the ditch shot the bugler dead. The swamp was reached. Many of the fugitives gained the mound across the neck of swamp, and there a body of cavalry which had ridden to intercept them, slew, with the aid of the pursuing infantry, considerable numbers, some of whom were women. Wading and plunging through the swamp and using in their hour of need their treasured ammunition, the main body gained the Puniu river, and escaped after a pursuit which the Brigadier described as lasting “nearly six miles.” He regretted that “in the pah and in the pursuit some three or four women were killed unavoidably, (their dress and hair)

1 Report of Mr. R. C. Mainwaring to Mr. Fox. P. P. 1864.

page 209 “rendering it impossible to distinguish one from the other at any distance.” He under-rated the number. Amongst the wounded were found six, and many more were killed and wounded.1 A report by an interpreter declared— “numbers are wounded, and I regret to say a large quantity of women.” More than a hundred Maoris were found dead, and at the most distant point of pursuit it was seen that the wounded were carried by their friends, while fresh traces of blood in the morning showed that the same occupation was followed during the night. The English loss was 16 killed and 52 wounded. It was hoped that the body of Rewi might be found. The General vainly offered a reward of ten pounds for it. The bodies which were not shattered were recognized by the friendly Maoris who accompanied the English. The fallen were supposed to have been Uriwera, Taupo, and Waikato people. The troops buried their enemies, some at the edge of Orakau, and others on the mound at the south-east where the cavalry had crossed the fliers. The conduct of the troops was highly extolled by the General, who returned at once to Pukerimu. Of the Maoris he said, “They had probably not less than 150 men killed out of a garrison not exceeding 300. “It is impossible not to admire the heroic courage and devotion of the natives in defending themselves so long against overwhelming numbers. Surrounded closely on all sides, cut off from their supply of water, and deprived of all hope of succour, they resolutely held their ground for more than two days, and did not abandon their position until the sap had reached the ditch of their last entrenchment.”
It was soon ascertained that Rewi had escorted his people to Hangatiki and was building a pah there. No man was permitted to enter or leave the district without his permission. Thither Brigadier-General Carey sent a Maori messenger to press the terms of peace offered by the Governor and General. The messenger was not allowed to see Rewi, but was told that the

1 An English soldier described to the author how an unarmed Maori for some time protected the women and children fleeing with him. As his pursuers approached he turned and knelt down to take deliberate aim. Time after time, without firing a shot, he thus arrested the pursuit while the women fled. At last he was himself shot, and it was found that his gun was not loaded. Some of the women escaped by means of the self-sacrifice of this unnamed Maori hero.

page 210 terms could not be accepted, lest faith should be broken as it had been broken with the prisoners taken at Rangiriri. The offers to spare life at Orakau had been refused by Rewi for the same reason. He would not by giving up his arms place himself at the General's mercy, but he was willing to live in peace if unmolested. Sir George Grey bitterly deplored that the obstinacy of the Ministry in refusing to release any of the captives gave strength to the life-despising despair of the Maoris. The grounds of Rewi's distrust reached him a few days after Mr. Whitaker rejected his solicitations for Te Oriori's release. The fall of Orakau and the scattering of Rewi's force left the Maoris at Maungatautiri between two large bodies of English troops. They abandoned their pah. Ten thousand English troops had pulled down the pride of Waikato. The war was over. A generous policy towards the fallen might have touched the hearts of a race of whose conduct, at Orakau, Mr. Fox himself was constrained to say: “Does ancient or modern history, or our own rough island story, record anything more heroic?” As on the west coast, where Major Butler left no Maori cultivation within 20 miles of Taranaki, so in Waikato and elsewhere, where war was waged, crops were destroyed and property taken without stint. Ruthless waste was admitted to be the only way by which the subjugation of the natives could be effected. Those who could not be conquered or captured might be starved.
Against the king-maker, Te Waharoa, the Ministry had a deep grudge, and as he had influence near Tauranga it was determined to prosecute the expedition which, in February, had been suspended in opposition to the wish of the Ministry. But, though suspended, it had excited the Maoris. Major Whitmore reported in April that the younger and worse-disposed natives had gone from Hawke's Bay to Tauranga. They were emulous of the ghastly distinction won by their countrymen at Orakau. They resented the blockade of the coast. Friendly chiefs were anxious to raise forces to assist the English, and Major Whitmore asked if he might raise a native contingent. If they objected to war against Waikato they would fight elsewhere. Major Whitmore's belief in their pugnacity was confirmed two days after the date of his letter. The Maoris (Ngaiterangi and others) had advanced to their frontier, and built near the boundary of the Church page 211 Missionary land a pah, at Pukehinahina, called afterwards the “Gate Pah,” because, being on a ridge, with a narrow swamp at each side, it served as a passage from English to Maori land. It was about three miles from the mission station at Tauranga. There they waited to defend their territory. Fully expecting to be attacked, they sent (28th March) a protocol to the Colonel in command, announcing that unarmed persons, and even a soldier who turned to the enemy the butt of his musket or hilt of his sword, would be spared. On the 21st April, General Cameron transferred his head-quarters to Tauranga. On the same day, near Fort Maketu, Major Colville (43rd Regiment) reported an ambuscade laid and an ensuing skirmish, in which the friendly Arawa aided the troops. On the 26th, the General reconnoitred the position from the sea. On the 27th, the enemy fired upon the English fort. H.M.S. ‘Falcon’ and the ‘Sandfly’ arriving, shelled their position, and followed the Maoris along the coast for twelve miles. The commander of the native contingent, Major G. D. Hay, pursued by land. On the 28th, the land force being about 400, which was the estimated strength of the enemy, there was an engagement at Matata, near the river Te Awaoteatua, in which the English allies were successful. Major Hay reported that the Arawa behaved very well. More than 50 of the enemy were found dead, and it seemed that the Ngatiawa and their allies were effectually broken. On the English side there were few casualties. A captured chief was assured by Captain McDonell that his life was in no danger; but the widow of a chief slain in the English ranks openly walked up to the captive and shot him dead. On the 27th, the General reconnoitred the Gate Pah, and moved thither a large body of troops. On the 28th, he had assembled a force of about 1700 men in front of it. He had one 110-pounder, two 40-pounders, and two 6-pounder Armstrong guns; two howitzers, two mortars, and six cohorn mortars. In the evening it was ascertained that the swamp on the enemy's right might be passed safely, and while a feigned attack was made in front, Colonel Greer, with about 700 of the 68th, succeeded in taking up a position behind the enemy to prevent escape. About half a mile in their rear Colonel Greer, in the dark, heard the Maoris talking in their redoubt. The guns and mortars were put into position in the night. Soon page 212 after daybreak on the 29th, fire was opened in front. On a ridge about 80 feet in height and 250 yards wide, abruptly falling on each side at first, and then sloping on sandy pumice formation on each flank to a narrow swamp in a gorge, was an oblong palisaded redoubt, guarded by an entrenched line of rifle-pits between the side-faces of the redoubt and the swamps. Within, the rifle-pits were horizontally covered with sticks and fern, and earth heaped above. Under the roof was space for loopholes. The redoubt was about 70 yards wide by a depth of 30. About 100 yards in the rear, as if to invite the English to fire in the wrong direction, was planted the Maori flagstaff. For about two hours the stratagem was successful, but then a mingled torrent of shot and shell hurtled amongst the Maori earth-holes. The Maoris made no sign, except when one of them coolly shovelled up earth to repair a partial breach. Trained soldiers marvelled at the time, as all who have visited the spot have marvelled since, at the daring of those dusky warriors. At noon it was found that a gun could be moved across the swamp on the enemy's left to high ground. Thence an Armstrong six-pounder enfiladed the Maoris, and drove them from the left of their position. The firing won the General's approval throughout the day, and at four o'clock he ordered the assault, “a practicable breach” having been made. This time, at least, the Maoris were thought to be doomed. There was daylight to kill them by, and Colonel Greer was in the rear to intercept fliers. One hundred and fifty seamen and marines, and an equal number of the 43rd, under their Colonel, Booth, formed the assaulting party. A detachment of 170 men was extended as near as possible to keep down the fire from the rifle-pits, and follow the column into the work. Three hundred men formed the reserve, under Captain Hamilton of H.M.S. ‘Esk.’ The winding ridge (commanded only on one side by the Maoris after they had been driven in from their left) protected the assailants. When the bombardment ceased, and a rocket gave signal for the assault, Colonel Greer moved his men close to the rear of the pah. The breach was gained; Colonel Booth and Commander Hay led the way. As they dashed into the inner trench hardly an enemy was to be seen. In the earth-covered rifle-pits and passages, which had sheltered the Maoris during that iron hail of ten page 213 hours' duration, they were still concealed from sight. But they saw the English, and jets of smoke from right and left told a deadly tale as gun after gun brought down the confused assailants. The fort, which hardly had room for its defenders, bore a thickening crowd, who poured into it merely to be shot. The check sustained was seen from without. The reserve plunged forward to support their comrades, but in vain. In that imminent and deadly breach the officers of both services threw away life like smoke-wreaths rather than quail. Captain Hamilton “fell as he led in the reserve.” Colonel Booth and Commander Hay, R.N. had fallen. Captains Hamilton, Glover, Mure, Utterton, and two Lieutenants, all of the 43rd, were shot dead or wounded in that fray so that they died. Captain Glover was seen on the ground. His brother, a Lieutenant in the same regiment, was carrying him to a place of safety, and was shot. Both died of their wounds.1 The Maoris at such close quarters seldom missed, and to miss then would have left them at the mercy of the bayonet. In a few minutes scores of the English were laid low. Stunned and panic-struck their comrades broke and fled. As they went they took no advantage of the ground, but were shot on the open surface of the ridge. No man could account for the disaster. Some said that by mistake, in the din and the rattle of musketry, the word “retreat” was heard and acted upon. Some said that the main body of the Maoris had rushed to the rear, had encountered the 68th,—recoiled; and, dashing back to the redoubt to sell dearly the lives they could not save, were thought by the astonished soldiers to be a Maori re-enforcement, sprung as by magic on the scene. The Maoris must have known that escape was hopeless, and it does not appear that they sought it before beating back the assault. Panic knows no law but disorder. The General could report but not explain. “Captain Hamilton was shot dead on the top of the parapet while in the act of encouraging his men to advance, and in a few minutes almost every officer of the column was either killed or wounded. Up to this moment the men, so nobly led by their officers, fought gallantly, and appeared to have carried the position, when they sudddenly gave way and

1 They were brothers of Captain Glover who distinguished himself in Ashantee in 1874.

page 214 fell back from the work to the nearest cover. This repulse I am at a loss to explain otherwise than by attributing it to the confusion created among the men by the intricate nature of the interior of the defences, and the sudden fall of so many of their officers.” The Maoris leapt forward to the work of slaughter. One of them exposed himself openly on the parapet and taunted the fliers as he fired, inviting them to renew the assault. Two of the 43rd were brained by tomahawks. The General, on reaching the front, determined not to renew the assault until morning, but threw up a line of entrenchment within a hundred yards of the fatal fortress.

Colonel Greer's movements are clearly related by himself. At daybreak he heard the besieged singing and dancing in their pah. A little disturbance was created in his ranks by the success of the Maori device in placing their flagstaff in rear of their work. The casualty list showed three of his men wounded by shells. Once or twice during the day he thought the Maoris were disposed to break away to the rear, and, when the assault began, he drew so close as to make escape impossible. “About five o'clock, p.m., the Maoris made a determined rush from the right rear of their pah, I met them with three companies, and after a skirmish drove the main body back: about 20 got past my right, but received a flank fire from Lieutenant Cox's party (68th, 60 men), and Lieutenant Hotham's (30 men) Naval Brigade, and 16 of the Maoris were seen to fall; a number of men pursued the remainder. By the time I had collected the men again and posted them it was very dark. My force available on the right was quite inadequate to cover the ground in such a manner as to prevent the Maoris from escaping during the night; in fact I consider that on such a dark wet night as that was, nothing but a close chain of sentries, strongly supported round the whole rear and flanks, could have kept the Maoris in; and to do that a much stronger force than I had would have been necessary. During the night the Maoris made their escape. I think that, taking advantage of the darkness, they crept away in small parties, for during the night every post either saw or heard some of them escaping, and fired volleys at them. The Maoris, careful not to expose themselves, never returned a shot during the night, but there were occasional shots fired from the page 215 pah, no doubt to deceive us as to their having left it.” How they left no one knew at the camp of the General. After they had poured their volleys upon the flying troops they made no sign of abandoning their post. Those who knew the voice of the chief Rawiri heard him calling to the soldiers to come on. In the pitchy night which ensued, either by the right rear or by stealing through the fern on their right flank, the garrison passed silently away, leaving, as was rarely the case, wounded and dead behind. Wounded prisoners told that some had been carried away even on this occasion. The tale was strange; but everything about the Gate Pah was equally so. The network of rifle-pits and underground passages, of which the English had become masters, had cost them the lives of 10 officers and 25 non-commissioned officers and men, while 4 officers and 72 of other ranks were wounded. Yet “not more than 20 dead and 6 wounded Maoris could be found in and about their position,” and of them but few had been hurt by Armstrong guns or shell. It was said that no English regiment at Waterloo had lost so many officers as the 43rd lost at the Gate Pah. The General's official report that the assault began at four o'clock and Colonel's Greer's statement that the Maoris made their sally in the rear at five o'clock, refute the idea that the return of the Maoris to their pah turned the tide of battle within it. The storming party had been driven back 45 minutes before the sally was made. It seems that having repelled the assault, and perhaps presuming that the English, under Colonel Greer, would be discouraged, the Maoris resorted to their usual tactics of abandoning their stronghold after inflicting loss upon the enemy, but that Colonel Greer's readiness compelled them to escape by night. When Mr. Smith, the Civil Commissioner, entered the pah in the morning, he believed the statement of a wounded Maori that less than 200 men had defended the work, “as it did not appear capable of holding more.” The dead English had neither been stripped nor mutilated. They had been kindly treated. Among the Maori garrison was Henare Taratoa, who had been educated under Bishop Selwyn at St. John's College prior to 1853. He tended one of the English wounded who, in his dying agonies, thirsted for a drop of water. The Maoris had none. Taratoa threaded his way through the page 216 English sentries in the darkness, and returned with a calabash of water to slake his enemy's thirst. By the side of each wounded Englishman there was found in the morning some small water-vessel, placed there by the Maoris before they departed from their fort. In recognition of their chivalry the few Ngaiterangi prisoners were afterwards released by Sir George Grey. The dying Colonel Booth was carried out of the pah in the morning. The General went to him; but the gallant soldier felt the repulse so deeply that he turned away his face, saying: “General, I can't look at you. I tried to carry out your orders but we failed.” He died in the evening.

