MYTHS AND CONTENTIONS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 521, 17 June 1949, Page 20

MYTHS AND CONTENTIONS

THE TREATY OF WAITANGI AND THE ACQUISITION OF BRITISH SOVEREIGNTY IN NEW ZEALAND, 1840. By J. Rutherford. Price, 2/6. ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEMES IN THE MODERN NOVEL, By S, Musgrove. Price, 2/-, Auckland University College. HAT rich comedy of good intentions, high-minded officials delegating teasing tasks to. a naval officer untrained in law or politics, hurrying on, huggermugger, to prevent the wicked settlers contaminating the Maoris, to prevent the noble Maoris being taken down by the land-sharks (or taking them down), lesser officials with axes to grind (even Hobson: a Lieutenant-Governor’s salary was double that df a Consul), missionaries protecting their spiritual children, the Maoris, but providing for their physical children with Maori land; when will this, the fantastic story of the ar.

quisition of New Zealand by the British Crown, ever be adequately told? Professor Rutherford does not tell it; but he has nailed down some parts of the story and has diligently sought the precise legal moment of the beginnings of British sovereignty. For him the date is May 21, 1840. He does not intend any critical assessment of character. What a muddler Hobson was

could hardly be deduced from these scholarly pages. Professor Rutherford, although he has a wholesome respect for it, points out the weaknesses of the Treaty of Waitangi. No one-except perhaps in a passing mood of centennial bombastcan contemplate the Treaty with any satisfaction. It was the salve to Secretary Stephen’s delicate conscience without which Lord Normanby and he would not have ‘permitted New Zealand to be annexed (a word Professor Rutherford is very shy of using). How soon did this solemn undertaking become the "praiseworthy device for amusing .... savages." By 1843 even Stephen was vigorously quelling Attorney-General Swainson’s notion that sovereignty might be fragmentary, because important chiefs had never signed the Treaty. No, the whole of New Zealand had been taken by the Queen. "Admit, if it must be so, that this was ill advised, unjust, a breach of faith, and so on.... That a subordinate officer should attempt to set such claims aside on his private judgment of what is prudent, or what is right, seems to me utterly inadmissible. My opinion is that this is a controversy to be repressed with a strong hand...." It is ironic that, when we celebrated our Centennial in 1940, it was the sacred Treaty which was ex- / alted-as though it had ever been honoured-and the subordinate officer who gave any too realistic account of what happened in 1840 was likely to be repressed with a strong hand. The (continued on next page)

hypocrisy of 1840 found a full echo in the pieties of 1940. No one can read Professor Rutherford’s pamphlet without respect for the | patience with which he has disentangled _ the contradictions and inconsistencies of | the 1839 and 1840 proceedings, Professor Musgrove examines the debt of . some modern novelists--Norman Douglas, Naomi Méitchison, Robert Graves and Philip Toynbee-to the material supplied by anthropology. It is a stimulating, vigorously written study, comparing, the anthropological novel to the "Gothic horror story in being the product of a fashion in thought which has not. yet been thoroughly assimilated into the consciousness of man.’ These Auckland University College bulletins are printed with decency rather than distinction. Professor Rutherford’s study is a portion of a longer work, J : ’ (continued from previous page) |

David

Hall