The Sun.
London, England, 1844-12-13 00:00:00

NEW ZEALAND.

The following is the report of the Select Committee
appointed " to inquire into the state of the colony of
New Zealand, and into the proceedings of the New
Zealand Company" :
The duty assigned to your Committee of inquiring
" into the state of the colony of New Zealand, and into
the proceedings of the New Zealand Company, and of
reporting their opinion thereupon to the House," they
have found to be one of no ordinary difficulty and deli-
cacy. An attempt at colonisation upon a very great scale,
and of the success of which high expectations had been
formed, has hitherto failed to realise the sanguine
hopes of its projectors. Instead of obtaining those ad-
vantages on which they had confidently reckoned as a
reward for their enterprise, and the privations to which
they have submitted, a large body of British settlers are
at this moment in a situation giving ground for very
serious anxiety, while the lives of several of their num-
ber have been unfortunately sacrificed. These unhappy
results have, moreover, been connected with differences
which have arisen, not only between the settlers and
the colonial authorities, but also between the New
Zealand Company (which reckons among its members
many gentlemen of high station and respecta-
bility) and the executive Government at home.
Under such circumstances, it will be obvious
that a very heavy and very unusual responsibility
is thrown upon your Committee when they are called
upon to express an opinion as to the causes of a state of
things so greatly to be lamented ; and though we have
endeavoured to execute this task to the best of our judg-
ment, we submit the result of our deliberations with
much diffidence to the House, and the more so because
the evidence before us, oral and documentary, is so ex-
ceedingly voluminous that we feel it would have required
much more time than was atour disposal to havedigested
it as thoroughly as we could have wished.
It appears to your Committee that the difficulties now
experienced in New Zealand are mainly to be attributed
to the fact, that in the measures which have been taken
for establishing a British colony in these islands, those
rules as to the mode in which colonisation ought to have
been conducted, which have been drawn from reason and
from experience, have not been sufficiently attended to.
When it was first proposed to establish New Zealand
as a British colony dependent upon New South Wales,
Sir George Gipps, the Governor of the latter, in a very
able address, laid down the following principles as those
on which he had framed the Bill which it was his duty to
submit to his Legislative Council for the regulation of the
infant colony of New Zealand :—".The Bill is founded,"
he said, " upon two or three general principles which,
until I heard them here controverted, I thought were fully
admitted, and indeed received as political axioms. The first
is, that the uncivilised inhabitants of any country have
but a qualified dominion over it, or a right of occupancy
only ; and that, until they establish amongst themselves
settled form of government, and subjugate the ground
to their own uses, by the cultivation of it, they cannot
grant to individuals not of their own tribe any portion
of it, for the simple reason, that they have not them-
selves any individual property in it. Secondly, that if a
settlement be made in any such country by a civilised
power, the right of pre-emption of the coil--or, in other
words, the right of extinguishing the native title, is ex-
clusively in the government of that power, and cannot
be enjoyed by individuals without the consent of their
Government. The third principle is, that neither indi-
viduals, nor bodies of men belonging to any nation, can
form colonies, except with the consent, and under the
direction and control, of their own Government , and
that from any settlement which they may form without
the consent of their Government they may be ousted.
This is simply to say, as far as Englishmen are con-
cerned, that colonies cannot be formed without the con-
sent of the Crown."
Referring to the speech of Sir George Gipps for the
argument in support of these rules, it may be observed,
that, with reference to New Zealand, they were, to a
certain extent, infringed by the irregular settlement
of British subjects on the shores of these islands,
which began many years ago ; but they seeas to
have been first openly and deliberately departed from,
when an attempt was made by the New Zealand
Company to establish a colony, not only without the
sanction, but in direct defiance of the authority of the
Crown. This attempt led at once to a violation of the
law by the first settlers entering into a voluntary agree-
ment for the establishment of an authority by which
they hoped, in the absence of any legitimate power, to
maintain order amongst themselves. The illegality of
this arrangement was pointed out to the Company by''
the then Secretary of State ; but the expedition sent
out to found what was to be, in fact, though unautho-
rised, a British colony, had already sailed. It is to be
regretted that more decisive measures were not adopted
for preventing the sailing of the expedition under these
circumstances, since it appears important with reference
to the future to observe, that such unauthorised attempts
at colonisation cannot be permitted without leading to
the most serious inconvenience. When large numbers
of British subjects have established themselves in distant
regions, inhabited only by barbarous tribes, it is impos-
sible for her Majesty's Government to leave them ex-
posed, without protection, to the dangers which their
own rashness may draw down upon them, or to allow
them to exercise, without control, and perhaps to abuse
the power which their superior civilisation gives them
over the rude natives of the soil. Hence every new
establishment of this kind involves a new demand upon
the military and naval resources of the empire; but
the undue multiplication of such demands must occasion
a very heavy burden on the nation, and it therefore
fellows that enterprises of colonisation should only be
entered upon with the sanction and under the authority
of the Government. In this instance the irregular and
precipitate mode of sending out the first settlers had the
unfortunate effect of placing these settlers and the agents
of the New Zealand Company, from the very outset, on
unfriendly terms with the officer whom her Majesty's
Government found it necessary immediately to dispatch
from England for the purpose of establishing the au-
thority of the Crown in the island of New Zealand ; and
there can be no doubt that this want of a good under-
standing between those whose cordial co-operation with
each other was so essential to the welfare of the newly-es
tablished colony, has been one of the main causes of the
difficulties with which it has had to contend. In order to
avert these difficulties, which were soon seen to be likely
to arise, a charter of incorporation was afterwards granted
to the New Zealand Company, with the hope of placing
that body in friendly relations with her Majesty's Govern
ment ; but this attempt was defeated, partly by the jea-
lousies created between the respective servants of the Crown
and of the Company, by the error originally committed
by the latter ; partly by other causes of difficulty which
afterwards arose. These are chiefly to be traced to the
means which were adopted for establishing the authority
of the Crown in New Zealand.
The sovereignty over these islands had, at an earlier
period, been formally disclaimed, and their independence
had been distinctly recognised, both by the Crown and
by Parliament. This course had been pursued because
it was considered, and (by no means upon light grounds)
that it was not advisable to extend British dominion in
these distant regions ; but is adopting this policy it was
overlooked, both by the advisers of the Crown and by
Parliament, that it was impossible to check the tide of
emigration which set so strongly towards the shores of
New Zealand, and that the regular establishment of
British power was the only practical mode of guard-
ing against the evils which could not fail to follow from
permitting a large number of Europeans to settle among
its uncivilised inhabitants without being subject to any
legitimate authority or control. Looking back at what
was then done, with the light to be drawn from subse-
quent experience, there is no room to doubt, that it
would have been far better if British dominion over

