Outside the war area, some of the tribes who were most amenable to missionary influence were brought together by the governor in July, 1860, and held a great meeting in the grounds of the Melanesian Mission headquarters at Kohimarama, near Auckland. After long discussion they expressed their determination not to join in the king movement, though they openly questioned the justice of the war. But the king-maker held to his scheme. With a profound philosophy which has hardly yet been mastered by European statesmen, he pointed to the actual existence of different and differing nations in the world. "The only bond," he said, "is Christ." Why should the Maori lose his nationality? Why should not he in his own way co-operate with the pakeha in upholding the law of the one Christ? "This upright stick," he said, "is the governor; this one is the king; this horizontal one which I lay across the other two is the law of God and of the queen; this circle which I draw round the whole is the authority of the queen which guards us all."
Nor did his actions fall below his words. Justice was administered with strict impartiality, and Tamihana himself founded a boarding-school, which contained at one time upwards of a hundred children. In order to provide for the maintenance of these scholars, he and his sons carried on a farm at Peria. Wilson relates how, when he went on a peace-making mission to this place, and was forced to spend the cold night amongst Maoris who showed no readiness to receive his message, a hand was laid upon him in the dim dawn, and the voice of the king-maker said, "You will perish in this place. Arise, come down and stay with me." After breakfast, he found Tamihana at his plough: "The day was wet; he was soaked with rain and bedaubed with mud. The great man—for such he really is—was dressed in a blue serge shirt and corduroy trousers, without hat, and toiling like a peasant." The missionary was then taken to the school, where this Maori Tolstoi gave the children some practical problems in arithmetic, and a dictation lesson from his favourite Book of Deuteronomy.
The latter part of 1861 saw a temporary improvement in the situation. War was for the time suspended. The Stafford ministry were driven from office by the vote of one of their friends, who felt the injustice of their war policy, and—most important of all—the weak governor was removed, and Sir George Grey sent back to take his place. Past suffering did not prevent Henry Williams and his friends from welcoming one who, with all his faults, was a real lover of the native race; and the governor soon showed that he had not forgotten the mistakes he had formerly made. One of his first acts was to go off by himself to Otaki, and there to spend a day or two with Hadfield—son-in-law to Henry Williams. "Of course," writes the latter, "they were agreed upon all points." Somewhat later he called upon the patriarch himself at Pakaraka, and consulted with him as to the best means of bringing peace to the land. With generous trustfulness Henry Williams wrote, "I have every confidence in Sir George, but he is in want of men to carry out his views."
The period from October, 1861, to May, 1863, is thus interesting, as being the last occasion in our history when it can be said that the voice of the Church was really effective in guiding the policy of the country. The indignant protests of Selwyn, Hadfield, and Martin had taken effect; an enquiry into the Waitara case proved the illegality of the Government's action. The new governor tried to establish a system of local self-government among the Maoris, and to atone for the misdeeds of the past. Henry Williams described the situation with characteristic bluntness: "Of the feeling of the old ministry and their partisans, there was no mistake: 'Hang the missionaries and bishops for having caused the rebellion.' These persons are now so still and quiet you may hear a pin drop, even in the bush.... Nothing is now heard but 'the dear Maoris; who would hurt a hair of their heads?'"
The brief period of peace in the north brought troubles of its own to Bishop Selwyn and the Church. The second General Synod was summoned to meet at Nelson in February, 1862. On the day appointed for the opening of the assembly there were not enough members to form a quorum. For several days this deficiency continued, and the synod could not be properly constituted. The members occupied themselves with passing resolutions which were validated at the end of the period, when at last a quorum was secured.
The chief reason for the smallness of this gathering was the attitude of the diocese of Christchurch. This important part of the Church was in a state of rebellion against the constitution. None of its principal clergy had attended the synod of 1859; no representative but the bishop came to that of 1862. Its grievances were of various kinds: it found fault with the "property" element, and the "mutual compact" idea, and the unalterable fundamentals, and all the other features upon which the Auckland laity had insisted. It seemed as though the spirit of Godley had returned in all its trenchant and uncompromising churchmanship. But the most definite of all the Canterbury grievances arose from the claim of the General Synod to own and administer all the church property in the country. Bishop Selwyn had handed over to the first synod more than seventy trust properties, which had been hitherto vested in himself as corporation sole: he expected the diocese of Christchurch to do the same. But this the Canterbury churchmen would never do. Rather than do it, they resolved to secede from the Church of New Zealand, and to reconstitute themselves on a diocesan basis. They appealed to the primate to "throw over" the constitution altogether, and to start afresh on what they considered more churchlike principles.
Such was the ecclesiastical situation for the next three years—1862 to 1865. The position was serious, and there was just the possibility of a schism. But it was hardly more than a possibility. Selwyn seems not to have disquieted himself very greatly about the matter. For there was one saving feature in the case. Christchurch could hardly set up for itself on a diocesan basis without its bishop; and Bishop Harper was Selwyn's friend, and he was loyal to the constitution. The whole synod of Christchurch might pass threatening resolutions—as it did in 1863 and 1864—but as long as Henry Harper occupied the bishop's seat they were bound to be blocked by the episcopal veto. And before the next General Synod the Church was to pass through such tragic occurrences that the question at issue could no longer command the same primary and absorbing interest.