ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 April 1938, Page 2

ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

HOUSE OF LORDS INQUIRES INTO NEW ZEALAND. MISSIONARIES V. COLONISERS. MAORI IN CHAMBER OF NORMAN KINGS. One of the interesting developments in the struggle between the Colonial Office and the New Zaland Association was the appointment on March 30, 1838, of a Select Committee of the House of Lords “to inquire into the present state of the Islands of New Zealand, and the expediency of regulating the settlement of British subjects therein.” The committee was set up on the motion of the Earl of Devon. ,

At that time the sittings of the House of Lords were held in the historic Painted Chamber, the original Council Chamber of the Norman Kings. The old Palace of Westminster had been burned down in October, 1834, and the present Houses of Parliament were not opened until 1852. A PARTY BATTLE. Most of the witnesses called before the Committee represented either the New Zealand Association or the missionaries, though there were a number of “independents.” Among others called by the missionaries were the Rev. Frederick Wilkinson, Captain Robert Fitzroy, who had visited New Zealand in 1835 in command of the Beagle expedition, tne naturalist of which was Charles Darwin; Dandeson Coates, lay Secretary of the Church Missionary Society, the Rev. John Beecham, Secretary of the Wesleyan Missionary Society, and W. A. Garratt, a member of the Committee of the Church Missionary Society. The association called the Rev. Samuel Hinds, D.D., the Hon. Francis Baring, M.P., George Samuel Evans. LL.D., and Lord Petre, who was later to be the Chairman of the New Zealand Company Among the “independents” were J. L. Nicholas, who accompanied Marsden to New Zealand in 1814, when he established the first Mission, Chalres Enderby of the firm of Whalers and Joel Samuel Polack, a storekeeper and flax-trader, who had lived at Kororareka. NAYTI GIVES EVIDENCE. But the witness whoes evidence interests us most to-day was the Maori Nayti. Nayti’s father was a first cousin of Te Rauparaha. His tribe lived in Cloudy Bay, and he had lived for two years in the house of Edward Gibbon Wakefield in London, and in 1839 sailed as interpreter with the Tory expedition. It is necessary to present the questions and answers as they appear in the official report:— You came to Europe in a French whaling ship?—Yes. The captain told you if you came to France you should see Louis Philippe?—Yes. But you did not see Louis Philippe, did you?—No. You did not know that the captain intended to make you work? —I did not know until I came on board the ship. The captain came to me, and said I should see Louise Philippe if I would go with him. I did not know that the captain intended to make me work; I was glad to see Louis Philippe and I came on board the ship; and then, when I came a little way, the captain said, “Now you g<? <,ad pull that rope”; and he made me work the whole way. If you went back should you keep on your English clothes, or go back to the dress of your tribe? —If I go to New Zealand I put off English clothes because they will be soon worn out, and I cannot get others; but if I am with English people I wear English clothes. Do you think the other New Zealand people would do so too?—I think so; that they would like them. Do you know Kapiti or Entry Island in Cook’s Strait? —Yes. Does Raupero live there? —Yes. There are plenty of convicts at Kapiti, are there not?—Plenty.

Do not the men who live there buy flax off New Zealand people?—Yes. Did you ever see any convicts come in with irons on the leg?—No, I never did. If they come on board ship they get the sailors to cut them off. When men came with irons on their legs to New Zealand did the New Zealand people understand what that was for? —They know they were bad men. When a chief dies who is the new chief; is it his son? —They do not make the son chief. How do they do it?—A number of people come in one place, some very great orator, some one who can speak very well, stands up, and proposes some one to be chief. Do they ever disagree about it. and is that ever the cause of war? —They say “I like it as well,” they all agree with the firsit speaker. Would you like more English to come there than there are now? —I like it. I do not know what my countrymen would like. I think they would like it, too, because they likeeven the bad people now. I think they would like gentelmen. Would you like New Zealand to be under English laws, that if a man killed another, he should be punished as he is in England?—People like me do not understand, but the children who are taught to read would like English people, and would like that. Do you remember an English ship of war called the Alligator having a fight with a tribe? —Yes. What did they fight for? —There was a ship whaling in Cloudy Bay; in the dark it went ashore, and was wrecked; the natives came and burnt the ship, and took away the captain’s wife and his child. The captain went back to Sydney, and brought the Alligator, and the people of the Alligator killed several New Zealand people and got back the wife and child. The chief took great care of the wife, did he not? —The gentlemen

took good care of them. They do not burn ships now? —No. At that time they did not know what it was; when this happened a ship had never been there before; ships did not go there, for want of water. THE COMMITTEE REPORTS. In August of the same year, the committee reported: “That it appears to this committee, that the Extension of the Colonial Possessions of the Crown is a question of public policy which belongs to the decision of her Majesty’s Government; but that it appears to this committee that support, in whatever way it may be deemed most expedient to afford it, of the exertions which have already beneficially effected the rapid advancement of the religious and social conditions of the aborigines of New Zealand, affords the best present hopes of their future progress in civilisation.” The verdict was, in fact, in favour of the missionaries.

A further sequel has been described by the New Zealand historian, Dr. A. J. Harrop in his “Life” of Edward Gibbon Wakefield. The “Times.” discussing the committee’s findings on. October 19, 1838, said that the scheme of the New Zealand Association had found “marvellously small favour” in its eyes, and, in one of the few puns in its history, referred to the association’s chairman, Lord Durham, in contra-distinction to Baron de Thierry, as Baron Practice. It added in characteristic terms: “In fact, the French adventurer’s pretensions are as nothing compared with those of the noble Earl; and if any person has wondered what it could be that made Mr. Gibbon Wakefield a pushing abettor of this New Zealand job, the circumstances of his Lordship having taken that gentleman under his vice-regal wing to Canada as a temporary solatium for the non-realisation of their Polynesian hopes, affords a disclosure intelligible, we think, to the blindest bat in Christendom.”