Origins of the Maori Wars by Keith Sinclair

Author:Keith Sinclair [Sinclair, Keith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781869405571
Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
Published: 2011-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

In yet another sense the new policy was a product of contemporary British ideals. It had long been felt that the Maoris should be governed, that it was lack of governmental organization which had given rise to the King movement. This view, as much as a natural feeling that as Governor he ought to govern, induced Gore Browne to decide to stop the Maoris from taking the law into their own hands. In several respects, then, it was the application of humanitarian ideals which brought the situation in New Zealand to the point of war.

In considering his policy humanitarian, the Governor showed some understanding of the position, but there was still a vast gap between what he thought he was doing and what he was doing in actuality. How little ‘mature’ was the consideration given to the policy was revealed when the Government came to defend itself. Scarcely any of its chief arguments squared with the facts. Despite the Governor’s intentions, the policy amounted in practice to little more than pure opportunism, similar to McLean’s practice of buying land without regard to rights which could be evaded.

The Governor could still be saved from the consequences of his errors. In both his statements to settlers who called on him, he had stressed that if Kingi should prove to be an ‘owner’, to have a ‘joint interest’, to possess no matter how small a ‘claim’, the land would not be bought without his consent. Investigation might prove such claims to exist. When the Governor and ministers came later to explain and defend their policy, they pointed to the offer of land on the Waipa by Wiremu Nera as a precedent. The Governor was said to have made on that occasion a declaration precisely similar to that subsequently made at New Plymouth. On that previous occasion, when ‘joint proprietors’ expressed their unwillingness to be parties to the sale, the negotiations for purchase were broken off.27

This way of escape, however, was not entirely open, because from the first the Governor tended to prejudge the vital issue of whether Kingi was an ‘owner’, as is shown both by his private journal and by his dispatch of 29 March. He believed that he was faced with a case of chiefly pretension to interference and not a case, of the kind which he also anticipated in his speech to the Maoris, of owners who did not want to sell. He assumed both that chiefs as chiefs had no interest in land sales and that Kingi had no other rights as an ‘owner’. For the second of these opinions (if not for the first) his advisers were entirely responsible. Before accepting Teira’s offer, subject to proof of title, the Governor consulted McLean and Richmond. The Native Minister had little personal knowledge of such questions, and there is no doubt that McLean’s word was decisive. As Richmond later told the House, McLean would never have advised the Governor even to entertain the offer if he had not had good reason to think ‘it would turn out a sound case’.

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