The Liberal Years

Continuing On From Our Islands' Stories

The Liberal Era

A look back at old New Zealand

Epsom and the King Country

1891-1912 The Liberal Government

Samuel Butler in New Zealand

The two William Swainsons

William Reeves 1857-1932

Richard Seddon 1845-1906

Samuel Clemens in New Zealand

John Gorst in New Zealand

The Te Aute old boys

Suffragettes and Prohibition

Chinese Immigration

The Liberal Era

In 1890 William Colenso published his book. THE AUTHENTIC AND GENUINE HISTORY OF THE SIGNING OF THE TREATY OF WAITANGI. The Treaty signing was now a colourful Ur foundation of the brash and successful colony, New Zealand. Settler hatred of the Treaty had been replaced by nostalgia and a proud belief that the Natives had received fair and generous treatment in the displacement of tribalism for a progressive colony. The Treaty of Waitangi and subsequent events were most likely the last things on the minds of these ladies above, if at all. After the peace settlement and new refrigerated trade with Great Britain in 1882, the New Zealand territories were being opened up and developed for new and old settlers. The British soldiers were given land in the confiscated territories to pay for their war service. Nearly all failed as farmers and sold or walked away from their farms. Except for a few romanticists and old soldiers, the settlers identified themselves as pioneers not as frontier men. Books and newspaper articles were written about the wars but the settlers preferred to attend tea parties, and debate the contemporary political issues. Neither the old nor new settlers wanted to hear much about the wars except to honour the soldiers and the Kupapa, and to respect and sentimentalise their former Maori enemies. William Reeves in his 1898 book, Long White Cloud wrote, "The great native difficulty was destined to melt fast away". In the provincial districts of the North Island the Europeans and the Maoris eyed each other warily. Shots were fired once harmlessly over disputes over roaming dogs in Northland. "Maori scares" were attributed after the events to a few hot headed Maoris and heavy handed politicians. I once visited an historic house near Palmerston North. We were shown a belfry and were told when Maoris were sighted, the bell was rung and all the house occupants came inside. Official census put the population in 1890 at 670,000. An estimated 40,000 were Maori. For both populations the other was mostly out of sight, out of mind. In 1840, the New Zealand population was estimated at about 80,000. Of that a few thousand were European. Captain Cook had estimated the Maori population in 1769 as 100,000. In 1890, the European population was up up and away. The Maori population continued to show slow decline.

A Look Back At Old New Zealand

Auckland town 1863. Bustling, full of hope, filled with emigrants from Dickensian Britain. To local Maori and poor immigrants, it must have seemed like the birth of Silicon valley on the Waitemata. Many Maori embraced her for a brave new future. Others not aware of its charms plotted from Waikato to slaughter its inhabitants.

"There was an alternative plan, which was favoured by most of the Kingites, and in the end was adopted; it was far more ambitious and daring than the first. The proposal was to execute a grand coup by attacking Auckland by night-time or early in the morning. The Hunua bush was to be the rendezvous of the main body, and a portion of the Kingite army was to cross the Manukau in canoes and approach Auckland by way of the Whau, on the west, while the Ngati-Paoa and other Hauraki coast tribes were to gather at Taupo, on the shore east of the Wairoa. The date fixed for the attack was the 1st September, 1861, when the Town of Auckland was to be set on fire in various places by natives living there for that purpose; in the confusion the war-parties lying in wait were to rush into the capital by land and sea. Certain houses and persons were to be saved; the dwellings would be recognized by a white cross marked on the doors on the night." ...With the exception of those selected in this latter-day passover, the citizens of Auckland were to be slaughtered." James Cowan: The New Zealand Wars 1922.

The painted white crosses on the doors seem to have come from the first Passover in Exodus. It also seems to have echoes of the ANZAC invasion of Gallipoli. Would the invasion be possible without radio communication? Maoris roaming the town at night with buckets of paint would surely have drawn attention. I suspect elderly Maori veterans got carried away with their tales to Cowan. These are the perils of tribal oral history. No Maori attack on Auckland ever took place.

Hanged murderer, Richard Burgess above. Hanged murderer Kereopa Te Rau below. Their murderous deeds were committed in New Zealand in 1865 and 1866. Burgess was a highway man in the South Island. Kereopa a HauHau chief in the North Island. The bastard son of a ladies' companion and a Horse guard in West End London, Burgess' life story springs from Dickensian London. He is Oliver Twist and David Copperfield morphed into one tortured body and soul. He set out on murderous vengeance for his life agony under the wheels of the industrial revolution. No mercy was ever extended to him and the crime that sent him into a murderous career he always denied. Eye gouger and cannibal, Kereopa received support and solace from his tribe and whanau (family). He was pardoned in 2012 and his family received a Crown apology. No tears nor pardon for Richard, despite his erudition and literary praise by Mark Twain for his gaol confession.

Parallel lives? Kereopa was no literary man. Just a leader and warrior under the HauHau delusion. Maori men were the first unpropertied class in New Zealand to receive suffrage in 1867. White unpropertied men had to wait another twelve years until 1879. Those two anniversaries passed unnoticed in 1967 and 1979. I guess because they were Maoris and deplorables.

