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The Life and Times of Sir George Grey, K.C.B.

Chapter XIII. — Short History of the New Zealand Company

page 91

Chapter XIII.
Short History of the New Zealand Company.

"Ill fare the land, to hastening woes a prey,
Where wealth accumulates and men decay.
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade,
A breath can make them, as a breath has made,
But a hold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed, can never be supplied."

The difficulties which were presented by the Maori war, and the necessity of acquiring a knowledge of the native language, religion, and literature, were not the only obstacles to peaceable and successful government which Captain Grey had to encounter. The cupidity and ambition of his fellow-countrymen, the restless and adventurous spirit of the first colonists of New Zealand, gave rise to continual conflicts and continual dangers. Taking the tide of public opinion on his system of colonization at the flood, Mr. Edward Gibbon Wakefield and a large circle of friends and admirers had registered a joint stock company destined to become famous, or rather infamous, as the New Zealand Company.

This corporate body was formed for the purpose of colonising New Zealand upon Mr. Edward Gibbon Wakefield's plan, and to make money. At that time New Zealand was a free and sovereign power. It owned allegiance to no authority beyond its own shores. Its tribes were free to deal with intending settlers as they chose. No law but that which the chiefs chose to make, and which they had power to enforce, existed from Cape Maria Van Diemen to Stewart's Island. To this land—fertile, beautiful, and waste—the page 92longing eyes of Mr. Wakefield and his friends were turned. In defiance of the warnings of the British Government, numbers of people were attracted by the hopes held out by the Company, and joined in the adventure. Money flowed in swiftly, because intending emigrants and speculators had to pay in London for the land they were to own in New Zealand. Colonel Wakefield was hurriedly despatched to obtain land from the natives. Purchasers flocked to the London office. In a short time upwards of one hundred thousand pounds was received as purchase money.

Without waiting to hear that a spot sufficient even to land upon had been purchased, the Company sent off several ships filled with emigrants to find a home, if possible, among the savage and warlike Maoris. This "highly irregular and improper conduct" (Select Committee of the House of Commons, 1844) was consistent with' the purposes for which the Company was formed. "The New Zealand Company was founded for two objects: the one was to put in practice certain views with regard to colonisation, the other was to make money" (Sir W. Molesworth, speech on New Zealand Bill, 1852)

As English subjects were thus being carried to New Zealand from Great Britain, and as from Australia a stream of colonisation had previously set in, Her Majesty's Ministers were driven to adopt the only effectual measures for establishing in these islands a settled form of government. Captain Hobson, who had been officially sent to New Zealand and had made a very able report, was appointed to undertake the negotiations. The meeting called by him was held at Waitangi, and there, under the most solemn promises that their titles to their lands should be secured to them by the Crown, the famous treaty was signed by the native chiefs, by which the Britain of the South became incorporated in the empire. Great fears were expressed by the chiefs present at the meeting that in ceding sovereignty they would be held as giving up their lands. The project was nearly defeated. Many leading men wavered. At last Tamati Waka rose. To him, equally renowned in the field and the council, the assembly listened attentively. He spoke with great earnestness and ability. When he had concluded he turned to Captain Hobson, and with pathetic confidence said, "You must be our father. You must not allow us page 93to become slaves. You must preserve our customs, and never permit our lands to be wrested from us." Tamati Waka's speech was decisive; the treaty was signed, the aid of the missionaries of the different churches was invoked, and many other influential chiefs not present at Waitangi joined in the movement. But the same promise was always exacted and was always made. The Maori was to be guaranteed, on the faith of England, all his rights in the lands of his fathers. On the 6th of February, the first forty-six signatures were appended to the treaty. At that time the first settlers of the Company at Port Nicholson, who had been landed at Petone some sixteen days before, were wondering where they were to get the land for which they had paid before leaving England. On the 21st May the sovereignty of the Queen was proclaimed, and the 16th of November created New Zealand a separate colony. So great was the influence which the New Zealand Company had by this time acquired that when the colony was declared independent of New South Wales Lord John Russell formally recognised it, and made arrangements with its directors in order that the colonisation of New Zealand should be carried on conjointly by the Government of the colony and the Company.

The agitation for what was afterwards called "local government" commenced with the landing of the Company's settlers at Petone. They formed a government of their own, with courts and officers, and acted as if they were invested with the authority of the Crown. From the first it became evident that the agents and officers of the Company were determined to exercise sovereign rule. Their idea of constitutional and representative government was, and always has been, continuing until the present time, that New Zealand was made especially for them, that they had or ought to have the right to rule, to legislate for their own benefit, to acquire great estates in land as their own inheritance, and, under the name of constitutional or representative government, to use the public money, the public credit, and the public patronage for themselves and their friends. The same struggle is being maintained now as commenced between Captain Hobson and the Wakefields in 1840, continued between the Wakefields and Captain Fitzroy in 1843, and afterwards between Sir George Grey, aided by Bishop Selwyn and Sir William Martin page 94on the one side, and Sir William Fox, Sir Charles Clifford, Dr. Featherston, Mr. Weld, and the whole host of land speculators and land jobbers who sided with them.

