THROUGH WEAKNESS INTO WAR
"Awhile he makes some false way, undebarred
By thwarting signs, and braves
The freshening wind and blackening waves,
And then the tempest strikes him; and between
The lightning-bursts is seen
Only a driving wreck,
And the pale master on his spar-strewn deck."
In 1842 it took eight months before an official, when writing from
New Zealand to England, could hope to get an answer. The time was far
distant when the results of a cricket match in the southern hemisphere
could be proclaimed in the streets of London before noon on the day of
play. It was not therefore surprising that Hobson's successor did not
reach the Colony for more than a year after his death. Meantime the
Government was carried on by Mr. Secretary Shortland, not the ablest
of his officials. He soon very nearly blundered into war with the
Maoris, some of whom had been killing and eating certain of another
tribe--the last recorded instance of cannibalism in the country.
The Acting-Governor was, however, held back by Bishop Selwyn, Chief
Justice Martin, and Swainson the Attorney-General, a trio of whom more
will be said hereafter. The two former walked on foot through the
disturbed district, in peril but unharmed, to proffer their good
advice. The Attorney-General advised that what the Acting-Governor
contemplated was _ultra vires_, an opinion so palpably and daringly
wrong that some have thought it a desperate device to save the
country. He contended that as the culprits in the case were not among
the chiefs who had signed the Treaty of Waitangi, they were not
subject to the law or sovereignty of England. Though it is said that
Dr. Phillimore held the same opinion, the Colonial Office put its foot
upon it heavily and at once. Her Majesty's rule, said Lord Stanley,
having once been proclaimed over all New Zealand, it did not lie with
one of her officers to impugn the validity of her government.
Mr. Shortland's day was a time of trial for the land claimants. After
nearly two years' delay Mr. Spain, the Commissioner for the trial
of the New Zealand Company's claims, had landed in Wellington in
December, 1841, and had got to work in the following year. As the
southern purchases alone gave him work enough for three men, Messrs.
Richmond and Godfrey were appointed to hear the Auckland cases. By the
middle of 1843 they had disposed of more than half of 1,037 claims.
Very remorselessly did they cut them down. A well-known missionary who
had taken over a block of 50,000 acres to prevent two tribes going
to war about it, was allowed to keep 3,000 acres only. At Hokianga a
purchaser who claimed to have bought 1,500 acres for £24 was awarded
96 acres. When we remember that among the demands of the greater
land-sharks of the Colony had been three for more than a million acres
each, three for more than half a million each, and three for more
than a quarter of a million each, we can appreciate what the early
Governors and their Commissioners had to face. The Old Land Claims,
now and afterwards looked into, covered some eleven million acres.
Of these a little less than one twenty-second part was held to have
passed from the natives, and was divided between the Crown and the
claimants. A number of the Church of England missionaries had to go
through the ordeal with the rest. Some twenty-four of these, together
with members of their families, had, between 1830 and 1843, bought
about 216,000 acres of land from the natives. The Commissioners cut
down this purchase to about 66,000 acres. Even then there was some
litigation and much bitterness. Some of the very missionaries who had
been most prominent in thwarting and denouncing the land purchases of
the New Zealand Company were themselves purchasers of land. As may
be imagined, the criticisms directed at them were savage, noisy, and
often unjust and exaggerated. Years afterwards Governor Grey became
involved in this miserable controversy, which only slowly died away
when he passed ordinances that did much to settle doubtful and
disputed claims.
Not all the missionaries laid themselves open to these attacks.
Neither Hadfield, Maunsell, nor the printer Colenso were amongst the
land-buyers, and the same honourable self-denial was shown by all the
Catholic missionaries, and by all the Wesleyans but two. Nor were the
lay land-claimants always ravenous. Maning, the Pakeha Maori, had paid
£222 for his 200 acres at Hokianga. At Tauranga £50 had been given for
a building site fifty feet square, in a _pa_. At Rotorua the price
given for half an acre had been £12 10s. Many of the most monstrous
claims, it may be noted, were never brought into court.
In the Cook's Straits settlements Mr. Spain strove to do equity. The
very sensible plan was adopted of allowing the Company to make some
of their incomplete purchases good by additional payments. But this,
which might have brought about a tolerable adjustment in 1840, led to
little but delays and recriminations in 1843. After three years of
stagnation the Company was as exasperated and impecunious as the
settlers. The positions of Colonel Wakefield in Wellington, and his
brother and fellow-agent, Arthur Wakefield, in Nelson, were almost
unbearable. It is hardly to be wondered at that the latter, in June,
1843, committed the very great mistake which led to the one misfortune
from which the unhappy Colony had so far escaped--war.