1866 was a busy year for New Zealand's hangmen. Ten men, including Richard, were hanged that year for the murder of ten people. Kereopa escaped justice for his tree hanging, eye gouging, and Church chalice blood drinking of missionary Volkner. Kereopa was either Satanic or had a macabre sense of humour. After fierce skirmishes in the bush, Kereopa was hanged in 1872. One of the Maori hanged for Volkner's murder was an accomplished poet and evidence against him was circumstantial. That was Mokomoko who was pardoned in 1893 and his execution apologised for by the Crown.

Richard fully confessed to his highway murders at Maungatapu in order to save two of his companions from an unjust hanging. He failed and was hanged with them. Kereopa made a solemn promise in 1872 to surrender himself so as to spare his Maori supporters further depredations. Kereopa then tried to make another escape before his final capture. Here I consider Richard the man with a savage honour.

Murderer Bill Sykes in the original 1839 Oliver Twist illustration. Working men's clothes fashion do not seem to have changed much between the 1830s and the 1860s. However Bill's clothes appear to be home spun and Richard's factory made.

Epsom and the King Country

Oh, to be in England Now that April's there.

Robert Browning 1845

Epsom, on the outskirts of Auckland. A semi rural, suburban glade that resides in the old borough of Mount Eden. Officially, Epsom does not exist. In that anomaly it parallels the South Waikato King Country. Their reality is spectral. Most Kiwis believe they do exist. If Epsom is England as sentimentalised by Anglophile colonials, King Country is Kingite history as sentimentalized by red necks. In both cases, their mythical names have taken on reality as names of electorates and residing organisations. Epsom, named after Epsom racecourse, has its famous hundred year old dying tree preserved by arbour lovers, and the most prestigious Auckland schools, Auckland Boys' Grammar and Epsom Girls' Grammar. The King Country has its Marae (meeting house) built and ministered to by Te Kooti. The history of Epsom and King Country intertwined once in a murder that in America would have been made into a Western movie. The Maoris lived in Epsom in a troublesome relationship with the settlers. In the 1860s they were expelled by the British army. However at least one returned after the war as a labourer. In 1876, Edwin Packer was murdered on the Epsom farm where he worked. Chief suspect, Taurangaka Winiata, a fellow worker, escaped to the King Country. King Tawhaio refused to return him to Auckland. The King Country was then the Maori Kingdom in an armistice with the Crown. Robert Barlow, himself part Maori, for a reward traveled to King Country, got Taurangaka drugged in a drunken party, and kidnapped him back to Auckland in 1882. Taurangaka, still insisting on his innocence, was hanged in Mount Eden prison. Robert Barlow a few years later died from what was believed to be a Maori curse (makutu). Taurangakaka was convicted only for murder and so was not eligible for the Royal pardon of Maori rebels in1883.

Te Kuiti Pa built and ministered to by Te Kooti.

When I was growing up on the North Island East Coast, elderly Maoris and their mores were part of the scenery. It never crossed my mind nor anyone else except old Coasters to link them to their warrior tribal past. The East Coast was British third world with windy stomach churning roads and water shortages. In 1965. I saw Porgy And Bess in Napier and performed in the Gisborne Opera House in Peter Pan. In the same year 1965, a Maori man died who said he had witnessed the funeral pyre burning of Prussian soldier, artist and adventurer Gustavus Von Tempsky and twenty colonial militia in 1868 by HauHau. The little boy had watched at the back of the HauHau settlement. Gustavus was a soldier admired by allies and foes. The Maori called him Manurau (a hundred birds) for his stalking skills. That set him apart from the British and made him more akin to his Maori enemy. According to Kendal, an American British army deserter to the HauHau, his warrior prowess spared him and his fellow dead soldiers from a cannibal feast. That flies against both the nutritional needs of the tribal Maori in battle and their customary treatment of their greatest enemies. But oh well. The boy's name was Tonga Awikau. He grew up to be a conciliator between Maori and Pakeha and an expert sound recorder of Maori chants and songs.

My primary school was Makaraka. It is a village a few kilometres distant from Gisborne. I never thought of Makaraka as a Maori name and a Maori history. I took part in theatricals and was hypnotised by children's classics. The Maori history around me belonged to a distant unrelated past. In Makaraka, Te Kooti had been a roustabout. When the British had put up the British flag at Makaraka, the local Maori tore it down. Now "all as all one under the sun" as the pop song went. In 1889, Te Kooti, now pardoned tried to return to the East Coast. That caused public panic and a public meeting was held at Makaraka school. Te Kooti was arrested and sent to the Mount Eden Auckland prison. There was nothing to charge him with and he was released after a few days. Te Kooti's followers built a meeting house to welcome Te Kooti's arrival on the Coast. Because of the early visit of Te Kooti, they built a painted instead of a carved house. It now stands as one of the most iconic Maori meeting houses. As a student teacher in 1991 in Hamilton, I wrote a "radio play" and had the senior boys perform it about Te Kooti's return. The best scene was the meeting at Makaraka. I depicted white radical Te Kooti supporter Desmond Arthur and the Gisborne former Mayor Crawford having a fight, and Desmond grabbing Crawford's beard. None of this I made up. I modeled my play on Ibsen's Enemy of the People. The history fitted the play to an amazing degree. The verdict of the Teaching College was I was "unsuitable for high school teaching".

