CHAPTER XXII.

Harley L’Estrange is seated beside Helen at the lattice-window in the

cottage at Norwood. The bloom of reviving health is on the child’s face,

and she is listening with a smile, for Harley is speaking of Leonard

with praise, and of Leonard’s future with hope. “And thus,” he

continued, “secure from his former trials, happy in his occupation, and

pursuing the career he has chosen, we must be content, my dear child, to

leave him.”

“Leave him!” exclaimed Helen, and the rose on her cheek faded.

Harley was not displeased to see her emotion. He would have been

disappointed in her heart if it had been less susceptible to affection.

“It is hard on you, Helen,” said he, “to separate you from one who has

been to you as a brother. Do not hate me for doing so. But I consider

myself your guardian, and your home as yet must be mine. We are going

from this land of cloud and mist, going as into the world of summer.

Well, that does not content you. You weep, my child; you mourn your own

friend, but do not forget your father’s. I am alone, and often sad,

Helen; will you not comfort me? You press my hand, but you must learn to

smile on me also. You are born to be the Comforter. Comforters are not

egotists: they are always cheerful when they console.”

The voice of Harley was so sweet, and his words went so home to the

child’s heart, that she looked up and smiled in his face as he kissed

her ingenuous brow. But then she thought of Leonard, and felt so

solitary—so bereft—that tears burst forth again. Before these were

dried, Leonard himself entered, and, obeying an irresistible impulse,

she sprang to his arms, and, leaning her head on his shoulder, sobbed

out, “I am going from you, brother—do not grieve—do not miss me.”

Harley was much moved: he folded his arms, and contemplated them both

silently—and his own eyes were moist. “This heart,” thought he, “will be

worth the winning!”

He drew aside Leonard, and whispered, “Soothe, but encourage and support

her. I leave you together; come to me in the garden later.”

It was nearly an hour before Leonard joined Harley.

“She was not weeping when you left her?” asked L’Estrange.

“No; she has more fortitude than we might suppose. Heaven knows how that

fortitude has supported mine. I have promised to write to her often.”

Harley took two strides across the lawn, and then, coming back to

Leonard, said, “Keep your promise, and write often for the first year. I

would then ask you to let the correspondence drop gradually.”

“Drop!—Ah, my lord!”

“Look you, my young friend, I wish to lead this fair mind wholly from

the sorrows of the Past. I wish Helen to enter, not abruptly, but step

by step, into a new life. You love each other now, as do two children—as

brother and sister. But later, if encouraged, would the love be the

same? And is it not better for both of you, that youth should open upon

the world with youth’s natural affections free and unforestalled?”

“True! And she is so above me,” said Leonard mournfully.

“No one is above him who succeeds in your ambition, Leonard. It is not

_that_, believe me!”

Leonard shook his head.

“Perhaps,” said Harley, with a smile, “I rather feel that you are above

me. For what vantage-ground is so high as youth? Perhaps I may become

jealous of you. It is well that she should learn to like one who is to

be henceforth her guardian and protector. Yet, how can she like me as

she ought, if her heart is to be full of you?”

The boy bowed his head; and Harley hastened to change the subject, and

speak of letters and of glory. His words were eloquent, and his voice

kindling; for he had been an enthusiast for fame in his boyhood; and

in Leonard’s, his own seemed to him to revive. But the poet’s heart

gave back no echo—suddenly it seemed void and desolate. Yet when

Leonard walked back by the moonlight, he muttered to himself,

“Strange—strange—so mere a child, this cannot be love! Still what else

to love is there left to me?”

And so he paused upon the bridge where he had so often stood with Helen,

and on which he had found the protector that had given to her a home—to

himself a career. And life seemed very long, and fame but a dreary

phantom. Courage, still, Leonard! These are the sorrows of the heart

that teach thee more than all the precepts of sage and critic.

Another day, and Helen had left the shores of England, with her fanciful

and dreaming guardian. Years will pass before our tale reopens. Life in

all the forms we have seen it travels on. And the Squire farms and

hunts; and the Parson preaches and chides and soothes. And Riccabocca

reads his Machiavelli, and sighs and smiles as he moralises on Men and

States. And Violante’s dark eyes grow deeper and more spiritual in their

lustre; and her beauty takes thought from solitary dreams. And Mr

Richard Avenel has his house in London, and the honourable Mrs Avenel

her opera box; and hard and dire is their struggle into fashion, and

hotly does the new man, scorning the aristocracy, pant to become

aristocrat. And Audley Egerton goes from the office to the Parliament,

and drudges, and debates, and helps to govern the empire in which the

sun never sets. Poor Sun, how tired he must be—but not more tired than

the Government! And Randal Leslie has an excellent place in the bureau

of a minister, and is looking to the time when he shall resign it to

come into Parliament, and on that large arena turn knowledge into power.

And meanwhile, he is much where he was with Audley Egerton; but he has

established intimacy with the Squire, and visited Hazeldean twice, and

examined the house and the map of the property—and very nearly fallen a

second time into the Ha-ha, and the Squire believes that Randal Leslie

alone can keep Frank out of mischief, and has spoken rough words to his

Harry about Frank’s continued extravagance. And Frank does continue to

pursue pleasure, and is very miserable, and horribly in debt. And Madame

di Negra has gone from London to Paris, and taken a tour into

Switzerland, and come back to London again, and has grown very intimate

with Randal Leslie; and Randal has introduced Frank to her; and Frank

thinks her the loveliest woman in the world, and grossly slandered by

certain evil tongues. And the brother of Madame di Negra is expected in

England at last; and what with his repute for beauty and for wealth,

people anticipate a sensation; and Leonard, and Harley, and Helen?

Patience—they will all reappear.

THE NEW ZEALANDERS.

We were listening one evening, rather listlessly, as people sometimes do

to an old friend’s narrative of business and family arrangements, when

the equal current of such talk was somewhat disturbed by the words—“My

brother’s new partner in the business at Wellington, Hoani Riri

Tamihana, a very respectable man, and well connected in the Ngatiawa.”

This nomenclature was out of the usual way, and was suggestive of

inquiry. Our friend was quite open and communicative at first, though

some of the company did at last drive him into disagreeable corners. He

remembered Hoani Riri when he and his brother became first acquainted

with him; he wore a cakahoo or mat dress, had his patoo-patoo in his

hand, and was distinguished by several rows of beads made of the bones

of fingers and toes, highly polished, and arranged row after row with a

graduated symmetry which indicated a very accurate taste. There was no

reason why a New Zealander might not get rid of such decorations, and

sit on a three-legged stool as composedly as our own countrymen when

they have cast off their scarlet coats and white cords; but there was a

feature of his early independent life which still stuck to Hoani Riri,

and our friend was rather annoyed in having to admit it. He was

_tatooed_. It was clear that this incurable relic of the state of

society in which he had spent his youth was considered by his partner’s

brother a great inconvenience to him. It prevented him—with all his

acuteness, said to be remarkable, and his business habits, pronounced as

steady and imperturbable—from being able effectively to represent “the

house” in this country. Among Parsees, and other Orientals, we have odd

enough names put to very discountable and acceptable paper. Moreover,

heads of houses and directors of companies will respectfully meet

occasionally with a dusky, stately, bearded and turbaned worshipper of

the Prophet, or of anything else; but a man whose skin people have taken

the liberty of tatooing!—it would not be easy to get clerks and

cashkeepers to admit his superiority and importance. There would be a

difficulty in cashing his check, even though his presence offered the

best possible means of showing its genuineness, since the signature is a

tracing of the pattern of the tatoo.

But there was another little matter in Hoani Riri’s personal history, to

which fastidious people would find it still more difficult to reconcile

themselves, and which indeed might be counted an insurmountable bar to

his ever being received in good society in this country, or making an

eligible matrimonial connection. He had in his younger days been

addicted to human flesh; and, being a very candid and really high-minded

man, he admits that, though he has now acquired totally different

tastes, the relish with which he partook in cannibal feasts—especially

when the fleshy part of a young female was served up—is still a matter

of by no means disagreeable recollection to him.

In this part of the conversation we were slightly startled by a

physiological friend, who broke into it somewhat vehemently, maintaining

that he considered the cannibalism of the New Zealanders—now

authenticated beyond all question—to be a remarkable indication of their

capacity to become a great civilised people. As this was by no means a

self-evident proposition, the physiologist was asked for his reasons,

which we shall abbreviate thus: Take a map of the world, and see how

distant New Zealand is from the rest of society—if it may so be

termed—from the clustering continents and islands of the world over

which man and the brute and vegetable creation have gradually spread. If

we suppose it to be from Central Asia, or from any other specified part

of the world, that the present forms of animal and vegetable life first

radiated, we may trace their dispersal, by easy gradations, to the

extremities of the rest of the known portions of the globe—to the

southern capes of Africa and America—to Borneo and Guinea, and even to

Australia. But the New Zealand islands are twelve hundred miles distant

from the nearest shore, and that nearest shore is the thinly peopled and

almost sterile Australia. Now we can imagine that, while an adventurous

race of men—the New Zealanders are believed to be of Malay origin—might

overcome so great a difficulty, and establish themselves in these

beautiful islands, they would not be accompanied by a like infusion of

the animal and the vegetable world. Accordingly, we find the fact

precisely in accordance with the supposition. Of indigenous quadrupeds

there is scarcely one in New Zealand so large as a house rat. The very

few birds found by the earliest European explorers, though some of them

had fine plumage, presented no more edible substantiality than a street

sparrow. The fruit and vegetable department was equally meagre—there was

really almost nothing to support life but an edible fern. Now observe

how the poor, abject, in every way inferior race, found scattered round

the edge of the great Australian continent, acted in circumstances

nearly similar—for there, also, indigenous animals and vegetables

suitable for food are rare. They lived on fern roots and cobra worms,

with an occasional opossum; and all travellers have remarked, that they

manage to preserve themselves from such sources merely in existence, on

the border of annihilation, and are consequently a wretched and

spiritless race. But your New Zealander, determined to keep up his

physical condition, and finding that there was nothing else for it, made

a virtue of the necessity of eating his kind—“and in fact,” continues

our friend, who seemed to have got on a strange hobby, “the cannibal

propensity is deeper in the highest conditioned races of man than most

people imagine. Why was pork, for instance, prohibited to the Jews and

other Oriental nations, of strong physical temperament and appetite?

