The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 8, Issue 1 (May 1, 1933)
The Greatest Native Minister
The Greatest Native Minister.
From the middle Sixties to the time of his death at the beginning of 1877, Maclean was engaged in politics, and also in the active direction of native affairs and in the organisation of the Government's military policy in the most critical era of the Hauhau wars. His right to fame will rest chiefly on his masterly handling of native affairs and defence in the dark hours when it seemed to many that white settlement in the North Island could not survive unless Imperial troops were once more called in to help fight the colonists' battles.
Maclean in three years (1869–1872) brought peace to the land, conciliated powerful Maori tribes, cleared the bush of irreconcilable rebels that haunted it, by using native contingents, with a few white officers; he made friends with the Maori King Tawhiao and his chiefs and people, made roads into the interior; opened new areas for white settlement. He was the man for that troubled day; he succeeded where others had failed. The Maori tribes, whether friend or foe, trusted his word. He neither bluffed them nor deceived them; his methods were characterised by simplicity, firmness, kindness once peace had been made, perfect straightforwardness. Unlike some petty politicians and rabid writers of the day, he did not wish to see the Maori extinguished as a strong and virile race.
Maclean was eight times Native Minister. It was an extraordinary testimony to his capacity as a master of Maori affairs. Short-lived Ministries rose and fell, but Maclean was the one man always needed. No one could take his place. He held office in one Cabinet after another, from the middle of 1869 until he resigned through failing health in the last days of 1876. That period set the crown on his life's achievements. He was only fifty-six when he died, worn out by work and care and the worry of political attacks, and the effects of exposure and hard travel in his early days.