In July, 1861, the Richmond-Stafford Ministry were replaced by one of which Mr. Fox was the leader; and, subsequently, a new Governor had succeeded Col. Gore Browne, and a new policy was to be instituted and experimented on, but the Natives could not be cajoled into submission. They had become imbued with the impression that a crisis in their national history had arrived—that now, or never, they most withstand the inroads of colonization page 5 before they were weakened by the evident decrease of their race, and they refused to listen to the words of peace. On the 30th November, 1861, Sir George Grey, in a letter to His Grace the Duke of Newcastle, recommended the transference of the management of the Natives to the Assembly, and urges it by the following reasons :—

"Another disadvantage of the system of making the Governor chiefly responsible for Native affairs, is, that it will be thought that the wars which may arise under it, have sprung whether rightly or wrongly, from the acts of the Representative of the British Government, over whose proceedings the Colonial Legislature but very imperfect control; so that it would seem difficult to call upon that body to find the means of defraying the cost of a war, for the origin, continuance, or conduct of which it was only in an indirect manner responsible."

It was not to be supposed that such gilded arguments as those which the Governor brought forward could possibly be resisted. There was an apparent solution of a great and increasing Imperial difficulty, and His Grace, unmindful of the "justice due to Native claims," and of "the responsibilities which rested on the Government with regard to this remarkable race," is evidently prepared to abdicate all power, and to accept the position in which Sir George, acting on the recommendation above noted, had placed him; but, before deciding, it was necessary to be informed as to the willingness and power of the Colonists to meet page 6 their engagements under the newly arranged plan of ministerial responsibility. The Duke of Newcastle accordingly writes, on the 25th February, 1862:—

"You inform me that you are conducting Native affairs, not as heretofore, through a Native Department, exclusively responsible in the first place to the Governor, and through him to the Home Government, but through and with the advice of a responsible Ministry, You You acquaint me with certain plans of improvement which you have proposed to your Government, involving the remission on the part of the Imperial Treasury of a sure probably amounting to about £25,000, from the contribution of £5 per head, which the Colony is hound to make to the expenses of British troops now in the Island.

"But while you thus inform me of the concession which you hope from Her Majesty's Government, you do not tell me by what sacrifices the Colonists are prepared to meet these concessions. I do not understand, for example, to what extent they are willing either to impose on themselves additional taxation, or to appropriate existing taxes to the improvement of the Maoris, or the support of any future war, or the liquidating the expenses of that which I hope is now concluded. Nor do you indicate the amount of personal effort which the Colonists are prepared to make in their own defence, and by which they may be enabled to dispense with military assistance, hitherto afforded them at the expense of Great Britain."