RUINS OF ST. THOMAS'S CHURCH, TAMAKI.
How can we account for all this? Must we not say that these were indeed the "Years of the right hand of the Most High"?
CHAPTER VII.
RETROSPECT.
(1814-1841).
The native bent of the Maori mind caused the people, as they embraced Christianity, gradually to place themselves as a matter of course under the guidance of a sort of Christian theocracy. It was under the auspices of this mild missionary regime—which, if a government, was a very singular one, seeing that there were no laws, and an almost total absence of crime—that the first British Governor set foot on the shores of New Zealand.
—Judge Wilson.
Hardly had Henry Williams returned to Paihia from his great journey through the heart of the island, when a warship arrived in the Bay, bearing Captain William Hobson with a commission from Queen Victoria, authorising him to annex the country to the British Crown. A not very friendly historian (Saunders) has summed up the situation at this point by saying that, on his arrival, Hobson fell into the hands of the Reverend Henry Williams, and obligingly admits that he might have fallen into worse ones. As a matter of fact, the captain could have done but little had he not secured the co-operation of this influential missionary. Rusden speaks no more than the truth when he declares that "Henry Williams had but to raise his finger, and his mana would have weighed more with the Maoris than the devices of Colonel Wakefield or the office of Hobson."