"A MAN OF WAR WITHOUT GUNS"
"Under his office treason was no crime;
The sons of Belial had a glorious time."
_Dryden_.
Between 1830 and 1840, then, New Zealand had drifted into a new phase
of existence. Instead of being an unknown land, peopled by ferocious
cannibals, to whose shores ship-captains gave as wide a berth as
possible, she was now a country with a white element and a constant
trade. Missionaries were labouring, not only along the coasts, but in
many districts of the interior, and, as the decade neared its end, a
large minority of the natives were being brought under the influence
of Christianity. The tribal wars were dying down. Partly, this was a
peace of exhaustion, in some districts of solitude; partly, it was
the outcome of the havoc wrought by the musket, and the growing fear
thereof. Nearly all the tribes had now obtained firearms. A war had
ceased to be an agreeable shooting-party for some one chief with an
unfair advantage over his rivals. A balance of power, or at any
rate an equality of risk, made for peace. But it would be unjust
to overlook the missionaries' share in bringing about comparative
tranquillity. Throughout all the wars of the musket, and the dread
slaughter and confusion they brought about, most of the teachers held
on. They laboured for peace, and at length those to whom they spoke
began to cease to make themselves ready unto the battle. In the worst
of times no missionary's life was taken. The Wesleyans at Whangaroa
did indeed, in 1827, lose all but life. But the sack of their station
was but an instance of the law of _Muru_. Missionaries were then
regarded as Hongi's dependants. When he was wounded they were
plundered, as he himself was more than once when misfortune befel
him. In the wars of Te Waharoa, the mission-stations of Rotorua and
Matamata were stripped, but no blood was shed. The Wesleyans set up
again at Hokianga. Everywhere the teachers were allowed to preach, to
intercede, to protest. At last, in 1838, the extraordinary spectacle
was seen of Rauparaha's son going from Kapiti to the Bay of Islands to
beg that a teacher might come to his father's tribe; and accordingly,
in 1839, Octavius Hadfield, afterwards primate, took his life in his
hand and his post at a spot on the mainland opposite to the elder
Rauparaha's island den of rapine. By 1840 the Maoris, if they had
not beaten their spears into pruning hooks, had more than one old
gun-barrel hung up at the gable-end of a meeting-house to serve when
beaten upon as a gong for church-goers.[1]
[Footnote 1: See Taylor's _New Zealand, Past and Present_.]
By this time there were in the islands perhaps two thousand Whites,
made up of four classes--first, the missionaries; second, the _Pakeha_
Maoris; third, the whalers and sealers chiefly found in the South
Island; and fourth, the traders and nondescripts settled in the Bay
of Islands. Of the last-named beautiful haven it was truly said that
every prospect pleased, that only man was vile, and that he was
very vile indeed. On one of its beaches, Kororáreka--now called
Russell--formed a sort of Alsatia. As many as a thousand Whites lived
there at times. On one occasion thirty-five large whaling ships were
counted as they lay off its beach in the bay. The crews of these found
among the rum-shops and Maori houris of Kororáreka a veritable South
Sea Island paradise. The Maori chiefs of the neighbourhood shared
their orgies, pandered to their vices, and grew rich thereby. An
occasional murder reminded the Whites that Maori forbearance was
limited.
But even Kororáreka drew the line. In 1827 a brig, the _Wellington_,
arrived in the bay in the hands of a gang of convicts, who had
preferred the chances of mutiny to the certainties of Norfolk Island.
Forthwith Alsatia was up in arms for society and a triple alliance
of missionaries, whalers, and cannibals combined to intercept the
runaways. The ship's guns of the whalers drove the convicts to take
refuge on shore, where the Maoris promptly secured them. The captives
were duly sent to their fate in Sydney, and the services of the New
Zealanders gratefully requited by a payment at the rate of a musket
per convict.
