The Treaty of Waitangi; or, how New Zealand became a British Colony

by Thomas Lindsay Buick

In bidding for the sovereignty of the country two courses were open to the British Government—force of arms, or honourable negotiation with the chiefs. It is not to be doubted that had Britain chosen to invade the country, she might, by pouring her battalions into it, in course of time have overcome the tribes by the slaughter of the sword. But who can estimate at what a cost the country would thus have been won?—while the crime of it would have been even more awful to contemplate than the sacrifice of blood and treasure. Happily it can never be suggested that Lord Melbourne's Ministers had ever contemplated such a mode of securing sovereignty. Their personal view was that it must be ceded if it was to be acquired at all, while the House of Commons had made it abundantly clear that it would accept it on no other terms.

Here then we have the genesis of the treaty. Discovery gave us no right of sovereignty. Force of arms was incompatible with the spirit of the times; possibly beyond the resources of the nation. Negotiation on the other hand had been made easy by the labours of the Missionaries, and the repeated expressions of good-will which had passed between the British Sovereigns and the chiefs. It was the line of least resistance; a mode agreeable to the national conscience, and approved by the laws of civilisation. For these all-sufficient reasons then Captain Hobson was despatched to New Zealand, charged with the mission of securing for the British Crown the sovereignty of the country by the "free and intelligent consent of the natives, according to their established usages."

In proceeding to an analysis of the treaty itself it will not be necessary to refer to the preamble, which is but an abridged recital of all that has appeared in the previous chapters of this work. It asserts no principle, and is remarkable only for the fact that it reflects in dignified terms the spirit of justice and equity in which its promoters desired to approach the Maori people.

In the first clause the chiefs both within and without the Confederation were invited to "cede to Her Majesty Queen Victoria absolutely and without reservation all the rights and powers of sovereignty which the said Confederation or individual chiefs respectively exercise or possess, or may be supposed to exercise or possess, over their respective territories as the sole sovereigns thereof."

It has been said that this was a condition which the natives never did, and could not possibly understand, seeing that they had neither sovereignty amongst themselves, nor any word in their language to express the idea of sovereignty. Their tribal system, it is true, was fatal to the principle of sovereignty in its broadest sense, and until the formation of the Confederation of Chiefs there was no force amongst them capable of exercising absolute authority over any great number of the people, the sovereignty of each chief being limited to his own tribe. No real sovereignty, however, vested even in the Confederation. From the first it was impotent as a national Government, because it lacked the requisite cohesion. Mutual tribal jealousies still prevailed, making it a Confederation only in name; and so far as is known it did not pretend to exercise any sort of dominion over the people after the excitement consequent upon the advent of Baron de Thierry had subsided. The native mind had therefore learned nothing of what was meant by sovereignty as we understand it, from the union of their chiefs. All that they knew of a paramount authority which it was their duty habitually to obey was the mana[158] of their personal chiefs. That they understood perfectly, and that conveyed to them all that they required to understand. Each chief was a sovereign over his own people, and the people were not so lacking in intelligence as not to perceive that the treaty meant the passing of this mana from the chief to the Queen. It would, of course, be radically unsound to pretend that every native who signed the treaty had perfectly grasped its provisions, and knew with even moderate certainty what he was retaining and what he was conceding. In many instances, particularly where the land had already been sold, it might not be incorrect to say that some of the chiefs did not even attempt to comprehend it. The red blanket[159] or the juicy plug of tobacco was an irresistible bait to many who felt they had no longer a "name," and so far as they were concerned, sovereignty and all else might fly to the four winds so long as their personal wants and their love of colour were gratified. The predicament in which those natives found themselves who afterwards alleged they had signed the treaty without a full appreciation of its terms and its obligations was poignantly put by Paora (Paul) Tuahaere, who, speaking at the Kohimarama Conference[160] in 1860, said the treaty had come "in a time of ignorance," and upbraided the elder chiefs for being caught thus unwarily. "Blankets were brought by Mr. Williams. These I call the bait. The fish did not know there was a hook within. He took the bait and was caught. When he came to a chief Mr. Williams presented his hook and drew out a subject for the Queen."

