THE HOBSON - SHORTLAND ADMINISTRATION.

CAPTAIN HOBSON the first Governor of New Zealand, was a deserving officer of the Navy. He had in 1837 been despatched by the Governor of New South Wales to New Zealand, where, on account of wars among the Natives, apprehensions were entertained for the safety of the British settlers and traders; and the report of his mission to Sir Richard Bourke showed that the Missionary theory of Native innocence and the wickedness of colonists had been thoroughly instilled into him.

Captain Hobson was accompanied from England by Mr. Willoughby Shortland, who had served under him as Lieutenant. The prominent part which this gentleman subsequently played in the affairs of New Zealand, renders it expedient to note here the opinion originally entertained of his fitness for office by his immediate patron. Captain Hobson wrote to Lord Normanby, on the 20th February, 1840—" I have been subject to great inconvenience and responsibility from being deprived of the assistance and advantage of a Colonial Secretary or a legal adviser. I foresaw, and expressed to your Lordship my prediction, that no gentlemen suited for offices of such trust could be found in New South Wales, who were not already in better circumstances than the limited means of a new colony could afford them. The fact has proved so. Although Sir George Gipps used every effort to procure proper officers, none could be found at once qualified and willing to hold the appointments ; and at this moment I see but little prospect of being immediately relieved from the dilemma." From this it appears that Captain Hobson did not then think Mr. Shortland qualified to act as Colonial Secretary. The passage also shows the neglect of the Colonial Office to provide an efficient Government for the new colony. They sent out "what seemed" a Government, to save appearances, and that was all. Captain Hobson was in August 1839 appointed her Majesty's Consul in New Zealand, with the understanding that if he could obtain from the Native chiefs the cession of "certain parts of the islands," he was to "assume the character of Lieutenant-Governor.' But so little doubt of this was entertained, that his first step on arriving at Sydney was to request Sir George Gipps to manufacture * Ministry for him. Sir George Gipps gave him Mr. Cooper, who had

been Comptroller of the Customs at Sydney, for a Treasurer ; and Mr. Felton Mathew, who had been Town-Surveyor at Sydney, for a Sur veyor-General. Two second-class clerks were the only assistants afforded to the Treasurer and Surveyor-General. Mr. Willoughby Shortland chose the office of Police Magistrate,—thereby showing his own estimate of what he was fittest for ; and a body-guard of a sergeant and four troopers of the New South Wales Mounted Police were detached to accompany the Governor and his Ministers to New Zealand.

On Captain Hobson's arrival there, he appointed Mr. George Clarke,

.elt Catechist to the Church Mission in New Zealand, Protector of Abo.aigines. The persons now enumerated constituted the entire Government : two naval officers, two gentlemen who had occupied subordinate

situations in the Government Offices of New South Wales, and a de-cent mechanic who had been promoted to be a Missionary catechist, with a couple of clerks, a sergeant, and four policemen, undertook to govern two or three thousand British settlers, and a hundred thousand Natives, inhabiting a country as large as the British Isles.

About a month after his arrival in the colony, Captain Hobson sustained a shock of paralysis, which rendered him for a time totally in capable of transacting business. As soon as he was able to write (or dictate) despatches, Mr. Shortland began to be mentioned as "acting Colonial Secretary ;" and in process of time the prefix " acting " is dropped. There is something about Captain Hobson's attack of paralysis that has never been properly explained. The official report of the surgeon of H.M.S. Herald to Sir George Gipps describes the Captain as rapidly recovering, and his mental faculties as "not in the most remote degree affected or impaired ;" but the letter of Captain Nias, in which it was enclosed, says of the surgeon's opinion—" I beg to remark, that it is in total contradiction to every thing he had stated to me before on the subject." A general impression prevails in the colony, that after his illness, Governor Hobson was little more than a tool in the hands of those who surrounded him.

The only addition made to the efficient force of the New Zealand Government till the beginning of 1842, consisted of three Commissioners of Land Claims, an Attorney-General, and for a short time a Deputy Surveyor.

Immediately after the separation of New Zealand from New South Wales, a more formal distribution of offices among the members of the Government took place. Among the appointments gazetted on the .3rd May 1840, were Willoughby Shortland, Esq., Colonial Secretary, and George Clarke, Esq., Protector of Aborigines. On the same day, a .commission of the peace was issued, containing the names of twentyseven gentlemen, most of them officers of Government and resident in Auckland. The Colonial Secretary, the Attorney-General, and the -Colonial Treasurer, were declared to be an Executive Council ; and the same gentlemen, with the three senior Justices of the Peace, a Legislative Council. Mr. Edward Shortland, brother to the Colonial Secretary, was the Governor's private secretary.