The English dead were buried in the mission burial-ground at Tauranga on the 2nd May, amid feelings which have seldom harrowed a British force, for many of the men burned with shame for the repulse, and were stunned by grief for their comrades. Within a separate enclosure, about 30 yards by 20, in that cemetery, may be seen to this day an obelisk inscribed on three sides. One inscription tells that Colonel Booth, Captains Glover, Mure, Hamilton, and Utterton, and Lieutenant Glover and Ensign Langlands fell at the Gate Pah. Another tells that Serjeant-Major Vance and a bugler, James Blackwall, with eleven privates, are interred there. The third is in memory of two corporals and four privates, who fell in a subsequent action at Te Ranga. A separate tomb tells that Captain J. F. C. Hamilton, of H.M.S. ‘Esk,’ “fell in the assault on the Pukehinahina (Gate) Pah.” In the same enclosure there are other graves and memorials of those who at different times were killed or died in the district. The enclosure, with the cemetery of which it is a part, is on the site of what was once a strong pah, on a low promontory, steeply scarped by the hands of Maoris. Ditches and high embankments intersecting the plateau show that the pah was once a formidable work.

Wars of old time with spears and clubs, and the wanton sacrifice of life at the Gate Pah, arouse melancholy reflections in the traveller who stands on the promontory and looks across the peaceful waters of the bay to the pyramid of Mongonui, standing like a lonely guard athwart the entrance to the harbour. At Mongonui, within the memory of white men, one of the savagest Maori slaughters had taken place. The murderous page 217 native wars were practically extinguished by Christianity, and the land might have had peace but for the pestilent injustice enacted by Governor Browne and his advisers. The slaughter at the Gate Pah would not have taken place if the Whitaker Ministry had not wantonly promoted the Tauranga campaign. If General Cameron had been content to occupy the front and rear of the Gate Pah English blood need not have been shed there. The Maoris must have surrendered, or ventured at disadvantage to pass the English lines. As usual, the Maori allies had endeavoured to dissuade the General from the assault. Wi Patene and others, friendly to the English, obtained permission to bury the Maori dead. Mr. Smith, the Civil Commissioner, with 18 natives, on Sunday (1st May) interred the bodies within the mission boundary near the Gate Pah,—Archdeacon Brown reading a portion of the funeral service. A mound was raised to mark the common grave. Except to prove what required no further proof—Maori valour,—the defence of Pukehinahina was idle. It could not check the English advance. Wi Patene and other friendly chiefs proposed to communicate with the rebels and urge submission. The General declined to authorize such overtures. If the rebels desired to make any, they might communicate with him. Wi Patene admitted that the General's reasons were satisfactory.

The Maoris did not retreat far. It was rumoured that they were fortifying a position in the hills at the head of the Wairoa. But the spirit of presumption was upon them, and Maori allies warned the English of their movements. On the 21st June, Colonel Greer heard that they were commencing to build a pah at Te Ranga, a few miles from the scene of their recent struggle, and he resolved to attack them before they could build palisades or construct shell-defying burrows. He marched to the spot with a force of 600 men, enfiladed them from a spur which commanded their right, drove in their skirmishers, kept up a sharp fire for two hours; and, when re-enforced by a gun and 220 more men, sounded the advance upon the position, which consisted of a ditch four or five feet deep. The 43rd, 68th, and 1st Waikato Regiments carried the rifle-pits with a dash, the Maoris firing vigorously but as usual too high. For a few minutes they fought desperately, then turned and fled, leaving 68 dead in the page 218 rifle-pits. The pursuit was keen. The 43rd avenged their loss at the Gate Pah. One hundred and eight1 Maoris were killed, 27 were wounded, and 10 were made prisoners. Henare Taratoa, the humane hero of the Gate Pah, was amongst the killed. On his body was found a written order of the day for war. It began with prayer and ended with the words, “If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink.” The English loss was 10 killed and 40 wounded. The dead Maoris were thrown into the rifle-pits dug by themselves the day before. The bayonet was the death-dealing weapon in the pits. A corporal of the 68th transfixed a Maori, who at once coolly seized the corporal's rifle with one hand and was endeavouring, tomahawk in hand, to cut down his enemy with the other, when a serjeant saved his comrade with a second bayonet. One Maori was brought in calmly smoking his pipe. On throwing open his blanket for the surgeon's inspection he showed four bullet-holes and five bayonet wounds through his trunk and thighs. Mr. Meade, R.N., saw him recovered and walking some months afterwards. Rawiri, who had invited the English to renew the assault at the Gate Pah, and almost all the notable chiefs, were among the killed. In his hurried account, written on the spot, Colonel Greer said: “I must not conclude without remarking on the gallant stand made by the Maoris at the rifle-pits. They stood the charge without flinching, and did not retire until forced out at the point of the bayonet.”2

Success so crushing touched, if it did not soften, the heart of one at least of the Ministry. Mr. Fox wrote in after years that the annihilation of the tribe was so complete, that when (in July and August) the survivors submitted, “they were truly a

1 N. Z. P. P. 1864. E. No. 3, p. 81.

2 Sir George Grey wrote to the Secretary of State (1st July, 1864): “Colonel Greer tells me that no thought of yielding possessed the natives —that they fought with desperation, and when at length compelled by the bayonet to quit the trenches in which they left more than a tenth of their number dead, it was strange to see them slowly climb up, and, disdaining to run, walk away under a fire that mowed them down, some halting and firing as they retired, others with heads bent down stoically and proudly receiving their inevitable fate. He adds in speaking of Rawiri their leader, who was amongst the slain—‘Poor Rawiri was a brave man, and behaved like a chivalrous gentleman towards me.’”

page 219 miserable remnant, on whom it was impossible to look without feelings of the deepest commiseration and pity.” On the 5th August, Sir George Grey, with General Cameron and two of his advisers, met all the natives. They had previously surrendered their arms to Colonel Greer. They now surrendered their lands. Sir George Grey promised to care for them as the Queen's subjects, and to release all prisoners of their tribe, in consideration of the chivalrous manner in which they had carried on the war. The Maoris expressed their gratitude. They ceded all their lands, and the Governor retained one-fourth as an atonement for rebellion, returning the remainder in recognition of the humanity of the tribes: The loss of Tauranga was the final blow to the Waikato tribes. It had afforded their most available seaport; and through it warlike contingents found their way from the east coast to Waikato. Strategically the campaign was effective; but he who is free from prejudice or lust for the land of the conquered may agree with the words, though not the feelings, of Mr. Fox in his equivocal defence, which declared that the “occupation of Tauranga was as fully justified as any other movement of the war.”

In the king-maker's mind no doubts existed longer. The Maoris, unless united, had no prospect of success. They were not united; and some of the most powerful tribes were arrayed against the patriot or rebel party. He was willing to bow to the stroke of fate. Burial-places rifled for green-stone treasures —cattle destroyed or eaten—maize and potato crops consumed —peach-groves cut down, or burnt; consequent starvation or distress: these were fruits of the war which the more impetuous Maoris had courted, and which, if they had not courted it, Whitaker and his friends were determined to bring about, as soon as they could command English blood and treasure with which to wage it. They had denied that land was their object. They had repelled the arguments of Sir William Martin, Archdeacon Hadfield, and others, who had shown that the Maoris could look upon the conduct of the English as arising only from lust for land; and now that success had crowned the arms of England, they proceeded to prove by their conduct that Sir William Martin was right.

It is difficult to imagine how any number of men, conversant page 220 with the rules prevailing in English society, could conduct themselves as Mr. Whitaker and his colleagues comported themselves towards the representative of the Crown with regard to the Maori prisoners. When tidings came that the treatment of the prisoners rankled in the minds of their countrymen, and intensified the horrors of war at Orakau and elsewhere, Sir G. Grey (4th May) asked his advisers to agree to the appointment of a Board, to inquire whether the prisoners could be maintained on board the hulk in the winter, and the Ministers then proposed to yield to his anxious desire that the Maoris generally might know something of the probable fate of the prisoners. They suggested that it should be announced that only loss of personal liberty would be inflicted until peace might be made, when allotments of land would be given; and that two, not important chiefs, should be allowed to go on parole to explain their position to the tribes. The Governor replied, that as after so long deliberation the Ministry had determined upon such a course, it would be well for them to carry it out. It would still be competent for the Secretary of State to convey any commands of Her Majesty varying the amount of punishment.

At this period the disasters at the Gate Pah were announced, and the Governor was about to proceed to Tauranga (10th May), when the Ministry asked him to sign blank passes for two chiefs to be selected as emissaries, on parole, to announce to their countrymen the intention of the Government with respect to the prisoners. Sir George Grey trusted the Ministry would excuse him from signing such papers for uninfluential chiefs. “It was against the judgment of the Governor that these prisoners and their friends were left so long without a guarantee of what their punishment was to be. It is equally against his judgment, that at the present moment, after our heavy losses at Tauranga, such a communication as is proposed, carried by such messengers, should be conveyed to the natives now in arms. In assenting to the Executive Government carrying out by their own action the course they have determined to adopt, the Governor thinks he has done all that can be required of him.” Mr. Fox signed passes, and Sir George Grey enclosed them to Brigadier-General Carey in Waikato; but the mission was unproductive. The appointment of the Board of Inquiry upon the hulk caused page 221 much correspondence. The relations which the Ministry desired to establish may be gathered from one fact. On the 23rd June, in reply to an interrogation, the Governor learned for the first time from Mr. For that Te Oriori had been put upon parole. Mr. Fox justified his reticence by arguing that the Ministry thought that in telling the Governor nothing about the chief for whose release he had vainly pleaded, the “Ministers in acting as they did thought they were conforming to his Excellency's views.”

At this juncture, when the slaughter at Te Ranga seemed to place unlimited power of rapine in the hands of the Ministry, there sped across the sea a despatch which showed that English honour was more safe in the hands of Mr. Cardwell than in those of his predecessor. The Settlements Act which Mr. Whitaker had pronounced essential to the well-being of the colony furnished the text. Mr. Cardwell did not dispute the right of the Colonial Government to extort from the insurgents some aid in defraying the expenses of the war, but the expenses had been borne mainly by England, which had therefore a right to require that the cession or confiscation of territory should not be carried further than was consistent with the permanent pacification of the island and the honour of the English name. As for the Settlements Act itself, the Duke of Newcastle pointed out in 1863 the difficulties incident to forming military settlements, and the reprehension with which the English Government would view measures tending to intensify disaffection. “I need scarcely observe” (Mr. Cardwell said) “that the Act now forwarded, taken in combination with the scheme proposed by your Government, exhibits a rapid expansion of the principles in which the Duke of Newcastle acquiesced with so much reserve.… Considering that the defence of the colony is at present effected by an Imperial force, I should perhaps have been justified in recommending the disallowance of an Act couched in such sweeping terms, capable therefore of great abuse, unless its practical operation were restrained by a strong and resolute hand; and calculated if abused to frustrate its own objects, and to prolong instead of terminating war. But not having received from you any expression of your disapproval, and being most unwilling to weaken your hands in the moment of your military success, Her Majesty's Government have page 222 decided that the Act shall for the present remain in operation. They are led to this conclusion not merely by a desire to sustain the authority of the local government, but also in no small degree by observing that no confiscation can take effect without your personal concurrence, and by the reliance which they so justly place on your sagacity, firmness, and experience, and your long-recognized regard as well for the interests of the colonists as for the fair rights and expectation of the native race.” Mr. Cardwell was wise enough to foresee that not confiscation but cession of land should be aimed at. It was desirable that the proposed appropriation of land should take the form of a cession imposed by the Governor and General Cameron upon the conquered tribes, and made by them as a condition on which Her Majesty's clemency should be extended. If this should be found impossible, the Governor might bring the Settlements Act into operation subject to reservations. The Act must be limited in duration by an amending measure. A duration of two years from the original date of enactment would afford time for inquiry as to extent, situation, and justice of the forfeiture, and yet relieve the conquered from protracted suspense, while assuring friendly natives that there was no desire to disregard the ordinary principles of law. The aggregate extent of forfeiture should be at once made known. A Commission not removable with the Ministry should inquire what lands might properly be forfeited. The Governor's concurrence in the forfeiture was not to be a mere ministerial act, but to be withheld unless he should be satisfied that the confiscation was just and moderate. “In the absence of those legal safeguards which furnish the ordinary protection of the vanquished, the Imperial and Colonial Governments were bound to adjust their proceedings to the laws of natural equity, and to the expectations which the Maoris had been encouraged or allowed to form,” so that it might be plain to them that the Europeans were “just, as well as severe.” To confiscate for European use the most valuable land, and drive the original owners to forest and morass, would convert the Maoris into desperate banditti, emerging from their fastnesses to destroy the peaceful fruits of industry. “I rely on your wisdom and justice to avert a danger so serious in its bearing on the interests of the European not less than of the page 223 native race. Turning to that part of the law which authorizes the dispossession of persons who have not been involved in the recent rebellion, I have to observe that though Her Majesty's Government admit with regret that the tribal nature of the native tenure will sometimes render it unavoidable that innocent persons should be deprived of their lands, they consider that land should not be appropriated against the will of the owners merely because it is in the same district with rebel property, and may conveniently be used for purposes of settlement, but only in cases where loyal and neutral natives are unfortunate enough to be joint owners with persons concerned in the rebellion, or because it is absolutely required for defence or communication, or on some similar ground of necessity. But every case of supposed necessity should be examined with the greatest care, and admitted with the greatest caution and reserve. … I trust that in accepting any cession, or authorizing confirmation of any forfeiture of land, you will retain in your own hands ample power of doing substantial justice to every class of claimant for restitution or compensation.” Finally, cessions having been received, the Governor would do well to accompany his justice and severity by announcing a general amnesty, excepting only the murderers of unoffending settlers, or other heinous criminals concerned in outrages to be specified in the proclamation. Subject to these cautions and conditions Her Majesty's Government would leave in the hands of Sir George Grey the power entrusted to him by the Act. In the same despatch the consent of the Imperial Government to guarantee a large portion of the New Zealand loan was announced, and a hope was expressed that by reason of General Cameron's operations, and the Colonial Administration, peace might be procured, the troops be withdrawn, and the blessings of order restored to the colony.

