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Letter I.

On the Character and Influence of the Present European Population of New Zealand, as Regards the Aborigines.

Having been residing, as a minister of religion, in the colony of New South Wales for the last sixteen years, with the exception of the time I have occupied during that period in several voyages to England, my attention has been much directed for a series of years past to the condition and prospects of the native inhabitants of the numerous islands of the Southern Pacific, and especially of the large island, or rather group of islands, known under the name of New Zealand. The commercial intercourse between that island and the Australian Colonies has, during the last few years, as your Lordship is doubtless well aware, been both frequent and intimate; and the Australian colonists have thus acquired much practical knowledge of its general resources and capabilities. I have only myself, I confess, been once at New Zealand, having touched at that island for a few days in the months of January and February last, on my fifth voyage from New South Wales to England by way of Cape Horn; but I have thus been enabled to ascertain, by personal observation, the accuracy of much of the information I had previously received respecting the island generally through the testimony of others; to correct the erroneous impressions relative to its soil and climate, and the character and condition of its aboriginal inhabitants, page 2 which had been made upon my own mind at a distance; and to deduce those inferences and conclusions,—in regard to what is really practicable, and what ought decidedly to be done, forthwith, by Her Majesty's Government, for the preservation of a numerous and most interesting race of Aborigines, as well as for the advancement of the maritime power of Britain, and the extension of her colonial empire—which I do myself the honour to submit to your Lordship in the following pages.

There has always been more or less communication between New Zealand and the colonies of New South Wales and Van Dieman's Land since the first establishment of these Colonies; potatoes and pork, obtained in barter from the natives for articles of European produce, being for a long time the only articles imported from that island into Sydney and Hobart Town. Of late, however, the splendid harbours of the island, and especially the Bay of Islands, situated on the east coast, near its northern extremity, have been the favourite resort of the numerous British, Colonial, American, and French whalers of the Southern Pacific; while European establishments have, during the last few years, been forming from time to time by the merchants of New South Wales and Van Dieman's Land, along the numerous bays and roadsteads to the southward, for the Right or Black Whale Fishery; as well as for the purchase of dressed flax and the other articles above-mentioned from the natives. The valuable timber of the island, and the facility of procuring it with the assistance of native labour, have also led to the recent formation of various establishments for the cutting of timber along the banks of its navigable streams; and the demand for European labour, which has thus been created in various departments of industry, has already attracted a considerable number of European labourers, sawyers, and mechanics to the island, and induced them to make it the place of their permanent abode. The resort of the South Sea whalers to the Bay of Islands, the existence of a considerable European population in the neighbourhood of that Bay, and the artificial wants of the natives, have naturally led to the establishment of page 3 various reputable persons in the capacity of merchants or traders in that vicinity; as also to the settlement of a swarm of individuals from the two penal colonies, of a very different description, as retail dealers, grog-sellers, and panderers to the worst vices of the most abandoned of men. There is thus, in addition to the crews of the numerous whalers and colonial traders frequenting the coast, a considerable European population, not merely residing temporarily, but actually settled in New Zealand, chiefly towards the northern extremity of the land.

Of the character of this European population, now permanently settled in New Zealand, it is scarcely necessary to inform your Lordship. With a few honourable exceptions, it consists of the veriest refuse of civilized society—of runaway sailors, of runaway convicts, of convicts who have served out their term of bondage in one or other of the two penal colonies, of fraudulent debtors who have escaped from their creditors in Sydney or Hobart Town, or of needy adventurers from the two colonies, almost equally unprincipled. In conjunction with the whalers that occasionally visit the coast, the influence of these individuals on the natives is demoralizing in the extreme. Their usual articles of barter are either muskets and gunpowder, or tobacco and rum. Most of them live in open concubinage or adultery with native women, and the scenes of outrageous licentiousness and debauchery that are ever and anon occurring on their premises are often sufficiently revolting to excite the reprobation and disgust of the natives themselves.