English or New Zealand born born Desmond Arthur had a colourful life. After inciting uproar on the Coast, he departed to live in England, Australia and America. He adopted Socialism of the Jack London Social Darwinist eugenics variety. His authorship of the treatise Might Is Right and other writings have made him one of the ideologues of the American "far right".

1891- 1912 The Liberal Government

The New Zealand Liberal Party was the first organised political party and Government in New Zealand. Previously, New Zealand had been governed by loose and competing alliances, called Ministries. In 1891, there was for the first time a majority of Members in the House of Representatives pledged to a common political strategy. Governor William Onslow alarmed by its radicalism tried to obstruct it by stacking the Legislative Council with conservative members. His lack of success has made the New Zealand Parliament a dictator ever since. A simple majority in Parliament would always be the man. There was a large class of landless and impecunious British coveting land in the colonies. Intensive farming development in New Zealand was being locked out by Maori tribal land possession and the South Island pastoral estates. In 1890, the first income tax was introduced into New Zealand. Now the liberal politicians had an income flow to put their economic theories into practice. The Government would purchase un or under productive land from the Maoris and the pastoralists and sell it to a new farming class. This new class would have the initial capital to live under 99 year old Government land leases. They would also be able to pay the new income tax. Leviathan would wax fat and afford to spread welfare to its supporters, such as old age pensions, and especially itself. Old age pensions were introduced to the "deserving" elderly. In Britain, it was de rigour that the elderly indigent go to the Work Houses or starve. In New Zealand, Liberal opinion was that the elderly indigent pioneers were now deserving of State gratitude. However the Old Age Pensions Act was fought bitterly over. Opposition to it was more on conservative principle than on necessity. Bureaucracy would flourish. To use an allegory, the pigs of Animal Farm came into the farmhouse. The Liberal Government moved cautiously by divide and rule, and nibble and swallow to purchase tribal land in the North Island. However over the decades, the North Island countryside became primarily pioneer rural New Zealand. The cow cockies (small white farmers) flourished or in bad times went bust. As a Parliamentary Labour radical, John A Lee put it. "The farmers think they won the war. They won the debt." The Liberal Government had no such scruples in the South Island. The giant pastoral estates were over a few years purchased by the Government. That was fostered by the threat of compulsory purchase. There were no sentimental portrayals of the pastoral estates, nor much public sorrow for their demise.. However the purchases were generous which could not often be said for purchases of tribal lands. Maori were mostly eager land sellers. Selling of land was not always detrimental to them. The pastoralists were mostly reluctant sellers. They gained capital but lost their class.

Cheviot Estate. The first land estate to be "burst up" by the Liberal Government. The bete noire of the land estates was the Liberal Minister of Lands, John McKenzie. Born in 1840 in the Scottish highlands, John had personally witnessed the land evictions of Scottish peasants in 1845. That had shocked him for the rest of his life. Harriet Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, supported these evictions. John made a life career of championing the poor aspiring to be farmers.

The 34,300 hectare Cheviot estate in North Canterbury was purchased in 1893. The night after it came into government ownership, the stables, granary and store were destroyed by fire.

Between 1892 and 1911, the Crown offered 3.4 million hectares of land for settlement, subdivided into 33,000 holdings. This included 209 estates totalling 486,000 hectares bought for six million pounds, and subdivided into 4800 holdings. The stick of compulsory purchase of estates was used 13 times.

John McKenzie

James Mackenzie with different aliases with his dog, Friday.

Legendary sheep drover and outlaw James Mackenzie discovered a pass through the Canterbury plains that opened them for farming and settlement. He was arrested in the pass in 1855 for rustling one thousand sheep with his faithful dog Friday. His prison escapes made him a legend to the struggling Canterbury folk. Mackenzie Country in the heart of Canterbury is named in memory of this sheep drove. Kiwis with their indifference to history but love of a gutsy story customarily confuse the two Macs.

Samuel Butler in New Zealand

Samuel Butler 1835-1902. Born in England at an Anglican rectory. Samuel's father was a parson child beater who was a literal bible believer. Samuel reacted not by atheism and licentiousness but by being a free spirit. He graduated in Classics at Cambridge. Samuel prepared for ordination into the Anglican clergy but lost his faith after bad experiences with baptised Christian children. In 1859, like many other settlers he sailed to New Zealand to escape from his family. He became a successful sheep farmer in Canterbury. On his sheep station, he wrote his famous novel, Erewhon published in 1872. Erewhon is set in a country that geographically resembles Canterbury, and socially and satirically contemporary England. In Erewhon, all machines have been abolished. The sick are punished, and the criminals are medically treated. He also published, A First Year in Canterbury Settlement about his arrival and life as a sheep farmer. Samuel wrote, in Canterbury. "New Zealand seems far better adapted to develop and maintain in health the physical than the intellectual nature... there is much nonsense in the old country from which people here are free." Attributed to Samuel, is the proverbial, "In Canterbury ditch diggers are more valued than poets".