Why, but that it so closely resembles human flesh that people in a state

of semibarbarism might get into the habit of overlooking the

distinction, and lapse into cannibalism. It was as well to have a

barrier against a system of living which would be so obviously

deleterious a feature in society, and the _obsta principiis_ principle

was adopted.”

But, without acceding to our physiological friend’s peculiar

speculations, there seems to be something extremely curious and

interesting in finding that our colonists have for the first time come

in contact with elements of progressive civilisation capable of keeping

pace with our own; in hearing of savages with whom our blood may mix

without deterioration, and detecting in very cannibalism a people

destined to so proud a destiny as to share, with the heirs of the

highest civilisation, one of the fairest portions of the surface of the

earth. The New Zealander is, in fact, the first savage who, after giving

battle to the civilised man, and being beaten—as the savage must ever

be—has frankly offered to sit down beside us, and enjoy with us the

fruits of mutual civilisation. A temperate healthy climate, suitable to

a highly conditioned race, was necessary to the development of such a

phenomenon. The British race do not spread at all, or spread very

scantily, in tropical countries, where the question of superiority of

race is at once settled by the hardy European degenerating so as to be

in a generation or two inferior to the aboriginal inhabitant. In North

America, however, we found a race inhabiting territories where our own

people are capable of the fullest development, yet where the aborigines

have baffled all efforts at civilisation and improvement. It is the same

in the temperate territories of Northern Africa; Hottentots, Kaffirs,

Zoolus—all were capable of making some slight advance; but all stopped

short, and showed themselves unfit to partake in the great destinies of

the British race. The aborigines of Australia, though there may be some

differences between tribes a thousand or two miles from each other—as

between those of Moreton Bay and the Swan River—are all of an extremely

degraded type, both physically and intellectually; and even the most

conscientious efforts which have been made, on rare occasions

unfortunately, to improve their condition, have ever signally failed. If

possible, the nations of Van Diemen’s Island were still a lower type of

humanity than those of the Australian continent. There is no reason to

suppose that these representatives of almost the lowest type of humanity

were cannibals, but we have the cannibalism of the bush-ranger convicts

attested beyond all doubt to Parliamentary committees. These desperate

men, the essence of British criminality, threatened at one time to

overpower the law, and establish an independent community in the rocky

island to which they were transported. In their cunning and capacity, in

their endurance under calamity, and ruthlessness in victory, they had

some resemblance to the New Zealanders, whom also they resembled in

having recourse to cannibalism. It is not easy to imagine anything more

horrible than the description of two of these monsters of degenerate

civilisation, Greenhill and Pierce, who wandered together day after day,

each watching his moment for plunging his axe into the skull of the

other, while, though each knew his comrade’s murderous intention, they

were respectively prevented from separating by the hope of a victory and

a feast. It is singular enough that thus, at the antipodes, we should

have, next door as it were to each other, the barbarism following the

departed civilisation of part of an energetic race, bearing so close a

resemblance to the barbarism which is evidently, in another race, but

the precedent of a state of high civilisation.

Nothing has been more bandied about, between scepticism and credulity,

than cannibalism or anthropophagy. Besides what Herodotus says of the

Massagetæ and other tribes, who ate their relatives by way of burial,

there have been through all ages charges of this kind, which are purely

fabulous; and few believe Purchas’s account of those Africans who

exposed human flesh ready for sale at all times, in well-kept booths or

shambles, though he gives it on the credit of “John Battell of Essex, a

near neighbour of mine, and a man worthy of credit.” The discredit found

to attach to the old traveller’s stories about the Peruvians rearing

offspring for the table, and the Saracens, who paid large sums for

sucking Christian babes, made people disbelieve in any such practice as

systematic anthropophagy, though it was generally admitted that

miserable beings, half maddened by starvation and hardship, had

sometimes forgotten their nature, and devoured their kind, under

impulses that rendered them no more accountable for what they did than

the most confirmed madman.

The history of New Zealand, however, places on record the fact of a

people indulging in systematic cannibalism, accompanied in recent times

with the interesting fact, that the systematic cannibal has been found

capable of a high civilisation. Cooke took pains to prove the existence

of the practice, both by inquiry and experiment. Not content with

turning over the remains of cannibal feasts, he got a New Zealand boy to

exhibit the propensity on his own deck. The many notices and statements

which other travellers have preserved are but a general acknowledgment

of what Cooke so distinctly proved. But it is in a now forgotten book,

called “A Narrative of a Nine Months’ Residence in New Zealand in 1827,

by Augustus Earle,” that we find the most succinct, clear, unvarnished

narrative of such a banquet. Mr Earle was an artist, and a wanderer in

several unfrequented countries. Although he had thus many things to

relate, which could only be taken at his own word, his unquestioned

character for truthfulness obtained credence for them. The cannibal

feast of which he gives a minute description—too minute to be

pleasant—took place on the body of a female slave, killed under

circumstances which, in this country, and without looking on the act as

merely supplying the market with butcher-meat, we would consider gross

treachery. We shall spare our readers the more minute parts of the

description, which, in their intense truthfulness, are really an

unpleasant piece of reading. But we are desirous to resuscitate a

portion of the account which shows the spirit in which the perpetrators

acted—a spirit of utilitarian coolness and system, exhibiting no

ebullitions of the unrestrained savage nature, but, on the contrary,

accompanied, as we shall see, with great self-restraint, shown under

circumstances of provocation and disappointment.

“Here stood Captain Duke and myself, both witnesses of a scene which

many travellers have related, and their relations have invariably been

treated with contempt; indeed, the veracity of those who had the

temerity to relate such incredible events has been everywhere

questioned. In this instance it was no warrior’s flesh to be eaten;

there was no enemy’s blood to drink, in order to infuriate them. They

had no revenge to gratify; no plea could they make of their passions

having been roused by battle, nor the excuse that they eat their

enemies to perfect their triumph. This was an action of unjustifiable

cannibalism. Atoi, the chief, who had given orders for this cruel

feast, had only the night before sold us four pigs for a few pounds of

powder; so he had not even the excuse of want of food. After Captain

Duke and myself had consulted with each other, we walked into the

village, determining to charge Atoi with his brutality.

“Atoi received us in his usual manner; and his handsome open

countenance could not be imagined to belong to so savage a monster as

he had proved himself to be. I shuddered at beholding the unusual

quantity of potatoes his slaves were preparing to eat with this

infernal banquet. We talked coolly with him on the subject; for, as we

could not prevent what had taken place, we were resolved to learn (if

possible) the whole particulars. Atoi at first tried to make us

believe he knew nothing about it, and that it was only a meal for his

slaves; but we had ascertained it was for himself and his favourite

companions. After various endeavours to conceal the fact, Atoi frankly

owned that he was only waiting till the cooking was completed to

partake of it. He added that, knowing the horror we Europeans held

these feasts in, the natives were always most anxious to conceal them

from us, and he was very angry that it had come to our knowledge; but,

as he had acknowledged the fact, he had no objection to talk about it.

He told us that human flesh required a greater number of hours to cook

than any other; that, if not done enough, it was very tough, but when

sufficiently cooked it was as tender as paper. He held in his hand a

piece of paper, which he tore in illustration of his remark. He said

the flesh then preparing would not be ready till next morning; but one

of his sisters whispered in my ear that her brother was deceiving us,

as they intended feasting at sunset.

“We inquired why and how he had murdered the poor girl. He replied,

that running away from him to her own relations was her only crime. He

then took us outside his village, and showed us the post to which she

had been tied, and laughed to think how he had cheated her: ‘For,’

said he, ‘I told her I only intended to give her a flogging; but I

fired, and shot her through the heart!’ My blood ran cold at this

relation, and I looked with feelings of horror at the savage while he

related it. Shall I be credited when I again affirm, that he was not

only a handsome young man, but mild and genteel in his demeanour? He

was a man we had admitted to our table, and was a general favourite

with us all; and the poor victim to his bloody cruelty was a pretty

girl of about sixteen years of age!...

“After some time spent in contemplating the miserable scene before us,

during which we gave full vent to the most passionate exclamations of

disgust, we determined to spoil this intended feast: this resolution

formed, we rose to execute it. I ran off to our beach, leaving Duke on

guard, and, collecting all the white men I could, I informed them of

what had happened, and asked them if they would assist in destroying

the oven, and burying the remains of the girl: they consented, and

each having provided himself with a shovel or a pickaxe, we repaired

in a body to the spot. Atoi and his friends had by some means been

informed of our intention, and they came out to prevent it. He used

various threats to deter us, and seemed highly indignant; but as none

of his followers appeared willing to come to blows, and seemed ashamed

that such a transaction should have been discovered by us, we were

permitted by them to do as we chose. We accordingly dug a tolerably

deep grave; then we resolutely attacked the oven. On removing the

earth and leaves, the shocking spectacle was presented to our view—the

four quarters of a human body half-roasted. During our work, clouds of

steam enveloped us, and the disgust created by our task was almost

overpowering. We collected all the parts we could recognise; the heart

was placed separately, we supposed as a savoury morsel for the chief

himself. We placed the whole in the grave, which we filled up as well

as we could, and then broke and scattered the oven.