Alsatia had its civil wars. In 1831 a whaling-captain deserted the
daughter of a chief in the neighbourhood in order to take to himself
another chief's daughter, also of a tribe by the Bay. The tribe of the
deserted woman attacked that of the favoured damsel. A village was
burnt, a benevolent mediator shot, and a hundred lives lost. Only the
arrival on the scene of Marsden, on one of his visits to the country,
restored peace. So outrageous were the scenes in the Bay that its own
people had to organize some sort of government. This took the form of
a vigilance committee, each member of which came to its meetings armed
with musket and cutlass. Their tribunal was, of course, that of Judge
Lynch. They arrested certain of the most unbearable offenders, tarred
and feathered them, and drummed them out of the township. When
feathers were lacking for the decoration, the white fluff of the
native bullrush made a handy substitute. In the absence of a gaol, the
Vigilants were known to keep a culprit in duress by shutting him up
for the night in a sea-chest, ventilated by means of gimlet-holes.
They were not, however, the only representatives of law and order in
New Zealand. The British authorities in New South Wales had all along,
perforce, been keeping their eye on this troublesome archipelago in
the south-east. In 1813 Governor Macquarie made Sydney shipmasters
sailing for the country give bonds for a thousand pounds not to kidnap
Maori men, take the women on board their vessels, or meddle with
burying grounds. In 1814 he appointed the chiefs Hongi and Koro Koro,
and the missionary Kendall, to act as magistrates in the Bay of
Islands. Possibly the two first-named magistrates were thus honoured
to induce them not to eat the third. No other advantage was gained
by the step. A statute was passed in England in 1817 authorizing the
trial and punishment of persons guilty of murder and other crimes in
certain savage and disturbed countries, amongst which were specified
New Zealand, Otaheite, and Honduras. Two others, in 1823 and 1828,
gave the Australian courts jurisdiction over Whites in New Zealand.
One White ruffian was actually arrested in New Zealand, taken back to
Sydney, and executed. But this act of vigour did not come till the end
of 1837. Then the crime punished was not one of the atrocities which
for thirty years had made New Zealand a by-word. The criminal, Edward
Doyle, paid the extreme penalty of the law for stealing in a dwelling
in the Bay of Islands and "putting John Wright in bodily fear."
Governor Bourke issued a special proclamation expressing hope that
Doyle's punishment would be a warning to evil-doers in New Zealand.
Governor Darling, as already mentioned, prohibited the inhuman traffic
in preserved and tattooed heads by attaching thereto a penalty of £40,
coupled with exposure of the trader's name.
In England more than one influential believer in colonies had long
been watching New Zealand. As early as 1825, a company was formed to
purchase land and settle colonists in the North Island. This company's
agent, Captain Herd, went so far as to buy land on the Hokianga
Estuary, and conduct thither a party of settlers. One of the first
experiences of the new-comers was, however, the sight of a native
war-dance, the terrifying effects of which, added to more practical
difficulties, caused most of them to fold their tents and depart to
Australia. Thus for the first time did an English company lose £20,000
in a New Zealand venture. The statesmen of the period were against any
such schemes. A deputation of the Friends of Colonization waited upon
the Duke of Wellington to urge that New Zealand should be acquired and
settled. The Duke, under the advice of the Church Missionary Society,
flatly refused to think of such a thing. It was then that he made the
historically noteworthy observation that, even supposing New Zealand
were as valuable as the deputation made out, Great Britain had already
colonies enough. When one reflects what the British Colonial Empire
was then, and what it has since become, the remark is a memorable
example of the absence of the imaginative quality in statesmen. But
the Duke of Wellington was not by any means alone in a reluctance
to annex New Zealand. In 1831 thirteen Maori chiefs, advised by
missionaries, had petitioned for British protection, which had not
been granted. The truth is, not only that the Empire seemed large
enough to others besides the Duke, but that the missionaries stood
in the way. As representing the most respectable and the only
self-sacrificing element amongst those interested in the islands, they
were listened to. It would have been strange had it been otherwise.
Nevertheless, the growing trade and the increasing number of
unauthorized white settlers made it necessary that something should be
done. Consequently, in 1832, Lord Goderich sent to the Bay of Islands
Mr. James Busby to reside there as British resident. He was paid a
salary, and provided with £200 a year to distribute in presents to the
native chiefs. He entered on his duties in 1833. He had no authority,
and was not backed by any force. He was aptly nicknamed "a man-of-war
without guns." He presented the local chiefs with a national flag.