In the beginning of 1842, some official changes took place. A Chief Justice (Mr. Martin), and an Attorney-General (Mr. Swainson), a Surveyor-General (Mr. Ligar), and a Commissioner of Land-Claims .(Mr. Spain), appointed in England, arrived in the colony ; and some shifting was required to make room for them. Mr. Mathew became Chief Police Magistrate at Auckland. The offices of Treasurer and Collector of the Customs were separated about the same time; Mr. Cooper retaining the latter appointment, and Mr. Alexander Shepherd being nominated to the former. Mr. Fitzgerald (whose daughter Mr. Shortland married soon after) was appointed to the sinecure office of Registrar of Deeds for the County of Eden. Mr. George Clarke junior, son of the Protector of Aborigines and Mr. Spencer Forsaith, a considerable land-claimant, were appointed Sub-Protectors. Little change took place in these arrangements up to the period of 'Governor Fitzroy's arrival on the 23rd December 1843, except that after the death of Governor Hobson, in October 1842, the Colonial Secretary became, in his capacity of "Officer administering the Government," the ostensible, as he is believed to have all along been the real, mainspring of the Government. Mr. Cooper was kept in the background, and appears to have had little influence. Mr. Chief Justice Martin, with a correct sense of what was due to his office, kept aloof from politics. Mr. Shortland, his brother, and his father-in-law, the Clarkes father and son, appear as the ruling spirits—the "Family Compact" of New Zealand. The two latter were identified with the Missionary body. Mr. Clarke senior claims a large extent of land1' Mr. Felton Mathew, by his advice to Governor Hobson to purchase 300 acres of unreclaimed land at Russell, for the enormous sum of 15,0001., is implicated in the land-sharking system.$ Mr. Clendon, the principal in this job, was made a member of Council. Mr. Symonds, Deputy-Surveyor-General, was agent for an Edinburgh land. company, which claimed an extensive district in the county of Auckland. Thus, all the more prominent members of the Auckland Govenment, few of whom had enjoyed any opportunity of learning the law or acquiring a knowledge of civil business, were connected by family ties, identified in their interests with the land-jobbers of Auckland, and subservient to the views of the Missionaries.

Of the legislative proceedings of this Government we are in possession of only the two first sessions, 1841 and 1842. The legislation has two main features : the ordinances of the second session are principally passed to repeal those of the first ; and while the refined vigilance of the Government extends to securing "the copyright of printed books to the authors thereof," we seek in vain for any attempt to define the relations of the Natives to the settlers.

To make laws, however defective, and to execute them, are two very different matters. On the 26th May 184 I.—a full year and four months after Governor Hobson arrived in the colony—be wrote to the Secretary of State for the Colonies—" The measures f mean to adopt for their (the Wellington settlers'] benefit, and that of others at a distance from Auckland, is to institute courts of General, Quarter, and Petty Sessions of the Peace," &c. During all that time, no step had been taken to provide for the administration of justice in the only settlements in which Governor Hobson found civilized inhabitants on his arrival. t Appendix to Committee's Report, pp. 82, 445. 418. ; Sessional Paper+, 1842; No. 569, pp. 143-148.