“By this time the natives from both villages had assembled; and a

scene similar to this was never before witnessed in New Zealand. Six

unarmed men, quite unprotected, (for there was not a single vessel in

the harbour, nor had there been for a month,) had attacked and

destroyed all the preparations of the natives for what they consider a

national feast; and this was done in the presence of a great body of

armed chiefs, who had assembled to partake of it. After having

finished this exploit, and our passion and disgust had somewhat

subsided, I could not help feeling that we had acted very imprudently

in thus tempting the fury of these savages, and interfering in an

affair that certainly was no concern of ours; but as no harm accrued

to any of our party, it plainly shows the influence ‘the white men’

have already obtained over them: had the offence we committed been

done by any hostile tribe, hundreds of lives would have been

sacrificed.

“The next day our old friend King George paid us a long visit, and we

talked over the affair very calmly. He highly disapproved of our

conduct. ‘In the first place,’ said he, ‘you did a foolish thing,

which might have cost you your lives; and yet did not accomplish your

purpose after all, as you merely succeeded in burying the flesh near

the spot on which you found it. After you went away, it was again

taken up, and every bit was eaten;’—a fact I afterwards ascertained by

examining the grave, and finding it empty. King George further said,

‘It was an old custom, which their fathers practised before them; and

you had no right to interfere with their ceremonies. I myself,’ added

he, ‘have left off eating human flesh, out of compliment to you white

men; but you have no reason to expect the same compliance from all the

other chiefs. What punishment have you in England for thieves and

runaways?’ We answered, ‘After trial, flogging or hanging.’ ‘Then,’ he

replied, ‘the only difference in our laws is, you flog and hang, but

we shoot and eat.’”

What renders the rapid civilisation of the New Zealanders the more

remarkable is, that the practice of eating human flesh appears to have

continued for several years after Mr Earle’s visit. Among other

instances which might be cited, the following occurs in the Lords’

Report on New Zealand in 1844. Mr Francis Molesworth is examined.

_Q._ “Do any of the tribes in the interior practise cannibalism?”

_A._ “Yes, and they do so on the coast. There was a case about

eighteen months before I came away.”

_Q._ “What were the circumstances of that case?”

_A._ “It was the case of Rangihaeata, at some festival or other; he

took a slave girl, and murdered her and ate her. I knew the

particulars of that case from a man of the name of Jenkins. He was

there at the time, and offered to buy the girl from Rangihaeata, but

he would not agree to it; he offered pigs for her, but Rangihaeata

said, ‘A piece of Maori flesh is much better than pork,’ and he killed

her and ate her. It is not very long since an encounter took place

between two tribes near Auckland, and a number of prisoners were

taken, and they were all eaten.”

Mr Angas went through the country about two years after this testimony

was given, but perhaps about five years after the state of matters to

which it refers. He was collecting the materials for his magnificent

illustrations of New Zealand life and scenery, where he gives a very

pleasing portrait of a young lady, Kaloki, with this memorandum attached

to it:—

“I met her on a visit to her friends at Te Aroh Pah, near Wellington,

in company with Kutia, the wife of Rauparaha, and a large party of her

attendants from the Roturua lakes, whither she offered to accompany

me, for the purpose of sketching and obtaining portraits of the

principal chiefs, adding that her introduction would be an immediate

passport throughout the entire district.”

There is something in this very different in tone from the description

of the cannibal feast. But we cannot turn even Mr Angas’s fine

illustrations, without feeling that they represent a state of matters in

rapid transition; that a few years will have swept away what they embody

of the past state of the country; and that the civilised descendants of

the mingled race, who seem destined to people these beautiful islands,

will turn to them with a strange interest, as an embodiment of customs

and manners that, in the antipodes, have grown older in a generation

than, in this country of unassisted self-effected civilisation, the

usages of our Saxon ancestors have grown in a thousand years. Even after

going beyond these thousand years, we find no proof that there was

cannibalism in this country. The New Zealand gentlemen of the next

generation will have their after-dinner jokes about who had eaten whose

uncle or grandfather, as Scottish gentlemen have had their talk about

old family feuds. Here, among the most curious of Mr Angas’s pictures,

is a representation of the mansion-house of that Rauparaha, whose wife

was the friend of the interesting Kaloki. It has an Egyptian-shaped door

elaborately carved. At either side, the extremities of the roof-beams

are supported by square pillars, covered with hideous representations of

animal life. The name of the mansion—a name which it will probably long

preserve—is “Eat-man-house:” probably its mother-of-pearl-eyed monsters

have gazed on many a jolly feast beneath its roof. We turn over Mr

Angas’s pages, and next find a portrait of a gentleman in an easy

attitude, and in a good modern English dress, which does his tailor

credit. He has just one anachronism, as the French would call it—like

our friend’s partner, he is tatooed; and there is no denying the

grotesqueness produced by the immediate contact of the artificiality of

savage with that of civilised life.

The evidence collected by Cooke and Bankes, of the extent to which

civilisation had grown among these people, unaided from without, might

have been expected to create more astonishment than it did. The size of

their war canoes, the number of men accommodated and disciplined to

formidable manœuvres in them, the knowledge of navigation which they

displayed, and, above all, the elaborate and in many respects

symmetrical decoration of their war vessels, their weapons, their

houses, their public monuments and their burial-places, must have all

from the first indicated them as a remarkable people. Their profuse

decorations in wood and stone seem, when compared with those of other

nations moving onward to civilisation, to indicate that the human

intellect in its struggles after symmetry, beauty, harmony of form, or

whatever artistic perfection may be called, must pass through endeavours

having a generic resemblance. In the sculptured stones of Scotland, to

which we lately referred, in the older Egyptian monuments, in the

alabaster carvings of upper Asia, in the ornaments of the lately

discovered cities of Central America,—there is a common characteristic

resemblance to the artistic labours of the New Zealander.

The obdurate ferocity of the inhabitants, which made our navigators shun

their shores for upwards of half a century, was of a kind, when

examined, to contain promise of civilisation. However deep their hatred

and unextinguishable their pugnacity, they were not capricious

emanations of mere savage passions; both had their causes, and were kept

alive to produce effects; and had we, in our intercourse with them,

looked on them and treated them as reasoning and in many respects able

men, we would have fared better. All the foreign blood they shed,

whether openly or treacherously, was with the one design of

protection—of saving their liberties and their possessions from

invasion; and when looking back from the dawn of peace and progress

which has now brightened over this singular people, the white man is

bound to confess that they had reason in their suspicions, and that they

showed wisdom and courage in their conduct. The war which lasted in New

Zealand from 1843, when the land disputes began, to 1848, though

productive of little bloodshed, is one of the most remarkable in the

world’s history. Since the invasion of Britain by the Romans, it was

unknown that the natives, thinly scattered over a large territory (the

islands cover the same area with Britain, and were supposed to be

peopled by about 150,000 inhabitants) should for years keep a civilised

force at defiance. The equality of the contest involved no reproach to

the civilised troops, since they found that, in the persons of tatooed

savages, they met an army under consummate commanders disciplined to the

highest point, and trained to partisan warfare. They were expert at the

use of the rifle, knew well the art of stockade fortification, and were

in all respects a match for their adversaries, with the addition of

knowing the country and its resources. Were there a population such as

these New Zealanders in Southern Africa, the prospect of our retaining

our possessions near the Cape would be quite hopeless. Experienced

military men noticed a generic difference between the New Zealand war

and other conflicts with aborigines. The bravest savages can generally

do no more than fight hand to hand; the New Zealanders conducted

campaigns. Barbarians generally see the result of successful operations

in extensive bloodshed; but the New Zealanders saw it only in success,

and, while they were parsimonious of the lives of their own followers,

did not spill uselessly the blood of their opponents. The usual

difficulty in bringing civilised troops to deal with savages arises from

the former always operating with and against masses, and being

unprepared for the peculiar individual machinations of combatants who do

not work gregariously and for effective results, but individually, for

bloodshed and plunder. In individual strategy the American Indians have

excelled all the world; and it was long ere our troops, through the

solemn, stiff, unadaptable movements of the eighteenth century, were

taught to protect themselves from the untiring inexhaustible cunning of

the scalper. Much provoking and useless slaughter took place ere they

were prepared for this mode of warfare; but, though frightful and

formidable in appearance, it was easily dealt with. Those who had

experienced Indian warfare found that totally different resources were

required in New Zealand. The individual cunning and ferocity, and the

corresponding danger, were wanting; but, on the other hand, an enemy was

found capable of conducting a war patiently and scientifically, with an

end beyond mere slaughter or momentary triumph. We take this view from

the occasional expressions in the military despatches, and still more

from their general tone, which assumes that of men dealing with enemies

on a level with themselves. The following, which is a specimen taken

from the miscellaneous mass of despatches in the Parliamentary papers,

is evidently not written about a parcel of wretched savages:—

“On examining the pah, I found it to be built on a very strong post,

protected by a row of timber palisades, with trenches and traverses

across; about 80 paces long, and 85 broad; in the shape of a

parallelogram, with flanking defences.