It has been needful to give an epitome of Mr. Cardwell's instructions, because Mr. Fox, in his ‘History of the War in New Zealand,’ denounced them as “directing things to be done which were physically impossible, and others to be attempted which were palpably absurd, and which, if attempted to be carried out, could operate in no other way than to upset the plans of the Colonial Government.” It seems not to have occurred to Mr. Whitaker and his colleagues that, if their designs were unjust or page 224 dishonouring to British fame, they deserved to be overthrown. The “natural equity” to which Mr. Cardwell appealed dwelt not within their breasts. Mr. Cardwell's announcement that he looked to the Governor, as representative of the Imperial Government, to decide the fate of prisoners of war, arrived a few weeks later, but the despatch of the 26th April made it clear that on so vital a point the Secretary of State would speak with no uncertain sound.

Sir George Grey gratefully accepted an offer made by the Ministers to surrender the prisoners to his care, (on conditions, one of which was the cost of maintenance,) and concerting his plans with the General, ordered that the prisoners should be taken charge of by the military authorities, undertaking that the Imperial Government should refund all expenses legitimately incurred by the imprisonment, and assume future responsibility. But Mr. Fox (25th June, 1864) wrote: “While, therefore, they yield to the pressure which his Excellency brings to bear upon them, Ministers felt bound to state” that the release of the prisoners as a body would be unwise. The Ministry could “only conclude that his Excellency is determined to carry out his views regardless of his responsible advisers.” Further difficulties arose. The Ministry took umbrage at the Governor's statement that one Maori had been imprisoned under a misunderstanding, and that inquiry would show that other innocent persons were in the hulk; but eventually (12th July) Sir George Grey having proposed that the prisoners should be located at Kawau, an island belonging to himself, Mr. Fox wrote: “All that Ministers can say at present is that they enter very cordially into the proposal, and will be prepared to give every assistance in their power towards carrying it into execution.”

To Kawau, an island about thirty miles from Auckland, the prison-hulk was taken on the 2nd August. The Rev. Mr. Ashwell, a missionary who had been expelled from Waikato by the Maoris, was placed there. The natives were to be allowed to cultivate the land, and their settlement was to be managed like a Moravian mission-station. By order of Mr. Russell, the Defence Minister, the military guard was withdrawn on the 2nd August. A written promise not to go away without leave was to be obtained from the prisoners. In the hurry of affairs Mr. page 225 White, of the Native Department, who had been Interpreter and Superintendent of the captives in the hulk, omitted to obtain the written promise. For some weeks all went well. On the 6th September, Mr. Fox said: “Ministers are satisfied with the arrangement lately made for the custody of the prisoners by their removal to Kawau.” He wrote thus in a document in which the Ministry protested against Mr. Cardwell's ruling, that the Governor should determine, subject to positive law, the fate of prisoners of war. They denounced any attempts to withdraw responsible government piecemeal. Sir George Grey transmitted their protest to Mr. Cardwell, with a despatch shown to his Ministers, in which he declined, while responsible for what was done, “to act as their servant to carry out that which I know to be illegal, and believe rightly or wrongly to be such as will reflect discredit upon our name.” The Ministry had not dealt with this rejoinder when Auckland was electrified by the escape of the prisoners in a body to the mainland, on the night of the 10th September. H.M.S. ‘Falcon’ arrived at Kawau the day before they escaped. Some persons said that the ball-practice in which her men were engaged was thought by the Maoris to be the beginning of the end. Rumours were rife that if war should be renewed in Waikato the prisoners were to be put on board the hulk, and sunk at sea. The sword was over the heads of all, while none knew who might be selected to be tried for offences which their enemies might call murder. In the raids made in the Auckland district, settlers had been killed in the early part of the war, and for their deaths it was known that vengeance would be exacted, notwithstanding the fact that at Rangiaohia Maori women and children had been burned. In refusing to let the prisoners know who was to be tried and who merely detained till the close of the war, the Ministry had kept the axe at the throats of all. The escape of such men constituted a danger to all Europeans. They were more than 200 in number. They might determine to sell life dearly rather than surrender. Nay, they might slaughter all they could find.

Sir George Grey was informed of the escape on the night of the 11th. On the 12th, with Mr. White, the Superintendent at Kawau, he was at the scene of escape. The fugitives had landed at Waikauri, left the boats on the shore, and marched to page 226 the ranges. They had spades, hatchets, and a few double-barrelled guns. Sir George Grey sent Mr. White with Te Oriori, two other natives, and a European, upon their path. On the 14th they were found. They received their visitors politely. Mr. White was seated in the centre of their encampment. After silence for a quarter of an hour Tapihana bade them welcome, but declared he would not go back. Te Oriori gave the Governor's message. They had done wrong. The speaker urged them to return. Other fugitives spoke. Tapihana, who mingled eager action with rapid words, admitted that the escape was a wrong; but fear was the cause of it. They concluded they were in peril when the man-of-war sailed round the island and fired. Such a thing had not happened before. They only wanted to be free. They would molest no Pakeha. They would resist force. Some appeared willing to return, but loth to do so in opposition to their comrades. Te Oriori, whose infirmity of purpose the Ministry had dreaded, showed no vacillation. He returned with Mr. White, and the refugees remained on the top of the hill Omaha. They received all visitors kindly. They were supplied by neighbouring natives with food. When they visited a shop they went in small armed parties.

The Ministry blamed the Governor. They were at the time indignant at his declining to sanction the confiscation they had proposed. Fox wrote (30th September): “A course of action on the part of his Excellency, which he has been pleased to term ‘generous’ towards the prisoners, has terminated in their escape, and in a very serious complication of the difficulties of the colony. In the mean time, while so much generosity is shown towards the Maoris taken in arms, his Excellency's sympathy is withheld from the unfortunate English colonists who have been driven from their homes and reduced to ruin; and the Colonial Government is unable to provide for their reinstatement, or to compensate them for their losses, because his Excellency declines to confiscate the lands of those who have inflicted so much misery upon them. His Excellency appeals to the judgment of posterity: he cannot mean the posterity of those who are thus left in destitution while a morbid and unaccountable sympathy is extended towards rebels, who have shown the most marked ingratitude.” The minutes which passed between the page 227 Governor and his advisers are wearisome to read. Matiu te Aranui and other chiefs became patrons of the fugitives, and enigmatically invited neighbouring tribes to send their thoughts. Old Tirarau, the Ngapuhi chief, showed the one sent to himself, and impounded others forwarded to his care, and handed them to the Government. Sir George Grey urged him not to believe false reports, nor waver in his confidence in the justice of the English. Seventy-two of the European settlers at Matakana earnestly petitioned the Government. They averred that the prisoners were building a strong pah in their immediate neighbourhood; that armed natives from all quarters were joining them, and Europeans were excluded from their fortifications. Immediate protection was asked for. The petition was received on the 8th October.

The state of New Zealand in 1864 was singular. The colonists had no enemies at the north of Auckland. There were nearly 20,000 soldiers and colonial forces under arms in the colony. Two hundred prisoners fled to the north of Auckland, settled on the top of a hill surrounded by colonists and by Maoris friendly to the English, and the Governor and Government knew not how to deal with them. So prompt and expert were they in field fortifications, so daring in battle when they had chosen their ground, that great carnage of the whites was expected from a declaration of war against the runaways.

The settlers' petition was sent to the Governor. He thought the case one in which he was bound to receive advice. Mr. Fox could see no “substantial difference between prisoners in custody and prisoners who have been admitted to parole and broke it.” The matter was very complicated, and Ministers were “at a loss what to recommend.” As a preliminary step they asked if it was “possible to capture the late prisoners by a military expedition, and if so, whether Her Majesty's naval and military force would be available for the purpose.” Sir George Grey recommended that precautions should be taken “in a manner that may draw no more attention to the Maoris at Omaha than is absolutely necessary.” He was meanwhile ascertaining their intentions. It had been suggested to him to offer the runaways a safe-conduct to Waikato. Would the Ministry consent? On the 11th October they consented. The Governor said it was page 228 doubtful whether the refugees would accept any terms, if they could hope to create war in the north, but pointed out that a pardon and promise of land at Waikato (their own country), which Ministers might “intend to assign them,” would be one method of arranging with them. “The more thoroughly just the offers to them are, the better position the Government will occupy in these matters.” Mr. Fox (12th October) was nettled at this allusion to justice. “The Ministry were wholly at a loss to understand it.” The Governor's conduct had complicated matters. His Ministers would not relieve him from responsibility, nor “share it with him; more particularly at this moment, when their resignations have been nearly a fortnight in his Excellency's hands.” They would advise on any proposal made by the Governor. “But if his Excellency wishes that land should be given to the prisoners in Waikato, Ministers have only to observe that the Government does not possess any land in Waikato, nor even if they did would they consider it just to use part of it for this purpose while their pledges to military and other settlers remain unredeemed.” Sir George Grey (12th October) replied that he thought he had done nothing to complicate matters, but he would carefully abstain from all action in the matter for the future.”… “From his own responsibilities he will neither shrink nor ask any one to share them; but his Ministers must bear theirs until they are in due course relieved from office.” He would afford them all the aid in his power. “It is a time when all energies should be united in meeting a common peril.” The plan finally agreed upon would be aided by Her Majesty's forces. On the 13th October the Ministry declaimed against such an unintelligible system of responsible government. The Governor had negotiated, had failed, and then, too late, asked for advice. Under ordinary circumstances such a course would lead to resignation of Ministers. “In the present case the resignation of Ministers has been placed in his Excellency's hands on that very ground among others, his Excellency having expressed his determination to issue a proclamation against their advice.” These bickerings neither allayed the fears of the settlers, nor removed the prisoners from their eyrie at Omaha. On the 12th October, they wrote to the Governor that they would not go back to Kawau,—would do no mischief, page 229 —but would resist force. He had heard privately that they were inviting their friends to send small vessels to carry them away.

Captain Cooper went to the pah with a Maori friend. He found the runaways determined. They would interfere with no Pakeha unless soldiers were sent against them. In that case they would plunder and kill settlers, women, and children. Government, they said, “desired to take all the land from the Maoris, and therefore it did not matter if they were all killed.” “Your Excellency” (wrote Captain Cooper) “will have to feed them on the mountain, or starve them out of it. They appeared to have a strong feeling against the Government.” The Ministry on the 15th October recommended, through Mr. Whitaker, that terms should be offered. To do so was humiliating, but justifiable rather than war in the north of Auckland, “of which no man can see the end or results.” No time was to be lost, and the terms recommended (18th October) were free passage to Waikato or elsewhere, residence on land to be arranged for, with freedom from molestation so long as they might not interfere in the war—and a title to such land at the end of war if they desired one. If they would not accede to these terms, force ought to be used to dislodge them from their menacing position. Mr. Fox, on the same day, in order further to complicate affairs, asked the Governor “what he conceives the present status of these natives to be, and what their status will be should they voluntarily or by compulsion be again placed in the hands of his Excellency, or of the Colonial Government?” Till they knew his Excellency's mind on these points it would be exceedingly difficult for Ministers to offer practical suggestions for carrying out the advice given by Mr. Whitaker. Sir George Grey begged that the opinion of the Attorney-General might be taken. Mr. Whitaker declared that “the natives referred to may be condemned as rebels in arms against the Queen's Government, and that if again placed in the hands of the Governor or Colonial Government they may be tried for their offences.” Transmitting this opinion, Fox said the Governor had misunderstood his request. The Ministry had no doubt as to the legal status of the prisoners. Mr. Fox wanted to know how the Governor would deal with them under Mr. Cardwell's despatch of the 27th June, 1864. Would he release them, confine them as prisoners page 230 of war, or hand them over to the civil authorities to be dealt with as criminals? Sir George Grey doubted whether, on reconsideration, Mr. Whitaker would adhere to his opinion as to the status of the escaped natives. Many of them had previously taken no “part in the rebellion, and are now probably unarmed. No inquiry ever took place as to whether such persons ever committed any offence or were innocent. After several months' confinement, they have run away. It may fairly be questioned whether such men are rebels in arms against the Queen's Government. Others of the prisoners the Governor has always believed to be very desperate characters.” He did not doubt that on recapture any of them might be tried for their offences, whatever they might be, and he would “throw no obstacle in the way of the Colonial Government bringing them to a legal trial; indeed he had never done so.” Mr. Fox retorted that he had declined on the 19th April to try them under the Suppression of Rebellion Act. The Governor replied that trial under that Act would have been illegal and contrary to equity. Persons might be brought to trial under it by court-martial “at the earliest possible period.” The Ministry had not proposed to use it until the prisoners had been four months and a half in captivity. This the Governor could not think just or equitable. If prompt trial had taken place the most guilty would have been punished, as an example, and leniency and generosity to others would have done good. As prompt trial had not taken place the ordinary courts of the country could be resorted to. Mr. Fox replied at great length. Ministers had already declared it “inexpedient to try the prisoners by the ordinary courts of law.” He scouted the distinction made by the Governor between “a trial” and “a legal trial.” As to trying the prisoners within a few days of their capture, it was clearly impossible. Most of them were captured at Rangiriri on the 21st November, and the Suppression of Rebellion Act was not passed till the 3rd December.1 The Governor had “fallen into several errors both of law and fact.” The Governor retorted that when the General com-