I happened to be crossing the Bay of Islands in a boat, on the evening of Saturday the 2nd February last, with a fellow-countryman of my own, who has long been settled in that vicinity, and I am happy to add, as the husband of a virtuous wife, and the father of a most interesting family, when the sound of music and dancing attracted my attention; the sound of a drum, of a French horn, and a fiddle being distinctly audible in the distance. "It is on board one of the two American whalers that arrived to-day," observed my intelligent friend; "they are both page 4 temperance ships, but I know well from past experience, they are both by this time full of native women for the worst of purposes." In the village of Kororadika, adjoining the outer anchorage ground in the Bay of Islands, I observed three or four public-houses of the vilest character, close to the native village in that part of the Bay; the unfortunate inhabitants of which are thus exposed, without hope of escape, to the worst possible influence and example; while at the mouth of the Kauakaua River, near the inner anchorage ground, I also observed a whole group of English public-houses of the most infamous description, close to another native Pa, or fortified village, which, during a late war in the island, contained upwards of fifteen hundred fighting men, besides women and children.

That scenes of outrageous violence, injustice and oppression should be perpetually recurring in a community composed of such materials, is naturally to be expected. The master of a French whaler lately shipped two or three English sailors at the Bay of Islands; but during his stay in that port the latter had run up a considerable account for ardent spirits in the house of one of the publicans at Kororadika, who, I was credibly informed, make it their business to entice sailors away from their ships for this very purpose. This account the French shipmaster refusing to pay, the publican forcibly seized and detained one of his whaleboats for payment; and when the English agent of the whaler went to demand the restitution of the boat in the name of the owners of the vessel, he was threatened with a personal assault in the most brutal and revolting terms, and had consequently to desist from his attempt. The Frenchman had, of course, to put to sea without his boat—a very serious loss indeed to a whaler. There happened, however, to be a French ship of war at the Bay some time afterwards, the captain of which, on being informed of the circumstance by the English agent, immediately obtained the requisite redress, by letting the publican know, through one of his officers, that if he did not send the full price of the whaleboat by a certain hour, he would drag him, house and all, into the sea.

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Mr. P., the author of a recent publication on New Zealand, and the brother of a wealthy emancipist auctioneer in the town of Sydney, endeavoured some time ago to set up an additional grog-shop in the village of Kororadika; but the publicans who had already obtained a monopoly of the business, conceiving he would injure their trade, actually threatened to hang him up upon the spot, and had even made preparations for the erection of the gibbet, when Mr. P. deemed it prudent to abandon his project.

In short, Lynch law is at present the only law among the numerous Europeans in New Zealand; there being no authority to appeal to in the island, and no redress procurable for the most atrocious injuries but by an appeal to physical force. A few weeks before the period of my visit to the island, a European had been tarred and feathered by some of his countrymen, for some misdemeanour, either real or imaginary; and another had been tied up to a tree and flogged, and was afterwards compelled to sign a note acknowledging that he had not only received the flogging, but that he richly deserved it. The note was demanded under the idea that it would secure the flagellators against all legal consequences.

It may doubtless be urged, in reference to these observations, that there is a British Resident in New Zealand, with a salary of £500 per annum from the Colonial Revenue of New South Wales, with liberty to draw for £200 more for presents to the native chiefs. That salary, my Lord, or rather the principle on which it is allowed—viz., for services performed out of the colony, and not for the colonists,—is universally regarded as a prodigious grievance in New South Wales; and I am sure your Lordship will allow it is a most unnecessary cause of offence to a really loyal and important colony. But from whatever source the salary of the office of British Resident in New Zealand should be derived in future, I cannot help remarking that the office itself has hitherto been totally useless; the Resident having no authority to enforce the observance of any law, no power to support his office by the punishment of offences, page 6 however atrocious, and no employment whatever that I could possibly ascertain, but that of standing sentinel upon the British ensign, which is hoisted close to his residence on one of the headlands of the Bay of Islands; and which I cannot help adding, is actually dishonoured by the prevalence of outrageous lawlessness, injustice, and oppression around the spot where it idly floats.