“There was also a bank of earth thrown up on the scarp side of the

trenches, which, owing to the heavy rain, were full of water. The

position altogether is a very strong one, and would have been almost

impregnable without artillery; but a hill, about 500 yards distant,

opposite the front face, commanded it completely. Therefore, had the

enemy remained, we might soon have dislodged them with our guns, which

were in readiness at Porirua, in command of Captain Henderson, R.A.

“The pah stands on a very high ground, fronting the harbour; at the

foot of it runs a deep narrow creek, fordable at low water; the ground

about it is excessively swampy, which the troops had to pass over. On

the side the pah stands on, rises a very steep bank, which, even

without opposition, the men had difficulty in mounting. And on the

proper left of the position is a very deep ravine, the side of which

is thickly wooded. The right face is also thickly wooded, and the

ground gradually slopes away into the valley.

“The rear was the weakest part as to its defence; the ground covered

with thick scrub; but, from its locality, I do not consider a position

could have been taken up by us on that side. The defences on the front

face were of a stronger description than any other.”

“On the morning of the 3d instant, a combined movement was made from

the pah at Pauhatanui and Porirua, consisting of 6 officers and 120

men of the 58th, 65th, and 99th regiments, and 30 militia, followed by

150 native allies, from the former; and 4 officers, 100 men of the

Royal Artillery, 58th and 65th regiments, with 80 native allies, under

command of Major Arney, from the latter place, for the purpose of

attacking the rebel chief, and preventing his escape from the Horokiwi

valley. We proceeded about four miles into the woods, covering our

advance with the usual precautions. The enemy soon discovered our

approach, and quickly retired; but, from his fires being still alight,

it was evident he had fled into the bush that morning.

“Night coming on, and being uncertain as to the direction of the

enemy, or the route they had taken, I deemed it then unadvisable to

proceed farther.

“Although our efforts have only led to the dispersion, and not to the

total destruction of the rebels, which was my anxious wish to have

accomplished, yet, by gaining possession of the stronghold of the

enemy, we are enabled to complete the line of outposts at Porirua, so

as effectually to prevent any return of the rebels to the district of

the Hutt.

“I beg to assure your Excellency that all under my command have well

earned from their superiors every credit and approbation, for the zeal

and cheerfulness they have exhibited under the severe trials and

privations to which they have been subjected for a long time past.”

The Governor, in a despatch of the 9th of July 1849, says—

“I have been assured by many excellent and experienced officers, well

acquainted with America and this country, that there is, in a military

point of view, no analogy at all between the natives of the two

countries; the Maories, both in weapons and knowledge of the art of

war, a skill in planning, and perseverance in carrying out the

operations of a lengthened campaign, being infinitely superior to the

American Indians. In fact, there can be no doubt that they are, for

warfare in this country, even better equipped than our own troops.”

He states that—

“They have repeatedly, in encounters with our troops, been reported by

our own officers to be equal to any European troops; and are such good

tacticians that we have never yet succeeded in bringing them to a

decisive encounter, they having always availed themselves of the

advantage afforded by their wilds and fastnesses. Their armed bodies

move without any baggage, and are attended by the women, who carry

potatoes on their backs for the warriors, or subsist them by digging

fern root, so that they are wholly independent of supplies, and can

move and subsist their forces in countries where our troops cannot

live.”

And then, after describing the rapidity and secrecy with which they can

move their forces to great distances, and concentrate them on any

selected point, we have the other and more pleasing side of the picture,

indicating that these formidable qualifications may, under judicious

management, give us able coadjutors, instead of deadly enemies, in our

efforts to turn to good purpose the material advantages of their fine

country.

“They are fond of agriculture; take great pleasure in cattle and

horses; like the sea, and form good sailors; are attached to

Europeans; admire their customs and manners; are extremely ambitious

of rising in civilisation, and of becoming skilled in European arts.

They are apt at learning; in many respects extremely conscientious and

observant of their word; are ambitious of honour, and are probably the

most covetous race in the world. They are also agreeable in manners,

and attachments of a lasting character readily and frequently spring

up between them and the Europeans.”

Since the conclusion of the war these useful qualities—covetousness

included—have, out of formidable enemies, been making apparently

excellent subjects. Instead of the nominal submission of savages, with

an underground of treachery, ready to come forth in ineffective but

mischievous outbreaks, they appear to have made their terms of peace as

sincerely as any civilised nation has ever treated, determining to reap

the fruits of tranquil co-operation. Not that we believe they would have

done so had they seen a clear prospect of defying the British arms, and

driving the civilised settlers out of the country: this they would have

preferred; but, finding it impracticable, they made up their minds, like

wise men, to that next best course, which they are now learning to

believe is the best of all. By the time when peace was renewed, we had

also learned _our_ lesson. We had become acquainted with their nature,

and seen that it was different from that of the ordinary savage. Many

social blunders and absurdities arise from mistaking a wise man for a

fool, and humouring him accordingly. So, almost from the beginning,

there was a series of blunders committed, in treating these clever

barbarians as it had been found necessary to treat other aborigines. In

fact, under the form of treaties, agreements, sales, or any other

nomenclature of civilised and complex life which our transactions with

ordinary savages may assume, the end of all is that they are at the

mercy of the civilised man, and hold their own side of the bargain by

the tenure of his justice and mercy. What he calls a reciprocal treaty,

an equitable adjustment, a fair sale for a just price, they must e’en be

content to hold so to be; they do not know the meaning of what is said

or done, but they know that they must submit. Now, the difficulty with

the New Zealanders was, that they knew to a certain extent what they

were about, and wanted to know more. They saw the object of some of the

transactions with them, but they had sense enough to know that there

were other objects beyond what their limited knowledge of the world

enabled them to see, and they must be at the bottom of all ere they

would rest content. Hence that fearful inextricable land-sale question,

filling its hundredweights of blue books. Had the natives possessed

neither knowledge nor sense, they would have been easily disposed of by

the _sic volo sic jubeo_. Had they possessed both, there would have been

hard bargains struck and kept; but possessing, as they did, much sense,

but little knowledge, transactions about matters which they could not at

first comprehend, yet were determined to comprehend ere they gave way

and were satisfied, seemed interminable.

We must not be understood as entering on the controversy between the New

Zealand Company and either the past or the present Government, in making

a passing reference to the events in New Zealand during the last twenty

years, as they appeared to the natives. When the first colonists settled

in the country, the Government left them to make what they could of it.

New Zealand was an independent country—they might buy land of those who

could sell it, and take their chance; but they were not to expect that,

if they bought the land at their own price—perhaps a kettle, a hatchet,

or a string of beads—and took such a title as they could get, they were

to be backed as absolute owners by the whole power of the British

empire. The Government would send a consul, as to any other independent

territory to which British subjects resorted, but would do nothing more.

But emigration to the new territory took such an impulse, that it was

necessary to alter this policy. Besides the missionaries and other

individual settlers, the great corporation which first appeared as the

New Zealand Association, and merged into the New Zealand Company, was

formed. A deep ambition burned in the bosom of those who devised this

project. Looking beyond mere wealth, or nominal rank, or temporary

notoriety, they saw a possible vista of future greatness in being the

humble exiles whose names would afterwards be echoed as those of the

founders of a great empire. Nor was the notion quite preposterous. No

fairer field for colonial enterprise had ever presented itself to the

world. Beyond doubt, the energetic British race, moderately filling

these delightful islands, and carrying with them all our constitutional

privileges and advantages, without the hereditary evils in pauperism and

degradation that weigh them down, would form an empire to predominate

more powerfully in the southern hemisphere than ours does in the

northern. It was the ambition of these schemers, many of them able men,

to be the planters of this empire. It was a bold and brilliant project.

Let us, since it has departed with the shadows of other great forgotten

projects, though we say but little of it, say that little kindly. The

empire on which their hopes were founded may hereafter arise; but

neither its reality, nor the fame of being its fabricator, is now for

them. They had scarcely even gone far enough to bear the _magni nominis

umbra_.

Well, to return to the natives. The British Government found reasons for

changing its policy of inaction. Not only was a powerful body of British

subjects making an independent settlement on the islands, but the French

were proposing, as no other Government wanted them, to take possession

of them for a convict settlement. To be in a position to protect its own

subjects who had gone there, and to assert a priority to France, the

British sovereignty was proclaimed on 30th January 1840. It is said that

the French proclamation was thus anticipated by barely four days. The

independence of New Zealand having, however, been previously

acknowledged, it would seem scarcely logical, if it were otherwise

right, to supersede the native chiefs in their authority, without their

consent. Accordingly, on the 5th of February, the celebrated treaty of

Waitangi was negotiated with the chiefs. The principle of this document

was, that the sovereignty of the British crown was acknowledged to

extend over the islands, the inhabitants receiving the privileges of

British subjects. The right of property in the soil was reserved to the

respective chiefs and tribes, subject only to a right of preemption by

the Crown when they sold land, and an adjustment of such equitable

claims as might arise out of the previous land transactions.