In the north-east corner of the South Island lies the grassy valley of
the Wairau. Rich in alluvial soil, open and attractive to the eye, and
near the sea, it wanted only greater extent to be one of the finest
districts in the Islands. The Company claimed to have bought it from
Rauparaha and Rangihaeata, whose ownership--for they did not live in
it--was based on recent conquest, and on occupation by some members
of their tribe. The chiefs denied the sale, and, when the Company's
surveyors came into the valley, warned them off, and burned down the
huts they had put up. Commissioner Spain was coming almost at once to
try the dispute as to the title. But the delays and vexations of the
previous years had infuriated Captain Wakefield. He looked upon the
chiefs as a pair of "travelling bullies" who wanted but firmness to
cow them. With hasty hardihood he obtained a warrant for the arrest of
Rauparaha on a charge of arson, and set out to arrest him, accompanied
by the Nelson police magistrate, at the head of a _posse_ of some
fifty Nelson settlers very badly equipped. Rauparaha, surrounded by
his armed followers, was found in a small clearing backed by a patch
of bush, his front covered by a narrow but deep creek. The leaders
of the arresting party crossed this, and called on the chief to give
himself up. Of course he defied them. After an argument the police
magistrate, an excitable man, made as though to arrest him. There was
a scuffle; a gun went off, and in the conflict which followed the
undisciplined settlers, fired upon by hidden natives, and divided by
the stream, became panic-stricken, and retreated in confusion, despite
Wakefield's appeals and entreaties to them to stand. As he could do
nothing with them, Wakefield held up a white handkerchief, and with
four gentlemen and four labourers gave himself up to Rauparaha. But
Rangihaeata had a blood-feud with the English. A woman-servant of
his--not his wife--had been accidentally shot in the fray. Moreover,
some time before, another woman, a relative of his, had been murdered
by a white, who, when tried in the Supreme Court, had been acquitted.
Now was the hour for vengeance. Coming up wild with rage, Rangihaeata
fell upon the unresisting prisoners and tomahawked them all. Captain
Wakefield, thus untimely slain, was not only an able pioneer leader,
but a brave man of high worth, of singularly fine and winning
character, and one of whom those who knew him spoke with a kind of
enthusiasm. Twenty-two settlers in all were killed that day and five
wounded. The natives, superior in numbers, arms, and position, had
lost only four killed and eight wounded. So easily was the first
tussle between Maori and settler won by the natives. In the opinion of
some the worst feature of the whole unhappy affair was that something
very like cowardice had been shown on the losing side. Naturally the
Wairau Massacre, as it was called, gave a shock to the young Colony.
The Maoris triumphantly declared that the _mana_ (prestige) of the
English was gone.
A Wesleyan missionary and a party of whalers buried the dead. No
attempt was ever made to revenge them. Commissioner Spain visited
Rauparaha, at the request of the leading settlers of Wellington, to
assure him that the matter should be left to the arbitrament of the
Crown. The Crown, as represented by Mr. Shortland, was, perhaps, at
the moment more concerned at the defenceless position of Auckland, in
the event of a general rising, than at anything else. Moreover,
the philo-Maori officials held that Rauparaha and Rangihaeata were
aggrieved persons. A company of fifty-three Grenadiers was sent to
Wellington and a man-of-war to Nelson. Strict orders were given to
the disgusted settlers not to meet and drill. On the whole, in the
helpless state of the Colony, inaction was wisest. At any rate Mr.
Shortland's successor was on his way out, and there was reason in
waiting for him. Now had come the result of Hobson's error in fixing
the seat of government in Auckland, and in keeping the leading
officials there. Had Wellington been the seat of government in 1843,
the Wairau incident could hardly have occurred.