In 1863, The Press newspaper in Christchurch published Samuel's letter captioned Darwin among the Machines. His letter compared machine evolution to human evolution. "In the course of ages, we (humans) will find ourselves the inferior race".

Samuel Butler clashed with Charles Darwin. Samuel accepted Darwinian evolution but always insisted there was an intelligent design in evolution. All organisms, argued Samuel, carry "an ancestral memory" that makes them strive for their next stage in evolution and perfection. Samuel's evolutionary theory had precedents in the science of others. However, it could not displace Darwinian evolution as the new religion to replace literal Christianity.

Samuel engaged in the social life of the Canterbury elite. In 1864, he returned to England but continued to maintain relations with Canterbury acquaintances. Samuel, as a self confessed Ishmael, fell between two stools. The Anglican Church and scientific materialism. He died in 1902 in relative obscurity despite his dilettante life in literature, music composition, science and art. But English publishing gave him a niche for his writings. Today in cancel culture, he would be reduced to blogs and Amazon books. His posthumous semi autobiography, The Way of All Flesh published in 1903 was a best seller and established his reputation as a major satirist and free thinker.

Samuel Butler, who never married, maintained life long relations with young men. That of course makes him now one of the literary queers. However, that is anachronistic. Samuel's lifestyle reflected the contemporary Hellenistic cult of the Platonic love of young men. If he ever consummated it, it would have filled him with shame and horror. In that Hellenism, his career runs parallel to the New Zealand Crown Colony Attorney General William Swainson.

The Two William Swainsons

The artist in image above and the invisible man. William Swainson 1809-84 was the second Attorney-General of the Crown colony of New Zealand from 1841 to 1856. I could not find an image of him. Legal systems are dry matters and William made himself very unpopular by rejecting the official version of The Treaty of Waitangi. There he clashed severely with all other Crown officials. He gave the legal opinion that tribes that did not sign were not bound to its terms, and their districts should remain outside Crown authority. James Stephens, the Permanent Under Secretary of the Colonies. said that although the declaration of sovereignty might be an unjust breach of faith, it should stand. William was born in England and was called to the bar as a lawyer. In 1841, despite his lack of experience, he was appointed to be Attorney-General of New Zealand. He sailed to New Zealand in company with two other lawyers, who became New Zealand Chief Justice, and the Register of the Supreme Court in Auckland. Together on the ship, the three lawyers drafted "in simple concise and intelligible language a new system of laws which they planned to be ideal for the new colony". At least that was what the lawyers thought. Many an old settler and Maori chief might have thought they would soon be choked, and echoed Jack Cade in Shakespeare's Henry V1, "Hang all the lawyers". Within six months of their arrival in New Zealand in September 1841, 19 enactments had been passed by the Legislative Council, creating the basis of governance in the new colony. William frequently defended the interests of Maori on land claim issues. William's Maori boatman and handyman, Mohi became his bromance companion and next door neighbour from 1880. Actually Mohi lived in a whare, a Maori house which has been unkindly compared to a dog kennel. Swainson described Mohi in his will as "his old friend". The same choice of words that Liz Truss described her black Treasurer. When Mohi died in 1890, George Grey led the funeral procession. Mohi was buried "no more than a leap away from Swainson's grave". Swainson died unmarried.

William Swainson has customarily been confused with William John Swainson, the artist. He was an English ornithologist, malacologist, conchologist and artist. He emigrated to New Zealand in 1841 and died in Lower Hutt.

A fellow artist in New Zealand. I will not show his image because he abandoned his family to an attack on his farm in an isolated valley a few miles outside Wanganui in 1847. Six young Maoris attacked them completely unprovoked. An accidental shooting of a chief in Wanganui a few days before might have aroused their anger. Settlers in these isolated valleys were sitting ducks to Maori anger. Then and since, the rough terrain and farming method have not led to European type villages in New Zealand. Four of the Maoris were caught and hanged. One was reprieved from hanging because he was twelve to fourteen years old. One of the four murdered Gilfillan victims was aged four months.

A John Gilfillan landscape of his Wanganui farm.

Footnote. Wanganui then was officially called Petrie. That was named after a British official. The settlers successfully petitioned Petrie be changed to the name of the much loved local river.