1 Mr. Fox, though a lawyer, seems to have had no qualms as to the propriety of trying prisoners under ex post facto laws; of which class of acts Justice Story declared that their injustice and iniquity constituted an irresistible argnment against the existence of the power to pass them.

page 231 mended
war-prisoners to generous treatment, and Mr. Whitaker proposed after long delay to try them under an Act which could only be brought into operation by the Governor's signature, a case had arisen of direct responsibility to England and the General Assembly. Therefore he declined to accept Mr. Whitaker's advice, and then it was for the Attorney-General or his colleagues to resign. “Had this course been taken many difficulties would have been removed from the Governor's way. But if Ministers did not think it necessary to take this course, then the Governor thinks they became responsible for the course they followed; and that all responsibility for it passed from him.” Mr. Fox (25th October) retorted that it was unfair to taunt Ministers for not resigning in April. It did not seem that if they had done so instead of talking about it, “any result would have followed. Their resignations have now been in his Excellency's hands twenty-five days, and he has neither accepted them nor intimated his intention of doing so. They would further remark that they do not understand that under responsible government Ministers are bound to resign whenever the Governor refuses to take their advice.… When Ministers arrived at the conclusion that he had made up his mind to abandon the principles he had enunciated in July, 1863, and endeavour to patch up a peace which would be neither stable nor permanent, they lost no time in placing their resignations in his hands, where they regret to know they remain still unaccepted.”
A new contention arose. Mr. Fox took umbrage at the Governor's statement that natives suspected by the Native Department of murder, and sent by the Ministry to Kawau, could not be regarded as prisoners of war upon parole. It seemed that Tarahawaiki knew that he was suspected of killing the Merediths, and the Governor naturally thought that the motives of the escaped prisoners must be different from those of ordinary prisoners of war. No inquiry had been properly made as to the implication of the prisoners in the crime of murder. Mr. Fox denied positively that he or any Minister knew that any of the prisoners had committed murder. They “instituted the most searching inquiry whether there were any murderers among the prisoners.” Mr. Fox indicted the Governor for making serious charges, out of flimsy materials, against his page 232 Ministers. The Governor had indeed said: “If such an inquiry has been made, it can be stated that such is the case, and that the Governor is in error, and no one will be more ready or willing than the Governor to admit that he is in error, and to express his regret that such is the case.” “Ministers,” said Mr. Fox, “must decline to accept as an excuse his Excellency's readiness to be convinced of his error if he has made a mistake.… One murderer only was discovered, and he was tried and convicted, and there is not in existence a particle of evidence against any other prisoner which would ensure conviction, or committal, or even justify a reasonable suspicion.” Such being the case, the reader may wonder why the prisoners were harshly treated. But the admission was made to embarrass the Governor, not to justify the Maoris. He replied by an array of quotations, which in his opinion sanctioned his former statements. It is unnecessary to trace the matter further. It has been followed so far— merely to show the difficulties in which the representative of the Crown was forced by the Duke of Newcastle's ignorant or unwise abandonment of control in matters of Imperial concern. The publication of the papers in New Zealand must have gone far to remove any lingering respect which the Maoris entertained for “the English Committee.” In a few words it may be said that the escaped Maoris remained at Omaha for many weeks. They were invited to go to Waikato. After many weeks some went. Some remained with friends in the northern tribes. Mr. Fox insisted that the Governor had done harm, and that the Ministry would have managed better. As it was, no ill consequences ensued,1 but it was not until April, 1865, that Sir George Grey informed the Defence Minister, then at Taranaki, that the prisoners were “returning to their homes.” The staunch Waka Nene never wavered in his loyalty. On the 1st

1 Captain Cooper, sent by Sir George Grey to invite the fugitives to return to Kawau and remain there on parole till the end of the war, was so indignant at the conduct of Mr. Fox in examining, in Captain Cooper's absence, a Maori clerk who had gone with him as a guide to Omaha, that he wrote a fiery letter, in which he denied that the Maoris were treacherous: “Indeed, I should consider myself much safer in the hands of the worst King-Maoris, even the Ngatiruanuis, than with such men as the Honourable Mr. Fox, who would not hesitate to stab the character of any person politically opposed to him, as he knows me to be, and as I believe he considers every honest man must be.”—N. Z. P. P. 1865; E. No. 15.

page 233 February, he wrote to the Queen, sending her three New Zealand mats, and a green-stone mere, the symbol of chieftainship. Sir George Grey did not think it judicious to check the old chief's “affectionate loyalty by refusing to forward his present,” but the New Zealand Parliamentary Papers contain no recognition by the Secretary of State of the irregular devotion of the chief to whom the English had mainly owed their safety in New Zealand long after the Queen assumed sovereignty there.
Among many graphic descriptions of Maori life and manners, Mr. Meade's journey to Taupo in company with chiefs, some of whom, after escaping from Kawau, returned immediately—took the oath of allegiance, and were allowed by the Governor to rejoin their families—throws light on the state of New Zealand in 1865. Returning to his family was not returning home for a Maori chief. His family was in exile. His home had been destroyed. Mr. Meade, R.N., carried letters from Sir George Grey to the Great Lake, where friendly chiefs felt themselves deprived of countenance from the Government for whose sake they had incurred hatred at the hands of the followers of the Maori king and of the Hau Hau fanatics. Sir George Grey recognized in Mr. Meade the courage and intelligence which fitted him for the dangerous post of emissary, in which he was accompanied by Mr. Brenchley, and by an interpreter, Mr. Mair. The principal chief of the party was Te Poihipi Tukeraingi, ever staunch to the Waitangi treaty, which he had signed on behalf of his father, and highly influential in the Taupo district, where Sir George Grey wished to cultivate friendly feelings. No European had visited it during the Waikato and Tauranga wars. At Maketu the envoys saw the friendly Arawa, ensconced in a pah to protect them from the Ngatiporou. The returned prisoners were entertained by the “tangi” or wail. They stood silent in the midst of their friends, men, women, and children, whose moaning and tears denoted the grief felt during the captivity. In a quarter of an hour the doleful ceremony was over, the returned exiles pressed noses with their entertainers, and ordinary life was resumed. At a runanga, on the 21st December, the loyalty of the Arawas was fervently pronounced. Mr. Meade admired the courtesy of the speakers, and thought it might profitably be imitated in the colonial parliaments. Bitter opposition page 234 to the cession of land by the tribe was shown. One old man stretching forth his arms cried: “Oh that I could thus embrace the land of my forefathers, and gathering it all within my arms keep it whole and safe from the grasping Pakeha!” Even among the English allies the slackening of their hold on their native soil created grief. With a cavalcade of 30 persons and a few followers, Mr. Meade reached Rotorua on the 26th December, 1864, and learned that a Pai Marire priest had arrived with five friends at Taupo, and converted many to his faith. The settlement where the cavalcade was entertained was protected by a double chain of rifle-pits, roofed almost level with the ground, each roof being pierced with loopholes. Passing towards Lake Tarawera the travellers were entertained at Wairoa by no less a personage than a native magistrate, the dashing Te Kepa Rangihiwinui,1 whose bearing and the comfort and neatness of whose weatherboard house they admired. With him and others, Te Poihipi and Mr. Mair had earnest consultations. Revelling in the witcheries of the tepid air and natural warm baths the English travellers did not attend all the debates. Passing onwards, receiving attention due to friends of the Governor, and occasionally saluted with politeness by the Maori king's friends, the embassy reached Tapuaeharuru, the inland home of Te Poihipi, at Lake Taupo, on the 6th January. On the crest of a cliff a large pah was being built for protection against the kingites or the Hau Haus, while on the other hand on the farther shore were settlements and forts owning Te Heu Heu as their lord, and he was hostile to the sway of the Pakeha as his fathers were. Thence Mr. Grace, a Church missionary, had to wander during the Waikato war. He was not ill-treated, but when his congregation held a meeting to decide whether he should be killed on account of murders by the English in Waikato, he thought it prudent to remove temptation from them. For months they kept sacred his house, his property, his live stock. Then came Hau Hau emissaries. The tares they sowed strangled the fruit of the seed sown by Mr. Grace-Pai Marire worship was accepted, and Mr. Grace's property was scattered amongst his late flock, who maintained nevertheless in

1 Te Kepa, or Kemp as he was called by the colonists, will retain his Maori name Rangihiwinui in these pages.

page 235 discussion with his friends that distribution was necessary for safety of the goods, which were to be restored to Mr. Grace on his return. Mr. Grace himself joined Mr. Meade's party on the 9th January, bent on re-establishing his mission. He brought ominous intelligence that an Auckland newspaper had averred that Mr. Meade and Mr. Mair had been “sent to find out what the kingites are doing,” and that the dangerous belief that they were spies was being circulated amongst the Maoris.

At Waihaha Mr. Meade saw a village nominally belonging to a friendly tribe, but peopled in the main by refugees from the Waikato territory, then laid waste by the troops. A white flag was hoisted to promise friendly reception to the visitors, where the fighting men were drawn up in fighting costume. The Maori followers of Te Poihipi landed from their canoes with a yell, and rushing forward till within 100 yards of their hosts, halted and formed in double line. The Waikato, having crouched in attitude of ambush, sprang to their feet, and in serried rank performed their war-dance, in perfect time, brandishing weapons and stamping as one man, and throwing themselves into every posture indicative of slaughter of their foes. Te Poihipi's followers took their time from him and went through the same wild ceremony. Musketry salutes were exchanged; and the two parties joined together, and indulged in their national welcome. When the ceremony was over Mr. Meade and his companions joined the circle, and were entertained with shaking of hands. Te Poihipi made an oration extolling the treaty of Waitangi, and loyalty to the Queen. Mr. Meade was struck by the pleasing countenance of a fine young chief. He was one of those who ran the gauntlet at Orakau through the English lines. Escaping thence he had joined the Arawas, and fought for the English against the Ngatiporou. He had now rejoined the Waikato exiles at Lake Taupo. Mr. Mair animadverted on his inconsistency in fighting both for and against the English cause, and Mr. Meade heard his reply: “Oh! as to that, fighting is fighting, and we young men don't care much whom it is against.” Among the exiles was a woman, Ahumai, whose husband was killed at Orakau, and who herself received there three bayonet and gun-shot wounds. Karamoa and Reihana, both captured at Orakau, and connected with the Maori king's followers, were detached by page 236 Te Poihipi to ask Te Heu Heu whether the Englishmen might pass through the native territory between Taupo and the military settlements on the Waikato. Mr. Meade had a letter from Sir George Grey to Te Heu Heu, but was to exercise his own discretion as to presenting it. Mr. Grace, on the 9th January, returned from an unsuccessful attempt to reach his old abode at Pukawa. Lowering looks encountered him, and a former teacher in his school warned him that his life would be in danger at Pukawa. A message was sent, inviting Mr. Grace without companions to his old home; and “the spies,” as Mr. Meade and his friends were deemed, were peremptorily forbidden to approach Pukawa or wander on the shore of the lake which owned allegiance to the Maori king. Te Heu Heu was absent, and the travellers awaited his return, or some tidings from Karamoa and Reihana. Te Heu Heu returned more inimical than ever, and it was felt that to send Sir George Grey's letter to him would be useless. The path of the travellers was thorny. They could not descend the Waikato valley without Te Heu Heu's help. They heard that followers of the king had arrived at Rotorua to open the way for the Ngatiporou to send re-enforcements from the east to the king. Rumour said that the king-maker was coming to Rotorua with 400 or 500 retainers. Mr. Meade's return to Tauranga in such a case was impossible, and the brave Te Poihipi and Rangihiwinui would have been overwhelmed. To try a third route to Napier was dangerous, for it led through Maori settlements devoted to the king, and war-parties were said to be in motion there. Te Poihipi objected to Mr. Meade's risking his life on the road to Napier. Three Maori chiefs had gone thitherwards for food for the party, and their failure to return caused apprehensions for their safety. Meantime, the Hau Hau fanatics gathered followers daily. Mr. Meade resolved to find a guide, and, by journeys at night and concealment by day, to dash through the hostile territory, and reach the military settlements on the Waikato river. A Pakeha Maori, connected by marriage with Rewi, was amongst Te Poihipi's friends at Taupo. His wife found a Maori guide in the person of Hemipo. Hemipo's father was an adherent to the Maori king, though the son was loyal to the Queen. Te Poihipi vainly endeavoured to dissuade Meade from taking such a guide on such an expedition.