Now, whether this may or may not have been a wise method of managing a

difficult piece of business, the treaty, so far as the natives were

concerned, was a solemn farce. The chiefs had first to be united into a

fictitious oligarchy, called the Confederation of the United Tribes of

New Zealand. They knew as much about the nature of a treaty, in the

diplomatic sense in which civilised nations understand it, and insist on

its being kept when they can, as about the predicaments and the

antinomies. But their sagacity taught them that it was something in

itself not dangerous or formidable. The piece of paper could not bombard

their pahs, or sink their war canoes; and as to anything it might impart

to their prejudice, they were as strong as ever to resist its

enforcement. Here lay the difference between such a treaty with New

Zealanders and with ordinary savages. These would have been bound to

submit, scarcely able to comprehend how or wherefore, unless in a moment

of heedless treachery they attempted to repudiate the whole. The New

Zealanders were, for their own sakes, pretty good bargain-keepers, when

they knew fully the extent to which they had practically committed

themselves; but were very jealous of admitting rights which they were

not conscious of having knowingly conceded.

At the root of all the complex disputes that followed was their

ignorance of the nature of a sale of land. They did not individually

possess any—scarcely any uncivilised people do; and they could not

comprehend the bartering it like a mat or a bunch of arrows. Still they

were ready to make bargains, giving in exchange what they might be found

empowered to give, without any warranty of title, as lawyers say. What

each chief appears to have bargained for was, that, in consideration of

the present given to him, he should abstain personally from disturbing

the purchaser over so much land—an engagement he would come to the more

readily the less right he had to it. When the rights so acquired had to

be officially investigated, under the sanction of the British

Government, a whole shoal of land-sharks appeared. One man claimed a

territory about the size of a medium English county, which he had bought

with a keg of gunpowder. A company claimed the middle island, about the

size of Ireland, having given for it a few hundred pounds’ worth of

merchandise, with an annuity of £100 a-year to a chief. Among the

tempting goods sent out to make a large purchase, by a benevolent

association in London, were enumerated “200 muskets; 16 single-barrelled

guns; 8 double do.; 15 fowling-pieces; 81 kegs of gunpowder; 2 casks of

ball-cartridge; 4 kegs lead slabs; 24 bullet-moulds; 11 quires cartridge

paper; 200 cartouche boxes; 1500 flints, and 200 tomahawks.” In some

instances there were no less than eight purchasers of the same

territory, all possessing titles equally satisfactory, and each

demanding that the law should secure to him the estate he had bought

with a bundle of red cloth, or a musket, as if it had been a bargain for

a piece of property in Middlesex.

The natives had reasons for forming some strange conclusions from the

scene of confusion which followed. Where, they asked, was the source of

law and authority among these strangers? First there came among them the

captains of whaling vessels—noisy, imperative, and exercising all the

visible authority of great chiefs. Then came the missionaries—men whose

bearing and conversation were totally different from those of the

whaling captains. Their voice was mild and their manner subdued, and

instead of pea-jackets they wore black coats, descending in two long

tapering strips behind; yet, withal, they had a command in their quiet

manner, and seemed to consider themselves rather the masters than the

slaves of the boisterous sea captains. Thirdly, there came the

representatives of the New Zealand Company—men of fortune and station in

society, some of them bearing military titles. The New Zealanders see at

once that they are gentlemen—worshipful men, who have authority in their

air and manner. What, then, is their astonishment when some

shabby-looking and coarse-mannered personages come, and snub these

worshipful gentlemen with impunity, and tell them to desist from this,

and to do that—and actually apprehend one of them, and lock him up; and

they submit to the indignity without drawing a trigger? The gentlemen of

the New Zealand Company, in fact, wished to establish a sort of local

organisation, partaking of the nature of a legislative and an executive,

to preserve order among the newly-arrived settlers, and probably to keep

the natives in awe with the show of something like a government. So was

formed the “Committee of Colonists,” with rules drawn up to serve a very

laudable purpose, if nothing more was intended than the preservation of

order until sufficient Government official service was supplied. In

among these gentlemen, however, march such subordinate officers as the

Government can afford for an embryo settlement. Possibly these

individuals were not the less consequential and rigid that their

original social condition was humble. They managed, at all events, to

excite the wrath and ridicule of the gentlemen colonists; but what could

these do? After having formed their own organisation, any resistance to

the law would have had a very ugly appearance, and they immediately gave

way to the “constituted authorities.” Here was matter of wonder to the

natives, and it was not reduced when they saw a young man, of

aristocratic birth and condition, taken to jail by a policeman for some

breach of regulation. The natural order of society seemed inverted among

these haughty foreigners. But this was not enough. After the successive

authority of the ship captains, the missionaries, the New Zealand

Company, and the governor with his subordinates, comes Mr Commissioner

Spain, with authority from the Queen of Britain to hold a Court of

Inquiry as to the land claims—to examine witnesses, Maori and

English—the former being questioned through an interpreter. They ask

what this new chief or king is to do. They are told that he is “to

report;” and when they ask the meaning of report, their attention is

directed to the sound made by the discharge of a cannon. And so they are

left to make the best of it.

They did, in some measure, make “the best” of it, since the multiplicity

of apparent rulers found them a ready excuse for resisting whatever they

did not like, and thought they were strong enough to resist. Though they

saw the English gentlemen called colonels, captains, and so forth,

submitting to the “constituted authorities,” they were not to follow the

example; and the chief, with arms in his hand, was not to be spell-bound

by a dirty bit of paper presented to him by a disreputable-looking

bailiff, especially if it affected the right to some large tract of

territory. The massacre of Wairau, which created so much alarm and

sympathy in this country in 1843, arose out of an attempt to enforce a

title to a large district, as if it had been an estate in Yorkshire,

first by surveying and marking it off, and next by apprehending, in due

form, the chiefs who offered interruption. The persons who were to be

ejected, like impertinent trespassers, were two chiefs, whose power and

importance are known even in this country—Rauparaha and Rangihaeata. Mr

Tucket, one of the few who escaped from the massacre, during the inquiry

which ensued, gave the following rather amusing account of the

preliminary discussion with the chiefs:—

“These chiefs were aware that we had already, more than once, explored

the Wairau, and that we were about to commence surveying it. They came

to Nelson, on this occasion, to forbid our doing so, and they soon

entered on the discussion of the subject; Rauparaha spoke with all the

blandness and suavity of an artful woman.

“Rangihaeata, in the other extreme, at once denied our right, and

defied us, and never opened his mouth but to breathe forth threats and

defiance. They both asserted that the Wairau was not mentioned, nor

intended to be included in the sale of lands made by Rauparaha to

Colonel Wakefield; the places which he acknowledged he had sold he

enumerated successively, again and again. He professed to be

reluctant, yet disposed to negotiate the sale of the Wairau, but said

that the cask of gold must be a very big one.

“Rangihaeata said they would not sell it, that they wanted it for

themselves, and thought of removing there from the Northern Island,

and occupying it. He declared that, if we went there, he would meet us

and drive us away; and that we should not have the Wairau until we had

killed him.

“Nothing would please him; he left the house in a rage, harangued the

natives on the beach, repeating his threats that he would kill us if

we went to the Wairau. He afterwards met Mr Cotterell, accosted him

angrily for having gone to the Wairau, and informed him he would kill

him if he caught him there. Mr Cotterell, that he might not be

mistaken, called to him a very competent interpreter, and requested

him to explain to him the speech, on which this ferocious chief again

repeated the threat. Rauparaha subsequently addressed to Mr Cotterell

a similar threat.

“With great reluctance Rauparaha was prevailed on to proceed, after

the talk at Dr Wilson’s house, to the survey office; we wished to show

him the native reserves on the plans, and to convince him that we

desired to benefit the condition of the resident natives in each

district of the settlement. He listened to the explanation with equal

contempt and impatience; would not glance a second time at the plan;

said that our profession of reserving lands for the Maories was all

gammon, humbug, and lies, accompanying this expressive phraseology

with fit manipulations, placing his thumb on the tip of his nose,

pulling down his eyelid, and such like approved acts of incredulity

and derision, which association with whalers had made familiar to him.

He then said in earnest that he had sold us all that land, alluding to

the reserves; if the resident Maories would not give it up, we might

kill them, repeating it, ‘Kill them, kill them:’ there was no occasion

for us to make reserves; the Maories could remove; all that land

should be ours, and then we should not want the Wairau. Then he

dropped the subject, and began begging again, urging on the agent that

the casks must be very big ones; then resuming the subject, he said

with a most honied voice, ‘Do not let your people go just yet to the

Wairau;’ adding presently, ‘But if they do go, there shall be no

harm.’ Next morning another interview took place at the agent’s

office; Rangihaeata equally violent and intractable as before;

Rauparaha less complaisant, having no further presents to hope for.

The agent, firm to his purpose, calmly replied to his threats by

informing them that, if they did molest or interrupt the surveyors, he

would take three hundred constables with him to the Wairau, and make

them prisoners. They parted, Rauparaha affecting courtesy;

Rangihaeata, sincere, but implacable, refused, with contempt, all the

presents which were carried out of the store for him.”—_Returns

regarding New Zealand_—Commons Papers, 1845.

The putting the finger to the nose is very characteristic of some of the

manifestations of New Zealand civilisation. They are a very jocular

people, with many set phrases and gestures of raillery. The chiefs who

disputed the sale of the Wairau valley might well think that they were

made the objects of jocularity when a bailiff presented himself with a

writ—called an ejectment, a Bill of Middlesex, or something of that

sort—and set about arresting them. Rauparaha’s testimony was taken in

the inquiry, and he described the attempt to apprehend him thus:—

“Mr Thompson said, ‘Will you not go?’ I said, ‘No;’ and Rangihaeata,

who had been called for, and had been speaking, said so too. Mr

Thompson then called for the handcuffs, and held up the warrant,

saying, ‘See, this is the Queen to make a tie, Rauparaha!’ I said, ‘I

will not listen either to you or to your book.’ He was in a great

passion; his eyes rolled about, and he stamped his foot. I said, ‘I

had rather be killed than submit to be bound.’ He then called for the

constable, who began opening the handcuffs, and to advance towards me.

