SOME PASSAGES IN THE HISTORY OF NEW ZEALAND.

Poetic attention in this country was directed for the first time to the colonization of New Zealand, on an extensive scale, in 1837. The islands of New Zealand and their inhabitants had continued, it is true, to engage a considerable share of the attention and intesest of the English public from the time of their discovery by Captain Cook. The accounts of the scientific companions of that great discoverer, incidental notices from South Sea whalers and -settlers in New South Wales subsequently to 1788, and more detailed narratives of missionary adventure since 1815, had awakened rather than satisfied curiosity. The prosperity of irregular settlers on the Hokianga and the Bay of Islands had stimulated English enterprise; and in 1825, a company for the purpose of setting on. foot a settlement in New Zealand was ferried. But no steps were taken by this body beyond the purchase of a tract of land from the Aborigines.

The movement in 1837 for the colonization of New Zealand had its origin in the proceedings of the Committee appointed by the House of Commons, in 1836, to investigate the modes of disposing of waste lands in the British Colonies. Mr. E. G. Wakefield, in Ins evidence before that Committee, spoke of New Zealand as a country extremely eligible for the purposes of British colonization, . provided some regular system should be adopted. This suggestion made a deep impression at the time upon Mr. Francis Baring, a member of the Committee, and, after the publication of the Committee's Report, on the minds of several gentlemen out of doors. After several meetings, these gentlemen associated themselves more formally, for the purpose of bringing the subject before the public and Parliament.

Having collected as much information respecting the actual state of New Zealand as was attainable at the time, the Society published a little book, containing the result of their inquiries, and developing the plan of a settlement in New Zealand. Their next step was to collect a number of persons' of some station, good education, and considerable property, who formed themselves into a distinct corn=unity, for the purposes of establishing themselves in New Zealand in the way proposed by the Society. An interview with Lord Melbourne was then applied for, in order to explain the Society's objects, and obtain the Premier's Sanction to the introduction of a bill for incorporating the mem4,1kara and conferring upon them powers necessary to carry *air scheme into effect. It was proposed on the part of the -Society, that "the founders of settlements in New Zealand" 'Should be constituted a Board of Commissioners by act of Parliament; and that they should have no pecuniary interest in the settlements, but merely act as trustees, under the superintendence of Parliament and the Colonial Office, for colonizing purposes. • Their scheme of colonization was intended to provide a vent for the redundant capital and population of this country, to facilitate the development of the natural resources of New Zealand, to protect the aborigines from the evil consequences to savage tribes which had uniformly attended European colonization, and to accelerate their, assimilation to the civilized settlers.

The Society's plan was favourably entertained by Lord Melbourne, and by Lord Howick, (who, though Secretary at War, appears to have paid more attention to colonies and colonization than any Member of the Ministry); and although at first opposed by Lord Glenelg, the Colonial Secretary, it ultimately received his approbation. Ministers, however, insisted that the Society should provide a certain subscribed capital, and instead of an act of Parlia

ment be satisfied with a royal charter of incorporation. This Proposal the members declined : assigning as their reasons, that

they believed, according to the modern law and practice of the constitution, a Parliamentary sanction was required to some of the provisions of the charter; and that they engaged in the undertaking solely from views of public benefit, with no motive of private gain. The Society's bill was brought into the House of Commons in the session of 1838; but opposed by the Government, and rejected. This opposition on the part of the Ministry to a scheme of which several of its members had deliberately expressed their approbation, was attributed at the time to the influence of the Church Missionary Society with the Colonial Office. The projectors of the systematic colonization of New Zealand Were too much in earnest to be diverted from their purpose by otte defeet; and the preparations of the intending colonists had been carried too far to admit of their drawing back without serious loss and inconvenience. Early in 1839, a New Zealand Land Company, with a large capital, was formed by the union of some members of the original Society with the intending colonists and the New Zealand Company of 1825. The object of this New Land Company was declared to be "the employment of capital in the purchase and resale of lands in New Zealand, and the promotion of emigration to that country." An application was made to the Marquis of Normanby, in March 1839, for a royal charter of incorporation, on the terms offered in 1837 by his predecessor Lord Glenelg: but this the new Secretary refused.