William Reeves 1857-1932

William Reeves was born in Lyttelton. His English family epitomised the prosperous but sometimes impecunious middle class. William was educated at Christ's College, the elite school for Christchurch boys. He suffered from bullying from the sons of the new rich pastoralists. But he was an excellent scholar in literary subjects. He was a fighter for South Island issues, especially railways. He was elected to Parliament in 1887. In 1891, the new Liberal Party became the Government. William was appointed in 1892 its Minister of Labour. This was a novel political posting. Workers in New Zealand would be no longer powerless citizens. Instead they would form a working class who would work collectively to become middle class, and whose leaders would advance to leadership in the country. William who was a witty, erudite author and poet was not entirely enamored with his own political ideals and their success. In 1894 William introduced the Industrial Arbitration Court. It was to dominate industrial relations in New Zealand for seventy nine years. Labour reform in Reeves' era brought about New Zealand's reputation as "a workers' paradise". And as somewhat of a purgatory if not hell for consumers. "The long weekend" started in Reeves' era. In 1896 disgruntled at the increasing crudeness of New Zealand politics, Reeve departed permanently to England as New Zealand's official representative, agent general. In England, he mixed with the Fabians who worked for socialist transformation through peaceful reforms. Their leaders became his close friends. Reeves was also an imperialist when socialism and imperialism were not seen as incompatible. In 1908, William's daughter Amber ran off to France with H. G. Wells. H.G. Wells' wrote his novel Ann Veronica in 1909 about the affair. I have read it. It started off really well. Then Wells seemed to get bored with its clichéd theme and her, and hurriedly finished it.

The Industrial Arbitration Court brought in compulsory arbitration between employers and workers. The Court laid down a decree. An employer was required to pay his employee a forty hour wage week that was enough to support himself, a wife and two children. The typical worker rented a house. His wife was employed full time as a mother and housekeeper. She grew a garden and clothed their children with hand me down clothes. The children received free education. The biggest luxuries were a piano and seaside holidays Also stage shows. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the local cinema, and from the 1920s the radio. And we must not forget plenty of beer at the workers' pubs.

Richard Seddon 1845-1906

His statue stands in front of Parliament House as an epitome of the successful New Zealand politician. He emigrated from England in 1866 for the South Island West Coast goldfields. He quickly became a roustabout legend in the Irish dominated West Coast. In 1881, the West Coasters elected him to Parliament. What Lyndon Johnson was to Texas, Richard Seddon was to the West Coast However Richard was more lucky. His war in South Africa was not blamed on him nor was it on television. Richard was Premier and Prime Minister from 1893-1906. If he privately regretted "having them think me a fool," he knew that it helped him play them "like a pianner". When the six Australian colonies joined the Australian Federation in 1901, New Zealand under the Seddon Government declined to join them. In the Australian Constitution, there is still an invitation to do so. Distance from Australia, in geography, history and culture always has set New Zealand apart from Australia. Australia originated as Terra Australis, the Southern Continent. New Zealand originated as Nova Zeelandia, New Sea Land after it was discovered in 1643 to be separate from Terra Australis. New Zealand has never been considered part of Australia except by ignoramus Americans. Australasia as combining both countries is equally unknown and unpopular in Australia and New Zealand. In Alice In Wonderland, Alice asks, "Please, Ma'am, is this New Zealand? Or Australia? " Richard Seddon as a rival to the new Federal Australian Prime Minister officially imposed himself as Prime Minister in 1901. Prime Minister has been the title of the head of the New Zealand Governments ever since.

Samuel Clemens in New Zealand

In 1895, Samuel Clemens was broke to the debt of today's equivalent of several million dollars. His investment in a novel type writer had failed. Samuel asked his accountant why he couldn't declare bankruptcy like anyone else. His profound accountant replied. "You are an author." So Samuel set out on a round the world trip to pay his debts via his public readings. His subsequent travel book, Following The Equator, was published in 1897. It includes his travel adventures in New Zealand. His literary fame preceded him to give him celebrity status wherever he traveled. Samuel tended to be long winded with strained jokes. His readings in New Zealand drew complaints that people did not know when to laugh because Samuel did not laugh at his own jokes. New Zealanders have never been given to satire. Samuel's report on New Zealand begins with a tale of a New Zealand Professor of Theological Engineering visiting Yale University in America. His Yale colleagues nervously spent the day studying up about a country they knew nothing about. They discovered the New Zealand Professor knew nothing at all about New Zealand. Samuel laboured over a joke that everyone until he knows better thinks you travel from Australia to New Zealand via a bridge. My grandfather reportedly attended a reading of Samuel in Palmerston North.

A brochure of hot springs and geysers in Rotorua in Samuel's book Following the Equator.

Samuel could not resist a riposte at British civilisation in his otherwise highly laudatory observations about Wanganui. In Huckleberry Finn, he had conflated being civilised with syphilis. He condemned a monument that commemorated Kupapa and a white man who fell defending Wanganui in the HauHau war thirty years before. The monument read. "Who fell in defence of law and order against fanaticism. Samuel harrumphed the HauHau were "patriots" The monument to the Kupapa dead "cannot be rectified. Except with dynamite". The monument is now removed. The brave men who fell defending the town from a cannibalistic cult are not to be celebrated. The advocates for the monument removal either don't know the real history like Samuel, or identify with the cannibals. Samuel's affections to the noble savage did not extend to the American Indians about whom he wrote about with nothing but derision and contempt. Earlier in Following the Equator, Samuel wrote a paean to race relations in New Zealand. It included. "The Government allows native representation -in both the legislature and the cabinet, and gives both sexes the vote."