On the 19th May 1841, the Surveyor-General reminded Governor Hobson, that he had up to that time been unaided even by • clerk or draughtainan ; and that, though three surveyors had arrived fro= Sydney, the survey was destitute of means, men, and instrument'. When Mr. Mathew was superseded, in January 1042, only 7,416 strew had been surveyed for settlement ; and those so inaccurately that Mr. Ligar had to resurvey a considerable portion. From the report of the Auckland Agricultural Association for 1843, we learn that, up to the autumn of that year, not more than 30,000 acres had been surveyed, se as to be available for settlers. At the time of Mr. Acting-Governor Shortland's demission of office, although the greater number of claims* had been decided on at Auckland, not a single grant had been issued.* In the Southern part of the island, not a single claim had been decided4 The Protector of Aborigines was busy purchasing lands from the Natives ;$ or jaunting about the country ;§ or advising the Governor,. on the 15th June 1842, forcibly to suppress a Native war, and urging him, on the 30th, to allow matters to take their course ;II or telling thee Natives, (who did not understand the treaty, and never beard of Magna Charta,) that in the treaty of Waitangi "they held in their hands the Magna Charta of their country." In short, Mr. Clarke's only business appears to have been to confuse the Governor. He maintained that the chief Nopera, who had been expelled by a hostile tribe, had still the right of property in Manganui ; and that Rauperaha had acquired the right of property in the Wairau plains, because he had driven out the former occupants. Towards the Natives, indeed, the conduct of the Government was marked by extreme vacillation and imbecility. In December 1840, Mr. Clarke assured the Governor the Natives approved of the condemnation of a Native murderer:1i On the 19th April, the Governor actually exercised jurisdiction in a civil controversy among the Natives.** Yet we learn from the Auckland newspapers, that in March 1842, six settlers on the Wangari had their houses destroyed and plundered by Natives, who were allowed to escape with impunity ; and that in March 1843, a similar case occurred at Manganui. One not inconsiderable cause of the almost entire neglect to discharge the functions of government has been, the utter want of subordinate officers. The principal "departments of state" were all filled up ; but the salaries of the great officers absorbed the revenue, and no staff, or an inadequate staff, was attached to them. For two years the Surveyor-General was left without adequate assistance. Till January 1842, the Protector of Aborigines was left single-handed to discharge the duties of his office (whatever they may have been): he then obtained two, and has since obtained four assistants. In the Estimates for 1842, three chief constables, four sergeants, and eight privates, are the whole establishment allowed to preserve the peace and enforce the laws in the Cook's Straits settlements, with their 8,000 Europeans, surrounded by a numerous Native population:ft But if the nominal Government of New Zealand was remiss in the discharge of its proper functions, in two respects it was active and indefatigable. The members vied with each other in land-jobbing, and in showing hostility to the settlers in Cook's Straits. With regard to land-jobbing, Mr. Shortland kept the rest in countenance by his example. Sir George Gipps allowed the Governmentofficers to purchase allotments of land at Auckland, provided they did not resell them within a period of two or three years. Mr. Shortland broke this regulation : he almost immediately resold the allotment which he bought for 300/., to Mr. Porter, for 1,2001. Not long after Mr. Porter was made a member of Council, and his son obtained one of the best situations in the Colonial Secretary's office.$$ The subordinates rivalled their chief. Captain Symonds was commissioned, in March 1840, to treat with the chiefs of Manukau for the cession of the territory round Auckland, and effected his purpose for an enormous price. On the 5th September, the "New Zealand and Manukau Land Company" published a prospectus in Scotland, in which Captain Symonds is named as a Director and the Company's Surveyor in the colony ; and a statement made, that Captain Symonds, "who accompanied Captain Hobson to the Waitemata," had been instructed "to offer his Excellency every facility which their property will afford for the selection of a capital." About the same time, Captain Symonds was appointed Deputy Surveyor.General. The exact share which Mr.: Mathew had in obtaining Mr. Clendon 15,000/. for 300 acres of unreclaimed land in the Bay of Islands, and the subsequent appointment of that gentleman to be a member of the Legislative Council, has never been satisfactorily explained. Without further multiplying examples, the job by which six of the best-situated and most valuable sections of the town-lands of Auckland were reserved from sale, and appropriated, at an under-value and with a credit of from two to three years, to the six principal Government-officers—a job in which the " Government " is implicated in its corporate capacity—a job laconically and pithily disallowed by Lord Stanley—may suffice as a specimen. §§ It was one of these allotments that Mr. Shortland disposed of in a few days at an advance of 400 per cent. With regard to the Cook's Straits settlers, the conduct of the Hobson-Shortland Administration towards them appears to have been decided by the Governor's apprehensions of the power of the Missionaries in England. The fist, and for a long period the only notice he had taken of them, was an absurd charge of "treason," and the despatch of Mr. Shortland with a body of soldiers to reduce them-11H The last act of hostility experienced by the Cook's Strait' settlers at the hands of the Auckland Government under this regime,

• committee's Notes of Evidence, 857.

f Ibid 859.

3 Enclosure in Acting-Governor Sliortiand's Despatch of 27th Nov. 1843. Ap.

pendix to Committee's Report, p. 236.

§ Sessional Papers,1842: No. 569, pp. 93 et seq. Enclosures 15 and D in Acting-Governor saortland's Despatch of 24th Sept.

1842. Appendix to Committee's Report, pp. 122, 194.

S Sessional Papers, 1842 : No. 569, pp. 93 et seq. ** Auckland Standard, 25th April 1842.

ft Sessional Papers, 1843; No. 134.

31 Committee's Notes of Evidence—Mr. Brodie, 638, 632:I and App., pp. 449. 452, et seg. §§ Sessional Paper, 1842; No. 569, pp. 190-142. Appendix to Committee's

Report, pp. 444, 445.

fi 8-nat Papers, 1841; No. 311, p.16.

-Was -Major Richmond's denouncing the assembly of their armed special -Inflatable., under the sanction of the Magistrates, after the Wairau massacre, as illegal.* During the whole intervening period from Lieutenant Shortland's campaign till Major Richmond's proclamation of outlawry, there is scarcely an act of the Government which laul not for its object to embarrass the settlers on Cook's Straits, or to blacken their characters.