these islands had been asserted as early as 1882, or even
1825 ; but a different policy having been at that time
pursued, it was considered, in the year 1839, when
Captain llobson was sent out, that the difficulties which
had thus been created, could only be got rid of by ob-
taining from the natives their assent to the extension of
the authority of the British Crown over New Zealand.
Acting under the instructions he had received, Captain
Hobson, therefore, immediately on his arrival in New
Zealand, at the beginning of the year 1840, con-
cluded with a large number of the chiefs of the northern
island a treaty, known by the name of the treaty of
Waitangi, by which, in return for their acknowledgment
of British sovereignty, they were promised protection,
and guaranteed in the possession of all lands held by
them individually or collectively. The evidence laid
before your Committee has led them to the conclusion
that the step thus taken, though a natural consequence
of previous errors of policy, was a wrong one. It would
have been much better if no formal treaty whatever hail
been made, since it is clear that the natives were inca.

pable of comprehending the real force and meaning of
such a transaction ; and it therefore amounted to little

more than a legal fiction, though it has already in
practice proved to be a very inconvenient one, and is
likely to be still more so hereafter. The sovereignty
over the northern island might have been at once as-
sumed, without this mere nominal treaty, on the ground
of prior discovery, and on that of the absolute necessity
of establishing the authority of the British Crown for
the protection of the natives themselves, when so large
a number of British subjects had irregularly settled
themselves in these islands as to make it indispensable
to provide some means of maintaining good order
amongst them. This was the course actually pursued
with respect to the middle and southern islands, to
which the treaty of Waitangi does not even nominally
extend ; and there is every reason to presume that,
owing to the strong desire the natives are admitted
to have entertained for the security to be
derived from the protection of the British Government,
and for the advantages of a safe and well-
regulated intercourse with a civilised people, there
would have been no greater difficulty in obtaining their
acquiescence in the assumption of sovereignty than in
gaining their consent to the conclusien of the treaty;
while the treaty has been attended with the double dis-
advantage, first, that its terms are ambiguous, and, in
the sense in which they have been understood, highly
inconvenient ; and next, that it has created a doubt

which could 'not otherw'ise have existed, and which,

though not, in the opinion of your Committee, well-
founded, has been felt, and has practically been attended
with very injurious results, whether those tribes which
were not parties to it are even now subject to the autho-
rity of the Crown.
Your Committee have observed that the terms of the

treaty are ambiguous, and in the sense in which they
have been understood, have been highly inconvenient ;
in this we refer principally to the stipulations it contains
with respect to the right of property in land. The in-
formation which has been laid before us shows that these

stipulations, and the subsequent proceedings of the Go-
vernor founded upon them, have firmly established in the
minds of the natives notions, which they had then but
very recently been taught to entertain, of their having a
proprietary title of great value to land not actually oc-
cupied ; and there is every reason to believe that, if a
decided course had at that time been adopted, it would
not have been difficult to have made the natives under-
stand that, while they were to be secured in the undis
turbed enjoyment of the land they actually occupied