Historical Sketch of the Colonization of New Zealand
As such a record may prove interesting to the future inhabitants of New Zealand, and instructive to those who shall engage in similar undertakings, we propose to give a brief history of the colonization of our adopted country.
It is supposed by some that New Zealand was visited by Juan Fernandez. He left memoranda stating that he had sailed westward from South America thirty days, when he reached a country inhabited by a people of a light complexion, clothed in a kind of linen, who treated him hospitably; and in all parts of New Zealand the natives have traditions of being visited by Europeans long before the time of Captain Cook. Further information on this subject may be found in Burney's 'History of Discovery in the South Seas.' It is clear, however, that Abel Jansen Tasman first made known the existence of New Zealand to Europeans. He saw it first on the 13th of September, 1642, when he made the northern extremity of the islands, according to his latitudes; and, running down the east coast, passed through Cook's Strait into a Bay, which he called Murderer's Bay, from the circumstance of losing four men in a conflict with the natives, who effectually prevented him or any of his people from landing. There is no evidence of any European having landed on these islands before Captain Cook, which he did on the evening of Sunday the 8th of October, 1769, accompanied by Solander and Banks.
It may be satisfactory to those engaged in the colonization of New Zealand, or other islands of the Pacific, to know that they are fulfilling the intentions of his Majesty George the Third, as will appear from the following extract from the instructions given to Captain Cook:—
"You are also, with the consent of the natives, to take possession, in the name of the King of Great Britain, of convenient situations in such countries as you may discover, that have not already been discovered or visited by any other European power; and to distribute among the inhabitants such things as will remain as traces and testimonies of your having been there; but if you find the countries so discovered are uninhabited, you are to take possession of them for his Majesty, by setting up proper marks and inscriptions as first discoverers and possessors."
In pursuance of these instructions, Captain Cook having circumnavigated and surveyed both islands, which had formerly been deemed part of the great Terra Australis Incognita, and passed through the Straits which bear his name, landed on various points in both islands, and with the usual solemnities took possession of them on behalf of the King of Great Britain; and thus, according to the received law of nations, established a claim to the sovereignty as against all foreign power,— a claim which the crown itself cannot lightly abandon. After such an act on the part of a servant of the crown as that performed by Captain Cook, any British subject settling on those islands carried with him, according to Blackstone and all the authorities, the common and statute law as his birthright, and might claim protection accordingly.
Captain Cook saw that New Zealand was an eligible site for a colony, and recommended it as such; but no attempt was made to follow up his suggestions. Benjamin Franklin and Mr Dalrymple issued proposals, but without any success, for raising a sum of 15,000l., with a view to supply the New Zealanders with those useful animals, vegetables, ,&c. and arts of life, of which they were destitute. This paper is dated August 29th, 1771, and may be found among Franklin's 'Miscellaneous Works.' In the parliamentary debates which led to the establishment of a penal settlement at New South Wales, New Zealand was mentioned as a desirable place for the experiment, and narrowly escaped through the terror of its cannibalism. Attention was further drawn to that part of the world by the establishment of missions in the Society Islands, about the year 1795, by the London Missionary Society; and in the year 1814 the Rev. Samuel Marsden, of New South Wales, laid the foundation of the Church of England Mission at the Bay of Islands. Previously to this, however, Col. Foveaux, of the New South Wales Corps, had recommended New Zealand to the governor of Sydney as a penal settlement, on the plan afterwards adopted at Norfolk Island; and suggestions were made by Col. Jackson and others to take possession of the country by a military force from India. The first regular proceedings were taken in the year 1814, with a view to the protection of the missionaries and other British settlers, and under the same authority which enabled the Sydney government to take possession of Norfolk Island, in the same longitude,— namely, the priority of discovery, the consent of the natives, and the commission of the governor of Sydney under an act of parliament, extending his jurisdiction over New Zealand and other islands of the Pacific.