Not the least of poor Mr. Shortland's troubles were financial. He
inherited debts from his predecessor. Indeed, the New Zealand Treasury
may be said to have been cradled in deficits. In 1841 Hobson's
expenditure had been £81,000 against a revenue of £37,000, most of
which was the product of land sales. In 1842 the revenue was £50,000,
of which only £11,000 came from land sales; and in 1843 this source of
income fell to £1,600. The southern settlers complained, truly enough,
that whilst they found much of the money, nearly all of it was spent
in Auckland. In 1844--if I may anticipate--Mr. Shortland's successor
had the melancholy duty of warning the Colonial Office that to meet an
inevitable outlay of £35,000 he could at the best hope for a revenue
of £20,000. Mr. Shortland himself, in 1843, tried to replenish the
treasury chest by borrowing £15,000 in Sydney. But New Zealand, which
has lately borrowed many times that sum at about three per cent.
interest, could not then raise the money at fifteen per cent. Mr.
Shortland next drew bills on the English treasury, which were
dishonoured, though the mother country afterwards relented so far as
to lend the sum, adding it to the public debt of the Colony. Finally,
the Governor, who on arrival superseded Mr. Shortland, made a
beginning by publicly insulting that gentleman. With proper spirit the
Secretary at once resigned, and was sent by Downing Street to govern a
small island in the West Indies.
If neither Captain Hobson nor Mr. Shortland found official life in New
Zealand otherwise than thorny, their career was smooth and prosperous
compared to that of the Governor who now appears on the scene.
Admiral--then Captain--Robert Fitzroy will have a kind of immortality
as the commander of the _Beagle_--Darwin's _Beagle_. His scientific
work as a hydrographer at the Admiralty is still spoken of in high
terms. He was unquestionably a well-meaning sailor. But his short
career in New Zealand is an awful example of the evils which the
Colonial Office can inflict on a distant part of the Empire by a bad
appointment. It is true that, like his predecessors, Fitzroy was not
fairly supported by the authorities at Home. They supplied him with
neither men nor money, and on them therefore the chief responsibility
of the Colony's troubles rest. But a study of his two years of rule
fails to reveal any pitfall in his pathway into which he did not
straightway stumble.
Captain Fitzroy was one of those fretful and excitable beings whose
manner sets plain men against them, and who, when they are not in
error, seem so. Often wrong, occasionally right, he possessed in
perfection the unhappy art of doing the right thing in the wrong way.
Restless and irascible, passing from self-confidence to gloom, he
would find relief for nerve tension in a peevishness which was the
last quality one in his difficult position should have shown. An
autocratic official amid little rough, dissatisfied communities of
hard-headed pioneers was a king with no divinity to hedge him round.
Without pomp, almost without privacy, everything he said or did became
the property of local gossips. A ruler so placed must have natural
dignity, and requires self-command above all things. That was just
the quality Captain Fitzroy had not. It was said that the blood of a
Stuart king ran in his veins; and, indeed, there seemed to be about
the tall, thin, melancholy man something of the bad luck, as well as
the hopeless wrong-headedness, of that unteachable House.
For he landed at Auckland in November, 1843, to find an ample legacy
of trouble awaiting him. The loyal and patriotic address with which
the Aucklanders welcomed him was such as few viceroys have been
condemned to receive at the outset of their term of office. It did not
mince matters. It described the community as bankrupt, and ascribed
its fate to the mistakes and errors of the Government. At New Plymouth
a similar address declared that the settlers were menaced with
irretrievable ruin. Kororáreka echoed the wail. Nor was the welcome of
Wellington one whit more cheerful--a past of bungling, a present of
stagnation, a future of danger: such was the picture it drew. It
was not much exaggerated. On the coasts of New Zealand some twelve
thousand colonists were divided into eight settlements, varying in
population from 4,000 at Wellington to 200 at Akaroa. Not one of them
was defensible in military eyes. There were no troops, no militia, no
money. Neither at Wellington nor Nelson had more than one thousand
acres of land been cleared and cultivated. Labourers were riotously
clamouring for work or rations. Within fifty miles of Wellington was
Rauparaha, who, had he appealed to his race, could probably have
mustered a force strong enough to loot and burn the town. Some
wondered why he did not; perhaps Hadfield's influence amongst his
tribe supplied the answer.
Governor Fitzroy began at his first _levee_ at Wellington by scolding
the settlers, inveighing against the local newspaper, and grossly
insulting Gibbon Wakefield's son when he was presented to him. At
Nelson he rated the magistrates after such a fashion that they threw
up their commissions. He then went to Rauparaha's _pa_ at Waikanae
near Kapiti. A dozen whites were with the Governor; five hundred
Maoris surrounded the chief. After lecturing the latter for the
slaughter of the captives at Wairau, Fitzroy informed him that, as the
slain men had been the aggressors, he was to be freely forgiven. Only
one utterly ignorant of the Maori character could have fancied that
this exaggerated clemency would be put down to anything but weakness.
