The Long White Cloud Part 7

Nevertheless, New Zealand was in a state such that, from time to time, even the English Government had to do something, so urgent was the need for action. After despatching their man-of-war without guns, they next year sent a man-of-war with guns. Nor did the captain of the _Alligator_ confine himself to the harmless nonsense of saluting national flags. In 1834 the brig _Harriet_ was wrecked on the coast of Taranaki. Her master, Guard, an ex-convict, made his way to Sydney, a.s.serting that the Maoris had flocked down after the wreck, and attacked and plundered the crew; had killed some, and held Guard's wife and children in captivity. As a matter of fact, it was the misconduct of his own men which had brought on the fighting, and even to his Sydney hearers it was obvious that his tale was not wholly true. But the main facts were correct. There had been a wreck and plunder; there were captives. The _Alligator_ was at once sent with soldiers to the scene of the disaster to effect the rescue of the prisoners by friendly and pacific means. Arrived on the scene, the captain sent his only two interpreters on sh.o.r.e to negotiate. They were Guard himself and a lying billiard-marker from Kororareka. They promised the natives ransom--a keg of gunpowder--if the captives were released; an offer which was at once accepted. They did not tell the captain of their promise, and he, most unwisely, refused to give the natives anything. All the captives were at once given up except the woman and the children, who were withheld, but kindly treated, while the natives awaited the promised payment. A chief who came down to the sh.o.r.e to negotiate with a boat's crew was seized, dragged on board, and so savagely mishandled that the ship's surgeon found ten wounds upon him. Yet he lived, and to get him back his tribe gave up Mrs.

Guard and a child. The other child was withheld by another chief.

Again a strong armed party was landed and was peacefully met by the natives, who brought the child down, but still asked, naturally, for the stipulated ransom. The sailors and soldiers settled the matter by shooting down a chief, on whose shoulders the child was sitting, and firing right and left before the officers in charge could stop them.

Next day these men made a football of the chief's head. Before departing the _Alligator_ bombarded _pas_, and her crew burnt villages and destroyed canoes and cultivations. If the man-of-war without guns was a figure of fun, the man-of-war with guns excited disgust by these doings even as far away as England. The whole proceeding was clumsy, cruel, and needless. A trifling ransom would have saved it all. The Maori tribal law under which wrecks were confiscated and castaways plundered was, of course, intolerable. Whites again and again suffered severely by it. But blundering and undisciplined violence and broken promises were not the arguments to employ against it. So long as England deliberately chose to leave the country in the hands of barbarians, barbaric customs had to be reckoned with.

From this discreditable business it is a relief to turn to Mr. Busby's bloodless puerilities. In 1835 he drew up a federal const.i.tution for the Maori tribes, and induced thirty-five of the northern chiefs to accept it. This comical scheme would have provided a congress, legislation, magistrates, and other machinery of civilization for a race of savages still plunged in bloodshed and cut asunder by innumerable feuds and tribal divisions. A severe snubbing from Mr.

Busby's official superiors in Australia was the only consequence of this attempt to federate man-eaters under parliamentary inst.i.tutions.

The still-born const.i.tution was Mr. Busby's proposed means of checkmating a rival. In the words of Governor Gipps, this "silly and unauthorized act was a paper pellet fired off" at the hero of an even more pretentious fiasco. An adventurer of French parentage, a certain Baron de Thierry, had proclaimed himself King of New Zealand, and through the agency of missionary Kendall bought, or imagined he bought--for thirty axes--40,000 acres of land from the natives. He landed at Hokianga with a retinue of ninety-three followers. The Maoris of the neighbourhood gravely pointed out to him a plot of three hundred acres, which was all they would acknowledge of his purchase.

Unabashed, he established himself on a hill, and began the making of a carriage-road which was to cross the island. Quickly it was found that his pockets were empty. Laughed at by whites and natives alike, he at once subsided into harmless obscurity, diversified by occasional "proclamations," which a callous world allowed to drop unheeded.

Yet this little burlesque was destined to have its share in hastening the appearance of England on the scene. Thierry had tried to enlist the sympathies of the French Government. So also had another Frenchman, Langlois, the captain of a whaling ship, who professed to have bought 300,000 acres of land from the natives of Banks Peninsula in the South Island. Partly owing to his exertions, a French company called "The Nanto-Bordelaise Company" was incorporated, the object of which was to found a French colony on the sh.o.r.es of the charming harbour of Akaroa, on the land said to have been purchased by Langlois. In this company Louis Philippe was a shareholder. In 1837, also, the Catholic missionary Pompallier was dispatched to New Zealand to labour among the Maoris. Such were the sea-routes of that day that it took him some twelve months voyaging amid every kind of hardship and discomfort to reach his journey's end. In New Zealand the fact that he showed Thierry some consideration, and that he and his Catholic workers in the mission-field were not always on the best of terms with their Protestant compet.i.tors, aroused well-founded suspicions that the French had their eye upon New Zealand. The English missionaries were now on the horns of a dilemma. They did not want a colony, but if there was to be annexation, the English flag would, of course, be far preferable.