It may also be urged, as it has repeatedly been already in this country, that the government of New Zealand is in the hands of the native chiefs, and that it rests entirely with these chiefs to establish a system of equal laws both for natives and Europeans. But it is worse than idle,—it is actually dishonest,—to use such language to Her Majesty's Government and the British public; and it can only be used (I mean by individuals at all acquainted with the real circumstances of the case) for the express purpose of deceiving either the Government or the public, if not both. If New Zealand had, like many of the islands of the Pacific to the northward, been under the government of five or even ten powerful chiefs, having each supreme authority in his own territory, I should have been the last to recommend any interference with that authority on the part of any civilized nation. But the whole inhabited territory of the New Zealand group of islands, as is well known in New South Wales, is parcelled out among innumerable chiefs, each of whom is independent of every other. The authority of these chiefs, moreover, like that of the chiefs among the ancient Germans, according to the historian Tacitus, is recognised only in time of war; and they have no personal property in the soil distinct from that of every Rangatira or freeman of their respective tribes, insomuch that when any particular tract of land is sold by any particular native, the probability is that there will be a number of other natives claiming an equal right to it with the one who has sold it. Nay, so far from being able to establish and to support a regular government on European principles, the New Zealanders are actually unable to protect their own patrimonial territories from the grasp of European page 7 rapacity, even when practised by unaccredited individuals, acting without the sanction of any Government whatever. It is the obvious interest, however, of such individuals to speak with great deference of the New Zealand chiefs,—of their being the heads of an independent nation, and of their ability to form a government on European principles for their own territory; for so long as such ideas are entertained in England, they will be enabled to rob the natives of their land unquestioned and unobserved, under the pretext of having bought and paid for it; and to produce regular deeds of sale and purchase, on some future convenient opportunity, for lordships as extensive as those of the Percys and the Howards.

In short, the New Zealanders can only be regarded as mere children, incapable of managing their own property, except through the agency of some liberal, enlightened, and Christian Government, acting as their trustee; and I beg to assure your Lordship, that unless some such Government interfere speedily on their behalf, by the establishment of a system of general guardianship for the protection of the natives on the one hand, and the enactment of equal laws, both for natives and Europeans on the other, there is no prospect for the New Zealand nation but that of gradual demoralization and speedy extinction. From the causes that are now in operation, chiefly through their intercourse with Europeans, the number of the natives, for a large extent of country around the Bay of Islands, as well as for a considerable distance to the northward and southward of that Bay, has been diminished at least one-half, during the last fifteen years; and it is the opinion of the most respectable Europeans on the spot, that if the present system is allowed to continue much longer, the period of their final extinction, in the northern division of the northern island, cannot be far distant.

This consummation, so strongly to be deprecated by every genuine philanthropist, is likely, my Lord, to be indefinitely accelerated by the prevalence of a system which has recently come into operation in New Zealand, and which is at present acted upon in that island to an extent of which your Lordship page 8 and the British public can have no conception:—a system, moreover, which it is alike the interest and the bounden duty of the British Government, as the great colonizing power of modern Europe, and the natural protector of the aborigines of every land to which the all-pervading commerce of Great Britain extends, to put a stop to immediately.

The unexpected and truly splendid results of the land-selling and immigration system in New South Wales, very speedily called into existence a class of persons in that Colony who were known by the name of Land Sharks, and who made it their business to attend all Government sales of land, for the purpose of jobbing in the article, and especially of extorting money from newly-arrived immigrants, or other bona fide intending purchasers of land, by pretending that they were desirous of purchasing the very lands which the latter had selected, and threatening to bid them up to an exorbitant price for their selections, unless they were paid a certain amount of hush-money. Now as persons of this class have not only been enabled to ascertain the real value of waste land in the colonies of New South Wales, Van Dieman's Land, and South Australia, through the working of the admirable system now in operation for the disposal of such land in these Colonies, but have been somewhat cramped and counteracted of late in their nefarious operations by the judicious regulations of the Local Governments in these settlements; they have turned their eyes all at once to New Zealand, where there is no minimum price of land established under the sanction of any Government, and where extensive tracts of the first quality can at present be purchased from the ignorant and deluded natives for the merest trifle. In this way, tracts of eligible land, of sufficient extent to constitute whole earldoms in England, have already been acquired in New Zealand, by the merest adventurers,—by men who had arrived in that island without a shilling in their pockets, but who had bad influence enough to obtain credit for a few English muskets, a few barrels of gunpowder, a few bundles of slops, or a few kegs of rum or page 9 tobacco in Sydney or Hobart Town. And thus, my Lord, after being despoiled of their pigs and potatoes, and their other articles of native produce, in pretended barter for the veriest trifles, the poor natives, who, your Lordship and the British public have been told again and again, are capable of establishing a regular Government of their own, are at length wheedled out of their land,—their only remaining possession,—and reduced at once to a state of hopeless poverty and moral degradation. One of the most extensive purchasers of land in New Zealand, at the period of my visit to the Bay of Islands, in January last, was a person of the name of White, who had formerly been a Wesleyan missionary at Hokianga, on the west coast, but had been dismissed from his society for immorality. This reputable individual is now a merchant of the highest caste, and one of the largest proprietors of land (purchased, of course, in the way I have mentioned), at the Hokianga and Kaiparra rivers in New Zealand.