Even some missionaries thought that compensation should have been
demanded for the death of the prisoners. As for the settlers, their
disgust was deep. Putting together the haste, violence, and want of
dignity of his proceedings, they declared the new Governor could not
be master of his own actions. That Gibbon Wakefield's brother should
have been savagely butchered and not avenged was bad enough; that his
fellow-settlers should be rated for their share in the disaster seemed
a thing not to be endured. The Maoris grew insolent, the settlers
sullen, and for years afterward a kind of petty warfare lingered on in
the Wellington district.
Governor Fitzroy was no more successful in Taranaki. There the
Company, after claiming the entire territory, had had their claim cut
down by the Commissioners' award to 60,000 acres. But even this was
now disputed, on the ground that it had been bought from a tribe--the
Waikato--who had indeed conquered it, and carried away its owners as
slaves, but had never taken possession of the soil by occupation. When
Colonel Wakefield bought it, the land was virtually empty, and the few
score of natives living at the Sugar-Loaves sold their interest to him
readily enough. But when the enslaved Ngatiawa and Taranaki tribesmen
were soon afterwards released through the influence of Christianity,
they returned to the desolated land, and disputed the claim of the
Company. Moreover, there were the Ngatiawas, who, led by Wiremu Kingi,
had migrated to Cook's Straits in the days of devastation. They
claimed not only their new possessions--much of which they sold to the
Company--but their old tribal lands at Waitara, from which they had
fled, but to which some of them now straggled back. On this nice point
Captain Fitzroy had to adjudicate. He decided that the returned slaves
and Ngatiawa fugitives were the true owners of the land. Instead
of paying them fairly for the 60,000 acres--which they did not
require--he handed the bulk of it back to them, penning the unhappy
white settlers up in a miserable strip of 3,200 acres. The result was
the temporary ruin of the Taranaki settlement, and the sowing of the
seeds of an intense feeling of resentment and injustice which bore
evil fruit in later days.
Nor did Captain Fitzroy do any better with finance than in his land
transactions. His very insufficient revenue was largely derived from
Customs duties. Trade at the Bay of Islands had, by this time, greatly
fallen away. Whalers and timber vessels no longer resorted there as in
the good old Alsatian days. Both natives and settlers grumbled at
the change, which they chose to attribute to the Government Customs
duties. To conciliate them, the Governor abolished Customs duties at
Kororáreka. Naturally a cry at once went up from other parts of the
Colony for a similar concession. The unhappy Governor, endeavouring
to please them all, like the donkey-owner in Æsop's Fables, abolished
Customs duties everywhere. To replace them he devised an astounding
combination of an income-tax and property-tax. Under this, not only
would the rich plainly pay less in proportion than the poor, but a
Government official drawing £600 a year, but owning no land, would pay
just half the sum exacted from a settler who, having invested £1,000
in a farm, was struggling to make £200 a year thereby. The mere
prospect of this crudity caused such a feeling in the Colony that he
was obliged to levy the Customs duties once more. His next error was
the abandonment of the Government monopoly of land purchase from the
Maoris. As might be expected, the pressure upon all rulers in New
Zealand to do this, and to allow private bargaining with the natives
for land, has always been very strong, especially in the Auckland
district. Repeated experience has, however, shown that the results are
baneful to all concerned--demoralizing to the natives, and by no means
always profitable to the white negotiators. When Fitzroy proclaimed
that settlers might purchase land from the natives, he imposed a duty
of ten shillings an acre upon each sale. Then, when this was bitterly
complained of, he reduced the fee to one penny. Finally, he fell back
on the desperate expedient of issuing paper money, a thing which he
had no right to do. All these mistakes and others he managed to commit
within two short years. Fortunately for the Colony, he, in some of
them, flatly disregarded his instructions. The issue of paper money
was one of the few blunders the full force of which Downing Street
could apprehend. Hence his providential recall.