Still the intending founders of a colony in New Zealand were not diverted from their object. Adopting, or professing to adopt, the Government's view of the independence of New Zealand, they resolved to invest money in the purchase of lands there, and colonize those lands with British emigrants. They despatched a preliminary expedition, under the command of Colonel Wakefield, in April 1839, to purchase lands, to acquire general information, and to pave the way for the settlers. On the 16th day of September 1839, the first body of the Company's emigrants sailed in three ships from Gravesend. The circumstances of their departure were striking, and in many of the spectators awakened thoughts of the embarkation of "the Pilgrim Fathers" in the time of Charles the First. The Directors of the Company, having no belief in the existence of any settled government in New Zealand, had attempted to provide a substitute. With this view, they visited each ship in succession, to obtain from the emigrants a voluntary agreement to a simple but comprehensive system of regulations for the maintenance of order, and establishing a machinery for the administration and enforcement of British law. The articles were subscribed openly on the deck of each ship of the expedition, amid enthusiastic cheers and discharges of cannon.

A British Government in posse had, however, been already provided for New Zealand, while the Land Company were making their arrangements. From about the middle of December 1838, a correspondence had been in progress between the Foreign and Colonial Offices, the Admiralty and the Treasury, with a view to devise some method of establishing law and order in New Zealand. In August 1839, matters were so far advanced that Captain Hobson, R.N., received a commission as Consul and "eventual Lieutenant-Governor" of New Zealand, under the Governor of New South Wales, if he should succeed in obtaining the cession of the sovereignty of part of the islands to the British Crown. The agreement among the settlers was, of course, not followed up. The preliminary expedition of the New Zealand Company reached Cook's Straits in the month of August 1839. At the time of Colonel Wakefield's arrival, the British settlers in New Zealand scarcely amounted to 1,000 in all ; of whom about 500 were settled

in the Northern peninsula, and about as many on Cook's Straits, at Banks's Peninsula, or further South. The Church of England Missionaries had settlements at the Bay of Islands and a short way inland, and in the valley of the Thames. The Wesleyan Missionaries had stations on the Hokianga and Kaipara. In addition to the Missionaries, traders and wood-cutters, who might be regarded as settlers of some standing, the growing belief that the British Government contemplated a settlement in New Zealand had attracted a number of land-speculators from Sydney.

Colonel Wakefield experienced some attempts at obstruction from the Sydney land-speculators. Mr. Barrett and the more respectable whalers favoured his views, while others of their class tried to frustrate them. But the most strenuous opposition he experienced was from the Church Missionaries ; who despatched a vessel with one of their body for the purpose of prejudicing the Natives against the New Zealand Company, and obtaining a colourable right of preemption before Colonel Wakefield could effect any purchases. Colonel Wakefield was induced to select Cook's Straits as the scene of the Company's operations, partly by the superior eligibility of that district, partly by its remoteness from the irregular settlements in the North. He found the Natives attaching little value to their lands, and anxious to procure a share in the ,advantage which the Northern tribes had derived from traffic with the Whites who had settled among them. After deliberate and protracted negotiations with the chiefs of all the tribes on Cook's Straits, interrupted occasionally by the wayward passions of some a the more ferocious chiefs, and the jealousies which Sydney landspeculators, whalers, and missionaries, had instilled, Colonel Wakegeld obtained a formal cession, signed by all the principal chiefs, of the land on both sides of the Straits, as far North as a line drawn from Kawia to Point Turnagain, and as far South as the 43d parallel of South latitude. The emigrants who sailed from Gravesend in September 1839 were received at Port Nicholson with open arms by the Natives.

Consul and "eventual Lieutenant-Governor" Hobson reached Sydney nearly at the same time that the Company's first body of emigrants arrived at Port Nicholson. At Sydney, Captain Hobson was furnished by the Governor with a staff of civil officers and advances of money to commence operations. Thus provided, be arrived in the Bay of Islands about the end of January 1840.

