ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXII, 30 November 1938, Page 5

ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO

NEW ZEALAND’S FIRST CONSUL

| BUSBY FAILURE AS RESIDENT ; BRITISH GOVERNMENT MOVES AT LAST On Ist December. 1838. a letter was despatched from Downing Street. London. that had an important bearing on the future of New Zealand. Lord Glenclg, the Colonial Secretary, wrote to Sir George Gipps, Governor of New South Wales, that it was “the intention of Her Majesty’s Government to appoint an officer, who will be vested with the powers, and will assume the character of British Consul at New Zealand.” Poor James Busby had been British Resident since 1832. and vested with no power to enforce his vague and anomalous authority, had done little except acquire the nickname of “the man-o'-war without guns.” British interests needed some firmer bolstering up, if British lives and commercial interests were to be safe in the remote no man’s land that was the New Zealand of those days. There were already British consuls at Honolulu and Tahiti. New Zealand too should have one. FRENCH INTEREST IN NEW ZEALAND | Lord Glenelg was much more sympathetic to the ideas of the Church Missionary Society than to those of Edward Gibbon Wakefield and his friends in the New Zealand Association. Yet even he had come to recognise that some move must be made in the troublesome matter of New Zealand, already being colonised by adventurers in a wretched and scrambling manner that did as much harm to the native population as the efforts of the missionaries did good. Then there were the French. Although Baron de Thierry was a gentleman with I more ideas than practical ability and although he was French in little else ! but his name and title, yet his grandii ose attempt at founding a kingdom for himself in northern New Zealand did ! point to the fact that the country lacked any real and effective government. Busby had successfully united the ; chiefs of the Hokianga and Bay of Isj lands districts into a “confederation” to resist the attempt of de Thierry to assume a sovereignty he had never I been accorded. The “United Tribes of ! New Zealand” who had signed Busby’s I Declaration of Independence of the ! 28th October, 1835, were united only in i this single act of resistance to foreign encroachment. They had let slip the opportunity given them by an article in this treaty to set up a federal government of their own. There was ample evidence that this political vacuum w r as of the greatest interest to the French. That put the whole matter in a different light.

WARSHIPS TO POLICE NEW ZEALAND WATERS

Even so, the idea dominant in the rather prim mind of Lord Glenelg was to protect British interests rather than to assume the Government of the country. His letter to Gipps goes on to relate that he had made arrangements with the Admiralty for “the more frequent visitation of New Zealand by one of Her Majesty’s Ships of War on the Eastern station.” This was, in fact, an attempt to give to the new British consul the powers which had never been accorded to Busby. Lord Glenelg made it quite plain that there was no thought of promoting Busby to the new position.

James Busby had throughout his office as British Resident in New Zealand a very bad run of luck. He was sent out to a turbulent and very slightly civilised country with a high-sound-ing title and no force to back it up be-

I yond the distant and slow effect of a | lacrymose report to Sydney. In 1833 by way of house-warming, a party of natives made a night attack on his house. This was not very long after i Mrs Busby’s first confinement. Appar- | cntly the motive of the attackers was i that “they were desirous of trying whe- | tner he had any power or not.” Then j Busby was shot at from another angle. He had been appointed from England, buc he was paid from the revenues of New South Wales. This was a grievance against him in Sydney. He was , likely to do wrong in Australian eyes, whatever he did. “NOT DEVIL ENOUGH FOR THE SITUATION” What Busby did do was not always discreet. He had been advised to cooperate with the missionaries, and Captain Fitzroy, of H.M.S. Beagle, afterwards a Governor of New Zealand, criticised his reluctance to wield power indirectly through these men who had acquired a widespread influence with the Maoris and had proved themselves able to get things done. Although Busby was on terms of courtesy with the missionaries, he exasperated them by his attitude to their attempted anti-liquor legislation of 1835, when he cast doubt on their power to make laws in New Zealand. Even an ordinance of which he thoroughly approved and which* would certainly have protected the Maoris from the worst effects of white intercourse was too much for his legalistic mind to swallow. He was severely criticised by his superiors for his course of action in this matter. He seems always to have taken the limitations of his office more seriously than its powers, refusing to administer an oath on the grounds that he was not a consul, and avoiding the responsibility of adjudicating between disputing whaling captains. As early as 1836 Busby had asked Governor Bourke of New South Wales for leave to go to England to put New Zealand affairs before the Government, stating at the time that he considered his office to be in abeyance. A more Machiaevellian character might have made a better showing. As a wandering Englishman said of him, “He has not devil enough for the situation.” Busby, upright and honourable, was much more at home cultivating his vineyard—he was an expert on viticulture—and attending to the affairs of his small estate at Waitangi. Eminently a stickler for law and a naan of great personal integrity, he would have been a great success as an officer in an established administration, as Protector of Aborigines for instance. In the rough and tumble of life on the frontier of an expanding empire, he was out of his depth. Lord Glenelg’s letter invited Governor Gipps to let Busby know he was to be superseded and expressed a pious hope that a government job could be found for him in New South Wales. Afterwards, when Hobson’s appointment as Governor automatically displaced Busby, he preferred to remain in New Zealand as a private citizen. In his old age he was an inveterate pamphleteer and « fierce critic of colonial representative government. CAPTAIN HOBSON’S SECOND STRING Though at the end of 1838 Lord Glenelg had announced the imminent appointment of a Consul “at New Zealand,” it was to be many months before the British Government implemented its good resolution. The man who was selected to be Consul was Captain Hobson. He came to New Zealand in January, 1840, with a Commission as Consul in his portfolio. But by that time the Government’s intentions were much more serious. Hobson’s Commission as Consul was only his second string. His first duty was to try to secure the cession of the country by the free de- ] sire of the chiefs, a difficult operation successfully completed in the negotiation of the Treaty of Waitangi. Thus Hobson could proclaim himself Governor at once and he was never called on I

to perform the much less exciting duties of Consul. Hobson’s career is another chapter in our history. Here, in this letter sent out to Australia on board the Asia in ■ I 1838, is the first indication of the British Government’s resolve to advance a step further in New Zealand rather than to retreat and leave the land to the Maoris, the missionaries, the traders l I and, most probably, the French. t