O'ERCLOUDED SKIES
There was no session of Parliament between April, 1858, and the end of July, 1860, and the colonists were consequently justified in believing that the machinery of Government was moving smoothly throughout the Islands, and that the chief engineers required no help from their subordinates. Had they been told that they stood upon the dividing line between peace and war; had they been told that it required but one forward step in order to plunge them into a strife which should endure almost without intermission for just so many years as the peace they had enjoyed, they would have laughed in their informant's face.
From the earliest days certain tribes had maintained an attitude of reserve towards the Pakeha. If the white intruders chose to found a settlement or two on the coast and remain there, well and good; the Maori might find their presence useful commercially and for purposes of war. It was another matter when the strangers absorbed the land, divided the country into provinces, and founded not only capital cities, but numbers of smaller towns and villages as well. If this sort of thing were to go on, the Maori might as well evacuate the island at once; for, as Heke had said to the Governor, "If you take our land, where are we to go?"
This was the view taken by the Waikato, one of the most famous and most warlike of the Maori iwi, who about the year 1848 formed a Land League, which they strove to induce the other tribes to join. The leading principle of the League was obstinate refusal to sell land under any conditions to the Pakeha.
Confined to the Waikato alone, this movement would have been serious enough, threatening, as it did, to preserve in the midst of the Pakeha settlements numerous fierce and resolute men, opposed to the domination of Britain. When other tribes associated themselves with the founders of the League, it should have been evident that some day, and before long, white and brown must stand foot to foot to decide which was to be for ever supreme.
It mattered not to the Leaguers that the Government desired them to participate in the beneficent legislation designed on behalf of their countrymen. If they were to be governed at all, they preferred to choose the means and the way. To this end they devised a grotesque scheme, blending British institutions with the monarchical system of the ancient Jews. This done, they elected a king, called a "parliament," hoisted the flag which William the Fourth had granted to the "United Tribes of New Zealand," and inscribed it "Potatau, King of New Zealand."
Ridicule might have killed the movement, had it stopped there; but danger loomed very near when the irreconcilable chief of the "Boiling Water" tribes, Iwikau Te Heu Heu, demanded total separation between the two races, pointing to his great ancestor, the slumbering volcano, Tongariro, as the centre of a district through which no road should be made, where no white man should settle, and wherein Queen Wikitoria should not be prayed for.
Governor Browne held, notwithstanding, that "Kingism" should be allowed to die a natural death, and most unwisely repealed the Act which Sir George Grey had brought in, which prevented the sale of arms to natives. It was not until six months after this unaccountable step, by which time the Maori had acquired several thousand stand of arms, that the Governor listened to the anxious settlers and made the purchase of guns and ammunition somewhat more difficult by increasing the duty upon them. The whirlwind of the wind thus sown was to be reaped later; but the immediate result was a series of small civil strifes between different tribes during the years 1857 and 1858.