The immediate consequence of the Treaty of Waitangi was the creation of courts by the authority of Government, which, after due deliberation, declared that the pretended purchases of native land made by the Company were nearly all invalid. The Company at once set itself by its agents and members to destroy the principle on which the Treaty of Waitangi was based, namely, the rights of the Maoris to their lands. Those rights were denied. They were assailed with ridicule. They were stated to be in antagonism to the rights of civilised humanity. No effort was spared to induce the Government of England to adopt this view, and although for some time these efforts were unavailing, at length, in 1844, they succeeded in obtaining a resolution from a Committee of the House of Commons, recommending the Crown to take possession of all lands not actually occupied by the natives; and in 1846, not only did Earl Grey deliberately set out his opinion to this effect in his despatch to the Governor, but in the Royal instructions, which accompanied the Act of 1846 and the Charter, provisions were made for registration of native lands, which, had they been carried into effect, would have absolutely despoiled the natives of the great bulk of their ancestral territories.

From its first existence, the Company commenced its work of colonisation openly in direct antagonism to the English Government. Its first detachment of settlers reached New Zealand and disembarked at Wellington on the 22nd of January, 1840.

These settlers had been allured by the prospects held out to them, and had paid large sums of money in London for the lands which they were to occupy in New Zealand. At the time of these sales the company had no land, nor did nor it, until the period of its dissolution, ever place a solitary settler upon a single acre of land with a good title acquired by it from the natives. It sent a fleet with immigrants to Wellington, and it had no land there on which to place them. It then located them at the Hutt and other places upon disputed lands, which led to a long series of sanguinary conflicts and murders. It despatched a large party to Nelson, and its efforts there to take the lands of the natives by force ended in page 95the conflict in Wairau, where, after a smart skirmish, in which our people were defeated, the prisoners taken by the Maoris were killed by one of Rangihaeata's natives, the chief being maddened by the death of his wife, the favourite daughter of Te Rauparaha. It attempted to locate a body of settlers at Wanganui; but there also it had no land. It sold the Chatham Islands, having no title or claim to them, to a German firm, and when threatened by the English Government with the loss of its charter for so doing, attempted to escape from the consequences of its own acts by evasion and falsehood. It covenanted to give employment to its settlers, if available land was not found for them, and when these men applied at Taranaki for this employment under what were called their "Embarkation Orders," its agent in his own words "endeavoured to evade the promise made by the Company, by sending the applicants for employment a long distance from home, making no allowance for time spent on the journey or for time lost in bad weather. The necessities of the men and their families were such as compelled them to submit for several weeks to these conditions, but many came home sick and claimed the promised medical aid; and others commenced the trade of pig and sheep stealing, not having yet had time to raise potatoes for themselves."*

It deceived Lord Stanley and attempted in vain to obtain his assent to its denial of the rights of the Maoris; and when Lord Howick, having become Earl Grey, was invested with authority in the Colonial Office, and another of its great champions, Mr. Hawes, became Under Secretary in the same department, and its legal adviser and organ of communication with the Government, Mr. Charles Buller, became Judge-Advocate-General, it deceived the Government and the House in order to further its nefarious plans. Immense sums, upwards of £230,000, were placed at its disposal by the English Government, of which but a small proportion, less than £30,000, was, it is said, expended by it in emigration.† "A considerable sum was lent by the Company to its own shareholders and lost. Other large sums were laid out ostensibly in the purchase of private estates, but really to buy up troublesome claims for compensation, and further sums of

* See Appendix to Twelfth Report. † Report on New Zealand Company's Debt Paper.—Sessions I. and II.

page 96considerable magnitude were appropriated by the directors of the Company amongst themselves on account of past fees,"* Finally, taking advantage of a very favourable arrangement (under the Act of 1847) which had been made by Mr. Charles Buller, who drafted the letters for the Colonial Office, and then drafted the letters for the Directors of the Company in reply, which letters, on both sides, embodied the terms of the arrangement which he had prepared, it "surrendered its charter, and, as a colonising association, ended its career without having given a single legal title to a single individual of a single piece of land, leaving the whole of its engagements in respect of the disposal of land during a period of twelve years unfulfilled and uncompleted, and leaving the whole colony burdened with a debt of £268,000."