Moreover, a fresh influence had caused the plot to thicken, and was also making for annexation. This was the appearance on the scene of the "land-sharks"--shrewd adventurers, from Sydney and elsewhere, who had come to the conclusion that the colonization of New Zealand was near at hand, and were buying up preposterously large tracts of land on all sides. Most of the purchases were either altogether fict.i.tious, or else were imperfect and made for absurdly low prices. Many of the deeds of sale may be dismissed with the brief note, "no consideration specified"! A hundred acres were bought for a farthing. Boundaries were inserted after signature. Some land was bought several times over. No less than eight purchasers claimed the whole or part of Kapiti Island. The whole South Island was the subject of one professed sale by half a dozen natives in Sydney. Certain purchased blocks were airily defined by lat.i.tude and longitude. On the other hand, the Maoris often played the game in quite the same spirit, selling land which they did not own, or had no power to dispose of, again and again. In some cases diamond cut diamond. In others both sides were playing a part, and neither cared for the land to pa.s.s. The land-shark wanted a claim with which to hara.s.s others; the Maori signed a worthless doc.u.ment on receipt of a few goods. By 1840 it was estimated that, outside the sweeping claim on the South Island, 26,000,000 acres, or more than a third of the area of New Zealand, was supposed to have been gobbled up piecemeal by the land-sharks. The claims arising out of these transactions were certain at the best to cause confusion, ill-feeling, and trouble, and indeed did so. Some legally-const.i.tuted authority was clearly wanted to deal with them.

Otherwise armed strife between the warlike Maoris and adventurers claiming their lands was inevitable. Before Marsden's death in 1838 both he and his ablest lieutenant, Henry Williams, had come to see that the only hope for the country and the natives lay in annexation and the strong hand of England.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Chapter IX

THE DREAMS OF GIBBON WAKEFIELD

Twin are the gates of sleep: through that of Horn, Swift shadows winged, the shapes of truth are borne.

Fair wrought the Ivory gate gleams white anigh, But false the dreams dark G.o.ds despatch thereby.

The founder of the Colony now comes on the scene. It was time he came.

The Islands were neither to fall into the hands of the French nor remain the happy hunting-ground of promiscuous adventurers. But the fate which ordained that Edward Gibbon Wakefield should save them from these alternatives interposed in the way of the great colonizer a series of difficulties from which any mind less untiring and resourceful than his must have recoiled. The hour had come and the man. Yet few bystanders could have thought either the hour propitious or the man promising. The word colony was not in favour when William the Fourth came to the throne. It was a.s.sociated with memories of defeat and humiliation in America, and with discontent and mutterings of rebellion in Canada. Australia was scarcely more than an expensive convict station. Against the West Indian planters the crusade of Wilberforce was in full progress, and the very name of "plantation"

had an evil savour. South Africa promised little but the plentiful race troubles, which indeed came. The timid apathy of the Colonial Office was no more than the reflex of the dead indifference of the nation. None but a man of genius could have breathed life into it.

Fortunately the genius appeared.

Though the name of Gibbon Wakefield will probably be remembered as long as the history of Australia and New Zealand is read, the man himself was, during most of his active career, under a cloud. The abduction of an heiress--a mad freak for which he paid by imprisonment and disgrace--deprived him of the hope of ordinary public distinction.

For many years he had to work masked--had to pour forth his views in anonymous tracts and letters, had to make p.a.w.ns of dull men with respectable names. This and more he learned to do. He found information and ideas for personages who had neither, and became an adept at pulling strings and manipulating mediocrities. All things to all men, plausible to the old, magnetic to the young, persuasive among the intellectual, impressive to the weak-minded, Gibbon Wakefield was always more than the mere clever, selfish schemer which many thought him. Just as his fresh face and bluff British manner concealed the subtle mind ever spinning webs and weaving plans, so, behind and above all his plots and dodging, was the high dream and ideal to which he was faithful, and which redeemed his life. He saw, and made the commonplace people about him see, that colonization was a national work worthy of system, attention, and the best energies of England.