There are diplomatic grounds connected with certain European treaties which give importance to the date of this proclamation, which is, Nov. 9th, 1814. Among other things the paper states,— "His Excellency being equally solicitous to protect the natives of New Zealand and the Bay of Islands, in all their just rights and privileges, as those of every other dependency of the territory of New South Wales, hereby orders and directs," &c. &c.; then proceeds to appoint Mr Thomas Kendall "resident magistrate at the Bay of Islands," extends the regulations laid down for New Zealand to "the adjacent isles," and names "Duaterra, Shunghi, and Korra-korra magistrates" in New Zealand, for the purposes of the proclamation.
Such was the first introduction of European settlers into New Zealand; and so far from colonization being then regarded, with suspicion, it was the only form that missionary labour was permitted to assume. It was the deliberate resolution of the Church Missionary Society to give the mission, in the first instance, a secular and merely civilizing character. No ordained clergyman was sent out; and the missionaries were officially termed "the society's settlers at the Bay of Islands." We may indeed venture to say, on behalf of those laborious men who made the first successful inroad upon barbarism, that it is unjust in their friends to turn round upon them for too faithfully adhering to the principle of their institution, by continuing to be a colony after the subscribers at home had changed their minds and resolved to patronize nothing but missions. The slow but sure success of what Dr Lang calls "the missionary carpenter, boat-builder, blacksmith, ploughman, rope-spinner, &c." made known in monthly and weekly reports throughout England, drew attention to the vast resources of the country; and the Church Missionary Society so effectually performed its work in preparing the way for a colony, that within a very few years after the settlement was founded at the Bay of Islands, the secretary, the Rev. Josiah Pratt, declared that in one of the provincial towns of England he knew of a large number of families ready to emigrate to New Zealand. The bug-bear of cannibalism had now nearly vanished. New Zealand had become the head quarters of the whale fishery. The. value of its timber, its flax, and other indigenous products had been made known by Mr Nicholas and other writers, and the natives themselves had been frequently employed as able seamen on board British vessels, when many abortive schemes were propounded for the colonization of the country. Among other attempts was one, we believe, originally suggested by Col. Nicholls of the Marines, who in vain submitted his plans to Lord Bathurst, then Secretary of State for the Colonies. Col. Nicholls had collected a great deal of information with respect to the country and its inhabitants, which was, communicated to his relative, Col. Torrens, and led, through the exertions of the latter gentleman, to the formation of the company of 1825. That company, under the sanction of its enlightened chairman, Mr Lambton, now Earl of Durham, accomplished all that was possible under the circumstances. An unfortunate selection appears to have been made of the company's chief agent, who made some valuable acquisitions of territory, held sacred to the uses of the company by the natives to this day, and now incorporated, after the lapse of fourteen years, with the other possessions of the present company, yet he suddenly abandoned the enterprize on mistaking a war dance performed in honour of him for a hostile demonstration. The gentlemen composing this association abstained from opening it to the public until some further success had been obtained, and were discouraged also by the well-remembered state of the money market in the year 1826. They, however, expended 20,000l., and received from Mr Huskisson the promise of a charter of incorporation, which has been recognized by subsequent governments, and is considered in force at the present day.
The proceedings of the company, nearly the whole of whose artizans, when discharged by the agent at Sydney, returned and settled in New Zealand— so little did they share in the panic of their commander— the growing prosperity of the missionaries, the increasing resort of shipping, the influx of runaway convicts and deserters from vessels, with the flagrant crimes perpetrated in this mixed and lawless community, drew the attention of the governor of Sydney, who was induced to appoint, with the concurrence of the home government, what he termed a consul "accredited to the missionaries at the Bay of Islands." Those excellent men doubtless were not aware that this was, diplomatically speaking, a transfer to them of the sovereignty from the crown of England; and it may quiet the apprehension of those jurists who may imagine that the sovereignty of those islands was indeed ever parted with, to recollect that, under these circumstances, it could only be held in trust, or, at the least, as a feudatory principality. That the missionaries regarded it somewhat in this light, is clear from the manner in which they have resisted the encroachments of foreign nations, and the way in which they have modelled the administration of their government after that of the prince-bishops of the middle ages. They have maintained the powers delegated to them, within their palatinate. Resisting all attempts to mediatize them, they have upheld their theocracy; and we know not whether to compare the converted chieftains to tenants in capité, the lesser barons, or to the heads of tribes ministering to that of Levi. At home the influence of a wealthy and important society was all-powerful at the colonial office, glad to be relieved of trouble and responsibility whilst obliging a great party; and the organ of that society, its secretary, wielding an expenditure of fifteen thousand a year in New Zealand, found himself virtually governor and bishop of both islands, of which that sum might have bought the fee simple.