Before this reached him he had drifted into the last and worst of his
misfortunes, an unsuccessful war, the direct result of the defeat at
the Wairau and the weakness shown thereafter. It was not that he and
his missionary advisers did not try hard enough to avert any conflict
with the Maoris. If conciliation pushed to the verge of submission
could have kept the peace, it would have been kept. But conciliation,
without firmness, will not impress barbarians. The Maoris were far too
acute to be impressed by the well-meaning, vacillating Governor. They
set to work, instead, to impress him. They invited him to a huge
banquet near Auckland, and danced a war-dance before their guest with
the deliberate intention of overawing him. Indeed, the spectacle of
fifteen hundred warriors, stripped, smeared with red ochre, stamping,
swaying, leaping, uttering deep guttural shouts, and brandishing their
muskets, while their wild rhythmic songs rose up in perfect time, and
their tattooed features worked convulsively, was calculated to affect
even stronger nerves than the Governor's.
It was among the discontented tribes in the Bay of Islands, where
Alsatia was now deserted by its roaring crews of whalers and cheated
of its hoped-for capital, that the outbreak came.
In the winter of 1844, Honé Heké, son-in-law of the great Hongi,
presuming on the weakness of the Government, swaggered into
Kororáreka, plundered some of the houses, and cut down a flagstaff
on the hill over the town on which the English flag was flying. Some
White of the beach-comber species is said to have suggested the act
to him by assuring him that the flag-staff represented the Queen's
sovereignty--the evil influence which had drawn trade and money away
to Auckland. Heké had no grievance whatever against the Government or
colonists, but he and the younger braves of the Northern tribes
had been heard to ask whether Rangihaeata was to do all the
_Pakeha_-killing? At the moment Fitzroy had not two hundred soldiers
in the country. He hurried up to the scene of disturbance. Luckily
Heké's tribe--the Ngapuhi--were divided. Part, under Waka Nené, held
with the English. Accepting Nené's advice Fitzroy allowed Heké to pay
ten muskets in compensation for the flagstaff, and then foolishly gave
back the fine as a present and departed. Nené and the friendly chiefs
undertook to keep peace--but failed, for Heké again cut down the
flagstaff. This, of course, brought war definitely on. The famous
flagstaff was re-erected, guarded by a block-house, and a party of
soldiers and sailors were sent to garrison Kororáreka. As H.M.S.
_Hazard_ lay off the beach in the Bay and guns were mounted in three
block-houses, the place was expected to hold out. Heké, however,
notified that he would take it--and did so. He marched against it with
eight hundred men. One party attacked the flagstaff, another the town.
The twenty defenders of the flag-staff were divided by a stratagem by
which part were lured out to repel a feigned attack. In their absence
the stockade was rushed, and, for the third time, the flagstaff hewn
down. During the attack the defenders of the town, however, under
Captain Robertson of the _Hazard_, stood their ground and repulsed a
first attack. Even when Robertson fell, his thigh-bone shattered by
a bullet, Lieutenant Philpotts, taking command, had the women and
children sent safely on board the ships, and all was going well when
the outnumbered garrison were paralysed by the blowing up of their
powder magazine. The townsmen began to escape, and a council of war
decided to abandon the place. This was done. Lovell, a gunner, would
not leave his piece until he had spiked it, and was killed, but not
before doing so. Bishop Selwyn, landing from his mission ship in the
Bay, had been doing the work of ten in carrying off women and children
and succouring the wounded, aided therein by Henry Williams. To
Selwyn, as he toiled begrimed with smoke and sweat, came running a
boy, young Nelson Hector, whose father, a lawyer, was in charge of a
gun in position on one of the hillsides outside the town. The boy had
stolen away unnoticed, and crept through the Maoris to find out for
his father how things stood. The bishop offered to take him on board
with the women, but the youngster scouted the notion of leaving his
father. "God bless you, my boy!" said the big-hearted Selwyn; "I have
nothing to say against it"; and the lad, running off, got back safely.
Out in the Bay the American corvette _St. Louis_ lay at anchor. Her
men were keen to be allowed to "bear a hand" in the defence. Though
this could not be, her captain sent boats through the fire while it
was still hot to bring off the women and children, and gave them
shelter on board. Anglo-Saxon brotherhood counted for something even
in 1845. The scene became extraordinary. The victorious Maoris,
streaming gleefully into the town, began to plunder in the best of
good tempers. Some of the townspeople went about saving such of their
goods as they could without molestation, indeed, with occasional help
from the Maoris, who considered there was enough for all. Presently
a house caught fire, the flames spread, and the glowing blaze, the
volumes of smoke, and the roar of the burning under the red-lit sky,
gave a touch of dignity to the end of wicked old Kororáreka.
