The Missionary ideal.

They received neither at the hands of Governor Grey. An older man, with a still more perverted mind, Edward Gibbon Wakefield, appraised them more justly when, in 1839, he instructed Ms brother, Colonel William Wakefield, to deal considerately with them, because of "the sacrifices they had made as pioneers of civilisation." Self-sacrifice was the last attribute Grey was to perceive in them. Half a century afterwards he told how he had found them living in comfortable houses, in competence, and in good positions. Having incredible influence over the natives, they had acquired great estates,—and this page 43was the pretext of Ms hostility. They also opposed and bitterly attacked all who stood up for fair dealing. The chief of those who thus stood up for fair dealing was Grey himself, and he seemed to think that he had been badly used by them. Yet, at different times, he had written of them in despatches as "the numerous and admirable body of missionaries," and justly spoke of them as having conferred "incalculable benefits" on the Colony.

In the long strife that took place between them he was the aggressor. As early as February, 1846, immediately after the capture of Ruapekapeka, he intimated that letters of a gravely compromising, indeed of a treasonable, character had been found in the pah. These he professed to have destroyed without reading, but he let it be plainly understood that the leading Anglican missionary, Henry Williams, was one of the writers. Williams was one of the most striking personalities in the early history of the Colony. Like the late Archbishop of York, he had served in the Royal Navy; and the fighting spirit, subdued and refined, lived on in the old lieutenant. He was possessed by the ideal of the early missionaries, who looked forward to a missionary New Zealand;, peopled by none but Maoris and their missionary teachers, or, if by some scattered Europeans as well, needed at first for purposes of trade and industrial initiation, then by those Europeans under the government of the missionaries. No thought had they of making New Zealand a British colony, or the home of a future division of the British race. They knew their labours to be imperilled by the questionable specimens of Europeans already settled in the islands, and they dreaded that their entire work of evangelization would be ruined by British colonisation. So indeed it proved, or almost so. But these things were still in the womb of time. Meanwhile, these excellent, if mistaken, men dreamed of a Maori theocracy, where the missionaries would supersede the tohungas, or Maori priests, raise the whole people to a higher level, and create within them a new life.

Acting in that self-assumed capacity, so far from encouraging revolt, Henry Williams sought to guide and page 44disarm the rebel chiefs who lately threatened British ascendency. The heart of the old naval officer was loyal to the old flag, and he must have felt a sharp pang when that strangest of charges was made. The incident is notable only as revealing the beginning of Grey's animosity against Williams.