Before Selwyn could sail for his first voyage in the Southern Cross, he was called upon by the Governor to go to make peace in a native quarrel, which threatened to lead to trouble with the settlers. The disturbance had arisen in the neighbourhood of Taranaki, called by the colonists New Plymouth. A chief had tried to sell some land, the ownership of which was disputed, to the English, and another chief, Katatore, had shot him down in cold blood, unarmed. The settlers fearful of the disturbance that might follow, asked that some troops should be sent to protect them, but the Governor, thinking that the presence of English soldiers would only add to the difficulty, begged the Bishop to go down to see whether he could bring about a peaceful settlement. The Bishop started at once accompanied by Dr. Abraham and his faithful Maori Deacon, Rota. They had a hard fortnight’s walk through difficult country to the Pah, that is the camp, of William King, a well known native chief, who had taken the part of Katatore, and here they met with a friendly reception. The next day the conference began in Katatore’s Pah, and Abraham thus describes what happened. They found “one hundred men or so within; all were seated on the ground to hear what the Bishop had to say. After a few minutes a man dressed like a would-be flash criminal at Newgate came up to us. It was Katatore, a little cunning, ill-favoured looking rascal, dressed in a black paletot, moleskin trousers, boots and a little black hat on the top of an immense bush of hair. He then told us the story of the murder. When he came to it, the Bishop said: ‘So then you killed an unarmed man in cold blood for the matter of land?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Then you repeated the act of Cain towards Abel, and in the sight of God and man you are a murderer.”
“The man started up in great wrath, but the Bishop calmly repeated it. The man started on his feet and left the ring of people, muttering and growling; but his own people did not seem disposed to support him on that point, nor to question the Bishop’s judgment.”
Some days after, the soldiers arrived, and the natives grew very excited thinking that the Bishop had broken faith with them; but he reassured them and finally after giving good advice to both sides in the dispute restored peace. Abraham writes:
“It was very striking to see the men’s delight when he wound up his speech with their old song, the Maori equivalent for ‘Lady bird, lady bird, fly away home.’ All the good advice seemed to tell but little, but this quotation set the whole party on the alert.”
During the days spent in this work of peace-making, Selwyn held many services with both colonists and natives, and persuaded the colonists to provide themselves with churches. Whilst waiting for the steamer which was to take him away, he with his party set to work to mend a road full of great holes, which he had in vain tried to persuade the people to mend. They made the road passable in a day and a half’s work; and were watched by the passers-by with amusement, but unfortunately not with shame for their own idleness.
The Bishop was violently attacked in the local papers for his conduct in the Taranaki dispute. In one of them it was said:
“Bishop Selwyn is again lending his blighting influence to New Zealand, has again taken the murderer by the hand.... It is reserved for the Bishop of New Zealand to use his undoubted influence to shield notorious criminals from justice when those criminals appeal to his sympathies through the medium of a dark skin.”
He was accused of preventing the sale of land to the settlers in New Plymouth. Thinking that some members of the Church might have been offended by the reports they had heard of his opinion and conduct, he felt it to be a religious duty to explain his opinions in a pastoral letter to them. In this he stated what he considered to be the cause of the hostility between the Maoris and the settlers. He said that land had been acquired too hastily without sufficient investigation of the titles, and went on:
“My advice to the natives in all parts of New Zealand has always been to sell all the land which they are not able to occupy or cultivate. I had two reasons for this: first to avoid continual jealousies between the races; and secondly to bring the native population within narrower limits, in order that religion, law, education and civilization might be brought to bear more effectually upon them.”
He referred to the strong feeling amongst the Maoris for their land, and to their accurate knowledge with regard to its ownership, saying: “No menaces of military interference are likely to have any effect upon men who from their childhood, have been accustomed to regard it as a point of honour to shed their last drop of blood for the inheritance of their tribe.” He expressed his conviction “that the lives and property of our fellow settlers, scattered as they are, can only be preserved by the greatest forbearance and the strictest justice in our dealings with the native people.”