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Life of Sir George Grey: Governor, High commissioner, and Premier. An Historical Biography.

The Missionaries' Land Purchases

page 47

The Missionaries' Land Purchases.

The missionaries had immediately adopted the practice sanctioned by the Government of New South Wales. In order to provide for their children they had proposed to the Church Missionary Society, which had hitherto granted a lump sum in satisfaction of all demands, that it should purchase for each child of a missionary 200 acres. The Society agreed, but annexed conditions that made the proposal unacceptable to the missionaries. They then decided to purchase land on their own account and place their children on it as they grew up. The Society did not disapprove of the practice, and the Bishop of Australia, then their diocesan, openly countenanced it. At the same time he gave them wise counsel. Let them provide for their children, and a blessing attend them, but let them reserve no land for their own use. Not otherwise could they escape aspersions.

Aspersions had already been made, and by one who fought without the gloves. When he was in England in 1840 Grey may, probably must, have seen four published letters addressed to Lord Durham by a famous Australian Presbyterian, John Dunmore Lang. Dr. Lang had touched at New Zealand on his way to England in 1839. He had kept his eyes open, and when he arrived in England, he told what he had seen. He asserted that the missionaries, especially the agents of the Church Missionary Society, had been the "principals in the grand conspiracy of the European inhabitants to rob and plunder the natives of their land," and that their systematic practice was "one of the grossest breaches of trust witnessed for a century past." It was a scathing indictment, and matters were still worse than Lang had made out. It was Anglican missionaries whose misdeeds he had heard of at the Bay of Islands, but, further south, missionaries of the other denominations had carried it to perilous lengths. The same pretext that induced the Anglicans to make extensive purchases induced the Rev. Richard Taylor, so creditably known in the literature relating to New Zealand, to purchase 50,000 acres.

page 48

Two things strike one in connection with the matter. Where did men who were presumably poor procure the money for making such extensive purchases? Mr. Taylor paid £681 for his 50,000 acres; Mr. Fairbnrn paid £923 for his 40,000. They must have borrowed the money. That is, they engaged, through the ordinary channels, in land speculations. Were such speculations consistent with their professional character?

Next, the missionaries estimated the value of land at five shillings the acre. This is shown by their proposal that, instead of giving their children at fifteen years old a final gift of £50, the Society should buy for them 200 acres. It was also the estimate adhered to by the Government commissioners. At that rate Mr. Fairburn would have paid a sum of £10,000 instead of less than £1,000, and Mr. Taylor £12,500 instead of less than £700. And what was the money value of the tools, etc., Mr. Williams gave for his thousands of acres?

Williams never surrendered the lands he had so easily acquired. In his heated controversy with the Governor, the Bishop (who sided with the Governor), and the Church Missionary Society he took high ground. He demanded that the Governor's grave charges should "be either fully established or fully and honourably withdrawn." They seem to have been sufficiently established by the mere enumeration of the lands owned by Williams's sons—almost the only fertile lands in the beautiful but barren and unproductive Bay of Islands. Withdrawn they never were, unless a friendly visit to the Bay of Islands during Grey's second term as Governor of New Zealand be considered such. The historians have taken sides with Williams. Not only his son-in-law, the scholar Carleton (who used to cite Aeschylus in the House of Eepresentatives, where there was no Sheridan to check him) in a biography of his father-in-law and in a special vindication, but the historian of the Church of England in New Zealand, the good Dean Jacobs; the historian of New Zealand, the Draconian Rusden; and the biographer of Wakefield, the all-accomplished and impartial Dr. Garnett, have with one accord set themselves page 49to laud and justify the brave old missionary. Two demurrers may be entered. First, let the unbiased reader peruse in the Parliamentary Papers the list of articles given by Williams in exchange for the tracts of land he purchased from the Maoris. It compares favourably with the collection of looking-glasses and Jew's harps given by William Wakefield for his alleged purchases, but it is still edifying. Next, let him remember that some of Williams's sons are among the largest landholders in New Zealand.