In less figurative, but not less pointed speech, Paora was supported by Heme Parae, who declared that the only law he heard of in 1840 was the law of God. "As to what is called the Treaty of Waitangi, I have heard nothing about it. It is true I received one blanket from Mr. Williams, but I did not understand what was meant by it. It was given to me without explanation by Mr. Williams and Reihana."

Twenty-three years after the event, when discussing the mental attitude of the Maori towards the treaty, the Rev. John Warren, one of the Wesleyan Missionaries, wrote: "I was present at the great meeting at Waitangi when the celebrated treaty was signed, and also at a meeting which took place subsequently on the same subject at Hokianga. There was a great deal of talk by the natives, principally on the subject of securing their proprietary right in the land, and their personal liberty. Everything else they were only too happy to yield to the Queen, as they said repeatedly, because they knew they could only be saved from the rule of other nations by sitting under the shadow of the Queen of England. In my hearing they frequently remarked, "Let us be one people. We had the Gospel from England, let us have the law from England." My impression at the time was that the natives perfectly understood that by signing the treaty they became British subjects, and though I lived among them more than fifteen years after that event, and often conversed with them on the subject, I never saw the slightest reason to change my opinion. The natives were at that time in mortal fear of the French, and justly thought they had done a pretty good stroke of business when they had placed the British lion between themselves and the French eagle. We have heard indignation expressed at the way in which the natives were, in the treaty, overreached by the Government, especially in the matter of securing to the Queen the right of pre-emption in the purchase of their lands. There is a native proverb which says, with reference to a man of great keenness and sagacity, 'He was born with his teeth,' and in the matter of making bargains the New Zealanders may be said to be a people who were born with their teeth. I believe it is a very long time since it was possible to overreach the natives much in a bargain. I know that their particular clause of the treaty was there by their own urgent request, and that it met with the universal and unqualified approbation of the chiefs."

In adopting this view Mr. Warren is not singular, for we find that his impression is confirmed by many equally competent authorities. It would therefore be an undeserved reflection upon the well-established intelligence of the Maori race to suppose that these indifferents constituted any large section of the people, there being amongst them a wide comprehension of the two great principles embodied in the treaty—that they were surrendering the magisterial control of the country to the Queen, and retaining the possession of the land to themselves.[161] The speeches of its opponents were eloquent of this fact. This was what Te Kemara meant when he exclaimed, "If thou stayest as Governor then perhaps Te Kemara will be judged and condemned. Yes, indeed and more than that—even hung by the neck." This surely was what the great Te Heuheu of Taupo meant when, addressing some natives who had signed the treaty, he said: "You are all slaves now. Your dignity and power are gone, but mine is not. Just as there is one man in Europe, King George, so do I stand alone in New Zealand; the chief over all others; the only free man left. Look at me, for I do not hide when I say I am Te Heuheu. I rule over you all just as my ancestor Tonga-Riro, the mountain of snow, stands over all this land."

The forms by which our sovereignty was exercised were doubtless new and strange to them, as witness their amazement at the pains the Crown took to prove a crime against a prisoner who had already confessed his guilt.[162] In some instances the degree of authority parted with may also have exceeded their anticipations, for we are told that it came as a shock to some of the chiefs when they discovered that they were not free to kill their slaves under the new regime as they had been under the old. Failure to comprehend such details is understandable in the peculiarity of the circumstances. Indeed complete clarity of mental vision could not have been expected, and would not have been attained in all particulars had civilised men instead of savages been concerned. The natives, however, understood clearly enough that for the advantages they hoped to reap from the treaty they were yielding much of their existing power to the Pakeha Governor, and whether it was much or little they were the more willing to surrender it because they realised that the advent of the European had so altered their social conditions that rule by the old method was no longer possible.

To these convictions must be added the indispensable persuasions of the Missionaries, in whose word and advice the Maoris placed implicit trust; but the thing which proved the determining influence in the negotiations—more than the inducements offered by the Crown, or the persuasions of the Missionaries—was that the chiefs had acquired a clear grip of the primal fact that whatever it took from them, the treaty left them in secure possession of their lands.