The solemnity, however picturesque, of convening a few savage chieftains in the neighbourhood of the Bay of Islands, making them declare their independence, and giving them a flag, could no more quell the disorders that prevailed through the islands, than it could, in constitutional law, give away the king's dominions. Atrocious crimes were perpetrated by Englishmen. Ardent spirits, gunpowder, and virulent diseases were introduced. Ruffians who had escaped from the chaingangs of New South Wales, or who from various causes were ashamed of appearing in convict society, flocked to New Zealand and furnished the natives with corrosive sublimates, laudanum and other poisons, to destroy each other with; and the neighbourhood of the missionary settlements soon became the most demoralized in New Zealand.
Repeated representations were made to the government in England to do that which should repress these evils, but without the least effect. The merchants of London joined in a memorial, signed by the heads of all the principal houses engaged in the south-sea trade. A petition, in 1834, was sent home by the most respectable of the settlers in New Zealand, which was repeated in 1836, and signed by all the influential members of the mission itself; but, through some influence at the Colonial Office, all applications, both public and private, were disregarded; and it seemed the fixed resolution of the government, whatever inconvenience or suffering might be occasioned by it, to leave undisturbed the experiment of training up a native Levitical republic under missionary control, directed primarily by a lay secretary-in England.
Such was the state of things in New Zealand when an incident gave reality to a project which had long been familiar to the minds of its author. In a work entitled 'England and America,' New Zealand had been pointed out as one of the finest fields for colonization. A committee of the House of Commons, "upon the disposal of waste lands in the British colonies," was sitting on the 27th of June, 1836, when the following answer was given by Mr Edward Gibbon Wakefield to a question by the chairman, Mr Ward :—
"961. Are there any parts of the world subject to our dominion now, in which you imagine that new colonies might be founded advantageously under this proposed system?— Many. I consider that in Australia, at present, there are no colonies; I look upon the settlements in New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land as mere gaols of a peculiar kind. They call the keeper 'his excellency,' and the chaplain 'right reverend;' but the real truth is, they are nothing else but gaols. Then South Australia is not yet founded. There remains a large extent of country between South Australia and that which is called Western Australia: there is in Extra-Tropical Australia a district of ground open to colonization, of which the outline touched by the sea-coast cannot be less than 4,000 miles. Very near to Australia there is a country, which all testimony concurs in describing as the fittest country in the world for colonization; as the most beautiful country, with the finest climate and the most productive soil; I mean New Zealand. It will be said that New Zealand does not belong to the British crown, and that is true; but Englishmen are beginning to colonize New Zealand. New Zealand is coming under the dominion of the British crown. Adventurers go from New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land and make a treaty with a native chief— a treaty in duplicate, the poor chief not understanding a single word about it; but they make a contract upon parchment with a great seal, and for a few trinkets and a little gunpowder they obtain land. After a time in these cases, after some persons have settled, the government at home begins to receive hints that there is a regular settlement of English people formed in such a place; and then the government at home generally has been actuated by a wish to appoint a governor, and says, 'This spot belongs to England; we will send out a governor.' The act of sending out a governor according to our constitution, or law, or practice, constitutes the place to which a governor is sent a British province. We are, I think, going to colonize New Zealand, though we are doing so in a most slovenly, and scrambling, and disgraceful manner."
The statement here quoted led to a conversation between a member of the committee, the Hon. Francis Baring, and the witness, and to the formation of a plan which was shortly after embodied in the draft of a bill, intituled "A Bill to facilitate and regulate the Settlement of British' Subjects in New Zealand." As it