The empty territories of the Empire were no longer to be treated only as gaols for convicts, fields for negro slavery, or even as asylums for the persecuted or refuges for the bankrupt and the social failures of the Mother Country. To Wakefield the word "colony" conveyed something more than a back yard into which slovenly Britain could throw human rubbish, careless of its fate so long as it might be out of sight.

His advocacy revived "Ships, Colonies, Commerce!" as England's motto. But for colonies to be worthy, they must be, not fortuitous congregations of outcasts, but orderly bands of representative British citizens, going forth into the wilderness with some consciousness of a high mission. From the outset his colonies were to be civilized communities where men of culture and intellect need not find themselves companionless exiles. Capital and labour, education and religion, were all to work together as in the Mother Country, but amid easier, happier surroundings. For Wakefield conceived of his settlements not as soulless commercial outposts, but as free, self-governing communities.

How was all this to be brought about? Whence was the money to come?

Whence the organizing power? At that point came in Wakefield's conception of the sale of waste lands at a "sufficient price." He saw the immense latent value of the fertile deserts of the Empire. He grasped the full meaning of the truth that the arrival of a population with money and industry instantly gives good land a value. His discernment showed him the absurdity of giving colonial lands away in indefinite areas to the first chance grabbers, and the mistake of supposing that wage labour would not be required in young countries.

His theory, therefore, was that colonizing a.s.sociations should be formed in England--not primarily to make money; that these bodies should hold tracts of land in the colonies as capital; that the sale of these lands at a "sufficient price" to intending colonists, selected for character and fitness, should provide the funds for transporting the colony across the earth, for establishing it in working order on its land, and for recruiting it with free labour.

The numerous _ex post facto_ a.s.sailants of Wakefield's theory usually a.s.sume that he wished to keep labour divorced from the soil and in a state of permanent political and industrial inferiority. That is sheer nonsense. There are few more odd examples of the irony of fate in colonial history than that the man who warred against the convict system, fought the battle of colonial self-government, was ever the enemy of the land-shark and monopolist, who denounced low wages, and whose dream it was that the thrifty, well-paid colonial labourer could and should develop into the prospering farmer, should be railed at in the Colonies as the enemy of the labourer. The faults of Wakefield's "sufficient price" theory were indeed grave enough. But compare them with the lasting mischief wrought in New Zealand by Grey's unguarded scheme of cheap land for everybody, and they weigh light in the balance. Later on I shall return to Wakefield's system and its defects. Here I have but to say that, as a temporary expedient for overcoming at that time the initial difficulties of a colony, it ought not to be hastily condemned. It has long ago been abandoned after working both good and evil, and in the same way the schemes of Church Settlement Wakefield made use of are now but interesting chapters of colonial history. But we must not forget that these things were but some of the dreams of Gibbon Wakefield. At the most he regarded them as means to an end. His great dream of lifting colonization out of disrepute, and of founding colonies which should be daughter-states worthy of their great mother, has been no false or fleeting vision.

That dream, at any rate, came to him through the Gate of Horn and not through the Ivory Gate.

By Wakefield it was that the Colonial Office was forced to annex New Zealand. In the face of the causes making for annexation sketched in the last chapter, the officials hung back to the last. In 1837 a body of persons appeared on the scene, and opened siege before Downing Street, whom even permanent officials could not ignore. They were composed of men of good standing, in some cases of rank and even personal distinction. They were not traders, but colonizers, and as such could not be ignored, for their objects were legitimate and their hands as clean as those of the missionaries. They first formed, in 1837, a body called "The New Zealand a.s.sociation." At their head was Mr. Francis Baring. Their more prominent members included John Lambton Earl of Durham, Lord Petre, Mr. Charles Enderby, Mr. William Hutt, Mr.

Campbell of Islay, Mr. Ferguson of Raith, Sir George Sinclair, and Sir William Molesworth. The Earl of Durham was an aristocratic Radical of irregular temper, who played a great part in another colonial theatre--Canada. Sir William Molesworth did much to aid the agitation which put an end to the transportation of convicts to Australia. For the rest, the a.s.sociation thought the thoughts, spoke the words, and made the moves of Gibbon Wakefield. Yet though he pervaded it sleeplessly, its life was but an episode in his career. He fought against the convict system with Molesworth and Rentoul of the _Spectator_. He went to Canada as Lord Durham's secretary and adviser.

He was actively concerned in the foundation of South Australia, where his system of high prices for land helped to bring about one of the maddest little land "booms" in colonial history. And as these things were not enough to occupy that daring, original, and indefatigable spirit, he threw himself into the colonization of New Zealand. He and his brother, Colonel Wakefield, became the brain and hand of the New Zealand colonizers.