John Gorst in New Zealand

He was born in England. When he was a young man, he inherited a large fortune. Instead of settling down in a squirearchy life, John chose to live his fortune in New Zealand. He sailed to New Zealand in 1860. He was at first a teacher at a Maori boys mission school in the Waikato. In 1862 he was appointed resident magistrate and then as civil commissioner for Waikato. George Grey was trying to incorporate Maori in tribal districts into the Crown Jurisdiction. In 1863, John and his family were driven out of Waikato by the Kingites. After a stint of recruiting military settlers in Australia for the Waikato war, John returned to England. In 1864, John published in England a New Zealand classic. The Maori King or, the story of our quarrel with the natives. This work is essentially a detailed account of his residence in New Zealand. Although sympathetic to his Kingite foes and their nationalism, John became resigned to force as a last resort- to impose the law and order that neither the Crown nor the Maori King could assert over the Maori. The Maori had got bored with a churchly life and were returning to the warrior way of life of their forbears. John wanted to impose divide and rule but the Kingites were united in a common resolve of Maori independence. As an Englishman scholar, John understood but was torn with his loyalty to his Queen. and belief in civil progress. His book is a perceptive and liberal commentary on the causes of the war.

Some disturbing passages from The Maori King.

"I first landed in New Zealand in May, 1860, just after the out-break of the Taranaki war. The entire colony was at that time absorbed in watching the struggle that was going on between a handful of ill-armed savages and the Queen's well -disciplined soldiers. and in speculating on the probability of the whole Maori population rising to join in the conflict."

"People in Auckland were especially anxious about the course that would be taken by the tribes living on the Waikato River, upon whose forbearance the very existence of Auckland appeared at that time to depend. A range of forest hills was pointed out from the town of Auckland, extending from east to west. Beyond the hills, the stranger was told, lay the Waikato country, inhabited by fierce warlike Maories sic, whose armed bands could at any moment swarm through the hill-side forests into the plain below, to burn the houses, drive off the cattle, and tomahawk the settlers."

John must have shared in the siege mentality of the Aucklanders. Newspapers in the 1860s carried commercial notices in their front pages and news was buried inside. Nothing like the saturation of the media in later centuries. They were nearly all dry text, interspersed sparsely with illustrations and still photographs. Outside the areas in New Zealand directly affected by the conflict, the newspaper readers would have read and sighed about the savages and the weak Government and then returned to their private preoccupations.

"What most struck me, in this my first visit to Waikato, was the strange contrast between the material poverty and the mental attainments of the people. In all outward signs of civilization, Maories sic proved to be extremely backward, their houses, clothing , food, and way of eating were of the most barbarous description, but in reasoning, especially on political topics, in making provision for their own government, and for the education of their children, they exhibited unexpected cleverness and good sense."

John gives examples of this good government and its break downs. He doesn't say but insinuates its chief flaw was its inconsistency. Its anarcho- authoritarianism. One accustomed to civil Government would in time reach fatigue, and wish to exit.

"The European either has no weapons, or having them, dares not use them; the Maori is well armed with guns and ammunition, has a dozen uncles and cousins to back him if he wants help, thinks nothing of flourishing his tomahawk, a few inches of his adversaries' heads and generally closes the argument by helping himself to a cow or a horse as 'payment' which the Englishman may get back again as he can."

"The Europeans were continually smarting under a sense of wrong, and Maories grew insolent and contemptuous, filled with an overweening confidence in their own powers and the unresisting patience of the oppressed race."

"Even in the streets of Auckland itself, the natives have generally been able to defy the majesty of the law. No native could be imprisoned for drunkenness or rioting without the risk of war; and with our unarmed men, women and children, hostages in native districts, it was a risk the Government dared not run,. On some particular occasions the Governor did venture upon asserting his authority, but drunken and insolent young Maories, with whom the police had instructions not to meddle, were common frequenters of the street of Auckland, even down to the date of the present outbreak."

"The habit of lying was thereby largely promoted, while those who received such aid soon became pauperised, as they found out how much easier was to beg or bully the Government out of what they wanted, than to get it by labour for themselves. It had come to be commonly observed, that, in most districts, chiefly as I believe, from this cause, the King natives were of a much better stamp than the Loyal ones, at least as regarded honesty and self respect. "

'The ignorant masses of towns-people judge of the natives from their not very prepossessing exteriors, and never having had experience of their good qualities which, as all who have lived amongst them acknowledge, lie concealed beneath, give free vent to their arrogance and contempt , and speak of the Maories, both publicly and privately, with disgust and dislike. Men habitually told that they emit a disagreeable smell, are not likely to feel a very strong affection towards the race that smells them. I know that the petty rudeness of Europeans is so disagreeable to many chiefs in Waikato, that they dislike going into Auckland, or any of the English villages, and are very shy of visiting at English houses. Their own behaviour to strangers affords a striking contrast. "

"A shake down of straw in an inn stable, bread and meat bought at a shop, or a meal in the inn kitchen, given as a great favour at the Englishman's solicitation, would be all the hospitality he could procure. I have heard the Bishop of New Zealand say he is quite ashamed to travel with his native deacons, men who dine at his own table and behave like gentlemen, because he cannot take them into the public room where a tipsy carter would be considered perfectly good society."