page 237

On the 27th January, the two horsemen rode from Oruanui, and to Mr. Meade's relief he found that Hemipo understood a few English words. On the same morning, long before day-break, one Ihaka, a native assessor, had ridden before them, bearing a letter warning the Hau Haus on the way that they would not be allowed to pass by Oruanui if they intended to proselytize Maoris or molest the English. Mr. Meade expected to meet the returning Ihaka, whose person was sacred in the character of herald, and to learn from him whether it was safe to proceed. The day wore on, but no herald appeared. Hemipo pointed out smoke rising from cooking fires, and said the Maoris around them were kingites; but the journey was continued without molestation to Tataroa. There the salutation “Pai Marire” told Mr. Meade that he was in the hornets' nest. But Maori courtesy demanded that he should halt to receive hospitality. Ihaka was seen standing with another Maori. Mr. Meade pointed out a red flag flying in the village, and suggested caution, but Hemipo said that as Ihaka was there, there would be no danger. The travellers rode into the open space in midst of the Maori dwellings, and came face to face, not with the usual denizens of Tataroa, but with 150 armed men, whose lowering countenances boded mischief. Hemipo gaily unsaddled his horse, as if he had arrived among friends, but adroitly managed to receive from Mr. Meade, and secrete under his coat, one of Mr. Meade's revolvers. Warm language was heard among the Hau Haus. One of them, flourishing a naval sword-bayonet, approached Mr. Meade; two others followed with guns. The Englishman had his hand on his revolver in his pocket, to make his life dear to the savages, when a powerful Maori, Aokatea sprung forward and drove the intruders back to the crowd. A ceremonial followed, preparatory to the judicial murder of the traveller. Round the Pai Marire flagstaff fanatical worship was carried on. Mr. Meade wondered at his privilege in seeing mysteries he had thought hidden from white men, but learned afterwards that, as he was doomed beforehand, there was no objection to his initiation. He was, indeed, an essential element in the rite. Te Aokatea, who had driven back Mr. Meade's assailant, was high-priest, and wished the infuriating ceremonies to be duly performed before touching the victim. Ihaka told page 238 afterwards that the Hau Haus anticipated Mr. Meade's journey, which had been thought concealed; that they had even threatened the sacred person of the Maori herald, and that he had no opportunity of returning to warn Mr. Meade of danger. There was a crumb of comfort in the fact that one chief, Paora Taki, had made an oration urging that Mr. Meade ought not to be molested, because the Hau Hau ought not to offend the tribes through whose territory they desired to pass in their own expedition. Paora Taki's speech was finished just as the arrival of the Pakeha was announced. On the prophet's flagstaff floated high the war-flag, a red pendant with white cross. Beneath, a black and blue large flag, with a red border, bore on the black part near the staff another white cross. Another red pendant with a St. Andrew's cross hung lower still. Mr. Meade and Hemipo sat apart under guard, and Ihaka was near them. Te Aokatea went through the process which was believed to procure inspiration. He yelled, he spoke—sometimes in English, sometimes in what was called French, or Hebrew—he made obeisance to the staff, to the east, west, north, and south, accompanying his genuflexions with Pai Marire words. At a signal, the seated tribes and dele— gates sprang up and marched round the staff, chanting responses to the priest, and pointing their weapons to the sky. The striking scenery around, the flags waving against the dark foliage in the background, the varied dresses and weapons, the fervent fanaticism gleaming from excited faces, the chorus of powerful voices rising in excellent time in that far forest, vividly impressed Mr. Meade, who noted the smallest particulars. The prophet's flag having been duly honoured by the congregation, a runanga was held to decide on the fate of the travellers. Immediate execution of both was urged by some. Mr. Meade was deemed a spy. Then Hemipo rose to address his countrymen in a cool and careless way, playing with his riding-whip as though addressing friends at home, in a manner which extorted Mr. Meade's admiration. Moralists more punctilious than Escobar would excuse Hemipo for his rhetorical artifices. Mr. Meade, he said, had nothing to do with army or navy, was only visiting the country for personal pleasure, and wanted to make a quick passage overland so as to reach his ship at Auckland before she sailed. His gentlemanly air showed as little insincerity as his page 239 demeanour implied fear. After speaking for Mr. Meade he referred to himself and his father's friendly relations with some of his auditors. Then Te Aokatea rose and savagely denounced the Pakeha intruder. No knowledge of Maori language was needed to enable Mr. Meade to distinguish friends from foes. As the discussion raged and death seemed certain, he took comfort from seeing that Hemipo was as ready to take lives with the revolver as he had been to tell lies as an orator. While Mr. Meade was reflecting thus, and the Maori executioner stood by his side waiting to smite with the tomahawk, Ahumai, the widow wounded at Orakau, whom the Englishman had seen at Waihaha a fortnight before, rose up from the crowd, slowly walked across the square, and sat by the captive's feet, as a token that he was entitled to hospitality. Thenceforward the fanatics relented; and it was finally agreed to dismiss the prisoners, because it was unwise to provoke the Arawa (through whose territory the Hau Haus wished to march) by killing a guest of that tribe. At last it was decided that the travellers should return whence they came. As they saddled their horses a Maori whispered aside to Hemipo. A reaction was taking place amongst the Hau Haus. Mr. Meade had hardly time to reflect whether Hemipo was called in order that the Englishman might be shot without risk to the Maori, when Hemipo bid him mount, as some rascally kingites wanted to kill him. To place several miles between the horse-men and Tataroa was the work of a few minutes, and after resting their horses in the shelter of the forest, the travellers reached Oruanui at night, where Hemipo narrated the day's incidents to eager listeners. Ihaka returned at a later hour, with a letter asking free passage through the territory, and stating in a postscript as a reason for granting the request, the safe return accorded to Mr. Meade. It was granted. Mr. Meade rode safely to Napier. The Hau Haus made converts as they passed, and though they did not attack the villages of tribes friendly to the English, their influence spread so fast that the Government, unable to protect its allies, invited them to retire to Rotorua, which they did with heavy hearts Nevertheless, Mr Meade's journey was not deemed fruitless. When, on his death, his journal was published, it was accompanied by a letter from Sir George Grey, stating that very great benefits resulted page 240 from the expedition to Lake Taupo, which Mr. Meade and Mr. Brenchley so successfully carried out. Poihipi and Hemipo will reappear in a stirring event in the story of New Zealand, which followed on the fuller development of Hau Hau fanaticism than that which Mr. Meade saw. Read by the lurid glare which surrounds the murders of Volkner and Fulloon, the narrative of Meade is terrible in its reality.

It is time to turn to Mr. Whitaker's policy on confiscation which led to his resignation. Already Mr. Fox's justification of it has been noticed, and his desire to promulgate the opinion of the Ministry that nothing could be more pernicious than to allow the Maoris to retain rights which the Queen had guaranteed. While General Cameron was arranging at Ngaruawahia in January, 1864, for the advance of the troops up the Waipa river, and planning the Tauranga campaign, the Government decided to promulgate a notice calling on all who had been in arms against the Queen to take the oath of allegiance and surrender their weapons. Those who had been with the enemy, but had not fought, were to do likewise, but in doing so would not obtain rest. “All the peace that is conceded to them at the present time is this: That they will be allowed to remain unmolested, and they will not hereafter be brought to trial unless they are found to have taken part in murders, plunder, or other evil acts. Let this, however, be borne in mind,—the disposal of their lands rests with the Governor.” As part of the English system of warfare was wholesale plunder and destruction of Maori homesteads and cultivations, and as Maori burial-places were rifled without remorse, it was hard for Maoris to understand the principles on which it was to be decided whether their own acts were evil.

The campaign in Waikato having been concluded by the evacuation of Maungatautari in April, and various chiefs having surrendered their arms, a proclamation was drawn up in which the surrender of arms was ordered to be made by the 1st July, after which date it would entitle the surrenderer to no benefits. Sir George Grey signed a draft of the proclamation on the 30th April, but dissented from the fixing of a date after which no surrender should be beneficial; and his dissent caused the proclamation to be held back after voluminous discussions. In page 241 requesting (11th May) that it might be regarded as revoked, the Governor, speaking of the ministerial theory that all Maoris who had fought against the Queen's troops had forfeited all their land, said that the question concerned the whole future destiny of the Maori nation. The Governor might by a few words, unwisely put forth, reduce generations to misery, and cut off from their inheritance the offspring of many loyal Englishmen. Mr. Whitaker replied: “In his zeal for the Maori the Governor appears to forget the European colonists.” The Governor's doubts whether the Settlements Act was intended to be an Act for general confiscation were needless; and there could be “no question that the Assembly is already committed to give further effect to it if it were necessary.” To the Governor's request that the proclamation might be regarded as revoked, Mr. Whitaker replied: “It requires no revocation, as it never received his Excellency's signature.” While thus disputing about principles neither the Governor nor the Ministry ventured upon details. The enormity of their demands made the latter anxious to conceal them until they could bind the Governor to accept them.

In the end of June the report of the two prisoners who had been allowed to visit Rewi and the king-maker, led to the belief that those chiefs desired that the Waikato war should be regarded as at an end. “Welcome, my brothers!—welcome to Waikato; to the river only, to the mountains only. There are no men; the only men left are those in prison and yourselves. Come; but I do not know whether you have been sent by the Government. If you have been sent in peace, give me the letter that we may know that you have been sent. My opinion is that you have run away. Take away with you the war, and Waikato river; and Waikato land take with you too. Had you brought a letter, we should have sent a letter; but as you are the Governor's letter, you must also be my letter.” Such was the speech of Rewi. The king-maker and others spoke in similar strain. Six hundred and forty Maoris agreed. There seemed some prospect of peace if the Colonial Government would be wise. In the end of June also, Mr. Cardwell's despatch, instructing the Governor that his concurrence with proposed confiscation was to be no perfunctory matter, was received. Mr. Fox's contemptuous page 242 opinion of the despatch has been noted. The Ministry thought its publication might strengthen them, and asked that it might be published. Their supporters, it was hoped, might be indignant. The Governor did not object, and the despatch was published on the 30th June.

The location of military settlers was a parallel line of contention between the Ministry and the Governor. In April they proposed to locate the 2nd Waikato Regiment, under Colonel Haultain, in the Waikato district, on a line between Pirongia and Maungatautari. Sir George Grey asked for precise information as to the posts to be occupied and the force to be placed at each. The Ministers said they were to be on the line of the Puniu river, which would include Te Awamutu (from which Rewi had expelled Mr. Gorst) and Kihikihi, Rewi's old abode. Each detachment should contain about 100 men. The precise points must be chosen by the military authorities, but the land must be eligible for settlement. The Governor declared that as Commander-in-Chief he was entrusted with the power which the Ministry wished him to cede to the General. They explained that they did not wish to interfere in questions as to the relative functions of the Governor and the General. As to choosing sites for forts they felt it was not their duty. Then it appeared that wider differences than the position of military posts were involved. The Governor disapproved of the ministerial plan, and circuitously strove to exhibit its effect. Before giving orders to locate the 2nd Waikato Regiment at the Puniu river he wished to learn where the other Waikato Regiments were to be located, and over what total extent of country they were to be spread. His Ministers were not prepared to gratify him. “The time had not arrived (11th May) when it was possible definitely to determine.” On the 17th May, they submitted to him a draft Order in Council, which he declined to sign because it defined, under the Settlements Act, “a district not of one tribe, or of a section of a tribe, but of many tribes, regarding some of whom no evidence had been placed before the Governor to show him that a considerable number of the members of such tribes have been engaged in rebellion. He ought not therefore to say that he is satisfied that they have been engaged in rebellion, and page 243 perhaps to do them an irreparable injury with his successors, who would from his knowledge of the natives assume that he well knew what he was doing.” (The wording of the Settlements Act enabled the Governor in Council to declare districts under the Act whenever he “shall be satisfied that any tribe, or section of a tribe, or any considerable number thereof, has, since 1st January, 1863, been engaged in rebellion against Her Majesty's authority.”) “Upon the whole, the Governor would prefer a district being in the first instance defined which would embrace a considerable part of the territory of the Waikato and Ngatimaniapoto tribes, who have been engaged in the rebellion.” The Ministry, on the 30th May, “deferred to his Excellency's preference,” and prepared an Order in Council defining the boundaries proposed, but urged that the location of the military settlers should be disposed of as soon as possible, as expenditure was being incurred which “the Colonial Government would not have the means of meeting.”

A singular episode occurred with regard to the Orders. On the 28th May, the Governor, Mr. Whitaker, the Attorney-General, and Mr. Russell, Minister of Colonial Defence, attended the Executive Council to which they were submitted. That the two Ministers were partners in a firm of solicitors may perhaps in part explain their method of transacting business. A signature to a deed was in their eyes, perhaps, the be-all and end-all which would trammel up all consequence. Orders were produced proclaiming a district including the valleys of the Waipa and the Waikato from Paparata to Hangatiki, and another district at Tauranga. The Governor signed them. Regulations for the districts were submitted and discussed, but not approved. The Governor and his Ministers had a serious misunderstanding as to what took place. Mr. Whitaker denied that the Regulations were submitted at all to the Council. Only the formal approval of the Order was in his opinion brought before the Council, and it was the Governor who introduced discussion on Regulations. The Governor declared that, after he had signed the Orders, Regulations were submitted “upon which the whole question depended.” One of them (relating to location of natives who had been in arms) was: “Every man will have allotted to him a certain quantity of page 244 land, which will vary in size, according to circumstances, from 5 to 1000 acres.” The Governor argued that something definite must be laid down about forfeiture. The natives ought to have a distinct offer, which would preclude all misunderstanding. The Ministers declined to make any statement on the subject. From time to time they would advise regarding other districts. They would not “say whether they would hereafter give, or not, more land to the natives who might take it under these regulations.” “I repeatedly pressed” (Sir George Grey said) “the necessity of their at once telling me their intentions regarding the confiscation of native lands, and the necessity also of letting the natives know their true position in this respect, and what was to be taken from them. They as repeatedly declined. I declined to approve the Regulations until this was done, or to sanction the issue of the Orders in Council proclaiming the districts unless accompanied by a plain declaration to the natives of the proclaimed districts of what was expected from them.” When actors in a scene differ in their evidence, the word of a bystander is usually accepted, especially when it is his formal duty to record what occurs. The minute made at the time by the Clerk of the Council was afterwards produced. It stated: “The Prime Minister submitted for approval three Orders in Council defining and declaring three districts under the New Zealand Settlements Act, 1863, two of them being at Tauranga, and one in the Waikato country. He also submitted for approval Regulations establishing the districts, but at present to be applied only to the smallest district at Tauranga. On which a long discussion ensued. The Regulations were not approved of, and the Orders in Council were ordered not to be issued.” When the Council met on the 16th June they disliked this record, and at their request the Governor erased it; though as the Clerk of the Council was sworn to take true notes of res gestœ, it is difficult to discover under what code of ethics the recommendation of the Ministry or the erasure by the Governor could be justified.1 The time occupied in the dispute put off any decision until Mr. Cardwell's despatch of the 26th April, 1864, arrived, and

