Introduction.

If any one should ask the writer of these pages why he comes out from the retirement of a country parish to mix himself up with a grave question of politics, he must answer as David answered when he was reproached with having left those "few sheep in the wilderness" and come down to see the battle: "What have I now done? is there not a cause?"

The fairest of England's colonies is threatened with disaster. There is a general cry that to save the colony we must exterminate the natives. After several months of useless desultory war we hear that a great victory has been gained, and the newspapers congratulate us on the intelligence; but we are told by the colonists themselves now in England that this last news is the very worst that has been received; "that it will take 10,000 troops to take possession of New Zealand from the natives, and it will cost this country 1,000,00l. or 1,500,000l. to do it¹."

for the purpose of preserving them, not to leave them merely to general rules of justice; for I foresaw a thousand things which might come into operation to destroy them under a show of justice.

"At the same time my plans were founded on strict justice: they grow out of these two considerations—compensation for the cession of their land—compensation for the cession of their sovereignty.

"Now it is precisely the violation, or at least the imagined violation, of these two principles which has aroused the innate patriotism of the New Zealanders; for what is rebellion viewed from our side is patriotism viewed from theirs. The land-league movement, the native-king movement, are surely proof sufficient that we ought to have done something to compensate him for the cession of his land, something to compensate him for the cession of his sovereignty, something to avert from his mind the instinctive galling reflection that he had been cheated of the one and robbed of the other.

"The plan which was suggested to give him compensation for his land was, that such portions of land should be reserved for him within the settled districts as would place the native chief in as favourable a position, with regard to the possession of landed property, as the wealthiest colonist. I mean property in the settled districts, made valuable by population, and producing a rental. A modification of this plan was adopted by the New Zealand Company in their 'native reserves.' I earnestly advocated their general adoption in letters to Lord John Russell and to Lord Derby, when they were respectively Her Majesty's Secretaries of State for the Colonies, but I need not say without success.

"Now, will it be denied that such reserves would have been a just compensation for the cession of the thirty million of acres, said to have been purchased for the Crown? And can it be doubted that if they had been made in a generous spirit, and with the con- page 7 scious purpose of building up the New Zealand people into a great constituent portion of the united commonwealth, the New Zealand Land-League would never have existed?

"I would also have compensated the New Zealander for the cession of his sovereignty, and would have formed the rude savage chief, the noble of nature, into the noble of civil life. This may be laughed at, but the New Zealand king movement cannot be laughed at. This movement is their unconscious vindication of the plans which I devised twenty-five years ago to save them from destruction, and England from the trouble and dishonour which will attend it.

"One of the things that were proposed in order to work towards this object, was the establishment of that principle which we see recurring again and again in history. I mean the principle of guest-ship, the ξενía of the Greeks. Your Grace must remember that noble passage of the Iliad, where the two hereditary guest-friends meet unexpectedly in hostile ranks, and perpetuate the alliance between their families by an exchange of armour. The principle is again seen in the relation of patron and client in the Roman Commonwealth; and again, singularly enough, in the Jaws which Gondebaut, second King of the Burgundians, gave to the people formed by the mixture of the Romans of Gaul with their Burgundian conquerors, and to which Montesquieu refers in his 'Esprit des Lois,' (Liv. xxx. chap. ix.) as proving that the barbarians could conduct their conquests with moderation and humanity.

"Carrying out the principle indicated by the recurrence of these relations among different peoples in different ages, I would have encouraged the formation of social alliances between the chiefs and the principal British settlers to be made with ceremony, to be accompanied with oaths of mutual fealty and friendship, and to be rewarded with some honour. Such an in page 8 stitution would have been well suited to a romantic infant people, and given a happy direction to their thoughts. It would have cemented friendship between chiefs and colonists, and helped to prepare the New Zealand chief for taking his place in the senate of the combined people.

"These thoughts are not in sympathy with the mechanical spirit of our age, and would be condemned as visionary by many. But I beg your Grace to notice that, having done my best twenty years ago (reckoning from my last efforts) to effect their adoption without success, I gave up what did not appear to be my province, and that it is only now, when I am startled by the actual occurrence in a most alarming form of those very results which it was my object to anticipate and prevent, that I again endeavour to bring them forward, and to do so most effectually by submitting them to your Grace's enlightened and humane consideration.

