For once the story of colonial annexation is neither darkened with crime nor saddened with war and bloodshed. The measure was essential both to the security of the natives and to the work of the Protestant missions. Lawlessness and anarchy were universal: the Maori tribes were slaughtering one another; the white man was slaughtering the Maori tribes. For the native laws were obsolete, and the laws of England no man yet had the power to enforce.
There was, too, on the part of England, and it was strongly expressed in the British parliament, a determination to secure, as far as possible, not only the safety but the independence of the natives under their old chiefs, and to leave them in possession of their ancient usages and forms of government. In fact, the authority of queen Victoria was to be that of a mild protectorate rather than an absolute sovereignty. The chiefs were to acknowledge the supremacy of the crown as represented in the governor. To him, and not as heretofore to the field of battle, with its horrors and cannibalism, were their disputes to be referred; and in all doubtful questions English law, its maxims and analogies, were to be held supreme. Upon these easy terms the most fastidious will find little to blame in our annexation of New Zealand. The Maories did not exceed, it was computed, one hundred thousand souls. Suppose they had been twice that number, still they could scarcely be said to occupy the whole of an island of the size of Ireland, and quite as fruitful. There was still room for a vast influx of Europeans, leaving to the natives wide tracts of land far beyond their wants, either for tillage or the chase, or for a nomad wandering life, had this been the habit of the Maories. And when the threatened seizure by France is thrown into the scale, few Protestants, of whatever nation they may be, will hesitate to admit that the conduct of England in this instance was both wise and just.
The Maories in general accepted this new state of things with satisfaction. Those of them who resided on the coast and in the neighbourhood of the Bay of Islands saw that the aggression of the colonists was restrained, and that their own safety was secured. Further in the interior, where the want of an English protectorate was less felt, heart-burnings occurred, fomented, as usual, by designing men, and aggravated by the occasional outrage of individuals. Some of the tribes resisted, and a war broke out, though happily neither bloody nor of long duration, in which the Maories maintained the reputation of their native valour, even against English regiments. Nor was it till the year 1849 that the peace of the island and the supremacy of the English crown were perfectly restored and asserted.
For a time the progress of the gospel was triumphant. For example, archdeacon William Williams could report that the number of communicants in the eastern district, beneath his care, had risen from twenty-nine in 1840, to two thousand eight hundred and ninety-three in 1850; and these were “members of the congregation who were supposed to walk in the narrow way. Here then,” he exclaims, “is abundant encouragement; the little one is become a thousand. In the course of ten years, there has been time for the novelty of Christianity to wear away; but, while some are gone back again to the beggarly elements of the world, hitherto the Lord has blessed his vineyards with increase.” In other districts the progress of the gospel was equally gratifying. At Tauranga, out of a population not exceeding two thousand four hundred, upwards of eight hundred partook of the Lord’s supper; and yet there were many native Christians who, from various causes, had been kept away from this ordinance. Other denominations of Protestant Christians had likewise their trophies to exhibit to the “praise of his grace,” who had crowned their labours with success. “The facilities,” reports one missionary, upon the eastern coast, “the facilities for usefulness are great; the coast might become one of the most interesting missionary gardens in the world. Crowds can be got together at any time for catechizing; the dear children are all anxious for schooling; the native teachers and monitors put themselves quite under your hands; and they are, I think, a very improving and improvable class.”
Similar reports reached home from almost every station in New Zealand. At the intervention of a missionary of the church of England, a Wesleyan missionary, and an English lay gentleman, (the surveyor-general,) the Waikato and Wangaroa tribes, bent on mutual slaughter, laid down their arms at the instant the battle should have joined. They had had their war-dance; some random shots had even been fired; their mediators had begun to despair; when at length, towards evening, they agreed to leave the subject in dispute between them (the right to a piece of land), to Sir George Grey, the governor, and Te Werowero, a native chieftain, for arbitration. The question was put to the whole army, “Do you agree to this?” Four hundred armed natives answered with one voice, assenting. The question was put a second time, and they again gave their consent. “The surveyor-general giving the signal, we all,” says the missionary, “gave three hearty cheers; after which the natives assembled for evening-prayers, and,” he adds, “I trust I felt thankful.” The accounts that reached England, filled men’s hearts with astonishment; even upon the spot, men long enured to the spiritual warfare with idolatry, were amazed at the greatness of their triumph. They wrote home in strains such as the following.
“Rotorua is endeared to us by every tie that should endear a place to a missionary’s heart. We came hither, to a people utterly debased by everything that was savage. Now, there is not a village or place around us, where the morning and evening bell does not call to prayer and praise, and where the sabbath is not observed. I am sometimes astonished when I look back upon the past, and remember what we have passed through. If I think only of those scenes which occurred to us during the southern war, the remembrance seems appalling. Now peace reigns in every border; the native chapel stands conspicuous in almost every Pa; wars seem almost forgotten; and for New Zealand, the promise seems fulfilled, ‘I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.’”
New Zealand was at length, outwardly at least, a Christian land. Bishop Selwyn had, in 1842, taken charge of the church of England and the oversight of her missions, and other denominations assumed a fixed and settled character. The missionary began to merge and disappear in the stated minister. The ancient warrior chieftain too, was fading fast from sight; and we cannot deny that, savage as he was, we part from him with some feelings of respect. Who that has a heart to feel, or any imagination capable of being warmed by strains of exquisite pathos, can read unmoved the last words of the dying Karepa? The scene is in the lonely village of Te Hawera, of which he was the chief. Mr. Colenzo, the missionary, arrived just as his people, with loud cries, sitting around his new-made tomb, bewailed his departure. At night they gathered around their spiritual father in his tent, and one of the natives thus related the last words of Karepa.