Early in February, Captain Hobson met assemblies of the Natives at Waitangi (in the Bay of Islands) and Hokianga, and induced them to agree to the treaty which has been named after the former place. The Missionaries, and some of the gentlemen attached to Captain Hobson's civil staff by the Governor of New South Wales, were despatched to different parts of the islands to 'procure the adhesion of all the tribes ; but long before the signa-tures of that portion of the chiefs who eventually signed the treaty were obtained, the sovereignty of the British Crown over New Zealand was formally proclaimed by the Governor.

In little more than a month after his arrival in New Zealand, Governor Hobson suffered from a paralytic attack ; from which, there is reason to believe, he never entirely recovered. The government was carried on from that time till the arrival of Governor Fitzroy, in December 1843, by Mr. Shortland, the gentlemen from Sydney, and Mr. Clarke, a Missionary catechist, who had been appointed Protector of Aborigines. For the seat of government, Captain Hobson selected what is now Auckland; though there was not a single British settler there, and the place is distant 150 miles from the nearest Northern settlement, and 600 miles from the settlements in Cook's Straits. The limited means of the new Government rendered its influence, except for the collecting of customs. duties, entirely unfelt beyond its immediate neighbourhood. If the Auckland Government was ineffective in the Northern settlements, its influence was still less felt in the more distant settlements on Cook's Straits. For eight months the only visit the settlers of Wellington received from the authorities at Auckland was in the person of Mr. Shortland, the acting Colonial Secretary, sent with some soldiers and mounted police to suppress the Council chosen by the settlers to administer amongst themselves a substitute for law in the absence of a regular government. Mr. Shortland was received with obedience and submission by the settlers ; but the appearance of the soldiers left an impression on the minds of the Aborigines that the Queen's Government was hostile to the settlers, and that the latter were unwarlike.

Events bad occurred in Europe, subsequently to the depar ture of Governor Hobson, which materially modified the Home Government's views of New Zealand policy. The publica tion of Captain Hobson's instructions, containing a virtual disclaimer of British sovereignty in New Zealand, had roused the emulation of France to take part in the colonization of these islands. The precursors of a French penal settlement on Banks's Peninsula sailed from France in November 1839. Instructions were trans mitted to Sir George Gipps, to accelerate whatever measures might 'have been adopted for annexing the islands of New Zealand to the British Crown. They were barely in time. Major Bunbury had

proclaimed the sovereignty of England in the South and Middle Islands in June, and Lieutenant-Governor Hobson in the North bland a few weeks earlier; but the British flag was hoisted and British courts held for the first time at Akaroa by Captain Stanley, whom Sir George Gipps had despatched for that purpose, only/our /vs before the arrival of the French expedition. The danger of French interference in New Zealand roused the apprehensions of the great merchants and bankers of London. They AseM a meeting in Guildhall, on the 15th of April 1840, at which a petition to Parliament was proposed and carried, urging the adop tion of measures to preserve those islands to the British Crown. This petition was referred by the House of Commons to a Committee. A report favourable to the views of the petitioners was moved in the Committee by Mr. Hutt, and supported by Mr. Hope, now Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies ; but was rejected, through the influence of the official members—Lord Howick, Messrs. Vernon Smith and Robert Steuart. Though Government, however, obtained the suppression of this report, they appear to have acted on its suggestions. Lord John Russell (who had succeeded Lord Normanby as Colonial Secretary) showed, not long after, that he could appreciate the importance of the New Zealand Company as an instrument for accelerating the settlement of the new province. Negotiations were commenced, which terminated in November 1840 in the offer of a charter to the Company, on these main conditions,— the Company was to waive all claims to lands in New Zealand on the ground of purchases from the Aborigines, and was to receive from the Crown a free grant of four times as many acres as it could prove it had expended pounds sterling for the purposes of colonization. This offer was accepted. The charter was issued on the 12th of February 1841; the Company's capital fixed at 300,0001., whereof two-thirds were to be paid up within the year; and an accountant was named to investigate their expenditure.

The period to which the preceding narrative relates may be called the ante-colonial period of New Zealand history. The history Of New Zealand as a British colony may be held to commence from the proclamation of British sovereignty in the islands, by Captain Hobson, in May 1840. The islands continued a dependency of New South Wales till May 1841, when they were proclaimed a separate colony under an independent government. A few months before this event, Governor Hobson had established himself, with the Government-officers, at Auckland.

