The Authorship of the War.

The responsibility for the outbreak of the war would, then, seem to lie on the shoulders of the Ministry. Others, and these among the best-informed, lay all its weight on the Governor. A once well-known colonist, Mr. C. F. Hursthouse, and a former Premier, who latterly occupied the position of Auditor-General, Mr. FitzGerald, uncompromisingly maintained that it was the Governor's war. Proper efforts, they asserted, had not been made to arrange terms of peace, and the advance of the army compelled the Maoris to fight with the courage of despair.

We must go back a month or two. On New Year's Day, 1863, Grey paid his last friendly visit to Waikato. On January 3 he rode alone to Ngaruawahia. The Maori King, Tawhiao, came to the neighbourhood, but not quite to the place. With the king-maker Grey had a long interview. Other chiefs, who were anxious to avoid war, desired a longer interview. A great Native page 144meeting was arranged. It was not held. "Tired and unwell," in fact, feeling that his mission had failed, Grey returned to Auckland, on the pretext of public business. We are reminded of the fictitious telegram that Ruskin had arranged should be sent to him when he went on a visit at Hawarden, expecting to find the company of the Grand Old Man unendurable. Whether it was business or chagrin, or the perception that a reconciliation was hopeless, the withdrawal of the Governor rang the knell of peace. The natives resumed their hostile attitude. With the approval of the Governor a British force occupied the Waikato. War was henceforth inevitable.

One last opportunity of making peace was granted. In December of the same year General Cameron was advancing inwards to the heart of the Waikato. Recognising the importance of the position, as the king's headquarters, he urged that Ngaruawahia should be occupied. The Ministers pressed the Governor to accompany or precede the General and offer the Maoris terms of peace. The Governor expressed his willingness, and he was possibly sincere, for he was a true lover of peace. But the Ministers insisted on accompanying the Governor, and to this he refused to consent. Neither would yield, and the mission never came off. Another and a last chance of making peace sped into the limbo of unfulfilled possibilities.

A few days later, on December 18, Grey issued a memorandum explaining that he could not, as Governor, have made overtures to the Maoris, who might not have accepted them, when the odium of failure would have fallen on the Governor. It was an illogical inference and applied far more to a mission without Ministers than with them. Perhaps we should recall our assertion of his sincerity. His principle all through life was to treat only with a vanquished enemy, and he may have been determined to defeat the Maoris before he would negotiate with them. Fox affirms in his book on the war that, if Grey had accepted the mission proposed to him by his Ministers, peace would have been made. Many months afterwards, in a despatch, Grey denied the assertions of page 145FitzGerald and Fox, and, thirty years later still, instructing Mr. Rees, he repeated the denial. Well-informed Maori chiefs affirm that, after the taking of Rangiriri, the making of peace was impossible. "Fire had been set to the fern," said a chief, and it is all too probable that, the passions of the natives having been kindled, there was no other issue than the disastrous war that ended in the total subjugation of the Maori race and the confiscation of great part of their territory.