Mr Thompson laid hold of my hand; I pushed him away, saying, ‘What are

you doing that for?’”

It was immediately on this that the scuffle which the natives drove to

so cruel an extremity began. It might have been known, from previous

experience in New Zealand, that such contumelious treatment towards a

chief was highly dangerous. The massacre of the crew of the Boyd arose

from a chief’s son having been flogged by a shipmaster, who, in bringing

him over from Europe to restore him to his friends, chose to treat the

young savage aristocrat as a working sailor.

The letters of the native chiefs during the wars and negotiations were

translated by sworn interpreters, and are printed with the other State

documents in the Parliamentary papers. A funny enough appearance they

cut in the solemn company with which they are associated, as the

following specimens may show:—

“_December, the 2d day, 1845._

“Friend, this new Governor,—You are a stranger, we are strangers; we

do not understand your thoughts, and you do not understand our

thoughts. What is the right (meaning) of Governor Fitz-Roy? Land? Not

by any means, because God made this country for us. It cannot be

sliced: if it were a whale, it might be sliced; but as for this, do

you return to your own country, to England which was made by God for

you. God has made this land for us, and not for any stranger or

foreign nation to touch (or meddle with) this sacred country. Yours is

heavy; New Zealand is heavy too. My thoughts to (or towards) Mr

Williams have ended. That is all.

“_War Song._

“Oh! let us fight, fight, fight, aha! let us fight, aha! let us fight:

fight for the land which lies open before us: let us fight, fight. You

have not taken it away to your land to Europe, on account of the

holding on of Whare-whare—to the Heaven climbed is the ascent to the

Governor. * * *

“From

(Signed) LITTLE JOHN POKAI,

At the Karewa.

“Write on Thursday precisely. Be quick. If it is not done quickly, I

shall understand your sentiments. If you do not write your letter

quickly on Thursday precisely, I shall understand your thoughts. Do

you not like those thoughts?”

“TE RUAPEKAPEKA,

_4 December 1845_.

“Friend, Mr Williams,—Salutations to you. Good are the words of your

book to me. Friend, let not your heart be hasty to make peace. I am

waiting for my grandson John Heke, that he may come to the Ruapekapeka

to me; then we will assemble to (meet) the Governor. These words to

you are ended.

“Friend, Governor,—Salutations to you. Let not your heart be in haste

to make peace; when my men have finished (assembling) then (it will

be.) That is the whole of my saying.

(Signed) “KAWITI.”[2]

Perhaps the world may never discover whether the asterisks represent

something too dreadful to be translated, or something which the sworn

interpreter found it impossible to put into English. We can only say

that we think the latter the more likely theory. Such documents, in the

formal contents of the blue books, have some such effect as their

authors would present if sitting in committee.

These chiefs had so much at least in common with the leaders of

civilised warfare that the British flag was the main object of their

hostility. They did not know what it expressed; but their instinct

taught them to dislike it because the foreigner deemed it important.

Among the Parliamentary documents from which we have been quoting, there

is the following state paper in reference to the flag-staff—

“FRIEND Governor Fitz-Roy, friend the new Governor, I say to you, will

you come and let us converse together either at Paihia or at Waitangi,

or at the Waimate, that my thoughts may be right towards you

concerning the stick (flag-staff) from which grew the evil to the

world. Walker and Manu (Kewa) and others say they alone will erect the

staff; that will be wrong; it will be better that we should all

assemble. They, we, and all the many chiefs of this place and of that

place, and you too, and all the English also.

“Now this I say to you, come, that we may set aright your

misunderstandings and mine also, and Walker’s too; then it will be

right; then we two (you and I) will erect our flag-staff; then shall

New Zealand be made one with England; then shall our conversation

respecting the land or country be right.

“Mr Busby; the first Governor; the second Governor; the third

Governor; the Queen: salutations to you all.

“From

(Signed) “JOHN WILLIAM HEKE POKAI.”

Heke was a great chief, and a great leader in these conflicts; but at

the time when the letter just cited was written, the beginning of the

year 1846, he was losing position among his brother chiefs, who were

abandoning the conflict with the British authorities. More than three

years afterwards, in July 1849, when New Zealand had become as tranquil

as the Orkney Islands, Heke thought fit to address a long representation

to the Queen, for the purpose of instructing her Majesty on the true

state of affairs in the colony. Like most statements by disappointed

men, it is a rather confused document—

“To the Queen of England, greeting,—Show us the same affectionate

regard that King George did in what he said to Hongi when he went to

Europe. King George asked him, ‘What was your reason for coming here;’

he said, ‘I had two objects in doing so—muskets and sixty soldiers.’

To which King George answered, ‘I will not consent to send soldiers to

New Zealand, lest you should be deprived of your country, which I wish

should be left for your children and your people, for they would not

act properly.’ They continued arguing on the subject for a long time,

and then King George said to Hongi, ‘It is better that I should send

some missionaries to you, as friends for you, for they are good

people; should they act wrongly, send them back; but if they act

properly, befriend them.’ And we accordingly befriended them. They

asked us, ‘Will you not give us some portions of your land? Our

generosity induced us to consent, and we divided it with them—giving

them part and retaining part ourselves. We thought that they were the

only people who were to live in this country; but no, there were many

thousands of others—but it was when we were foolish that we thought

this.’

“The immense congregations of people that took place here was what

brought forth the day of trouble, which exactly agreed with what King

George had said to Hongi. After trouble had ensued, Mr Busby arrived

with a different arrangement, and then the first governor, William

Hobson, with a different one again: the flag of New Zealand was

abandoned, and that of England alone displayed. He did not state this

at the meeting at Waitangi, in order that everybody might know that

the flag-staff was the great protection of these islands; and his

concealing it was the cause of my error, for I was the person that

consented that both Mr Busby and the first governor should live on

shore, thinking that they would act rightly; then came Fitz-Roy, the

second governor, with a different arrangement again. Not understanding

the authority which accompanied the appointment of governors, and to

which we had in our folly consented, I urged him to come here, in

order that we might talk on the subject of the flag-staff; he did not

come, but re-erected it, having four iron bars, and covered with tar.

The obstinacy of his thoughts was the cause of the war, and of my

transgressing against you. Then came Governor Grey, a fighting

governor; I therefore say, who was it sent those people here? Which

makes me think that you were the original cause of the dispute between

us—which confuted what King George had said to Hongi. Don’t suppose

that the fault was mine, for it was not, which is my reason for saying

that it rests with you to restore the flag of my island of New

Zealand, and the authority of the land of the people. Should you do

this, I will then for the first time perceive that you have some love

for New Zealand, and for what King George said, for although he and

Hongi are dead, still the conversation lives; and it is for you to

favour and make much of it, for the sake of peace, love, and

quietness; therefore, I say, it remains with you to decide about the

people who are continually arriving here, viz., the Governors, the

soldiers, the French, and the Americans; to speak out to them to

return; they are quarrelsome, and every place will be covered with

them; I consequently am aware that their acts are making things

progress towards trouble. I thought that when our fighting was over,

the men-of-war and steamers would cease coming here and all their

mischief-breeding concomitants, for I am careful of the fiery darts of

the world, the flesh, and the devil.”

These last words showed that Heke had been listening to the

missionaries, though he had derived little of the spirit along with the

phraseology of Christianity. In the letter, of which the long passage

just cited is but a comparatively small portion, the chief says—possibly

in reference to the varied authorities, judicial, executorial, clerical,

military, &c., whose conflicting powers puzzled the natives—

“What I consider very bad is concealing the intentions, for there are

many rooms in your house, which prevents their being all searched: the

calico room is that of peace, but then there is the room of red

garments and the room of black garments—these two rooms ought to be

concealed in that with peace of God.”

It was necessary that this state paper should be duly laid before her

Majesty. We are left in profound ignorance of the shape in which Heke

may have received the announcement of its reception, but the

Parliamentary papers contain a despatch from the Secretary of the

Colonies to the Governor of New Zealand in these terms:—

“I have received your despatch of the 18th July last, forwarding a

letter addressed by the New Zealand chief Heke to the Queen, in

explanation of his view of the causes of the difficulties which have

taken place throughout the colony, and I have to request you will

acquaint the writer that I have laid that communication before her

Majesty.”

But “the difficulties,” many of them of Heke’s own creation, were, as we

have already hinted, conquered before he offered his intervention. The

motives from which the armed forces in New Zealand gradually dissolved,

as it were, into peaceful workmen, is in itself a significant symptom of

the character of this remarkable people. They began to find that it was

a far better speculation to enter into a partnership—however humble—with

the Europeans, than to fight with them. They are not, it must be

admitted, an imaginative or ideal people; they judge values by hard

cash. Their superstitions were found to be entirely subservient to their

interests—for instance, the inexorable _tapu_ or _taboo_. A field which

had been bought, but which was not to be given up, was found to be

tabooed, and so a rifle which had been lent, and which the owner wanted

back again. When a chief was wanted to fulfil a bargain, or was dunned

by a creditor, he was found to be surrounded by the sacred _tapu_. This

utilitarian spirit gradually undermined the zeal for national

resistance. In fact, it was not national—it was personal and

patrimonial. The chiefs and their followers who might side with the

English had no reproaches of baseness, or unpatriotic desertion, to

fear. Some of them were taken into service and employed as a police

force—and proud they were of the character. One or two chiefs who were

wounded in the British service received pensions. There came, as among

the Sepoys, to be a competition to get into the service, which

extinguished the insurrections. Those who could not be employed in the

government did still better by embarking in agricultural, shipping, or

commercial enterprise. There never, perhaps, in the history of the

world, was so sudden a revulsion from bitter war to the energetic

pursuit of the arts of peace as these people have exemplified.