1 The Royal Instructions required that minutes shonld “be read over, confirmed, or amended,” as the case might require.

page 245 laid down principles based upon justice and moderation—which Mr. Fox denounced as physically impossible, palpably absurd, and likely “to upset the plans of the Colonial Government.” As, however, the Governor's voice was potential, the Ministry, on the 25th June, in compliance with his wish, stated their views upon confiscation. They desired a frontier line from Raglan or Kawhia to Tauranga. All land belonging to rebels north of that line, and that extending to the southern line defined in the Orders (signed but withdrawn on the 28th May), was to be confiscated; but it was proposed to give, in convenient localities, from 10 to 2000 acres to each former inhabitant desiring to return. This was to be the extent of confiscation in Waikato. It might be necessary to deal separately with the Ngatimaniapoto, whose land would not be sufficiently touched by this proposal. At Taranaki there was to be confiscation on both sides of the settlement. Sufficient land was to be taken from the Ngatiawa, Taranaki, and Ngatiruanui tribes to establish military settlements and “afford a substantial contribution to the expenses of suppressing the rebellion.” On the west coast land was to be taken from the Waitotara river to a convenient distance, including Waimate. Except in special cases, where the loyal and rebellious held lands in common, lands of the loyal would not be interfered with, and the Ministry anticipated no difficulty in making satisfactory arrangements to compensate the loyal. As to the east coast they had a difficulty in determining. “It would be impracticable to take forcible possession of the land of some of these tribes, and not desirable to attempt to place settlements on the land of any of them.” If possible, cession of land should be brought about. Circumstances might modify these views, or the conduct of the natives might call for more stringent measures;—”Ministers must therefore reserve to themselves the right to alter or modify their present proposals.” By the term rebel natives they meant all persons whose lands might be taken under the Settlements Act, who might “be found not entitled to compensation.” Sir George Grey explained that his original plan (June, 1863) of confiscation was to take land in Waikato proper, and not to go beyond Ngaruawahia. The military settlements would thus have had continuous support page 246 from a base at Auckland, and the population would have spread naturally as from a centre. It was not until April, 1864, that he had learnt at Pukerimu that the Ministry proposed to abandon this plan and locate the Waikato militia on a line between Kawhia and Tauranga; in a manner widely different from that suggested by himself in 1863, and cordially concurred with by the Ministry of the day. Mr. Whitaker wrote a long paper to prove that the line suggested in 1863 “was of a different description, and for a different purpose from that which it was the object of the Government to establish across the Waikato.” It remained “to confiscate the lands, or some of them, give away part on military tenure, and sell the remainder to defray the expenses of the war.” “From the time his Excellency's present advisers1 took office till the present time, they have never proposed or contemplated any other line of frontier than the one from Raglan or Kawhia to Tauranga.” Whatever they had contemplated, Sir George Grey was justified in asserting that until Maungatautari was evacuated they had not proposed such a line to him. They waited till 10,000 British troops had struck down opposition before they made their demand. But though he shrunk from confiscating at large to gratify Whitaker, the Governor accepted the specific advice tendered to him as to forming military settlements in spots far in advance of the southern limit designed by himself. The map first shown to the General was so vague that he asked for further information as to the intended locations. A block of land about eight miles wide, stretehing eastward from Pirongia to the Waikato river at Pukerimu, was marked out, but no sites for settlements were shown. The General was not told how many men were to be settled, or from which Waikato Regiment they were to be taken.
On the 6th June, the Ministry proposed that the 2nd Regiment should furnish settlements at Kihikihi and Pirongia;—the 1st Regiment should afford men for a settlement at Tauranga, and the 4th Regiment should be located on the Waikato river,

1 Yet in 1879 one of them, Mr. Fox, published a statement incompatible with Whitaker's. “As the war was none of my making, so the confiscation was not prepared by me. Both were the work of Sir George Grey and his Ministers, and not of me. My Maori friends will see that… I had nothing to do with it” (‘New Zealand Hansard,’ 22nd July, 1879).

page 247 between Pukerimu and Kirikiroa. At each settlement 300 or 500 men were to be placed. The plan involved abandonment of posts at the southern portion of the Waikato, but the Governor relinquished his own project on the understanding that the force maintained in front should not be greater than was required to defend the line between the Waipa and the Waikato. The ease with which the Ministers descanted upon military affairs was shown in a memorandum at this period. They were of opinion (27th June) that it was very desirable to send an expedition as soon as practicable against the king-maker's settlements of Matamata and Peria. They did not intend to occupy, but they would destroy. “It is of the first importance,” they added, “that an effective blow should be struck at Taranaki and Wanganui as soon as possible.” Mr. Fox also—warming with dignity—when, at Waikanae, Wi Tako declared allegiance to the Queen (3rd June), enunciated terms for natives then in arms, which, though contained in the draft proclamation signed by the Governor on the 30th April, had been withheld as unjust, and were declared by Mr. Whitaker to need no revocation. Called upon to explain, Mr. Fox (incredible as it may appear) cited the cancelled draft as his justification, on the ground that it was “only not issued for reasons ab externo which appeared to the Colonial Secretary to have no application to Wi Tako's case.” Indiscriminate retorts reduced the Ministry to absurdity, for though the words were spoken to Wi Tako they referred by name to the Ngatiruanui and Taranaki, as well as to the Ohau and Otaki natives, and therefore the case was not the case of Wi Tako. The position of the Ministry was not less galling because they had brought it upon themselves. Mr. Cardwell's injunctions might have been less pointed if they had not been demanded by the demeanour of the Ministry.

In May the Secretary of State announced that the Act for compulsory taking of land for public purposes by Provincial Legislatures could not be recommended for allowance by the Crown unless amended so as to exclude native possessions from its operation. This announcement reached New Zealand in July, and with it arrived a separate despatch enclosing observations made in London by Mr. Gorst, who deprecated such wholesale confiscation as would tend to render the Maoris desperate and keep them permanently in arms. He wrote page 248 strongly in praise of the Ngatihaua and Waikato tribes, from whom he had received many acts of kindness. He described their great villages and hamlets as if still “dotted about the country, surrounded by their patches of cultivated land. The whole district is occupied and used; it bears marks of having been enriched and improved by the labour of its inhabitants. Good fences have been erected; Rangiaohia, for instance, is surrounded by a fence many miles in circuit; roads are made in various directions; bridges have been thrown over impassable swamps; and a good many mill-dams have been constructed.”

Mr. Gorst wrote in May; but the scene had been desolated in a manner unknown to him. To destroy cultivation, orchards, mills, and homesteads, had been the theory and practice of the war. But though Mr. Gorst made no direct allusion to the Ministry, Mr. Fox lost all patience at his interference. He denounced him as inexperienced, and said his book on the Maori king, though “rather clever, was by the free use of the suppressio veri and the suggestio falsi” calculated to convey untruthful impressions, and was “also very full of absolute mis-statements.”1 He declared that the Ministry could have had a staunch supporter of their policy in Mr. Gorst, if they would have given to him a seat in the Legislative Council: to which Mr. Gorst replied, that though when in Sydney in 1863 he told Mr. Dillon Bell that he would accept such a seat untrammelled with office, and with freedom to express his own views, he did not wait an answer from New Zealand, when none arrived by return of post, but sailed for England. Having seen with what pertinacity minutes and counter-minutes were exchanged on the subject of escaped prisoners, the reader may conceive the exaggerated length to which they were drawn out on other matters. It would be a hopeless task to invite him to wade through even a summary of the minutes which passed between the Governor and his advisers on the subject of land

1 Mr. Fox in his own retort unwittingly made an absolute mis-statement. He averred that the song sent to Taranaki, in 1863, to stir up the natives to commit the murders at Oakura, “and which became the tocsin of the rebellion, was composed for the occasion by a Middle Waikato man.” Unhappily for Mr. Fox the song had been printed in 1850 by Sir George Grey in a collection of ancient New Zealand songs.—Sir George Grey. Despatch, 30th August, 1846.

page 249 confiscation. It is a slough of despond. If a traveller could be imagined in a marsh never deep enough to drown him, never freshened by rain or stream, and without a shore, the task of the historian of New Zealand at this epoch can be understood. The mud of disagreement is stirred up at every step, and the wiles of controversy wind like weeds around him to prevent progress. If Mr. Cardwell's despatch had not arrived, and enabled the Governor to cut the knot, it is certain that he and his Ministers would have found it “too intrinse to unloose.” The extent of the confiscation proposed by Whitaker and Fox deserves to be recorded. Though the latter had once opposed injustice to Maoris, he was no sooner enlisted under Mr. Whitaker than he supported the principles he had formerly resisted. In January, 1864, commenting on Sir William Martin's arguments, he declared that it was injurious to the Maoris “to retain possession of immense tracts of land, which they neither use nor allow others to use:” and there was no act of rapine which would not be sanctioned by such an axiom. Accordingly, when the Ministry, flushed with the conquest of Waikato, submitted their scheme of confiscation, in May, 1864, the district to be proclaimed under the Settlements Act, and thus rendered liable to confiscation, was sweepingly described.

From the Tamaki Portage, near Auckland, across the Frith of Thames, and round Cape Colville, thence by a line-including the fringe of the sea to Tauranga, “thence through that harbour to Urumingi, thence to Arowhena, thence to Hangatiki, thence to the mouth of the Awaroa river on the Kawhia harbour, thence along the west coast to the Manukau harbour, and thence to the Tamaki Portage.” Such was the line. Every man within it who had borne arms against the Queen was to sign a declaration to submit to her law, and to give up his arms, or satisfy Mr. Whitaker's subordinates that he had none. The rape of Waitara, which Mr. Fox opposed, was a petty theft in comparison to the larger deeds which would be done under the Order in Council prepared by Mr. Whitaker for the Governor's signature on the 17th May. The Order declared that the Governor in Council was “satisfied that the native tribes, or sections of tribes, or considerable numbers thereof in the district,” had (after 1st January, 1863) been engaged in rebellion. page 250 The line exempted the Ngatiwhatua and more northern tribes, but subjected the Waikato, the Ngatimaniapoto, the Ngatiraukawa, the Ngatimaru, the Ngaiterangi, the Ngatipaoa, the Ngatitai, the Ngatihaua, and various sub-tribes or hapus, who had friends and blood-relations south of the line which ran from Kawhia by Hangatiki to Tauranga. Eight millions of acres would have been gathered within it. The Governor said he was not satisfied in the manner required by the Act: he would not mix innocent tribes with the guilty; he would not proclaim millions of acres as liable to penalties which in his opinion ought to fall only on territories of single tribes, or sections of tribes. Then followed the scene on the 28th May, concerning which the testimony of the Clerk of the Council has been cited. As the Ministers (by their admission) declined to define their policy on confiscation, the Governor directed the Clerk to retain the Orders already signed, and not to allow them to be issued until the Governor had approved the Regulations.

Mr. Whitaker, a few months later, wrote: “It is possible that his Excellency has not understood the subject himself, and that the confusion of ideas which pervades his ‘Memorandum’ is the candid reflex of his mind.… The conclusions arrived at by his Excellency—as to the proposals of his Ministers being contrary to law and equity, contrary to his duty to the Imperial Government, and not in accordance with the responsibilities imposed by the presence and aid of the British forces, and the expenditure of large sums of British money—are entirely without foundation… a just, satisfactory, and permanent peace has been indefinitely postponed by the vacillation and indecision of his Excellency.” Had Sir George Grey vacillated in deference to Mr. Whitaker, he would perhaps have been falsely credited with courage. It was certainly galling to intriguers to find their hopes dashed after the coveted Orders had been signed. To succeed in a trick and not to reap its reward is intolerable. The Orders thus blighted in the bud were framed to obviate the Governor's reluctance to confound the guilty with innocent owners. One confiscated a separate block at Tauranga. Another comprised an irregular block running along the valleys of the Waipa and Waikato rivers, from Maungatawhiri, and reaching Hangatiki. No estimate was arrived at as to the quantity of page 251 land which would be required for settlement and sale. The Ministry having failed in their project, and Mr. Cardwell's celebrated despatch of the 26th April having arrived, it was thought advisable to strengthen their position against the Governor by putting forward an opinion given by the Bishop of Waiapu (W. Williams), who, commenting on the suggestion of the Aborigines' Protection Society, that peace should be obtained by negotiation, expressed his conviction that only by some confiscation could the Maoris be made to feel the evils of their courses. This indeed was the deliberate statement of the Governor himself.

The Bishop's letter (15th April) to Mr. Fox was used in such a manner that he thought it necessary to write another declaring that he only advocated “confiscation upon such principles as will commend themselves to our Government at home and to the Christian public.” In the notice to natives to surrender arms “and take the oath of allegiance, but that their lands are in the hands of the Governor, there is nothing to assure and encourage them that their case is not desperate.… I beg to submit that some definite terms should be laid down to the natives, particularly in reference to the land which may be left to them.” Mr. Fox, who, in reply to Sir William Martin, thought it injurious to leave natives in possession of unused land, audaciously wrote to the Bishop (4th July)—”The Ministry do not believe that there is any material difference between your opinion and theirs on the subject.” Having made an assumption so unwarrantable, Fox thought it advisable to send it to England. “His Lordship's opinion is entitled to so much weight, that perhaps his Excellency will excuse the suggestion, that the correspondence should be forwarded to the Secretary of State.” On the 29th July, the Governor asked the Ministry to inform the Bishop of the extent of confiscation they proposed, and their construction of the term Rebel Natives, “in order that his Lordship, who is now in town, may state whether, in expressing his opinion, he intended to advocate a confiscation of that nature and extent.” The Ministry gave no reply. On the 25th August, they were asked for one. Mr. Fox then declared that they were of opinion that it would be inconvenient to communicate “their plans to persons not members of the page 252 Government,” that the Bishop could have no special knowledge or experience, and “Ministers would not attach much importance to his opinion (probably formed entirely from a native point of view) upon the details of the Government plans.” In other words, Mr. Fox would entrap the Bishop into what might be used as an approval of plans the nature of which he would not allow the Bishop to know. Sir George Grey sent all the correspondence to England, where, with such an exposure of its composition it could do no harm, and Mr. Cardwell merely acknowledged its receipt.