When an Imperial guarantee was sought for a loan of £200,000, which the Company agreed to take in full of all demands, it was stigmatised by men like Sir J. Trelawney as "nothing but hushmoney, in order that all discussions about past transactions may be put an end to," while Sir James Graham regretted that it was no longer advisable to debate the questionable transactions of which this Company had been guilty. Its own settlers, overwhelmed by disappointment and woe, "afflicting the directors with their complaints of disappointment and ruin" thus addressed them while claiming compensation: "We address you not as supplicants for your bounty, not as men suing for favour at your hands, but as parties deeply and grievously injured by you, and as such demanding redress. And to what cause are the disasters which have befallen us attributable? You cannot and dare not deny that the immediate and proximate cause of our ruin has been the non-fulfilment by you of a contract formed with us seven years ago."§

Alarmed by these and other threats from the victims of their cupidity and selfishness, the directors took legal advice as to their liability. The counsel who advised, a member of their own company, and a man of character and standing, gave his opinion that the Company was not only liable for the original money paid by the settlers, with interest, but could also be made to pay compensation

* See Lord Grey's speech on the second reading of the New Zealand Bill.

"New Zealand and its Colonisation," p. 145, William Swainson.

Mr. Charles A. Buller to the Secretary of State for the Colonies.

§ Swainson's "New Zealand," p. 125.

page 97for all their losses. True to its character, the Company suppressed this opinion, obtained more favourable advice from a more pliable lawyer, but little known in his profession, and sent out this second opinion to the settlers, thereby entrapping these unhappy people into making compromises disadvantageous to themselves. Upon this it was charged before Parliament with deceiving its own New Zealand colonists by means of a deliberate suppression of the truth. So tortuous and disingenuous were the proceedings of this Company that Sir James Stephen, then permanent Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, requested Lord John Russell, then principal Secretary of State in the Department, "to relieve him from the duty of ever again receiving any of the directors of that body at any interview relating to their affairs."

This significant request, which showed clearly that Sir James Stephen feared to trust himself at an interview with unscrupulous men, was granted without hesitation by Lord John Russell.

Prior to the advent of Captain Grey the Company had ruined hundreds of settlers; brought about the massacre at the Wairau; it had harassed the gallant Captain Hobson to death, and driven Captain Fitzroy well-nigh into lunacy; it had deceived the English Government and a Committee of the House of Commons, and had commenced a civil war in New Zealand, which, but for the inflexible determination and great sagacity of Governor Grey, might have ended in the total extermination of the white population of these islands.

The report of the Committee of the House of Representatives of New Zealand upon the matter of the New Zealand Company's debt is most damaging. And with respect to the debt generally, resolutions were agreed to by both Houses to the effect that the charge on the land fund of the colony was an oppressive burden on its resources; that it appeared to have been created by Parliament in ignorance of the real facts, and to have been obtained by the New Zealand Company by means of the suppression of material circumstances, and that the colony was entitled to obtain from the British Parliament a re-consideration of the case.

Prior to the advent of Governor Fitzroy, who landed in Auckland on the 23rd of December, 1843, the native mind had become strongly excited by statements industriously promulgated, having reference to the determination of the English Parliament and the page 98English Government, moved by the New Zealand Company, to deny the Treaty of Waitangi, and the rights of the Maoris to any lands upon which they had not bestowed labour and been at one time in personal occupation.

The fight and massacre at Wairau had destroyed the fear which had long existed in the minds of the Maoris regarding the superior prowess and warlike skill of the Europeans. On the 9th of July, 1844, Hone Heke, a son-in-law of the famous Hongi, as before stated, asserted the rights of the Maoris and their determination not to submit to spoliation, by cutting down the flagstaff at Kororareka, and the flag of England which it carried. In January, 1844, this was repeated, and on the 11th of March Kororareka was taken, the block-house burned, and all the English people driven away.

It has been stated that Hone Heke's war did not arise through the Maoris' fears about their land, but the concurrent testimony of all competent authorities affirms the fact.* Bishop Selwyn distinctly states it in his answer to Earl Grey. Even the chairman of the Company, when writing to the Secretary of State, speaking of the difficulties which the Company had to face, says: "These difficulties must, we think, be ascribed to one cause, namely, the disputes respecting the Company's title to land. This is the one thing that appears to have led to all the bad blood between the natives and the settlers. It was the direct cause of the unhappy business at Cloudy Bay (the Wairau), and of the subsequent disastrous state of feeling"

Indeed, it was only when the recommendation of the Parliamentary Committee before alluded to was communicated to the natives in the North that Hone Heke and his people rose to protect themselves against what they considered to be a gross intended violation of the Treaty of Waitangi.

Governor Fitzroy was recalled. The Company meanwhile made propositions to the Government in London, the knowledge of which tended still farther to alarm the natives. The position of affairs in New Zealand was the subject of a five days' debate in the House of Commons.

