CHAPTER XIV

EXTENSION IN NEW ZEALAND AND ITS EFFECTS

In New Zealand the way to unity lay first through war, War and then through peace. The predisposing cause of war ^"f / '^ was neglect.

Until 1862 Maori affairs were 'mainly in the hands The < king

of the Governor responsible for (them) to the Crown '. 1 " lovc! ' lcnl r v ' was due to

He and he only was responsible ; but the only funds by neglect. means of which he could fulfil his responsibility were £7,000 a year — of which £5,900 went to missionaries, &c, and the rest to magistrates, &c. ; and his only advisers were the officials of the native department, who derived their pay from the Assembly, and whose chief duty it was to buy land from the natives. Governor Browne (1855-61) could not speak Maori, had no interpreter of his own, and therefore groped and fumbled like a blind man who has been told not to follow but to lead the lad who leads him. Consequently, although 'successive governors promised that the colonists and the Maori should form but one people under one equal law no effort was made to redeem these promises. In 1864, said Sir J. Gorst, 'the whole population is and has been for years in a state of utter anarchy.' 2 Even in New Plymouth — where a dispute arose about selling land to the English — natives flaunted their ' vende tte' in the eyes of the English until 1859, when Browne forbade future 'violence inside the British boundaries', whatever that might mean. Not ' misgovernment ' but

1 Acc. and Pap., Dispatch, Dea 10, 1856.

■ Sir J. Gorst, Maori King (1S64), cb» ü and iii.