Bearing in mind what had occurred on the subjects of the escaped prisoners, and confiscation of lands, it is startling to find that, on the 2nd August, 1864, in commenting on Mr. Cardwell's despatches, laying down principles for the Governor's guidance as to confiscation and negotiation for peace1—the Ministry told Sir George Grey: “Practically no difference of opinion as yet exists between his Excellency and his advisers, and they trust it may not arise.” As, however, after publication of the despatches, “a feeling had arisen in the colony” that Mr. Cardwell intended to “subvert the existing arrangement as to the administration of native affairs in some matters,” the Ministry protested “without delay against the introduction of a new form of Government,” partly administered by the Governor, and partly by his advisers.

Let the reader pause for one moment to reflect upon the difference between the cession suggested by Mr. Cardwell and the confiscation proposed by Whitaker and Fox. All tribal rights were guaranteed to Maoris by the treaty of Waitangi. One contracting party has no power to abrogate any provision of a treaty. Cession as an act of a whole tribe might plausibly be represented as permitted by the treaty. The confiscation was a mere outrage upon treaty and law: for Whitaker confessed that it would be worthless unless it could be stretched so as to rob the innocent. Admitting that a Maori could be made a rebel because he resisted attacks made upon him, and that his

1 26th May, 1864. Mr. Cardwell: “It is my duty to say to you plainly, that if, unfortunately (your Ministers') opinions should be different from your own as to the terms of peace, Her Majesty's Government expect you to act on your own judgment,” &c.

page 253 rights might be forfeited; yet his share in land was tribal, and to confiscate his rights left those of others unharmed. The portion of the tribe which remained faithful to the Queen therefore gathered1 into themselves both by treaty and law any lapsed rights of their tribesmen. Te Wheoro and his friends, who accompanied General Cameron in the Waikato campaign, might be enriched by the death or disappearance of their conquered tribesmen, but the destroyed rights could not attach to the Queen. No men knew this fact better than Whitaker and Fox, and their persistence in urging confiscation was but a continuance of the spirit which actuated the New Zealand Company and Earl Grey in deriding the “so-called treaty” made by the Queen. Sir George Grey (26th August) forwarded the ministerial protest to Mr. Cardwell. He affirmed that the publication of Mr. Cardwell's despatch of the 26th April had “produced a very happy effect upon the native population.” To it he attributed in no small degree the surrender of the Tauranga tribe. He pointed out that the discussions between himself and his advisers, as already communicated to Mr. Cardwell, showed that considerable difference had arisen between himself and his advisers on questions of Imperial concern. He

1 Such seems the only result either in justice, or logically, of forfeiture of a tribal right. The contention of Whitaker and Fox was of course outside of the domain of logic, law, or justice. It was, I believe, reserved for the sagacity of Sir Arthur Gordon to suggest a modus vivendi by which the rapacious acts done before he became Governor in New Zealand might be partially reconciled with justice—viz. that on confiscation of rights of a Maori, the confiscating authority should become seized of the confiscated tribal rights of their victim without destroying those of his tribesmen. Though such a position may be defended with subtlety, and is a large abstinence from the cynical rapine put in force by New Zealand Ministries, it is manifest that the entry of the local government into tribal rights by an act of force exercised by that government opens the door to iniquity which the cupidity of the moving spirits in New Zealand has never restrained. The three theories are sufficiently distinct. One holds that an honourable regard for the treaty of Waitangi demands that every man's tribal rights shall be respected absolutely. This cannot be the case if he be compelled against his will to accept the Government as joint owner. The Whitaker-Fox theory was not only that the Maori must be robbed of his land in defiance of the express words of the treaty, but that it was of no use to rob the guilty unless at the same time the innocent were robbed. Sir Arthur Gordon's contention would limit the acquired rights of the confiscating Government to the extent and to the quality of the rights of the assumed traitor.

page 254 urged, on general and local grounds, that it was not salutary to hand over to a Ministry, feebly responsible to the local legislature, uncontrolled power over the lives, actions, and honour of British men and officers engaged in war in a country where the race which elected to the legislature was more or less excited against the other race which was altogether unrepresented, and yet included the largest landed proprietors in the Northern Island. He was confident that when Mr. Cardwell had determined on a policy, just to Great Britain and to Maoris and colonists, he might rely on the good sense and good feeling of a majority in New Zealand in support of it.

In the end of August a crisis was approaching. General Cameron had been consulted on the demand of the Ministry for a frontier line (partly maintained by the Queen's troops) from Raglan or Kawhia to Tauranga. He saw great objections to the plans for an expedition in winter against the tribes at Matamata and Peria, and for what appeared like a winter campaign at Taranaki. As the Ministry seemed to cling to their own ideas of strategy, Sir George Grey told him (30th August) that— “If he had not determined not to act upon the advice Ministers tendered him, that operations should be followed up at Tauranga in the manner they proposed, the aspect of affairs in New Zealand would have borne at this time a very disastrous character.” The king-maker's people were at Matamata and Peria, and the Ministry thirsted with more than common thirst for his destruction, although Mr. Mackay, the Civil Commissioner of the Thames district, had reported on the 16th August: “It does not appear to me that the natives intended to be otherwise than friendly towards the Government unless some military operations take place at Matamata or Peria, in which case if the hostile natives were driven down into their country they would assist them, and retreat to the wooded spurs of the Aroha ranges, a position, from its inaccessible and rugged nature, they could occupy and maintain with a very small force against highly superior numbers.” The Ministry sneered at Mr. Mackay as having been duped; but in September they had strained their powers so far that they had given way. The Maori prisoners had been transferred to the island of Kawau in August, and Mr. Fox had recorded his protest against Mr. Cardwell's theory page 255 that, subject to law, the Governor was the arbiter of their fate. The inability of the Ministry to deal justly or generously with negotiations for peace, or with cession of lands, threw the responsibility upon the Governor, and on the 7th September he sent to his advisers a draft of a proclamation drawn in compliance with Mr. Cardwell's instructions, in order to give the natives an opportunity of submission before the resumption of warlike operations. He offered free and absolute pardon to all who might “come in on or before the 22nd October, take the oath of allegiance, and make cession of such territory as may in each instance be fixed by the Governor and Lieutenant-General.” The pardon would not be extended to persons engaged in certain murders which were to be specified. The Ministers agreed to the issue of the proclamation with provisoes. Arms were to be given up, except where the Governor might deem their retention necessary to defend their owners against rebels still in arms. Mr. Whitaker required the Governor's assurance that the cessions would be of the required extent, and that if not availed of by the day fixed in the proclamation the terms should lapse, and forfeiture should without further delay supersede the proposed cession. The Governor would not give the assurance required. The Ministry sought to acquire territory to defray war expenses, or to be devoted to military settlements. He, on the other hand, viewed the cession as a punishment inflicted to deter others from rebellion, and proportionate in each case to the guilt of the tribes involved. He could not take a man's land more largely than justice would warrant merely because it might be wished to plant settlements upon it. He recalled the reasons which prevented the issue of a proclamation in May, requiring the surrender of arms, and which were still cogent. Mr. Whitaker declined (13th September) to acquiesce in the proclamation. Rebels were from time to time surrendering in considerable numbers, and the Government ought not to vacillate. The Governor misunderstood the ministerial view of acquisition of territory. “Ministers explicitly declared that the contemplated cession should include the objects (named by him), not that they were the only ones sought.” Their memorandum was lengthy. The Governor replied to it at almost equal length on the following day. He had not accepted advice from page 256 Ministers on several occasions, because he would not drive a nation to despair. If the Ministry had intended to oppose conformity with Mr. Cardwell's despatch, Sir George Grey thought they ought not to have published it. For his part he concurred in the justice of the instructions therein. He unhesitatingly appealed “to his country and to posterity to judge between his views and those of his responsible advisers, and to pronounce whether when a man has come to a decision amidst so many and great difficulties, his responsible advisers ought not to refrain from clouding his judgment, and trying to force him to a decision he does not approve, by using such language as their memorandum contains. If upon reconsideration his responsible advisers still refuse to acquiesce in the proclamation submitted to them, as the Governor, for the reasons he has stated, considers it to be his duty, sorry as he is to differ in opinion with them, to adhere to his intention of issuing it; he begs to be informed what course they intend to pursue.”

The escape of the prisoners from Kawau might delay the issue until the effect of that escape on the Maoris might be ascertained, but he wished for an early reply. On the 20th September, the mail from England brought information that Mr. Reader Wood's negotiation for the New Zealand loan had failed to procure more than a very small instalment, and even that at a low minimum. Out of £1,000,000 offered, only £5000 were tendered for at £90, on the first day. On the 22nd September, the Ministry wrote a portentously long minute, in which they requested to be relieved from office “if his Excellency adheres to his intention of issuing the objectionable proclamation.” Sir George Grey before deciding to accept their resignations determined to acquaint himself with the financial condition of the colony. They had averred that the demand for land had not been vague. It was “not a quantity to be measured by any man's opinions, but a given rule easily applied, which would leave nothing to be determined by thoughts and opinions, and in strict accordance with the instructions from England and the views of the General Assembly.” The Governor asked what was the given rule so easily applied. They told him with equal curtness that each military settler was entitled to a certain number of acres, that a similar rule would apply to each page 257 immigrant from Great Britain, and that there would be no difficulty in determining the moderate quantity required for sale. He asked for an approximate estimate, and at last obtained from them what for months he had besought in vain. On the 30th September, they formulated their demands as to quantity, but not situation, of land required by confiscation. In Auckland, military settlers would require 360,000 acres; emigrants from England, 240,000 acres; for sale would be required, 400,000. In Taranaki, military settlers would need 180,000 acres; emigrants from England, 120,000 acres; for sale would be required 300,000 acres. The total of 1,600,000 acres was less than had been proposed in the Assembly, but Ministers had “made the modification for the purpose of avoiding any imputation even of prolonging the war for the acquisition of territory.” The sudden readiness to give information was due to an interview between Mr. Reader Wood (the Treasurer, who had returned from England), and Sir George Grey, on the 29th September. Mr. Wood in a letter from England (written in July), had complained of attacks made in the ‘Times’ newspaper upon the Colonial Government and the colonists, “accusing them of closing all avenues to peace, and of employing the British troops to fight—not in a war of defence, but in a war of aggrandisement, and for the purpose of wresting land from the natives by force.” Mr. Wood, arriving from England in September, and discussing the subject, was told that the opposition of the Ministry to the proclamation of pardon to the natives was calculated to close the avenues of peace. Mr. Wood suggested that the Ministry should retire. On the 30th September, they tendered their resignations. They were, therefore, practically out of office when they consented to inform the Governor, even approximately, how much land they wished to confiscate. He thanked them, and asked if they would oblige him by showing approximately the boundaries of the required lands. They were unable to do so, “even approximately.… It was not intended to take the land required in one block, but in several, of which some would have been small; and as to others there is not sufficient information to determine even the precise localities.” No man of ordinary intelligence could have supposed that such a seizure of land could fail to foster enmity and suspicion among the Maori owners who were to be ejected, page 258 but who, even at the last moment, knew not which of them were to be sufferers. Again appealed to, they sent a tracing in which they designated 340,000 acres surrounding Taranaki, a rectangular block of 564,000 acres extending from Waimate to Waitotara, and an irregular block widening from Drury to the south so as to include the valleys of the Waipa and Waikato and reaching nearly to Hangatiki. But they furnished this approximate description on the distinct understanding that neither their successors nor the Assembly were to be prejudiced by their act. The Governor was unwilling to seek new advisers until he had obtained accurate information as to the financial position of the colony. He asked for it on the day on which his Ministers had formally resigned. They replied: “Ministers do not understand that it is the duty of his Excellency or themselves to furnish information as to the financial position of the colony to any person who may profess a willingness to accept office; indeed they foresee probable evil consequences as the result of such a circumstance to men not under responsibility.” They would, however, furnish the Governor with information. Outstanding debts amounted to more than £1,400,000, of which half-a-million was due to the Imperial Government, and was to be paid out of the proceeds of that portion of the loan for three millions which the Imperial Government might guarantee. The monthly expenditure exceeded the monthly income. The Government had drawn nearly three-quarters of a million sterling against debentures, for a million and a quarter, held in London for sale or hypothecation. Nevertheless, the Ministry declared (3rd and 6th October) that they saw “no financial difficulty whatever if the plan of settlement and confiscation be carried out as authorized by the General Assembly and sanctioned by the Imperial Government, nothwithstanding the failure of the immediate negotiation of the loan.” They added that in consequence of that failure they would have advised an immediate reduction of war expenditure had they remained in office. Mr. Cardwell's despatch (26th April) on confiscation or cession, when shown to Mr. Reader Wood in England, elicited his warm concurrence. He recorded it in writing: “I take this opportunity of stating, formally and officially, that which I have previously had the honour of stating to Mr. Secretary Cardwell personally, that page 259 there is nothing in the instructions of April 26th to Sir George Grey that does not represent the views of the Colonial Government in practically carrying into effect the policy of confiscation authorized by the Legislature in the New Zealand Settlements Act.… On my own behalf, therefore, and that of my colleagues I can give to Mr. Cardwell a full assurance that the Local Government will certainly co-operate with Sir George Grey in carrying out that just and temperate policy towards the native race embodied in the New Zealand Settlements Act as limited in its operation by his instructions of April 26th.” Mr. Wood was in no doubt as to Mr. Cardwell's meaning, for he wrote to his colleagues (with regard to the requirement that “a measure should be at once submitted to limit the duration of the Act to a definite period,” &c.), that he asked Mr. Cardwell whether he wished the Parliament to be at once assembled ad hoc, and Mr. Cardwell replied: “Two years are given during which the Crown has the power of disallowing; if within that time I find that the Parliament will agree to carry out the Act in the manner I have suggested, and to limit its duration to a definite period, the power of disallowance will not be exercised; if not, it will.” When reminded of this statement, Mr. Whitaker did not shrink from retorting that the Ministry agreed with Mr. Wood's words, and were ready to repeat them, but that “what Mr. Wood did say had no reference whatever to cession but to confiscation;” although Mr. Cardwell's announcement of the intentions of Her Majesty's Government declared: “It is in their opinion very much to be desired that the proposed appropriation of land should take the form of a cession imposed by yourself and General Cameron upon the conquered tribes.”

