OFFICE AND NO POWER

Taranaki Daily News, 23 March 1935, Page 13 (Supplement)

OFFICE AND NO POWER

JAMES BUSBY AT WAITANGI

(By

H.E.C.)

It was reported this week that search in New Zealand and New South Wales has resulted in the discovery of documents that will put the career of James Busby, the first and only “Government Resident” in New Zealand, in a much more favourable light than historians have been wont to accord it. Nor is it any wonder- that the Resident’s descendants are desirous that Mr. Busby’s own record of the eight years he spent as an official in the Bay of Islands should be made public, for most of the public references to him as an official are those of writers who criticise him for having accomplished little, or of those who strongly disagreed with his policies; Yet from those references some facts emerge that seem to indicate room for a more charitable view of his official career in New Zealand; to show that he possessed at least some of the characteristics that are expected of British administrators in uncivilised countries; and that his feebleness in public affairs was not always due to his lack of brains or of spirit. A man who would leave the comparative comfort of the position, of Collector of Internal Revenue at Sydney—even the Sydney of 100 years ago—for a position in a land inhabited by savages usually on the warpath, and by lawless white men of varying nationalities did not lack courage, or confidence in his own abilities. Much had been learned of New Zealand through Marsden’s fervour for missionary enterprise there, and a good deal of the information supplied to the authorities was ho credit to the pakehas who were forming tiny settlements among the Maoris, all of the Europeans having but the one object of making gains for themselves. It was not a missionary but a trader who had brought to Sydney the story of the lure of a white .man’s vessel by Te Rauparaha to perpetrate the hideous massacre 'of Kaiopoihaia, and it was a ship’s surgeon who protested most vigorously about the shelling of the Taranaki Maoris after the survivors of the ship Harriet had been handed back as promised. James Busby’s determination to accept the appointment in New Zealand was scarcely, therefore, supported by the valour of ignorance of conditions in'that country, nor was he a man who had known only the surroundings of the crude colony of New South Wales. He had accompanied his father, an official surveyor, as a settler with capital, but had become an official at Sydney. Pember Reeves in his “Long White Cloud” 'describes Busby as a “well meaning, small-minded person,” although he admits it would have required a genius to have made anything of the position Busby held if the conditions and circumstances of the time were taken into account.

At least on two occasions Busby showed himself other than narrow-mind-ed. Twelve months after his arrival, when the futility of his appointment must have begun to impress itself upon him, a Maori, one Reti, tried to shoot him at his residence. ( The shot missed and when the culprit was discovered and I confessed, it was suggested by his own people that he be executed. Busby,; however,, after consultation with - the missionaries, agreed to a lesser penalty. Reti was to be banished from, the Bay of Islands and his house and land to be forfeited—to Busby according to the chiefs’ suggestion, .but on the Resident's ■own proposal the confiscation was to be to the Crown. It was by virtue of this bit of Crown land, in fact, that Hobson afterwards claimed the right to land as Lieutenant-Governor of New Zealand before British sovereignty had been accepted by the-Maori chiefs. ■ ; The second occasion when Busby measured up to something more than a “small-minded person” was when Hobson arrived. The Resident soon learned that Hobson’s arrival meant the cancellation of his own office, and that there was to - be no place for him in the new administration in New Zealand or in the colonial service of New South Wales. As he put it himself later on, when defending his land purchases from the Maoris he found 15 years of service, for the Crown, eight of them full of danger, were terminated without compensation, but he was not so small-minded as to refuse his aid to the officer who superseded him, and he was loyal to Hobson at a time when disloyalty might have altered New Zealand history.

It is said that search has revealed a furflier draft of the Treaty of Waitangi in Busby’s handwriting. Lindsay Buick in his “Waitangi” records that when Hobson submitted his draft of the treaty to Busby the Resident disapproved of almost all of it. He offered to draft one based on Hobson’s instructions, an offer that was accepted, and except for the transposition of certain clauses Busby's draft was accepted by Hobson and handed to Henry Williams to translate into Maori. The missionary himself put on record that he showed the translation to Busby, who suggested but one or two minor alterations. The fact that Mr. Williams submitted his translation to Busby shows that he accepted the latter’s proficiency in the Maori language, for the translation had to give the meaning of phrases for which there were no exact equivalents in Maori words. Williams and Busby had differed sharply on many occasions. If the Resident was inclined to magnify his position as representing the British. Crown Henry Williams was pretty much of an autocrat too, especially when he considered he had the interests of his Maori flock to consider!

Buick, quite justly, lays stress also upon the fact that in a report made by Busby to Governor Bourke of New South Wales and transmitted by him to Downing Street with the suggestions of Captain Hobson will be found the germ of the Waitangi Treaty. It will be interesting to see whether the document said to have been discovered recently is an elaboration of the report to Bourke or a first draft of the document accepted by Hobson. However futile his efforts as Resident may have seemed, and his behaviour after leaving office. is likely to have influenced judgment upon his official career more than has been realised; however ludicrous his “confederation of Maori tribes” may appear in the light of subsequent events; however childish the granting of' a New Zealand flag for New Zealand shipping may be considered, there can be traced through all the years of Busby’s service the genuine desire to preserve and further British interests. For that reason he became Resident, his “confederation” was to block French aggression in New Zealand, and the shipping flag to protect New Zealand vessels from becoming the prey of any pirate without any chance of redress.

The man who could differ with the missionary influence when he thought it wrongly used and refuse at the same time to join the anti-missionary and lawless white men; the man who studied the Maoris, learned their language and gained the confidence of some of them; an official superseded without thanks

after eight years of monotonous though \ . sometimes dangerous loneliness, years marked by slights from his fellow countrymen who defied his authoritjT and* • quarrels with missionaries who'igftoted ~ it; the man who after such an experience gave his successor loyal support deserves perhaps rather less contempt as an official .than. he. has received.