The Cause of the War.

We have, I think, seen then, Sir, that, with one exception, one of the "Charges" made against the New Zealand Colonists by the Honorable Members for Taunton and Maidstone, and by those political and Exeter Hall sections of your community whom they represent, have the slightest foundation in fact. What they allege to be the"Causes" of the War are not the Causes. The War springs, fundamentally, from the fact that for five and twenty years your Colonial Office, incited by your Utopian Missionary and Aborigines-Protection Societies, has so coaxed and coddled the Maori, so truckled to every "whim" of this vicious, turbulent Child, that he would now fain be Master. With one brilliant exception at the Waitara, the history of the government of New Zealand from the day when your first Governor hoisted the British Flag, down to the exploits of your present Governor and his feather bed for Prisoners of War, is the humiliating history of the civilised Man "kotoing" to the Savage.

Ponder on a few illustrations. At Wairau, the Maori slaughters two of your Queen's Magistrates in cold blood— page 35 he grants your Missionary-Colonial Office^* Governor an interview therein—His Excellency hopes he wont murder Queen's Magistrates again, shakes hands, and bows himself off—whereupon, the chuckling Maori proclaims His Excellency to the Tribes as "He Paukena, te Pakeha," this Governor is soft—a mere pumpkin. At Taranaki your Law Officer, specially appointed by the Crown, judicially pronounces, after a solemn investigation in open Court, that the Maori has sold and been fully paid for a certain 50,000 acres of unused, wild land, and will not be paid again—whereupon, the Maori rushes to his arms, threatens to destroy the Settlement, and drive its people into the sea—your Missionary Midas hurries to the spot; and, for the moment, pacifies the Savage by tearing up the "Judgement of the Court" and by giving him back every acre he had sold. At Korouareka, Heké, a shining missionary convert, had waxed strong and saucy by bartering his pigs and slave girls with the lawless whalers for powder and guns—the Custom House came and crippled this Trade—Heké's ultimatum was "remove your Custom House or I burn down your Town"—instantly, your Governor and his Missionary-Officials^† swept away every Custom

^* It was about this time that the Colonial Office, seized with what has been termed its "pious fit," commenced that anti-emigration alliance with Missionary Societies, Aborigines-Protection Societies, and Exeter Hall, which it maintained for so many years, and which proved so disastrous to both races in New Zealand. Indeed, from 1830 up to 1850 ex 55, the Colonial Office received its inspirations from these bodies, and its true designative style and title during this period should have been the Missionary-Colonial Office .—Hursthouse's New Zealand, the "Britain of the South."

^† Missionary-Officials.—This term is used to signify, generally, the gentlemen who, as advising amateurs or actually salary-receiving officers, constituted the executive governments of Captains Hobson and Fitzroy. Every missionary was not an official, and every official was not a missionary. But they all echoed and typified the missionary policy of the Colonial Office, and were all deeply imbued with the "missionary spirit." This spirit notoriously ruled the councils of the two first governors. Captain Hobson had been accredited to the missionaries; missionaries framed the Waitangi Treaty; the original draft is in the handwriting of a missionary; and Governor Fitzroy was far more a missionary ruler than even Governor Hobson. Indeed, Capt, Fitzroy's bosom counsellor was a missionary catechist, a gunmaker by trade, who had been turned into what was called "Protector of Aborigines," a Mr. Clark, to whom he once paid the dubious compliment of publicly declaring that he. Mr. Protector Clark, was worth any six of his other officers put together.—Hursthouse's New Zealand, the "Britain of the South."

page 36 House in New Zealand by stroke of pen, and sought to replace the public revenue of an infant Colony just emerging from the "Bush" by a property tax and a tax on rooms of houses! (¹²) At Wellington, Te Rauparaha, the cannibal Napoleon of Cook's Straits, a wily ruffian who had abetted the murderers of the Queen's Magistrates at Wairau, was taken prisoner in rebel War—Sir George Grey, "on hospitable thoughts intent," was entertaining him at Auckland—but Te Whero Whero, he who afterwards became the first puppet King set up by the present Rebels, invited Sir George to release and give up his prisoner-guest to him—royal invitations are commands—Sir George obeyed. Te Rauparaha visited Te Whero Whero, and then leisurely journeyed home—publishing to the Tribes, en passant, that in this third august Representative of the British Crow, as in the second, there was only a "Paukena"—a sort pumpkin, a figure of straw.

These are specimens, patent to all men, of that more public Policy which your Colonial-Office-and-Missionary Government has ever pursued towards the Maori. To count the more private cases where in the quarter of a century's intercourse between the Races your despotic au- page 37 thorities, moved by maudlin tenderness for the Pet of Exeter Hall, have winked at his insolent aggressions, and suffered even their own Magistrate to become his laughing stock,—would be to count the leaves in Spring.

Can we wonder, then, that such a Race as the New Zealanders, so dealt with—a Race, mentally, of turbulent Children so humoured for more than twenty years—should refrain from seeking to gratify any "Whim," any "Caprice," by which they might become possessed?