For years they battled against their persistent opponents the Church Missionary Society and the officials of the Colonial Office. The former, who hit very hard at them in controversy, managed Lord Glenelg, then Colonial Secretary; the latter turned Minister after Minister from friends of the colonizers into enemies. Thus Lord Melbourne and Lord Howick had to change face in a fashion well-nigh ludicrous. The Government offered the a.s.sociation a charter provided it would become a joint-stock company. Baring and his friends refused this on the ground that they did not want any money-making element to come into their body. Moreover, in those days joint-stock companies were concerns with unlimited liability. The a.s.sociation tried to get a bill of const.i.tution through Parliament and failed. Mr. Gladstone spoke against it, and expressed the gloomiest apprehensions of the fate which the Maoris must expect if their country were settled. New Zealand, be it observed, was already a well-known name in Parliament.

The age of committees of inquiry into its affairs began in 1836. Very interesting to us to-day is the evidence of the witnesses before the committee of that year; nor are the proceedings of those of 1838, 1840, and 1844, less interesting. In the third of the four Gibbon Wakefield, under examination, tells the story of the New Zealand a.s.sociation. In 1839 it became the New Zealand Land Company. Baffled in Parliament, as already described, the colonizers changed their ground, decided to propitiate the powers, and become a joint-stock company. Having done so, and subscribed a capital of 100,000, they tried to enlist the sympathies of Lord Normanby, who had just succeeded Lord Glenelg at the Colonial Office. They found the new-made Secretary of State very affable indeed, and departed rejoicing.

But, like many new-made ministers, Lord Normanby had spoken without reckoning with his permanent officials. A freezing official letter, following swiftly on the pleasant interview, dashed the hopes of the Company. They were getting desperate. Lord Palmerston had, in November, 1838, promised them to send a consul to New Zealand to supersede poor Mr. Busby, but the permanent officials thwarted him, and nothing was done for eight months. At last, in May, 1839, Gibbon Wakefield crossed the Rubicon. As the Government persisted in treating New Zealand as a foreign country, let the Company do the same, and establish settlements there as in a foreign land! Since repeated efforts to obtain the help and sanction of the English Government had failed, let them go on unauthorized. Secretly, therefore, the ship _Tory_, bearing Colonel Wakefield, as Agent for the Company, was despatched in May to Cook's Straits to buy tracts of land for the Company. He was given a free hand as to locality, though Port Nicholson was hinted at as the likeliest port. With him went Gibbon Wakefield's son, Jerningham Wakefield, whose book, _Adventures in New Zealand_, is the best account we New Zealanders have of the every-day incidents of the founding of our colony.

Arriving in August among the whalers then settled in Queen Charlotte's Sound, Colonel Wakefield enlisted d.i.c.ky Barrett's services, and, pa.s.sing on to Port Nicholson, entered into a series of negotiations with the Maori chiefs, which led to extensive land purchases.

Ultimately Colonel Wakefield claimed that he had bought twenty millions of acres--nearly the whole of what are now the provincial districts of Wellington and Taranaki, and a large slice of Nelson.

It is quite probable that he believed he had. It is certain that the Maoris, for their part, never had the least notion of selling the greater portion of this immense area. It is equally probable that such chiefs as Rauparaha and Rangihaeata, who were parties to the bargain, knew that Wakefield thought he was buying the country. Fifty-eight chiefs in all signed the deeds of sale. Even if they understood what they were doing, they had no right, under the Maori law and custom, thus to alienate the heritage of their tribes. Had Colonel Wakefield's alleged purchases been upheld the Company would have acquired nine-tenths of the lands of no less than ten well-known tribes. The price paid for this was goods valued at something less than 9,000.

The list of articles handed over at the Wakefield purchases is remarkable enough to be worth quoting:--

300 red blankets.

200 muskets.

16 single-barrelled guns.

8 double-barrelled guns.

2 tierces tobacco.

15 cwt. tobacco.

148 iron pots.

6 cases soap.

15 fowling pieces.

81 kegs gunpowder.

2 casks ball cartridges.

4 kegs lead slates.

200 cartouche boxes.

60 tomahawks.

2 cases pipes.

10 gross pipes.

72 spades.

100 steel axes.

20 axes.

46 adzes.

3,200 fish-hooks.

24 bullet moulds.

1,500 flints.

276 shirts.

92 jackets.

92 trousers.

60 red nightcaps.

300 yards cotton duck.

200 yards calico.

300 yards check.

200 yards print.

480 pocket-handkerchiefs.

72 writing slates.

600 pencils.

204 looking gla.s.ses.

276 pocket knives.

204 pairs scissors.

12 pairs shoes.

12 hats.

6 lbs. beads.