* Bishop Selwyn to Earl Grey, August 1st, 1848, "New Zealand Papers," Imperial Parliament, July, 1849, p. 37.

Swainson's "New Zealand," p. 126.

page 99

The Company continually desired the English Government to disregard the Treaty of Waitangi, and to confiscate the whole of the lands of New Zealand nominally to the Crown, but really for the benefit of the New Zealand Company. It had gone so far as to approach Lord Stanley, then Secretary of State for the Colonies, urging upon him that the Treaty of Waitangi was simply a device for the purpose of amusing naked savages, and inducing them to behave in a friendly manner until the British power should be permanent in these islands.

With Lord Stanley the leaders of the Company met with no success. His reply to them, at once noble and dignified, stated that he, as Her Majesty's representative, held all treaties assented to by the Crown of England as solemn and deliberate transactions; that he should in no wise assent to the doctrine propounded to him that such treaties were merely devices to amuse naked savages, and that he held, on behalf of Her Majesty, that the Crown of England and the people of England were bound by their solemn obligations to the native people and chiefs of New Zealand.

The promoters and leaders of the Company were not to be rebuffed. No sooner had Lord Stanley quitted his position of authority in Downing-street than they repeated their attacks upon Earl Grey, who, as Lord Howick, had been interested in the formation of the Company. In Earl Grey, for a time, Mr. Wakefield and his coadjutors found a more willing listener. Under his auspices, and with his assistance, they obtained, in 1846, the passage of an Act through the English Parliament providing for a so-called Constitutional Government of New Zealand. Immediately subsequent to the passing of the Act it was transmitted with a long despatch from Earl Grey to the Governor, in which his lordship sets forth, with great circumstantiality, his belief that the Treaty of Waitangi cannot be held to be binding upon the British Government.

So strenuous were the efforts made by the Company to obtain complete control of the colony that it was believed by many that Captain Grey was about to be recalled, and an agent of the Company made Governor in his stead. In anticipation of such a step a public meeting was called, and held at Nelson, on the 30th January, 1847, the Honourable Constantine Dillon being chairman. page 100The first resolution expressed the deep regret of the people at the reported removal of Captain Grey from the office of Governor. The second was thus worded: "That we view with feelings of alarm and regret the proposed delegation of the powers of Government to the New Zealand Company." Three other resolutions in the same direction were also carried, the last being: "That the twentieth report of the directors of the New Zealand Company lately received, the letter of Mr. Edward Gibbon Wakefield appended to it, and the report of the Committee upon that letter, are all characterised by a most extraordinary ignorance of the state of the colony, and of their own settlements in particular, by predictions of which the subsequent course of events has shown the absurdity in the most striking manner, and by the suggestion of a course of policy for the future based upon error—visionary and impracticable."*

One of the former resolutions states the opinion of the meeting that "The administration of the affairs of this settlement (Nelson) by the New Zealand Company has convinced us of its incapacity, and destroyed all confidence on our part either in the wisdom of its measures or in the integrity of its conduct." The speakers at this meeting represented the entire public feeling of the community. Besides the Hon. Constantine Dillon in the chair, Dr. Monro and Mr. David Monro. J.P.; Mr. Greenwood, Mr. Fell, Mr. C. P. Withers, J.P., Mr. Seymour, Mr. Saxton, Dr. Renwick, Mr. Budge, Mr. Moore, Mr. Greaves, and Mr. Dartnell all spoke to different resolutions. Copies of the resolutions were sent by order of the meeting to the Governor, to Earl Grey, and to the Court of Directors of the New Zealand Company.

In Auckland at about the same time and while the Constitution was on the way, the people of Auckland signed an address to Captain Grey eulogising his efforts for the public good. Auckland and its people were bitterly opposed by the New Zealand Company. This address states: "When it was found that Auckland could not be deprived of its natural gifts, and that in spite of all attempts to retard its progress and destroy its very existence it still advanced steadily but slowly, and that when compared with the settlements

* New Zealand Parliamentary Papers, Imperial Parliament, December, 1847, p. 10.

page 101of the Company which sought its extinction, it rose superior to them all, then the attempt is made to defame and malign its settlers, and no misstatements, however gross, no fabrications, however outrageous, are left untried to effect this purpose. … As an apology for the introduction of these remarks, and for praying your Excellency to represent our interests at Home, and disabuse Her Majesty's Government of any false impressions with regard to us as a community, we may mention that so entirely is the influential portion of the press in the mother country enlisted in advocating the cause of the New Zealand Company, that the friends of this settlement now in England have found themselves totally unable to cope with their more powerful opponents, and like ourselves have been obliged to sit clown in patience, trusting in the power of truth and time eventually to obtain us justice."*

* Enclosure in Despatch, Governor Grey to Earl Grey, February 4th, 1847. Parl. Papers, June, 1847.