Long before any King-Movement noise among them had roused your drowsy Colonial-Office Officials at Auckland, close observers of the Maori had seen that a "Whim," a "Caprice," had seized him on which, sooner or later, he would act. The Maori's beau ideal of Colonization is half-a-dozen petty White-Man Settlements dominated by Maori Pahs, where, as Store-keepers, we shall barter guns and powder, blankets and tobacco, sugar and flour, with him for pigs and poultry, firewood and garden stuff, and something else. To him, a Settlement is a Shop; and as our early Settlements in New Zealand were little other than Shops, he welcomed them. By degrees, however, our Settlements grew—every year brought more and more of the White Man's ships—fresh Lands were acquired—axe and plough were heard in the wilderness where, before, no sound had broke the solemn stillness save the Kaka's scream—and the Missionary and the Pakeha Maori,^* ever hostile

^* Pakeha is the Native word for stranger or foreigner, and is the term used by the Maori to designate the Colonist. Pakeha-Maories consist, chiefly, of old Whalers and runaway Sailors, Australian Expinces, Sawyers and Pedling Traders, who have taken Native Concubines and left civilization for the hush: Gentlemen, for the most part, naturally opposed to Colonisation and its accompanying nonsense of Magistrates and Policemen.

page 38 to Colonists and Colonisation, had not failed to remind the Maori that when the White Man's Rat had grown numerous enough in the Land, it had utterly eaten up and annihilated the Rat of the Maori.^*

Not unnaturally perhaps, and prompted by those who should have known better, the inference drawn from these facts by certain of the less enlightened and more suspicious Tribes was that their existence as a Race, as free Wild Men of the Woods, depended mainly on their keeping down these annually increasing numbers of the White Man; and they fancied that the directest mode of doing this would be to prevent him from further widening his territory. Believing this, and contemptuous of mat fainéant Government, that official "wind bag" at Auckland, of which they had so long made mock, they banded together, and resolved, not only to sell no more Land to the European themselves, but to seek to exercise such a "terrorism" over other Tribes, or sections of Tribes, as should prevent the further sale of Land altogether.(¹³)

Seeing, however, with the cunning peculiar to their Race, that both among their own People and among such of the White men in "Ingarania" (England) as were represented by Missionary and Aborigines' Protection

^* With the exception of two or three small lizards, the Native Rat. (Kiore) not larger than the English Water-Rat, is the only indigenous four-footed creature found in New Zealand. This little creature, King-quadruped of the Country, has been all but annihilated, it is believed, by the Immigrant English Rat, which, like everything else introduced into New Zealand, has taken firm root in the Country, and which banquets on the wild provender of the Bush, rather than on the reaped provender of the Barns, in swarms. The Kiore is now so scarce that though I resided several years in New Zealand and am particularly fond of Natural History, I never succeeded in procuring a specimen.

page 39 Societies, they would draw to themselves far more sympathy and support, could they but show that it was not a greedy desire to play the Dog in the Manger about Land, or an oppressive desire to prevent others from doing what they deemed best with their Land, which had induced them to combine, they soon, ostensibly, changed their tactics and their "cry;" and impudently professed that it was their civil sufferings, their want of the White Man's Laws and Institutions, the anarchy and confusion reigning among them, which, at the last hour, had induced them to band together and advance to the brink of Revolt. And to give colour to this "after-thought" they changed the name of their cause from that of the "Land-League" to that of the "King-Movement," and sought to hide the trick under the banner of a puppet King.

Certain of your Philo-Maori men in England, certain' of our Philo-Maori men in the Colony—men having a horror of the plain and simple, men ever fumbling for the mare's nest, and believing in nothing save what is complicated, many-sided and hard to be understood—believe, or affect to believe, that this latter cause and motive for his Rebeldom, professed by the Maori, was the true cause. Dont listen to them. We have seen at page 14, that in the great, overriding, matter of Security of Life and Property, and in many of the most substantial fruits of Civilisation, the condition of the Maori, on the eve of his Revolt, was infinitely superior to that which he had ever enjoyed before; and was, indeed, one which would have contrasted not unfavourably with that enjoyed by millions of our People at-home; while if British Institutions and the symbols of civilized citizenship had not reached his Village, it was not because no attempt had page 40 been made by the Government to push them so far into the wilderness, but because when they were at his gate he himself would give them no admission.

Though in the present Eebel ranks half the combatants may be there from lust of plunder, and from their innate, weasel-like, appetite for blood, yet the original "Root Troubles" in Taranaki, which in their spread have now extended over the North Island, are wholly and solely attributable to a "Combination" on the part of certain Tribes to prevent, by violence and terrorism, the further advance of the White Man, the further victories of his Civilization, by preventing his further acquisition of Land.

Despite his bell-ringing and chapel-going, his letter-writing and speech-making—despite his twenty years' experience of the White Man's goodness, and of the gifts laid at his feet by Colonisation—the Maori Rebel is Child enough to believe, or to pretend to believe, that it is the Pakeha's sworn design to eat up the Maori just as the Pakeha-Rat ate up the Maori-Rat. Were his most trusted Missionary to tell him that New Zealand is big enough and rich enough to support ten millions of each Race in easy plenty, the Maori Rebel would call him a fool and a liar to his face. He is Animal enough to believe that the license of the Wilderness better than the fullness of the Corn-Field—that he can stay the great wave of Colonisation—that he can dictate to the Colonist "so far and no farther," and confine the White Man's twenty rising Settlements in the New Land to markets for pigs, and to Maori brothels and shops—to duplicates, in fact, of that most popular among the Natives of all our Settlements, Heké's foul stye of Kororareka—Kororareka, the old. "Alsatia" of the Pacific.