[146] Before the first batch of the Company's emigrants sailed from the Thames, they were induced by the Directors to sign an agreement binding themselves to "submit in all things needful to peace and order until the establishment of a regular Government." This meant that if any of them committed a breach of the law of England, he should be punished according to the law of England. This agreement was brought under the notice of Lord John Russell who challenged the right of the Company to enforce such a provision. The Company took the opinion of Serjeant Wilde upon the point, and his advice, given on November 14, 1839, was that (1) the parties will not be justified by law in acting under the agreement, (2) that those acting under it were liable to prosecution for so doing, and (3) the agreement should be abandoned.
[147] "Captain Pearson of the brig Integrity was arrested to-day (April 14) under a warrant issued for illegal conduct towards his charterer, Mr. Wade, of Hobart Town, and brought before the District Magistrate, Major Baker. The prisoner refused to recognise the Court, and was accordingly committed. The ensuing day Captain Pearson made his escape, and an escape Warrant has accordingly been issued against him."—Extract from New Zealand Gazette (the first newspaper published in the Colony), April 18, 1840.
[148] The proclamation itself does not make it clear on what grounds Hobson took possession of the "Island." Indeed it is so ambiguously worded that he seems to imply that he claimed it by right of cession. In his despatch to the Secretary for State, however, he made it clear that he intended to claim it "by right of discovery," a course which he had recommended to Lord Normanby before he left England.
[149] "Captain" Cole as he was sometimes called, because he had been sailing in an East Indiaman, had been one of the early Wellington settlers, having come out in the Aurora. On the arrival of Captain Hobson he removed to the Bay of Islands, and had succeeded in getting himself appointed chief constable at Port Nicholson, in which capacity he now appeared in the Southern settlement.
[150] As sovereignty over only a small portion of the Colony had at this time been ceded to the Queen, Hobson was claiming a wider jurisdiction than he was entitled to in describing himself as "Lieutenant-Governor of New Zealand." He was only Lieutenant-Governor in New Zealand.
[151] This also was a mistake. It should have been South, not North. On this error Sir George Grey once based the argument that New Zealand included New Guinea, and was entitled to claim control over it. The error was corrected and the boundaries so amended as to include the Chatham Islands.—Vide Letters Patent issued to Captain Hobson, April 4, 1842.
[152] It had been reported that the settlers were starving, which was quite untrue.
[153] While H.M.S. Britomart (Captain Stanley) was returning from her historic visit to Bank's Peninsula she put in to Port Nicholson and took Mr. Shortland on board, leaving Mr. Murphy to supply his place as the representative of the Government at the Southern settlement.
[154] This number was subsequently increased to 546.
[155] Mr. Fredarb, who was trading master of the schooner Mercury, added the following note to his copy of the treaty: "The chiefs at Opotiki expressed a wish to have it signified who were Pikopos (i.e. Roman Catholics) and who were not, the which I did by placing a crucifix † preceding the names of those who are, as above, and at which they seemed perfectly satisfied."