Under Governor Hobson, the community of New Zealand may be regarded as composed of three sections or parties. The first were the Aborigines ; to whom the appointment of a Protector, representing them at the seat of government, and assumed to speak their sentiments and assert their interests, gave the coherence and weight of a political party. Their representative maintained on their behalf—lst, That previously to the assumption of the sovereignty of New Zealand by the British Crown, the tribes or chiefs possessed an absolute right of sovereignty over the whole of the islands' and a perfect right of property in all the lands : 2d, That though the treaty of Waitangi had transferred the territorial sovereignty from the chiefs and tribes to the British Crown, it reserved to the Natives the privilege of being governed immediately by their own chiefs according to their old customs ;* and to the tribes and chiefs an absolute right of property in all the lands of the islands, which they could only alienate to the Crown. The second party was composed of the old settlers, lay and missionary, in the Northern parts of the North Island, and the adventurers who had been recently attracted thither by the prospect of its becoming a British dependency. Most of these claimed an absolute right of property in lands more or less extensive, which had been ceded to them before the proclamation of British sovereignty, by chiefs or tribes,. for considerations more or less valuable. The Missionaries had been gradually laying the foundation of such claims during their residence of a quarter-century in the land. So had the old* established wood-cutters on the Hokianga and in the vicinity of Wangaroa, and the traders of the Bay of Islands. The acquisitions of the lately-arrived adventurers were mere colourable transactions, which they hoped to induce the new Government to recognize.t But all these classes concurred in asserting that the land-rights to which they laid claim were absolute ; that Government, in justice, was bound to recognize them in full, equally with those of the Natives, on the ground of their having been already in existence at the establishment of British authority. The third party was composed of the settlers on Cook's Straits, and the New Zealand Company, from whom their land-titles were derived. Their claims rested on the Crown grant promised by Lord John Russell. Their views of the actual state of property in land in the islands, at first somewhat vague, have gradually assumed a more definite form, but have never materially varied. Before the establishment of British sovereignty, they had accepted from the Native tribes and chiefs such rights of property in land as they believed them capable of conveying. After the establishment of British sovereignty, they held that the property of all waste lands ought to vest in the Crown, to be administered for the common good. They believed that the Crown might either claim the wastes as a necessary appanage of sovereignty, or obtain a cession of whatever rights the Natives might claim in them' for a moderate equivalent ; but in either case, they maintained that the disposal of waste lands should be vested exclusively in the Crown. They further maintained, that in order to prevent the acquisition of tracts of land by individuals so large as to obstruct the progress of settlement and cultivation, the Crown should dispose of the waste lands by sale alone ; that the proceeds of the land-sales should be mainly devoted to providing a supply of immigrantlabour to the colony ; and that, as an act ofjustice to the Aborigines, a certain proportion of the waste lands should be reserved for their exclusive use in perpetuity.

In a wish to respect the interests of the Natives, the views of the

This view is utterly unsupported by any clause or word in the treaty. t The term land-srk, which has perhaps been rather indiscriminately used as a term of reproach, was originally invented to designate this elms. Its application came afterwards, naturally enough, to be so far extended as to include some of the older settlers, both lay and missionary, who had succeeded in obtaining very extensive cessions of land from the Natives for very trilling equivalents.

Missionaries, especially the managers in England, and of the New Zealand Company and its settlers in the colony, approximated pretty closely. But the theoretical views of the home directors of the Mission respecting the pernicious efFects of colonization on uncivilized tribes, and their horror at the irregularities of a large proportion of the early settlers in New Zealand, had, without due discrimination, been extended to the Company and its colonists. The alienation, thus generated, was widened by the material interests of the resident Missionaries ; the peculiar nature of whose claims to land gave them a common interest with the old lay settlers and the "land-sharks," to whom they were otherwise strongly opposed. On the other hand, the Missionaries, by their original relations with the Natives, and by the appointment of one of their number to be Protector of Aborigines, were identified with the Native party. The position of the Missionaries as teachers enabled them as a body to influence the Native mind to a certain extent; while at the same time the necessity of preserving their influence over the Natives often obliged them to defer to the passions and prejudices of their pupils.