Loaded with booty, Heké's men went off inland in high spirits. Three
vessels crowded with the ruined Alsatians sailed to Auckland, where
for a while the astonished people expected nightly to be roused
from their beds by the yells of Ngapuhi warriors. Our loss had been
thirty-one killed and wounded, and it was small consolation to know
that, thanks to the ship's guns, the Maoris' had been three times as
great. The disaster was a greater blow to the English _Mana_ than even
the Wairau Massacre. But the settlements showed spirit everywhere,
and under the stress of the time the Governor forgot some of his
prejudices. Even those much-suspected people, the Wellington settlers,
were allowed to form themselves into a militia at last.
Thanks to the divisions among the Ngapuhi, Heké did not follow up his
victory. Troops were procured from Sydney, but they had no artillery.
The natives relied on their _pas_ or stockades. These, skilfully
constructed by means of double or triple rows of heavy palisades,
masked by flax and divided by shallow ditches which did duty for
rifle-pits, could not be carried without being breached by cannon. A
fruitless attack upon one of them soon demonstrated this. The _pa_,
called Okaihau, though strong in front, was weak in the rear. Four
hundred soldiers, supported by as many Ngapuhi friendlies under Waka
Nené, marched against it. Fruitlessly Nené advised the English Colonel
to assail the place from behind. The Colonel, who had seen Nené
yelling in a war-dance, and looked upon him as a degraded savage,
approached the front, where Okaihau was really strong. As he had no
guns he tried the effect of rockets, but though terrified by the
strange fire, the defenders gained heart when they found that the
rockets hit nothing. They even charged the English in the open with
long-handled tomahawks, and only fell back before a bayonet charge
in regular form. After skirmishing all day and losing fifty-four in
killed and wounded with but negative results, the English retreated to
Auckland to request artillery. Waka Nené carried on the fighting on
his own account, and in a skirmish with him Heké was badly wounded.
Guns were fetched from Australia, and Heké's men were brought to bay
at their principal _pa_, Ohaeawai. Colonel Despard commanded the
besiegers, who outnumbered the defenders by more than three to one.
After bombarding the palisades for some days, the colonel, in defiance
of the advice of his artillery officer--who declared there was no
practicable breach--ordered an assault. Two hundred soldiers and
sailors were told off for the duty, and at four o'clock on a
pleasant, sunny afternoon they charged up a gentle, open slope to the
simple-looking stockade. Only two or three got inside. In a quarter of
an hour half the force were shot down, and the survivors only saved by
the bugle-call which Despard ordered to be sounded. Forty, including a
captain and two lieutenants, were killed on the spot or died of their
wounds. Sixty-two others were wounded. Gallant Lieutenant Philpotts,
the first through the stockade, lay dead, sword in hand, inside the
_pa_. At the outset of the war he had been captured by the natives
whilst scouting, and let go unharmed with advice to take more care in
future. Through no fault of his own he had lost Kororáreka. Stung by
this, or, as some say, by a taunt of Despard's, he led the way at
Ohaeawai with utterly reckless courage, and, to the regret of the
brave brown men his enemies, was shot at close quarters by a mere boy.
The wounded could not be removed for two days. During the night
the triumphant Maoris shouted and danced their war-dance. They
tortured--with burning kauri gum--an unfortunate soldier whom they
had captured alive, and whose screams could be plainly heard in the
English camp. Despard, whose artillery ammunition had run short,
remained watching the _pa_ for several days. But when he was in a
position to renew his bombardment, the natives quietly abandoned the
place by night, without loss. According to their notions of warfare,
such a withdrawal was not a defeat.
Such are the facts of one of the worst repulses sustained by our
arms in New Zealand. It will scarcely be believed that after this
humiliation Captain Fitzroy, on missionary advice, endeavoured to make
peace--of course, without avail. Heké became a hero in the eyes of
his race. The news of Ohaeawai reached England, and the Duke of
Wellington's language about Colonel Despard is said to have been
pointed. But already the Colonial Office had made up its mind for a
change in New Zealand. Fitzroy was recalled, and Captain Grey, the
Governor of South Australia, whose sense and determination had lifted
that Colony out of the mire, was wisely selected to replace him.