After agricultural enterprise, the chief pursuit of the natives has been

that of the miller. They appear to have entered on it with surprising

rapidity. As the New Zealanders are very fond of letting her Majesty

know all they are about, we have among the Parliamentary papers

presented in the last session a letter to the Queen, with an account of

the raising of one of the earliest grist mills, accompanied by a present

of the meal ground in it.

“Governor Grey has been here at Otawhao and Rangiaohia, and has given

us a plough; he also told us that Mr Morgan would arrange about some

white man to teach us to plough, at which we were much pleased—and

this year we commence to plough the ground. We have for a long time

been desirous of this, but we are a poor people, and the majority of

our pigs had been disposed of to pay for the mill, which was the

reason that we did not plough; but now the governor has generously

given us one, which has greatly rejoiced us; and we will persevere in

ploughing the land. We have finished a water-mill, and paid for it

entirely ourselves. We paid the white man who built it £200, which he

obtained by the sale of pigs and flax—£20 being for flax, and £180 for

pigs. The common labour we did ourselves—namely, building the dam, &c.

&c. Our reason for constructing the mill was on account of having

commenced to grow wheat at Rangiaohia. We were a year in collecting

the requisite amount of money.

“O the Queen, we regard you with affection, because we have nothing to

give you—because we, the Maoris, are a poor people; but we wish that

you should see and also eat of the flour grown at Rangiaohia. Don’t

find fault with what we send you, whether much or little: it is little

in the presence of the Queen of England. We have nothing else except

this quantity of flour to give you. Be graciously pleased with our

present in order that our hearts may be glad.

“The schools for our children are very good, and we will now become

civilised. But don’t send convicts here to our country. They will

cause us trouble, and we will be afraid lest evil should be increased

in our islands. This is all.

“TE WARU.

“KAHAWUI.”

The following document, dated a few months later, shows what rapid

progress must have been made in the erection of mills:—

Return of Flour Mills now in

operation, (22d August 1849,)

within one district of the

Province of New Ulster, the

property of Aboriginal Natives

(all but the last within a circuit

of fifty miles of Otawhao.)

┌──────────────┬─────────────────┐

│ Name of │ COST. │

│ principal │ │

│ Owner. │ │

├──────────────┼────────┬────────┤

│ „ │ Cash. │Labour. │

├──────────────┼────────┼────────┤

│Te Waru, │£200 0 0│ £50 0 0│

│Ti Tipa, │ 80 0 0│ 40 0 0│

│Tipa, │ 80 0 0│ 40 0 0│

│Manihera, │ 80 0 0│ 40 0 0│

│Pake, │ 330 0 0│ 40 0 0│

│Paora Te Patu,│ 100 0 0│ 40 0 0│

├──────────────┼────────┼────────┤

│ │£910 0 0│£250 0 0│

└──────────────┴────────┴────────┘

The New Zealanders are, at the same time, large shipowners; and they

have a shipping-list, published in English and Maori, with departures

and arrivals of vessels owned and commanded by natives.

We find the Governor of New Zealand, on 7th March 1849, reporting,—

“During my journey through the extensive and fertile districts of the

Waikato and Waissa, I was both impressed and gratified at the rapid

advances in civilisation which the natives of that part of New Zealand

have made during the last two years. Two flour-mills have already been

constructed at their sole cost, and another water-mill is in course of

erection. The natives of that district also grow wheat very

extensively: at one place alone, the estimated extent of land under

wheat is a thousand acres. They have also good orchards, with

fruit-trees of the best kind, grafted and budded by themselves. They

have extensive cultivations of Indian corn, potatoes, &c.; and they

have acquired a considerable number of horses and horned stock.

Altogether, I have never seen a more thriving or contented population

in any part of the world.”

We may remark that, from so thinly peopled a country, so far off, we

must not expect to receive authentic intelligence down to a recent

period. The Parliamentary papers issued in the past session seldom

contain intelligence later than 1849. On the 25th June of that year, the

Lieutenant-General of New Munster reports:—

“At Otaki, the natives are still making rapid progress in

civilisation, and the settlement is assuming the appearance of a neat

European village. Many new houses of a superior kind have been built

during the last eighteen months; a magnificent church has been

erected, and, though not quite complete, is in a state which is

usable; in fact, I have myself attended service there, when, I think,

there could have been little short of 900 natives within its walls.

More attention has been paid to neatness than was formerly the case;

and most of the fences are not only substantially put up, but are cut

evenly at the top, and present a very neat and clean appearance. The

gardens are also more attended to; and the use of milk, butter, tea,

&c., more appreciated in the domestic arrangements.

Other indications of the advancement of the native race, and of their

growing confidence in the value of civilised institutions, are to be

found in their frequent applications to the resident magistrates’

courts, whenever they consider themselves aggrieved, whether by

Europeans or by other natives; and in the readiness with which they

submit to and abide by the decisions. In these courts, during the last

eighteen months, several cases of grave importance, between native and

native, have been adjudicated upon, which would have formerly involved

the life of the offender, and might have led to a general

disturbance.”

The thoroughly and almost impetuously practical character of the

natives, and their freedom from ideal influences, is shown in the manner

in which they have welcomed the services of the medical profession.

The colonial surgeon, in his report for 1849, says,—

“The short, but, I apprehend, somewhat indiscreetly alarming account

of small-pox, which was published in the native language some twelve

months ago, made an extraordinarily powerful impression in this

district on the Maori mind, creating, at the same time, a singularly

urgent anxiety to be vaccinated. Hence, no sooner was it known that

the antidote was in our possession, than not only the hospital and the

town practitioners were besieged by applicants from far and near, but

ex-professional gentlemen also were eagerly solicited to become

operators in the cause, as if the enemy they so fearfully dreaded was

at the threshold, and not a day to be safely lost; nay, so great was

the panic among them, and so precocious, too, their intuition, that

ere long they began to vaccinate one another; and finding that they

could produce vesicles, or pustular blots any way like to these,

vaccination hence went on in indiscriminate progress, to the neglect

of all observances, and in hand-in-hand deterioration, which it is

impossible now, with any probability of truth, to estimate or

surmise.”

As an equitable balance of the hard and almost selfish character which

we have attributed to these people, let us conclude by saying, that many

documents and works which we have perused in reference to them, convince

us that they are an eminently good-hearted race. Several instances are

recorded where they have made considerable sacrifices to serve Europeans

to whom they were under obligations; and in more than one instance,

their communities have subscribed to relieve distress caused by fire,

shipwreck, or inundation—a form of generosity eminently indicative of

civilisation.

THE ITALIAN REVOLUTION.

The _emeute_ of Paris, which cast out the Bourbons, is the key to all

the subsequent _emeutes_ of Europe. The nations of the Continent,

however differing in features and language, are one family; they have

the same policy, the same habits, and the same impulses. No member of

that family can be moved without communicating that motion, more or

less, to the whole body; like a vast lake, into which, stagnant as it

may be, a stone flung spreads the movement in circle on circle, and

spreads it the more for its stagnation. But, if the great moral expanse

had any inherent motion; if, like the ocean, it were impelled by a tide,

the external impulse would be overpowered and lost in the regular and

general urgency of Nature.

This forms one of the distinctions which mark England as differing from

the Continent; in this country there is a perpetual internal movement.

Open as England is to all foreign impulses, they are overpowered by the

vigour of change among ourselves. She has the moral _tides_; constantly

renewing the motion of the national mind, guided by laws hitherto

scarcely revealed to man; and tending, on the whole, to the general

salubrity and permanence of the national system. This preserves England

from revolutions; as manly exercise preserves the human frame from

disease, and from those violent struggles with which nature, from time

to time, throws off the excess of disease. Thus, it is scarcely possible

to conceive a revolution in England!

In the life of a single generation we have seen _three_ revolutions in

France; and those three revolutions have been of the most decisive

order;—the first comprehending an overthrow of the laws, the government,

and the religion—a total overwhelming of the fabric of national society,

an explosion of the State from its foundations;—no simple plunder of the

palace, or disrobing of the priest—no passing violence of the mob, like

a thunder cloud passing over the harvest-field, and though it prostrated

the crop, yet leaving the soil in its native fertility;—but a _tearing_

up of the soil itself; an extermination of monarchy, priesthood, and

law; requiring a total _renewal_ by the survivors of the storm. The two

succeeding revolutions were overthrows, not merely of governments, but

of dynasties—the exiles of kings and the imprisonment and flight of

cabinets—great national convulsions, which would once have involved

civil war, and which, but for the timid nature and sudden ruin of those

dynasties, _must_ have involved civil war, and probably spread havoc

once more through Europe. Yet England was still unshaken. She had

tumults, but too trifling for alarm, and apparently for the purpose of

showing to the world her innate power of resistance to profitless

innovation; or for discovering to herself the depth of her

unostentatious loyalty to the constitutional throne.