"The colonial newspapers are full of affronts, grave and petty, to the natives, not indeed of course to annoy them but to please the European readers. These all come round to native ears. The Southern Cross, an Auckland newspaper which usually advocates a 'physical force' policy used to be regularly taken in at Ngaruawahia (The Kingite capital) and read aloud by a native girl who understood English perfectly. No doubt its opinions were considered to be those of the Government and the whole English race." Was that Hini Te Kiri?

"The necessity of union was industriously preached by Wiremu Tamihana and others, at all the large public meetings, which are frequented amongst the natives. The fable of the bundle of sticks which with others has been translated and circulated, took their fancy, and was related over and over again." That sounds positively fascist.

"Te Heu Heu of Taupo then spoke with violence, enumerating the cause of quarrel, which the Maories had against the Europeans, the indignities shown to chiefs by the lower orders in the towns, their women debauched, men made drunk, chiefs called 'bloody Maories'. He advocated total separation of races and expulsion of Europeans by force, He was at last stopped by some of the chiefs, and compelled to sit down."

Joh Gorst went into politics in England. He held major positions in the British Government. In 1906, John returned to New Zealand to represent King Edward at an International Exhibition in Christchurch. He visited his old haunts and renewed acquaintances. Old enemies warmly greeted him. He wrote in his book published in 1908: New Zealand revisited: recollections of the days of my youth.

"They (the Maoris) are looked upon as a unique distinction of the New Zealand State, and the community is not a little proud of their success in assimilating into their civilisation this ancient and picturesque race. They treat the Maories, both politically and socially, as perfect equals."... "You see on the benches of schools, and in the choirs of churches and cathedrals, Maori men, women and children's seated promiscuously among the white race. The Maories on their part have lost the bitter feeling of hatred toward Europeans which prevailed forty or fifty years ago."

My grandmother was born in 1897 and grew up in New Zealand. That made her one of the children John might have spotted sitting among the Maoris. Her reserved attitudes might throw some light on early to mid twentieth century white attitudes and practices toward Maori. She made several visits to our family home in a Maori district in the North Island. My mother said my grandmother was "quite scared of Maoris". I recall she spent several nights in the early 1960s frantically trying to lock the house door. That amused us. Her apartment building in Wellington had a secret policy that no Maori could live there. If she was challenged about that, she might have replied. She wouldn't be so much worried about Maori residents. It was their relations and friends she would worry about. The prison choir came to her Church to sing. They were all Maoris. The one Maori Church choir member joined them and she couldn't tell the difference. However, she accepted that my aunt adopted two children of not obvious Maori appearance. Dear old Nan who never understood me and told me my Classics University course was no good for anyone.

A story on the Maori side in same era might throw counter light. A Maori woman growing up in a Maori community in the early to mid twentieth century recalled the young people would make fun of the " kitchen Maori" of the old people. The young people all spoke English as first language and understood some Maori. She would hear a few old people grumbling about land issues and wondered what that was about. Her life was pop songs, movies and rugby. Then when the young Maori radicals appeared in the nineteen seventies, she understood what the old people had been talking about.

As John Gorst saw Queen street Auckland in 1860s under the Maori terror, and as he saw Queen street Auckland in 1908, since 1907 in a thriving British Dominion, (Home Rule). As warranted a Dominion, New Zealand would be no longer under the at least theoretical shackles of London. The Governor was titled the Governor-General in 1917, and the Premier was titled Prime Minister from 1906. With both new titles, New Zealand constitutional status as a self governing Dominion was promulgated. As a Dominion, the New Zealand Parliament could do everything except engage in foreign diplomacy, and fight foreign wars without the Empire's permission.

The Te Aute Old Boys

The Anglican Maori Te Aute school old boys. The boys matriculated in University subjects, including Latin and Greek. That education prepared them for political leadership and professions.

Maui Pomare had his first distinction in being the only person on record injured in the 1882 raid on Parihaka. He had his toe trodden on by a constabulary horse. As a small boy trampled by a horse, one would imagine more serious injuries. So it might have been a burlesque joke. Maui grew up to be a famous medical doctor and Minister of Health in Parliament. He campaigned for sanitation in Maori settlements, and Maori conscription in World War One. He detested Maori cultural practices. His unflinching goal in life was "to make the Maori as good as the Pakeha" (New Zealand white people). There were proposals he be Prime Minister in 1925. He however turned them down. He said, New Zealand was not ready for a Maori Prime Minister.

Apirana Ngata's first distinction was leading a sneak out at night of Te Aute third formers to catch eels. He and Peter Buck, whose father was white, became pre-eminent scholars in Maori culture and distinguished Parliamentarians. In the 1960s, Maoris on the North Island East Coast would point out a house said to be awarded to a Ngata ally to stop Ngata going to gaol for fraud in his Maori Affairs Department. Maoris are great yarners. Ngata along with Princess Te Puea worked hard and successfully for many years on developing Maori land to prevent further sales. In the 1920s, Maori tribes received Crown compensation for confiscations of their lands in the wars. Te Puea used the compensation money to purchase the land to restore the Kingite capital in Ngaruawahia. When Ngata was voted out of Parliament in 1943 by a Ratana and Labour Party member, he exclaimed. "They have given my people money. They have destroyed my people."