It is absolutely distressing, my Lord, to observe the effects which this system of unprincipled rapacity is already producing upon the truly unfortunate natives of New Zealand, in conjunction with the other sources of demoralization to which I have already alluded. The more intelligent of the natives perceive and acknowledge their unfortunate condition in these respects themselves; but they are spell-bound, as it were, and cannot resist the temptation to which the offer of articles of European produce and manufacture infallibly exposes them. Like mere children, they will give all they are worth to-day for the trinket or gew-gaw, which they will sell for the veriest trifle to-morrow. Pomare,^* an intelligent native chief, who speaks tolerably good page 10 English, but who has already alienated the greater part of his valuable land in the neighbourhood of the Bay of Islands, observed to one of my fellow-voyagers: "Englishmen give us blankets, powder, and iron-pots, for our land; but we soon blow away the powder, the iron-pots get broken, and the blankets wear out; but the land never blows away, or wears out." The master of the vessel, in which I have just returned to England, had resided for a considerable time in the Bay of Islands, about eight or ten years ago, as the master of an English whaler, and page 11 was consequently well known to the natives in that part of the island. Oil going ashore at the village of Kororadika, the day after we had cast anchor, he called at the house of a native chief, of the name of Riva, with whom he had formerly been well acquainted, and asked him how he had not come on board his ship, to welcome him, as he used to do, when he heard of his arrival in the Bay. "I was ashamed to go," replied the noble-minded, but unfortunate chief, "because I had no present to offer you. Formerly, when I went to see my friends, I always carried them a present of pigs or potatoes; but I am a poor man now. I have sold all my land, and I have nothing to give my friends." Riva is as fine a looking man as I have ever seen; tall, muscular, and athletic; with an expression of kindliness on his open countenance, which it is impossible to mistake, notwithstanding the tattooing with which it is disfigured. But his poverty, my Lord, is not the worst feature in his present circumstances. Having no land to reside on, as he formerly had, at some distance from the Bay, he is compelled to take up his permanent residence in the village of Kororadika, among the lawless crews of the English, French, and American whalers that frequent the port; his daughter, one of the handsomest native women I have seen, being actually living, at the time I visited the island, in open concubinage with a civilized brute, who commands an English whaler out of London, and who, I was credibly informed, has a wife and children in this city.

But one of the most fruitful sources of extensive misery and depopulation in the islands of New Zealand is, the wars to which the demoralizing intercourse of the natives with worthless Europeans has incidentally given rise. About eighteen months ago the ship Roslyn Castle, in which I have just returned to England from New South Wales, belonged to an emancipist mercantile house, which has since become bankrupt in that Colony, of the name of L. and W., and was employed as a whaler, out of the port of Sydney, on the coast of New Zealand. Touching for supplies at the Bay of Islands, either page 12 the master, or one of the officers, secreted on board and carried off to sea a native woman of some note, belonging to the Pa, or fortified native village, at the mouth of the Kauakaua River. The natives of that village, not being aware of the fact, accused the natives of Kororadika, about two miles distant, of having killed and eaten the woman, in consequence of some old feud; and although the latter repelled the accusation with an indignant denial, a war between the two villages was the result, each party being enabled to assemble, from the tribes in the neighbourhood, in alliance with one or other, about fifteen hundred fighting men. The war continued between four and five months, and, during its continuance, not fewer than eighty of the unfortunate natives were killed.