“He summoned us all,” said he, “to come close around him, and with much love exhorted us; talking energetically, as was his custom, a long while, he said:—‘You well know that I have brought you, from time to time, much riches, muskets, powder, hatchets, knives, blankets. I afterwards heard of the new riches, called faith. I sought it. I went to Manawatu; in those days a long and perilous journey, for we were surrounded by enemies; no man travelled alone: I saw the few natives who, it was said, had heard of it; but they could not satisfy me. I sought further, but in vain. I heard afterwards of a white man at Otaki, and that with him was the spring where I could fill my empty and dry calabash. I travelled to his place, to Otaki, but in vain; he was gone—gone away ill. I returned to you, my children, dark minded. Many days passed by; the snows fell, they melted, they disappeared; the buds expanded, and the tangled paths of our low forests were again passable to the foot of the native man. At last we heard of another white man who was going about over mountains and through forests and swamps, giving drink from his calabash to the secluded native—to the remnants of the tribes of the mighty, of the renowned of former days, now dwelling by twos and threes among the roots of the big trees of the ancient forests, and among the long reeds by the rills in the valleys. Yes, my grandchildren, my and your ancestors, once spread over the country as the Koitarekè (quail) and Krivi (apteryx) once did; but now their descendants are even as the descendants of these birds, scarce, gone, dead, fast hastening to utter extinction. Yes, we heard of that white man; we heard of his going over the high snowy range to Patea, all over the rocks to Turakiráe. I sent four of my children to meet him. They saw his face; yes you, you talked with him. You brought me a drop of water from his calabash. You told me he had said he would come to this far-off isle to see me. I rejoiced, I disbelieved his coming; but I said he may. I built the chapel, we waited expecting. You slept at nights; I did not. He came, he emerged from the long forest, he stood upon Te Hawera ground. I saw him. I shook hands with him; we rubbed noses together. Yes, I saw a missionary’s face; I sat in his cloth house (tent); I tasted his new food; I heard him talk Maori; my heart bounded within me; I listened; I ate his words. You slept at nights; I did not. Yes, I listened, and he told me about God, and his Son Jesus Christ, and of peace and reconciliation, and of a loving Father’s home beyond the stars. And now I, too, drank from his calabash and was refreshed, he gave me a book, as well as words. I laid hold of the new riches for me, and for you, and we have it now. My children, I am old; my teeth are gone, my hair is white; the yellow leaf is falling from the Táwai (beech tree); I am departing; the sun is sinking behind the great western hills, it will soon be night. But, hear me; hold fast the new riches—the great riches—the true riches. We have had plenty of sin and pain and death; but now we have the true riches. Hold fast the true riches, which Karepa sought out for you.’
“Here he became faint, and ceased talking. We all wept like little children around the bed of the dying old man—of our father. He suffered much pain, from which he had scarcely any cessation until death relieved him.”
But New Zealand was now passing through a dangerous crisis. The Maori ceased to exist in his savage state. Cannibalism was a mere tradition. Of the ancient superstitions scarcely a trace was left. European arts and manners were introduced in almost every part of the island, and New Zealand took her place amongst other civilized communities. Still, under new circumstances fresh dangers threatened her. The church of Rome saw from afar and coveted so glorious a possession; and in the course of a single year a Romish bishop and sixteen priests landed at Wellington, and a second bishop with his troop of priests and nuns at Auckland. For a while the childish simplicity of the Maori character, fond of show and a stranger to suspicion, gave them great advantage; and the missionaries of evangelical churches viewed their progress with serious apprehension. But as the novelty wore off the Maori Christian discovered that Popery was but a hollow pretence, without heart, or life, or abiding consolation, and whole tribes which had been led astray returned with their chiefs to purer churches in search of better pasturage. Lately the translation of the whole of the Bible has been completed, and in this we have the best antidote, under God, to the progress of this baneful superstition. New Zealand, too, besides its several Protestant bishops of the church of England, its zealous missionaries, and stated ministers of every evangelical denomination, has now at length a native ministry of her own Maories, few as yet in number, but holy men, men of competent learning and gifts of utterance, who have evidently been called of God. One of these, the Rev. Riwai Te Ahu, who was ordained by Bishop Selwyn, is not only highly esteemed by all the natives of whatever tribe they may be, but by the English too; and he is entirely supported by internal resources, by regular contributions from the natives, and a private grant from the governor himself. We can understand something of the joy with which an honoured missionary, one of the oldest labourers in the field, sat and listened in the house of prayer while he officiated, assisted by the Rev. Rota Waitoa, the only two Maori ministers of the church of England in New Zealand, and his own early converts, “the one reading prayers, and the other preaching an admirable sermon to his own native tribe.” Other churches have similar triumphs. The Wesleyans have three native assistant ministers, and probably these are not all, for it may be presumed that a great work is going forward in so large an island, of which our missionary societies have no official reports, and by agents who are no longer responsible to them. Thus it is often found that in the interior some village or hamlet has become Christian where no European missionary was ever seen. Native converts have done their own work.
Still the church in New Zealand is in an infant state, surrounded by many dangers. The influx of Europeans, the sudden increase of wealth and luxury, the introduction of a new and foreign literature from England, bearing as it were upon its wings all that is bad as well as all that is lovely and of good report in theology, politics, and morals, may well cause, as indeed it does create, the deepest concern to those who have at heart the purity of the Maori faith, and the continued progress of the gospel. It is not for those who know that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation, to doubt for a moment of its ultimate success; but the firmest faith may, at the same time, be apprehensive and anxious, if not alarmed, for the fiery trial that awaits her,—not of persecution, but of wealth and luxury, and the sad example of every European vice. Let the reader help them with his prayers.