The Suffragette Movement and How it Congealed With the Prohibition movement.

New Zealand women got the vote in 1893. By then, there was no restriction on male suffrage for British subjects except for lunacy and imprisonment. The class wars in Britain had not taken much hold in New Zealand. The upward mobility of the New Zealand people, and the Arbitration Court had seen to that. So New Zealand women European and Maori got the vote full cloth. To quote Samuel Clemens. "If voting made any difference, they wouldn't let us do it." He was being the jester. Voting in the nineteenth century did not move mountains but it could level hills. The great majority of New Zealanders were united in their aspirations for middle class status and their loyalty to the British sovereign and Empire. There were powerless minorities of Sinn Fein, and Socialist supporters. Maori nationalism was not extinct but ignored. Elections had become mostly dull affairs of administration and support for the Empire. Votes for women and prohibition (banning drinking alcohol) enlivened voting more than anything else. It was said prohibition campaigns attracted more public interest and contention than elections In a society with few regular recreations other than the pubs and alcohol, women and their male supporters came to believe that alcohol was "the curse of the working classes". Suffrage for the women would bring in prohibition. Prohibition would make family and social life seem like heaven. William Reeves' wife, Maud saw to it that he voted for women's suffrage in Parliament. Reeves wrote in Long White Cloud. "It came as a surprise to most to learn next year that the House of Representatives was in favour of women's suffrage." Was William hinting at something? The real power and influence of women? New Zealand became the first country in the world to give women the vote. New Zealanders love New Zealand firsts. Bernard Shaw, gave an ironical point by his character Lady Fanshawe in his 1909 pro suffragette play, Press Cuttings. "The New Zealand women have the vote. What is the result? No poet makes a New Zealand woman his heroine. One might as well be romantic about New Zealand mutton." When I heard a BBC dramatisation of Press Cuttings in 1993, the centennial year of New Zealand women's suffrage, I was amused all the cutting lines opposing suffrage, were omitted. Lady Fanshawe was making a point that the spiritual and domestic influence of women over men would be lost when they turned into politicians. However, denying women the vote became untenable when women owned property, were well educated, and employed men who had the vote.

Minnie Dean. The only woman to be hanged in New Zealand. In "God's own country" as declared by King Dick, Minnie was hanged in 1895 for child murder. She ran a baby farm for foundling or unwanted babies. Babies died under her care. Her life as narrated by author Lynley Hood, reveals the dark underside of God's Own country for populations outside comfortable business or union protection. Minnie was no Dickensian female victim. Rather she was a lower class version of Becky Sharp. The only circumstantial evidence for Minnie's life after she left Scotland at the age of sixteen until her appearance in Southland New Zealand at nineteen, is as the lover of a black birder and pirate, Thomas McGrath. In Court records, a Mrs Proctor and her child were named as Thomas' unaccompanied passengers on his pirate ship. Mrs Proctor was called by the crew, the captain's "lady friend". Mrs Proctor was the name Minnie first called herself in New Zealand when she arrived with her two infants. Minnie always stoutly denied she was a murderer. Three dead babies were found in her garden and others were believed to have been thrown off a train. Minnie's reputation hangs over Southland as an evil damned witch whose grave no flora grows on. In a way, her story is the only non Maori story in New Zealand where real history, myth and natural history converge. Not entirely a coincidence this happens in the most Gaelic Scottish of New Zealand's regions?

The Chinese "Yellow Peril"

Having lived ten years in China, I understand exactly the opposition to their immigration. They are an industrious but pushy people. Having staked their territory, they do not permit any other race to join them as equals. Their loyalty only was and is to the nation of China and their families. The sagacious Liberal Government stopped New Zealand from becoming an outpost of polluted, overcrowded Asia. In modern day China, I do not recall seeing a bird. The only ancient monuments I saw were on hilltops. Pollution destroyed the former. The red guards destroyed the latter. In New Zealand, they have always lived under the protection of the law. The same cannot be said about foreigners in China. The poll tax on Chinese immigrants made their numbers manageable, and their industry has contributed to the country. Their relatively small numbers have spared the country and themselves from the triads. Auckland now has a Hong Kong triad. In 1936, Chinese received old age pensions, and in 1952 received New Zealand citizenship, three years after New Zealand citizenship replaced British naturalisation. Until then they were subjects of China. They received citizenship, the same year the murderer in the only Chinese racial killing in New Zealand died in a mental hospital. The New Zealand Chinese hindered by language and education kept to themselves and made livings from market gardens and retail shops. My mother spoke of walking in terror through "China town" in Wellington in the 1940s. The Chinese shops were dingy and the Chinese men appeared to be drugged..

I found many helpful Chinese in my time in China. My Chinese family have found in New Zealand, nothing but kindness and honesty from the white people. The Auckland Chinese have exploited my wife and stepson shamelessly.

To be continued in the blog: Fighting for Modernism and the Empire.