The local position of the Government at Auckland would of itself have been sufficient to give a preponderating influence to the Native party, and the party of the Northern settlers. This influence was strengthened by the official character of the Protector of Aborigines, and by the implication of a majority of the officers of the Local Government in land-sharking speculations. The views of the Local Government were naturally received with favour at the Colonial Office ; and the views of the Missionaries in New Zealand were strenuously supported by the London office-bearers of the Mission. One fatal consequence of this state of affairs has been, the frustration of every attempt to have the rights of property in land, and the management of wastelands, definitely settled and subjected to an uniform plan. These ends were urged by the New Zealand Company, of whose original scheme of colonization they formed a part. They were thwarted by theNorthern land-claimants, lay and missionary, who aimed only at securing large tracts ofland for themselves. At first, the Government here appeared inclined to adopt the views of the Company, and to take upon itself that charge of disposing of the waste-lands for the common good, of which the Company had denuded itself, after the recognition of the Crown's authority. But the influences brought to bear upon the Government caused the discussion of those points between the Company and the Colonial Office to assume a controversial form. The peculiar temper of Lord Stanley, who has held office throughout the greater part of the time during which this controversy has been in progress, has at once tended to render it more vehement and to procrastinate a final decision.

The Missionary construction of the treaty of Waitangi was supported generally by the Northern settlers, and by those who claim to be the peculiar friends of the Natives. Some adopted this construction with a sincere desire to promote the Native interests ; others from an idea that it was the most favourable to their own claims. This construction was opposed by the Cook's Straits settlers, as incompatible with the plan of vesting in the Crown a title to waste lands that would enable it to administer them for the common good, and as tending to procrastinate the settlement of the land-claims. The representations of the former party were successful ; and the Commissioners of Land-Claims have acted in conformity to their views. The delay occasioned by the complicated inquiries hence arising, apprehended by the New Zealand Company, was realized. Other delays occurred from the procrastination of the Commissioners and the pedantic technicality of their proceedings. Great oppression was also caused by their exorbitant fees. The extravagant expectations of gain inspired into the minds of the Natives by these imperfectly-underStood proceedings completed the mischief. All rights of property in land have been left unsettled. Cultivation has been arrested ; resources have been wasted. The evil has been increased by the large expenditure of the Local Government; and this cause of complaint has been aggravated by the circumstances of the revenue's being principally derived from those settlements which are at a distance from the seat of government and derive little benefit from its expenditure. The Government, which has cost so much, has been found entirely inefficient. The irritation produced among the Natives by the unsettled state of the land-question has instigated them to acts of violence, which the Local Government has proved utterly powerless either to prevent or redress. Emboldened by the apathy of the Government, two chiefs with their followers massacred a number of .gentlemen at the Wairau ; and these murders have not even been Judicially investigated.

In England, the action of the Home Government has been in a great measure confined to defending or apologizing for the acts of the Government in New Zealand, and in staving off applicants for redress by referring to the Local Government to decide upon almost every application made to the Office in Downing Street. The action of Government has been throughout obstructive. The embarrassments of the colonists have reacted on the great colonizing body in this country. The New Zealand Company, finding their income continually decreasing and their expenditure increasing in consequence of the unsettled state of the colony, were obliged first to contract, and ultimately to suspend their operations. On having recourse to so extreme a measure, it was necessary to

ve the country the means of judging between them and the biovernment, by whose conduct they had been reduced to such straits. The best means of accomplishing this appeared to be an appeal for Parliamentary inquiry ; and an appeal having been made to the House of ComMoass a Select Committee was appointed.

The Committee consisted of fifteen Members ; ten of them habitual supporters of the Government. They reported strongly in favour of the Company's claims, and against the Government. They prefaced this verdict with a reprimand to the Company for "irregular and improper" conduct in commencing operations' in defiance of' the Government : but we have already seen that this "irregular and improper" conduct preserved New Zealand to Britain.