"Your Grace will observe that I have expressed no opinion as to the merits of the present quarrel, nor suggested any measure to meet its difficulties my object is to interest your Grace in the above general principles. But I have so very strong a feeling as to the first step to take, that I am impelled to state it. It would be to send a peacemaker to Wirimu Kingi—the office of κήϱνξ is as well understood among the New Zealanders as it was among the Greeks—and to offer him, on the part of the Queen of England, peace and a code of laws. Should this be done before it be too late, any action on the part of the troops, which your Grace will be requested to send out, would, I believe, be found to be unnecessary.

"I have received strong confirmation of this opinion from a letter, dated Auckland, November 5th, which appeared in the 'New Zealand Examiner,' of January 14th. The writer says: 'If, however, the Government should determine to carry on this war page 9 until the insurgents voluntarily lay down their arms and sue for peace, it is the firm conviction of ail reliable Maori authorities that peace will not be restored until the natives are exterminated. In all their former wars among themselves, an instance of voluntary submission of the weaker party has never been known. In fact, it is a point of honour with them that the overture for peace should come from the stronger party.'

"I have the honour to be,

"Your Grace's obedient humble Servant,

"Montague Hawtrey."

In the year 1836, the writer of these pages was Curate of Upper Chelsea, and happened to live within a few doors of Mr. Edward Gibbon Wakefield. This led to an acquaintance with him, and to a knowledge of the plans which he was then arranging, in concert with the Earl of Durham, Lord Petre, the Hon. Francis Baring, Sir William Molesworth, Sir George Sinclair, Mr. Philip Howard, and other gentlemen, most of whom were members of Parliament, for the Colonization of New Zealand. The great beauty of the country, its insular character, its noble forests, rivers and havens, and wide tracts of fertile land, page 10 seemed to point it out as a most desirable place for trying that principle of colonization which had been newly devised by Mr. Wakefield, and adopted by Great Britain in the more recent of her Australian colonies. I mean the principle of selling land at a fixed price instead of granting it, and thus at once securing a collected instead of a scattered population, and creating a fund for conveying labourers to the settlement and promoting its prosperity in many ways.

But New Zealand could not be dealt with as a wild unoccupied country. It was tenanted by a primitive race, the noblest perhaps that ever existed in a wild state on earth : a race which had shown a surprising thirst and wonderful capacity for civilization; proud, warlike, jealous of their honour, possessing a language full of images and poetry, and who had now been for a long time under the influence of Christian teaching.

What was to become of that race? It was too certainly known that, as a general rule, wherever colonies had been established in a country occupied by aboriginal tribes, the wild race had been exterminated by the civilized. Was this to be the fate of the New Zealanders?

This was a topic on which the writer of these pages thought deeply and earnestly. It was obvious to him that to attempt to stop the settlement of civilized man in a country so attractive as New Zealand was lite attempting to stop a river. And on this point he was at issue with the leaders of the Church Missionary Society, who, naturally interested in the work the; had carried on so long and so devotedly, shut their ears against every proposal of co-operation, and used the most persevering, and for a long time successful efforts, to thwart every plan for its systematic colonization. Far from sympathizing with these obstructive efforts, he rejoiced that there was a body of enlightened gentlemen banded together to carry on the 'heroic' work of colonization in a heroic way; and page 11 he regarded it as a subject for devout thankfulness to God that those gentlemen received the suggestions which he made to them for the benefit of the native race with hearty concurrence and approbation, and were determined, if they had succeeded in obtaining their charter, to carry them out with good will. He need not state how it happened that the charter was not obtained. His object is to show what he had planned for the benefit of the natives, and why he thinks that if those plans had been adopted the present troubles would not have occurred. He will endeavour to show this by making extracts from the publications descriptive of his views which he put forth at the time, pointing out their bearings on the present crisis. He proposes to consider the subject under the following heads:—

1.	On the general principle of exceptional laws.
2.	Compensation to the New Zealander for the cession of his land versus the Land-League.
3.	Compensation to the New Zealander for the cession of his sovereignty versus the Mew Zealand king movement.
4.	Amalgamation—Les Gombettes.
5.	"The Real question at issue."