The French _emeute_ of 1830 propagated its impulse through every kingdom

of Europe. The power of the rabble was proved to all by the triumph of

the French mob; a new generation had risen, unacquainted with the

terrible sufferings of war; the strictness of the European governments

had been relaxed by the long disuse of arms; the increasing influence of

commercial wealth had tended to turn ministers into flatterers of the

multitude; and the increasing exigencies of kings had forced them to

rely for their personal resources upon the merchant and the Jew. A less

obvious, yet perhaps a more effective ingredient than all other

materials of overthrow, was the _universal irreligion_ of the Continent.

Divided between Popery and Infidelity, the European mind was prepared

for political tumults. Superstition degrades the understanding, and

makes it incapable of reason. Infidelity, while it makes the world the

only object, gives loose to the passions of the world. The one,

extinguishing all inquiry, merges all truth in a brutish belief; the

other, disdaining all experience, meets all truth with a frantic

incredulity. The first temptation to political disturbance finds both

ready. The refusal to “give to God the things that are God’s,” is

inevitably followed by the refusal to “give to Cæsar the things that are

Cæsar’s.”

Superstition took the lead in revolt. In 1830, the year after the

expulsion of the Bourbons, some of the Papal provinces proclaimed the

reign of Liberty at hand, and disowned the _temporal_ sovereignty of the

Pope. But the Austrian army was on the alert; the troops entered the

Romagna; the Legations, wholly unprepared for resistance, (though

storming the Vatican in their figures of speech,) at once discovered the

fruitlessness of oratory against bayonets, and licked the dust before

the Austrian grenadiers.

All tyranny is cruel in proportion to its weakness: such is the history

of all despotic governments. The Romagna was inundated with spies; the

prisons were crowded; (and what language can describe the horrors of an

Italian prison!) and with an Austrian army as the defenders of the Papal

throne against its subjects, the reign of the old despotism once more

was the reign over all things but the minds of the people.

In the midst of this confusion, the old man on the Roman throne, who had

exhibited nothing of supremacy but its violence, suddenly died. The

death of Gregory XVI. was a crisis. The presence of the Austrians had

begun to be an object of alarm to the government of the Cardinals, and

the desire to get rid of this dangerous defence was the key to the new

line of policy adopted by Rome. This suggested the choice of a man who

might influence the popular mind by giving way to the feelings of the

populace; and Maria Mastai Feretti was raised to the Papal sovereignty,

by the name of Pius the Ninth.

The election of a Pope has generally been a matter of intrigue among the

ambassadors of the foreign powers at Rome, and especially among the

Cardinals—the former intriguing to elect a tool of their Government, and

the others an instrument of their own. The Popes have been generally

chosen in old age, and in the decay of their faculties—the former, as

affording the speedier prospect of a successor—and the latter, as

throwing him more completely into the hands of his court. But, the

crisis demanded an instrument of another capacity. Mastai Feretti had

been educated for a military career—had subsequently chosen the

priesthood—and had, we understand, even been employed in the South

American missions. Thus he had lived out of the conventual routine, and

had the rare fortune, for a monk, of travelling beyond the borders of

Italy. His family, too, were known by some public offices, and the hope

of seeing the triple crown _burnished_ on the brow of a vigorous leader,

rendered the choice popular among the crowd.

The first act was to publish an Amnesty—an act of policy as well as of

mercy; for, by it, he released a large number of the partisans of his

new system. The exiles also were recalled; and some of the most

prominent actors in the late movements were purchased by the hope of

public offices. The Pope even performed occasionally the duties of the

priesthood. He one day visited a church of which the vicar was absent;

he put on the robe, and read the mass. Little dexterities of this kind,

to which none could object, and which all were ready to applaud, raised

popular acclamation to its height, and for a few months Pio Nono was, in

all lips, the model of a priest, a patriot, and a pope.

All those things might have been done by a wise sovereign; but Pio Nono

exhibited his ignorance of Italian nature by not knowing where to stop.

Every day now produced some memorable innovation: the press was

partially emancipated—a rational measure only among a rational people;

the laity shared in the magistracies which had been hitherto confined to

the priesthood; and a Cabinet Council was formed, all the members of

which were laymen, except the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the

Minister of Public Instruction.

All those reforms, which would have been salutary among a manly people,

were ruinous among a people utterly disqualified by their habits, their

morals, and their religion, for liberty.

The news from Rome flew instantly to all parts of Italy. The populace

everywhere demanded a constitution, and proceeded to attack the police,

and sometimes to plunder the possessors of property. When the scattered

soldiery resisted, the bloodshed was charged as a crime on the head of

their governments. The peasantry thronged the roads, crying out for a

reform, of which they could not comprehend the simplest principles. The

King of Naples, in not unnatural alarm at those philosophers of the

highway, attempted to exercise his authority. It was answered by

rebellion. Sicily and Calabria at once armed their rioters. The mob

seized upon Palermo and Messina; the politicians were on the alert; and

they drew up a Jacobin constitution, which the King, helpless and

hopeless, was persuaded to sign.

The Papacy was now in danger; the success of the Neapolitan rabble was a

stimulus to the rabble of Rome. The Pope found the peril of toying with

popular passions. He was forced to sign a constitution entitled—“a

fundamental statute for the _temporal_ government of the States of the

Church.” He was virtually _dethroned_.

Thus the Popedom had begun the true revolutionary era. The Italian

Revolution of 1846 was followed by the French Revolution of 1848. The

echo of the thunder was thus louder than the thunder itself. It was

reverberated from every throne of the Continent; Berlin was in the hands

of a mob; Vienna was in open rebellion; Prague fought the Imperial

troops; Hungary rose in arms, and fought the bloodiest campaigns since

Waterloo,—till Russia entered the field with her one hundred and fifty

thousand men, and extinguished the war by a truce, which will be broken

at the first opportunity of bloodshed.

But, before the general spread of insurrection, Lombardy had risen in

rebellion, tempted by the vauntings of Italian patriotism, by the lenity

of the Austrian Government, and, above all, by the example of Rome.

The dominion of Austria in Italy consists of the provinces formerly

known as the duchies of Milan and Mantua, and the territory of the late

Venetian Republic. It is one of the most absurd blunders of modern

republicanism, to represent those possessions as the spoil of war. On

the contrary, if ancient right and regular inheritance can give a title,

Austria possesses that title to the duchies of Milan and Mantua—Milan

having been an Austrian fief from the year 1533, when it descended to

Charles V., Emperor of Germany, by the death of its sovereign, Sforza;

and Mantua having been also an Austrian fief, though governed by the

Gonzagas till the reign of the last Duke Ferdinand; who, taking a

hostile part in the war of the Spanish Succession, the Emperor, Joseph

I., placed him under ban, and annexed his forfeited duchy to Milan.

From Charles, Milan descended to his son Philip II., and from him to the

Spanish line of the House of Austria; when, by the War of the

Succession, it passed to the German branch, and became a province of

Austria; and so both remained, until Napoleon’s invasion of Italy in

1796.

The Austrian claim to the Venetian territory is later and more mixed

with war, but is equally clear.

By the peace of Campoformio in 1797, Austria had been compelled to give

up the duchies of Milan and Mantua, at the same time with Belgium, to

the French Republic, receiving in return Venice and its territory, which

were then French conquests. In the campaign of 1805, by the treaty

following the battle of Austerlitz, Napoleon again took possession of

the Venetian territory and city, annexing them to Milan and Mantua,

which, with the subsequent annexation of Modena, the Legations, and in

1808, the Papal Marches, he named the _Kingdom_ of Italy, though not

comprehending more than a third of Italy, and having only a population

of six millions. It has been the curious fate of French aggression, to

provide by its grasp for possession by others. In 1814, the Austrian

Emperor, by the right of victory over France, claimed the duchies of

Milan and Mantua, with the Venetian territory, which had been united to

them, as we have seen, only by the short-sighted rapacity of Napoleon.

The whole was then confirmed to the Austrian Emperor, by the treaty of

Vienna, under the name of the Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom, and annexed by

Congress to the Imperial Crown of Austria. The other arrangements of

Italy were also founded on their former state. Modena was restored to

its Duke, the Legations and Marches were given again to the Pope; and,

in general, the provinces south of the Po were placed under their former

sovereigns.

Thus it is mere Italian coxcombry to talk of the Austrian possession of

northern Italy as a usurpation. The Line of Charles V. have been its

acknowledged masters for three hundred years—a possession as old as the

reign of Elizabeth, and as thoroughly acknowledged as the possession of

Ireland by the British sceptre. Irish folly may talk of the English as

usurpers, and Saxons; but a right three centuries old is as indisputable

as the reason of man can make it in either Ireland or Italy; and nothing

but absurdity or treason in either case could call it in question.

But if it be said that those transfers of power were always resisted by

the Italians, and that they merely succumbed to ill fortune in the

field, nothing can be farther from the fact. From the earliest period of

modern history, the Italians were the mere lookers-on in the wars which

disposed of their country. The French fought the Germans, and the

Germans fought the French; but Italy never fought for itself. Like

Virgil’s heifer, it stood while the two bulls were lowering their horns,

and tossing up the sand with their hoofs, the patient prize of the

combat. When a French army entered Milan over the battalions of the

German, the Italians welcomed them with an opera; when a German army

entered Milan over the bodies of the French brigades, the Italians

proclaimed the glories of Germany with a “Te Deum.” Then the affair was

at an end; things took their regular course; the Italian returned to his

macaroni, and acknowledged his master, consoling his submission by a vow

of vengeance in the next generation.