Stars and stripes appeared in the design which the chiefs selected,
thanks, says tradition, to the sinister suggestion of a Yankee
whaling-skipper. H.M.S. _Alligator_ signalised the hoisting of the
ensign with a salute of twenty-one guns. After this impressive
solemnity, Mr. Busby lived at the bay for six years. His career was a
prolonged burlesque--a farce without laughter, played by a dull
actor in serious earnest. Personally he went through as strange an
experience as has often fallen to the lot of a British official. A man
of genius might possibly have managed the inhabitants of his Alsatia.
But governments have no right to expect genius in unsupported
officials--even when they pay them £300 a year. Mr. Busby was a
well-meaning, small-minded person, anxious to justify his appointment.
His Alsatians did not like him, and complained that his manners were
exclusive and his wit caustic. Probably this meant nothing more than
that he declined to join in their drinking-bouts. His life, however,
had its own excitements. A chief whom he had offended tried to shoot
him. Crouching one night in the verandah of the resident's cottage,
he fired at the shadow of Mr. Busby's head as it appeared on the
window-blind. As he merely hit the shadow, not the substance, the
would-be assassin was not punished, but the better disposed Maoris
gave a piece of land as compensation--not to the injured Busby, but to
his Government.
It has been well said of Mr. Busby that "his office resembled a
didactic dispatch; it sounded well, and it did nothing else."
Nevertheless, New Zealand was in a state such that, from time to time,
even the English Government had to do something, so urgent was the
need for action. After despatching their man-of-war without guns, they
next year sent a man-of-war with guns. Nor did the captain of the
_Alligator_ confine himself to the harmless nonsense of saluting
national flags. In 1834 the brig _Harriet_ was wrecked on the coast of
Taranaki. Her master, Guard, an ex-convict, made his way to Sydney,
asserting that the Maoris had flocked down after the wreck, and
attacked and plundered the crew; had killed some, and held Guard's
wife and children in captivity. As a matter of fact, it was the
misconduct of his own men which had brought on the fighting, and even
to his Sydney hearers it was obvious that his tale was not wholly
true. But the main facts were correct. There had been a wreck and
plunder; there were captives. The _Alligator_ was at once sent with
soldiers to the scene of the disaster to effect the rescue of the
prisoners by friendly and pacific means. Arrived on the scene, the
captain sent his only two interpreters on shore to negotiate. They
were Guard himself and a lying billiard-marker from Kororáreka. They
promised the natives ransom--a keg of gunpowder--if the captives were
released; an offer which was at once accepted. They did not tell the
captain of their promise, and he, most unwisely, refused to give the
natives anything. All the captives were at once given up except the
woman and the children, who were withheld, but kindly treated, while
the natives awaited the promised payment. A chief who came down to the
shore to negotiate with a boat's crew was seized, dragged on board,
and so savagely mishandled that the ship's surgeon found ten wounds
upon him. Yet he lived, and to get him back his tribe gave up Mrs.
Guard and a child. The other child was withheld by another chief.
Again a strong armed party was landed and was peacefully met by the
natives, who brought the child down, but still asked, naturally, for
the stipulated ransom. The sailors and soldiers settled the matter by
shooting down a chief, on whose shoulders the child was sitting, and
firing right and left before the officers in charge could stop them.
Next day these men made a football of the chief's head. Before
departing the _Alligator_ bombarded _pas_, and her crew burnt villages
and destroyed canoes and cultivations. If the man-of-war without guns
was a figure of fun, the man-of-war with guns excited disgust by these
doings even as far away as England. The whole proceeding was clumsy,
cruel, and needless. A trifling ransom would have saved it all. The
Maori tribal law under which wrecks were confiscated and castaways
plundered was, of course, intolerable. Whites again and again suffered
severely by it. But blundering and undisciplined violence and broken
promises were not the arguments to employ against it. So long as
England deliberately chose to leave the country in the hands of
barbarians, barbaric customs had to be reckoned with.