But injuries of this kind, on the part of worthless Europeans, are of perpetual occurrence on the coast of New Zealand, and will certainly continue to be perpetrated upon the helpless natives till a Christian and energetic Government is established in the island, under the auspices of Great Britain. During my stay at the Bay of Islands, I saw a native woman, who had been brought down to the Bay, by a French whaler, from the South Cape, about eight hundred miles distant, and who had, in all likelihood, been got on board the whaler in some clandestine manner. But if there were a regular and energetic Government established in the island, such outrages, with all the disastrous consequences to which they lead, would either be altogether prevented, or would easily be effectually punished, by whomsoever committed. If such a Government, for instance, had seized and detained the French whaler, till he had found security for defraying the full expense of re-conveying the native woman to her own tribe and vicinage, the probability is that no whaler of any nation would have dared thereafter to perpetrate such an outrage upon the defenceless natives, on any part of the coast.

A person of the name of Harwood, the master of a colonial schooner, called the Lord Rodney, belonging to the mercantile house of Cooper and Holt, in Sydney, was lying with his vessel page 13 some time ago in Port Nicholson, at the eastern entrance of Cook's Straits, when a large tribe of natives in that neighbourhood, amounting to about 800 souls, and pretending that they were afraid of an attack from another tribe in the vicinity, offered to charter his vessel to convey them all to Chatham Island—a large and fertile island to the eastward of New Zealand, situated on the 44th parallel of south latitude, and famous for its excellent potatoes. Harwood accepted their offer on the part of his owners, agreeing to receive payment in pigs and potatoes, and accordingly conveyed the whole tribe, with all their movable property, at two trips, to Chatham Island; although he could not but know that the real object of the New Zealanders was a predatory and murderous expedition against the peaceful and defenceless natives of that island—whose property and provisions they accordingly seized on their arrival, reserving themselves as a standby, in the event of a scarcity of food. Shortly thereafter, a Scotchman of the name of Roberton who had been in the patriot service under Lord Cochrane, on the coast of South America, and who was then the master of a colonial trader, from Van Dieman's Land, touched at Chatham Island, and induced several of the New Zealanders from Port Nicholson to go on board his vessel, to assist in working her back to Van Dieman's Land, as he was short handed, promising to restore them to their countrymen on that island within a certain time. The New Zealanders were urgent on this point, and told Captain Roberton that if their countrymen were not brought back to them by the time appointed, they would massacre the whole crew of the first vessel that should touch at the island. On his arrival in Van Dieman's Land, the New Zealanders went on shore, and Captain Roberton states, that when he was again ready for sea, he applied to the police of that colony, and even to the Governor himself, informing them of the conditions on which he had taken the New Zealanders on board his vessel at Chatham Island, and of the threat which their countrymen had held out in the event of their not been taken back to the island at the time appointed, page 14 requesting the interference of the Government to enable him to get the New Zealanders on board his vessel. But the authorities of Van Dieman's Land having informed Captain R. that, as the New Zealanders had arrived in the colony as free persons, they could not compel them to go on board any vessel against their will, he was obliged to put to sea again without them.

In the meantime, the day appointed for the return of the New Zealanders to Chatham Island arrived; but as they were not forthcoming, their countrymen prepared to carry into effect their murderous threat on the first vessel that should touch at the island. The first European vessel that happened to touch at Chatham Island, in these circumstances, was the Jean Bart, a French whaler, the master of which, a respectable young man from Havre de Grace, had shortly before committed suicide, in a fit of temporary insanity, at the Bay of Islands. Watching their opportunity, therefore, the New Zealanders rose upon the crew of this unfortunate vessel, when off their guard, murdered every one of them, amounting to forty persons in all, and afterwards set fire to the vessel.

The tidings of this massacre were brought to the Bay of Islands by an American whaler, which had touched at Chatham Island shortly after it took place; and as the French corvette, L'Heroine, Captain Cecille, was then at anchor in the bay, Captain C. immediately set sail for Chatham Island, to punish the murderers. This, it seems, he did effectually, by exterminating the whole of the New Zealanders on the island, leaving the miserable remnant of the Aborigines in quiet possession of their native isle. The whole of this frightful tragedy was enacted towards the close of the past year.

