MURDER MOST FOUL
The year 1865 was full of incident. Fifteen years had gone by since Russell had bewailed the choice of Auckland as the capital, since Wellington had stormily asserted her right of elder birth, since men here and there with nothing better to suggest had demanded petulantly, "Why should it be Auckland, any way?" It was now Auckland's turn to lament; for, in the opinion of those qualified to judge, the central position of Wellington justified the transference thither of the seat of Government.
There is no way yet discovered of pleasing everybody; but, in order that the choice might be strictly impartial, the Governors of New South Wales, Victoria, and Tasmania were requested to decide upon the best site for the capital, while they were given to understand that the spot selected must be somewhere on the shores of Cook Strait, that being the geographical centre of the colony.
The Governors inspected the region without prejudice in favour of existing towns, and unanimously decided that "Wellington, in Port Nicholson, was the site upon the shores of Cook Strait which presented the greatest advantages for the administration of the government of the colony." No method of selection could have been more just, and in February, 1865, the seat of Government was removed from Auckland to Wellington.
The second notable event—the third in order of sequence—was the surrender of the celebrated Waikato chief, Wiremu Tamihana Te Waharoa (William Thompson), whose persistent energy had put so much heart into the insurgents. With his submission the Waikato war proper ended, and this although many Waikato joined the Hauhau movement. The conflict was not over; but the Waikato as a tribe withdrew from it. Some of their land had been confiscated, they had got the worst of the fight, and, though they still clung to their principles regarding the sale of land and the establishment of a Maori dynasty, they now acknowledged the might of the Government to be something beyond their power to overthrow.
The submission of Wiremu Tamihana influenced not the wild fanatics who were being recruited from almost every tribe of note in the North Island, and whose expressed determination it was to drive the Pakeha Rat into the sea. They would fight and die for Maoriland, if need be; but they would never give in. Not all of them believed the horrible creed which Te Ua had invented; but even these were content to be classed as Hauhau, if so they might help to free their country from the domination of the Pakeha.
"Good wine needs no bush," and if ever a cause was spoiled by the character and behaviour of its adherents, it was this; if ever a body of men in arms in the sacred name of patriotism earned, and rightly earned, the detestation and vengeance of their foes, the Hauhau did so at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of their war. The very Maori loathed their name and character, and these, concerned for the honour of their race, fought as strenuously against their degraded countrymen as did the whites with whom they were allied.
Between February, when Wellington became the capital, and June the 17th, when Wiremu Tamihana surrendered, an innocent missionary was murdered by his own flock under circumstances which served to show that, even at that late day, there were Maori who required but little persuasion to induce them to slip back into the pit of savagery out of which they had, it was hoped, climbed for all time.
The Church of England Mission Station at Opotiki (Bay of Plenty) had been for some years presided over by the Rev. C.S. Voelkner, an energetic and successful missionary. His station was among some of the wildest, least civilised tribes of the Maori; but his devotion had gained him the respect, and even the goodwill, of the fierce, untamed fellows in whose midst he dwelt.