From this discreditable business it is a relief to turn to Mr. Busby's
bloodless puerilities. In 1835 he drew up a federal constitution for
the Maori tribes, and induced thirty-five of the northern chiefs
to accept it. This comical scheme would have provided a congress,
legislation, magistrates, and other machinery of civilization for
a race of savages still plunged in bloodshed and cut asunder by
innumerable feuds and tribal divisions. A severe snubbing from Mr.
Busby's official superiors in Australia was the only consequence of
this attempt to federate man-eaters under parliamentary institutions.
The still-born constitution was Mr. Busby's proposed means of
checkmating a rival. In the words of Governor Gipps, this "silly and
unauthorized act was a paper pellet fired off" at the hero of an even
more pretentious fiasco. An adventurer of French parentage, a certain
Baron de Thierry, had proclaimed himself King of New Zealand, and
through the agency of missionary Kendall bought, or imagined he
bought--for thirty axes--40,000 acres of land from the natives. He
landed at Hokianga with a retinue of ninety-three followers. The
Maoris of the neighbourhood gravely pointed out to him a plot of three
hundred acres, which was all they would acknowledge of his purchase.
Unabashed, he established himself on a hill, and began the making of a
carriage-road which was to cross the island. Quickly it was found that
his pockets were empty. Laughed at by whites and natives alike, he
at once subsided into harmless obscurity, diversified by occasional
"proclamations," which a callous world allowed to drop unheeded.
Yet this little burlesque was destined to have its share in hastening
the appearance of England on the scene. Thierry had tried to enlist
the sympathies of the French Government. So also had another
Frenchman, Langlois, the captain of a whaling ship, who professed to
have bought 300,000 acres of land from the natives of Banks Peninsula
in the South Island. Partly owing to his exertions, a French company
called "The Nanto-Bordelaise Company" was incorporated, the object
of which was to found a French colony on the shores of the charming
harbour of Akaroa, on the land said to have been purchased by
Langlois. In this company Louis Philippe was a shareholder. In 1837,
also, the Catholic missionary Pompallier was dispatched to New Zealand
to labour among the Maoris. Such were the sea-routes of that day that
it took him some twelve months voyaging amid every kind of hardship
and discomfort to reach his journey's end. In New Zealand the fact
that he showed Thierry some consideration, and that he and his
Catholic workers in the mission-field were not always on the best
of terms with their Protestant competitors, aroused well-founded
suspicions that the French had their eye upon New Zealand. The English
missionaries were now on the horns of a dilemma. They did not want a
colony, but if there was to be annexation, the English flag would, of
course, be far preferable.
Moreover, a fresh influence had caused the plot to thicken, and was
also making for annexation. This was the appearance on the scene of
the "land-sharks"--shrewd adventurers, from Sydney and elsewhere, who
had come to the conclusion that the colonization of New Zealand was
near at hand, and were buying up preposterously large tracts of land
on all sides. Most of the purchases were either altogether fictitious,
or else were imperfect and made for absurdly low prices. Many of the
deeds of sale may be dismissed with the brief note, "no consideration
specified"! A hundred acres were bought for a farthing. Boundaries
were inserted after signature. Some land was bought several times
over. No less than eight purchasers claimed the whole or part of
Kapiti Island. The whole South Island was the subject of one professed
sale by half a dozen natives in Sydney. Certain purchased blocks were
airily defined by latitude and longitude. On the other hand, the
Maoris often played the game in quite the same spirit, selling land
which they did not own, or had no power to dispose of, again and
again. In some cases diamond cut diamond. In others both sides were
playing a part, and neither cared for the land to pass. The land-shark
wanted a claim with which to harass others; the Maori signed a
worthless document on receipt of a few goods. By 1840 it was estimated
that, outside the sweeping claim on the South Island, 26,000,000
acres, or more than a third of the area of New Zealand, was supposed
to have been gobbled up piecemeal by the land-sharks. The claims
arising out of these transactions were certain at the best to
cause confusion, ill-feeling, and trouble, and indeed did so. Some
legally-constituted authority was clearly wanted to deal with them.
Otherwise armed strife between the warlike Maoris and adventurers
claiming their lands was inevitable. Before Marsden's death in 1838
both he and his ablest lieutenant, Henry Williams, had come to see
that the only hope for the country and the natives lay in annexation
and the strong hand of England.
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