The reader who bears in mind Mr. Fox's denunciation of Mr. Cardwell's despatch as utterly mischievous, must be anxious to escape from the crooked windings in which it has been necessary to follow the course of the Whitaker Ministry; who soon after this audacious statement quitted office. On the 8th October, they informed the Governor that they thought that all war expenditure from colonial sources should be stopped, and that the General Assembly ought to be summoned at a date not later than 15th November. Sir George Grey replied, that in view of the financial position he had come to the conclusion that he page 260 could not form a new Ministry in time to meet emergencies, and that the proper course would be to summon the Assembly. He at once acquiesced with their advice. They had also urged him to bring the Settlements Act into operation, but he understood Mr. Cardwell's instructions and his conversation with the Treasurer as implying that the Act ought not to be brought into operation until there had been a failure to obtain cessions of land in the manner proposed by the Governor's proclamation. He would undertake that the natives making them should do so as defeated rebels, and would conclude no arrangements without considering the opinions of his advisers. He did not ask the Ministry to acquiesce in his proclamation or be responsible, but wished it to be inserted in the ‘Gazette’ at the time chosen by himself. Mr. Whitaker replied that the proclamation should be inserted. On the 24th October, the Governor forwarded it in terms similar to those in the draft rejected in September by his advisers; but extending the day of grace to the 10th December instead of the 22nd October. At his request they added a list of exemptions from pardon of all persons (unnamed) engaged in the commission of murders which were found by juries to have been committed by some person or persons of the native race. The catalogue included 29 cases. The proclamation, signed on the 25th, was issued on the 26th October. None of the Ministry countersigned it. The General and the Commodore concurred with it, and regretted that it had been so long delayed. The king-maker wrote to the Governor. He was almost alone in Waikato. The war preparations had drawn the tribes to Taranaki. “Extend to me,” he said, “the days from the 10th December even unto the end of February. My great desire is to have to the end of April, but I presume you would not grant my request, and therefore only ask to the end of February.” Let the chiefs assemble to consider the proclamation. For himself, the suspension of hostilities he had agreed to at Ngaruawahia, still continued. “I gave my word then. You keep Waikato. I will not fight there. My word is the same now. The words which I now leave for the assembling together of Waikato are:—1. The land. 2. The murders. 3. The guns and powder.” The Ministry affected to believe that the king-maker had become a Hau Hau, but the Civil Commissioner page 261 reported that in conversation with him the king-maker expressed great contempt for the new superstition. Mr. Fox, nevertheless, retorted that however remarkable a man Te Waharoa might be, and undoubtedly was, Mr. Fox had a painful impression that his sincerity and truthfulness were not to be relied upon. The Ministry continued to advise the Governor on such subjects as accommodation of immigrants, and location of troops in Waikato.

The removal of the seat of Government to Cook's Straits as resolved on by the General Assembly had been an open question with the Ministry. Odium was dreaded by a provincial statesman if he should be candid enough to confess that any site was eligible except one in his own province. The Governor was personally entrusted with the negotiations under which Commissioners were appointed. Mr. Joseph Docker of New South Wales; Sir Francis Murphy of Victoria; and Mr. Ronald C. Gunn of Tasmania, after due examination, handed their report on the 3rd October to the Superintendent at Nelson, who on the 10th transmitted it to Auckland. They unanimously recommended Wellington as the best site. Their report was received at Auckland by Mr. Fox on the 14th October. When the Governor informed his advisers that he concurred with them in thinking that the Assembly ought to be convened, they asked him on the 10th October if he had received the report of the Commissioners. He said he had not. On the 11th, they transmitted to him a proclamation calling the Assembly together at Wellington. On the 12th, they requested him to give his consent, before five o'clock on that day, to the proclamation. On the 12th, he said he had been quite taken by surprise by their sudden choice of Wellington. Auckland would be injured by so unexpected a removal. Threatened as it was by a financial crisis, and by renewal of war, it deserved consideration, and he must take time to deliberate on a matter thus suddenly and without previous consultation thrust upon him. The escaped prisoners had been but a month on their hill-top at Omaha, and it was not known whether they were planning war, or would be supported by other tribes. The Ministry were engaged in considering the supplication from Europeans at Omaha for help in their peril. On the 13th, a petition signed by more than 1500 inhabitants of Auckland deprecated the page 262 sudden removal of the General Assembly at so critical a conjuncture. On the 17th, the Ministry were willing to allow the Governor to fix the place of meeting, but as he declined to do so, they advised on the 18th that it should meet at Auckland on the 21st November. There was no circumstance, technical or serious, on which the relations between the Governor and his advisers were allowed to work without needless friction. Mr. Fitzgerald declared that the colonists were living under a “Memorandummiad.” Ministers began to be weary of their vain work. They complained of the “already enormous file of despatches and minutes.” “In the hands of the Governor is all the power; he alone can move troops. He alone can confiscate; he alone has the fate of prisoners in his hands. Ministers are really powerless.” Yet though their views were “diametrically opposed” to his, he would not accept their resignations. The Whitaker Ministry had indeed been useless for good, but men are more powerful for evil than for good. If a generous and prompt policy had been adopted towards the prisoners and the vanquished, the whole aspect of the colony might have been changed. But the prisoners had been kept in torturing suspense, their friends in arms were partners in anxiety, and the Hau Hau fanatics had been aided in adding fuel to the fires of disaffection. The coast between Wanganui and Taranaki was the hot-bed of wild passions, and exiles from Waikato had flocked thither to swell the rebel bands. Even the tardy proclamation of pardon in September might have arrested the troubling of the waters, but the Ministry had withheld their consent. They would neither do good themselves nor allow others to do it. To crown their disgust a despatch (August) from Mr. Cardwell arrived in October. Commenting on the differences between the Ministers and the Governor, it declared that Mr. Reader Wood “was distinctly told that his acceptance of my proposal for a guaranteed loan would be regarded by Her Majesty's Government as an assurance on his own part and that of his colleagues of their desire cordially to co-operate with you in that just and temperate policy towards the native race; and his reply, which was laid before Parliament, was perfectly satisfactory and complete in this respect.” It told the Governor that in using every legitimate means to give page 263 effect to the instructions of the 26th April, he might count upon the cordial support of the English Government. On these and other points the Ministry continued to compile minutes, of which there seemed no end, until the 23rd November, the day before which the Assembly was to meet. The Governor's last memorandum briefly urged that he had endeavoured to act constitutionally, and that he was “satisfied that larger experience in public affairs of the kind which have recently been transacted in this colony, will lead his present advisers ultimately to admit that such is the case, and to withdraw their present opinions, and to regret that they have often expressed themselves in language of such unusual strength.”

In forming a new Ministry, it was absolutely necessary to respect Mr. Cardwell's injunctions, and to contemplate a reduction of the Imperial forces in the colony. The small section of the English public which concerned itself with the wrongs of Maoris recoiled from savage extermination of a gallant race, outnumbered by ten to one of those in arms. The naval and military forces on the spot shared the feeling that they were made the catspaw to drag from the fire the prizes coveted by the colonists.1 The taint of the original injustice at Waitara manifestly clung to the acts of Whitaker and his colleagues. The army and navy loyally fought against the Maoris, but they accorded to them an admiration, if not a sympathy, which they could not feel for some of their grasping countrymen. Mr. Cardwell wrote (26th September): “If the doctrines now broadly propounded by your Ministers are to be admitted, New Zealand must be regarded not only as owning no dependence upon the mother country, and as having that inherent right which independent countries exercise of conducting their own affairs according to their own judgment, but as having this

1 The military always evinced a better feeling than was shown by those whose battles they were fighting. Lieutenant-Colonel Carey, C.B., published a ‘Narrative of the Late War in New Zealand’ (London: Bentley, 1863). He said, p. 189: “Many more would have returned to their allegiance but from fear of the colonists, who treated even the friendly tribes with the greatest brutality.… The prisoners we took had to be most carefully guarded, not so much to prevent escape, as to save them from the un-English and unmanly attacks of the Europeans, who, when they could do so with safety, treated them with the greatest indignities. Widely different was the behaviour of the soldiers.…”

page 264 right coupled with the singular privilege of enjoying the services of a Governor, a General, and an army furnished by this country. On the other hand, the mother country would be simply a tributary nation, affording at its own cost the means of carrying into effect the policy of the Colonial Ministers, without exercising any voice in the direction of that policy. It is sufficient to state these conclusions. It is not necessary to enter into any discussion of them.” England had furnished an army of the finest troops under an accomplished General, had consented to guarantee a loan for the service of the colony, and Mr. Cardwell looked for a spirit of reason, of good sense, and of cordial co-operation, which he was confident would not be appealed to in vain. The Governor's new advisers would be compelled to include Mr. Cardwell as a factor in the forces which would control New Zealand so long as Imperial troops might be retained. On the 21st October, 1864, there had been a public meeting at Christchurch, at which Mr. Weld had advocated a policy of self-reliance. Let the colony take all the expense and all the control of the Maori question and war. Let every soldier go. Let the General Assembly be convened without delay. Sir George Grey found in such a speaker the Minister he required. Oral agreement having been arrived at, the terms were reduced to writing. Mr. Weld pronounced “the system of double Government by Governor and Ministers” to have “resulted in evil to both races.” He recognized the right of the Home Government to maintain the existing system while the colony received aid from British troops. He accepted the alternative, and would “recommend the General Assembly to request the Home Government to withdraw the whole of its land force from the colony, and to issue such instructions to the Governor as may enable him to be guided entirely by the recommendations of his constitutional advisers, excepting only upon such matters as may directly concern Imperial interests, and the prerogatives of the Crown.” Pending the decision of the Imperial Government he would ask the Assembly to “undertake a reasonable liability for the services of the troops actively engaged in the field at the special recommendation of his Excellency's advisers, and for such troops only.” A colonial force would be kept on foot, a military post occupied about the page 265 centre of the coast-line of the Ngatiruanui country, and a road would be made from Wanganui to the northern part of the Taranaki province. Arrangements made with military settlers were to be fulfilled by taking sufficient land out of the territory held by military occupation. The seat of Government would be at once moved to Wellington in accordance with the recommendation of the Commissioners. If there should be material difference between the Governor and his advisers during a recess, Mr. Weld would resign, and in such case he thought that either the Assembly should be summoned or other advisers chosen. The boldest part of Mr. Weld's scheme was not that which seemed so at first sight. As he intended to make use of Maori warriors on the side of the Government—an arm not largely resorted to in 1863—and there were tribes ready to fight with or without provocation, the dispensing with English troops was not so daring a measure as it appeared abroad. But in financial affairs the Government was helpless. The Whitaker Ministry were wise in their own generation when they shrunk from exposing to a probable Minister the condition of the New Zealand Treasury. Mr. Weld with undoubted resolution addressed himself to the task, and by the weight of his reputation made arrangements which tided over the difficulty, until by taxation it could be fairly met. He ever professed friendship for the Maori, although he could not be brought to recognize the Ngatiawa tribal tenure at Taranaki; and one of his first acts was to ask the former magistrate of the Waikato district, Frederick Dart Fenton, to become Chief Judge of a Native Land Court to be established by law. The Court which the Act of 1862 enabled the Governor to create from time to time had proved almost a dead letter. What Maori could be urged to appeal to it while Whitaker and Fox were advisers of the Governor? The first necessity was to pass a new law without delay. Under it the Judges like those in England held office “during good behaviour.” They were no longer to be the ephemeral creatures of a Governor or of his advisers. They were to be assisted by native assessors (holding office only “during pleasure”), whose concurrence was necessary in any judgment. The salaries of the Judges were fixed by the creating law. Thus was seen the first rift in the cloud page 266 of oppression with which Whitaker and Fox had enshrouded the Maoris by their Confiscation (New Zealand Settlement), and their Oppression (Suppression of Rebellion) Acts. Between 1860 and 1865 arms had expelled the gown from the solemn atmosphere over which justice is wont to preside in dealing with hereditary and treaty rights. With a convenient Governor like Colonel Browne, and a lax Secretary of State like the Duke of Newcastle, the whole of the North Island might have been pilfered from its owners. Though the great majority of a tribe might be loyal, there might be a few hostile to the Government, and on that plea the whole territory might be confiscated. Mr. Whitaker had contended that such a power was the essence of his needs. It was known and admitted by Governor Browne that the great majority of the tribe were on the side of Te Rangitake. The native rights which the Government literally cast into the fire in 1860 were now to be the subject of inquiry by law. Mr. Weld was wise enough to know that unless the law so earnestly sought by Sir William Martin could be applied to unloose the Gordian knot of Maori tenure, nothing but the sword would remain. The preparation of the necessary measure was a work of time.