But although all the wars of the New Zealanders are by no means the result of the intervention of Europeans, it is remarkable with what tact and ingenuity the Europeans, resident on the island, uniformly improve them to their own personal advantage, whatever be their issue. Towards the close of the year 1838, about a hundred fighting men of one of the tribes in the neighbourhood of the Bay of Islands, went on a predatory page 15 excursion to Barrier Island, at the mouth of the River Thames, about 120 miles to the southward, on the east coast. Barrier Island is about forty miles long, very fertile, but thinly inhabited. The interlopers from the Bay of Islands having, therefore, billeted themselves on the peaceful and unoffending natives of that island, the latter sent private information of the circumstance to the chiefs on the banks of the River Thames, on the mainland, with whom they were on terms of friendship, and who accordingly assembled in great force to give battle to the interlopers. The latter, it seems, although fewer in number, were better acquainted with the use of firearms than their countrymen to the southward, and there were accordingly upwards of twenty of the chiefs of the Thames River shot in the fight that ensued, besides many natives of inferior standing. The fight had evidently been very sanguinary, for the Bay of Island natives, who had in the meantime nearly exterminated the natives of Barrier Island, were themselves reduced to thirty men, and were glad to embrace the opportunity of a small coasting vessel, bound to the Bay of Islands with pork and potatoes, to return to that neighbourhood. The little vessel arrived in the Bay on the 2nd of February last, having landed the thirty natives on the coast, to walk overland to the Bay.

In these circumstances, it became a matter of question, as well as of considerable interest, among the land-jobbers at the Bay of Islands, to whom Barrier Island belonged. One of them informed me himself, that he was intending to proceed to the River Thames by the first opportunity, to purchase it from the natives; that is, to purchase a beautiful island, forty miles in length, and containing one or more good harbours for large ships, from the miserable remnant of its native inhabitants, immediately after a bloody war, in which the latter had been all but exterminated. But Pomare, the chief I have already mentioned, had, in the mean time, laid claim to the island, and had offered to sell it to another European at the Bay, as being his by right of conquest; the natives from the Bay of Islands, page 16 who had been concerned in effecting the work of extermination on Barrier Island, being of his tribe and district.

It will thus, I trust, be evident to your Lordship, that the influence exerted on the unfortunate natives of New Zealand by the Europeans at present residing on that island, as well as by the numerous whalers and colonial traders that occasionally visit its coasts, is demoralizing in the extreme, and must infallibly issue in their speedy extinction. European vice and European disease are thinning their ranks with lamentable and incredible rapidity, insomuch that the natives themselves perceive and acknowledge it. "Give me a double-barrelled gun, to keep me in mind of you when you are gone," said the chief Pomare to the captain of the vessel in which I have just returned to England, while taking his leave of him, on the eve of our sailing : "but of what use would it be to us ?" added Pomare, "for we are all dying, and we shall all be dead by-and-bye." This process, my Lord, will be accelerated tenfold, if the nefarious arts that are now so extensively in operation among the European inhabitants of the island, for the purpose of robbing the natives of their valuable land, are allowed to be continued. For when a native disposes of a portion of his land to a European, the probability is, that the portion he retains becomes of no use to him in his own estimation, and he is, therefore, virtually compelled to sell it also; for in all probability, and perhaps for the express purpose of realizing such a result, the European puts cattle on his purchase; these, of course, trespass on the native's land, as there are no fences in the country, and destroy his corn and potatoes; and the unfortunate New Zealander either disposes of his remaining land in disgust, for the merest trifle, and migrates to the interior, or sets himself down, with his family, close to some European anchorage ground, to live on roots and shell-fish, and to obtain a miserable livelihood by maintaining a precarious and disgraceful intercourse with worthless Europeans.

It is thus, my Lord, that one of the finest Aboriginal races page 17 on the surface of the globe is fast disappearing from the face of the earth. It is impossible, however, that Her Majesty's liberal and enlightened (and shall I not be permitted to add Christian) Government can long remain an indifferent spectator of such a consummation. The state of things I have endeavoured to describe has in no respect been brought about by the New Zealanders themselves. It has been the natural result of the extension of British commerce, and the planting of two British penal colonies on the adjacent coast of New Holland and Van Dieman's Land. It has been the corollary, so to speak, of the land-selling and immigration system of New South Wales. In such circumstances, I conceive, my Lord, Her Majesty's Government must interfere, as well for the vindication of its own high character in the civilized world, as for the sake of injured and outraged humanity, by placing itself, as it were, "between the living and the dead, that the plague may be stayed."