Later Career, 1868–98
After a short retirement to Kawau Island and a visit to England, where he failed in an attempt to enter Parliament as a Gladstonian Liberal, he re-emerged in New Zealand politics in 1874, as Superintendent of Auckland Province and member of the House of Representatives, in an unavailing effort to prevent the abolition of the provincial system of government. He continued in the House of Representatives for nearly 20 years, and was Prime Minister (1877–79), but his administration was defective and his leadership poor. He announced many of the principles of the later Liberal and Labour Parties (electoral reform, land tax, breaking up of large estates, regulation of wages and hours, education, etc.), but his ideas were too radical for his contemporaries and he failed to build up a party to implement his programme. His oratory was impressive, but often unduly maudlin and petulant, and too much given to declamation. “This,” he said, “is a revolt against despotism…. What I am resolved to maintain is this, that there shall be equal justice in representation and in the distribution of land and revenue to every class in New Zealand … equal rights to all — equal rights in education, equal rights in taxation, equal rights in representation … equal rights in every respect.” He would utter bitter personal recriminations against his political opponents, whom he was forever accusing of land jobbery, and he defied parliamentary etiquette by making personal attacks upon the Governor and the Secretary of State. “Keep your rank; keep your wealth; but do not send us out men who care nothing for us, with high titles, to make great fortunes out of us, and who refuse us dissolutions when constitutionally we are entitled to them. I say that of the Secretary of State we absolutely know nothing — for the Secretary of State we absolutely care nothing … He could confine himself to his own business.” His frequent lack of self-restraint earned for him Tancred's famous description of “a terrible and fatal man”.
In the realm of world affairs, Grey entertained visions of New Zealand expansion in the Pacific islands, and forecast with uncanny accuracy the development of the modern British Commonwealth as a group of autonomous States in friendly association with the United States of America.
He had a shrewd insight into the Maori mind, and his published collection of Maori legends is a classic. He bequeathed his large collection of writings on the African language, together with his library of incunabula and manuscripts to Cape Town in 1861, and later donated a second valuable collection to the city of Auckland. An amateur natural scientist of repute, he sent thousands of specimens of the flora and fauna to the British Museum and to Kew Gardens. His island domain of Kawau became a botanical and zoological experiment in the acclimatisation of plants and animals. Always keenly interested in education, his name is connected with many schools and institutions whose foundation and advancement he assisted, including Bloemfontein College, Auckland Grammar School, and Wanganui Collegiate.
Grey died in London on 19 September 1898, and was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. He was a strange mixture — a philanthropist impelled by altruistic motives, a visionary and a prophet, and a man of resolute, often dramatic, action. He made a real impression on those colonies in which he lived and ruled, especially in New Zealand where he spent the greater part of his life. In the final analysis, he fell short of greatness because he was too autocratic and egotistic in manner, lacked true self-control, and could never recognise his own mistakes. He pronounced judgment upon himself when, in November 1845, he boasted to the Maori chiefs assembled at Kororareka, “I never alter what I once say”. Yet, for all his failings, he earned the affection and respect of the colonists over whose destinies he presided, and especially the love of the Maori people, whose farewell message at his death was, “Horei Kerei, Aue! Ka nui matou aroha ki a koe” (“George Grey, alas! Great was our love for thee”).
by James Rutherford, M.A.(DURHAM), PH.D.(MICH.) (1906–63), Historian, Auckland.
Grey Collections (MSS), Cape Town, South Africa, and Auckland, New Zealand; Sir George Grey, K.C.B. (1812–1898), Rutherford, J. (1961); Crown Colony Government in New Zealand, McLintock, A. H. (1958); Origins of the Maori Wars, Sinclair, K. (1957).
GREY, Sir George
(1812–98).
Colonial Governor and politician.
A new biography of Grey, George appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.
Sir George Grey was the son of Lieutenant-Colonel George Grey, who was related to the Greys of Groby and the Earls of Stamford, and of Elizabeth, née Vignoles of County Westmeath, Ireland. He was born at Lisbon (14 April 1812) a few days after his father was killed at Badajoz. Educated at Guildford and Royal Military College, Sandhurst, he served in Ireland with 83rd Regiment (1830–36), gaining the rank of captain, but he found military life mentally and socially irksome. He made two exploratory expeditions in north-western Australia (1837–39), one to Hanover Bay and the other to Shark Bay, revealing great bravery and fortitude but poor judgment, and accomplishing little of geographical significance. Nevertheless they stimulated Grey's interest in the aborigines, and his report on how to civilise native peoples (1840) attracted favourable notice at the Colonial Office.
In 1839 he married Eliza Lucy, daughter of Sir Richard Spencer. Their only son died young in 1841. Husband and wife subsequently became estranged; they separated in 1860 and were not reconciled until 1896.
South Australia, 1840–45
In 1840, at the age of 28, he was appointed Governor of the newly founded colony of South Australia, and here he had to learn the art of public administration by painful experience. Confronted with the task of bringing the public expenditure within the small local revenue, in the next 18 months he cut down Government disbursements from about £150,000 a year to 40,000. His rigorous economies averted a financial crisis, stopped the mania of speculative land buying, and drove the colonists to the tasks of productive farming. But his methods gave grave offence to the settlers, and one Adelaide newspaper printed at the head of each issue the Shakespearean text, “Think upon GREY and let thy soul despair”. But being unhampered by an elected parliament, Grey and his nominated councillors could go their own way, outwardly unaffected by the public clamour. By 1845 the development of wheat farming had produced self-sufficiency, and copper mining outside Adelaide was bringing prosperity to the settlers. Grey's efforts to civilise the aborigines, however, by providing schools and fostering employment under the Europeans, made little headway.
New Zealand, 1845–53
His first New Zealand governorship (1845–53) was his greatest success. Reinforced by troops and money from England and aided by loyal Maoris, he suppressed the northern rebellion of Kawiti and Hone Heke by capturing Ruapekapeka pa (1846). A desultory campaign in the Wellington region ended with the arrest of Te Rauparaha (1846), and there was some indecisive fighting at Wanganui in 1847. Thereafter Grey kept the peace by establishing friendly relations with the leading chiefs and by scrupulously respecting their land rights. His cautious land-purchase operations opened up ample areas for colonisation in the South Island and in the Wellington and Hawke's Bay districts, but the needs of Auckland and Taranaki were less well satisfied. He dealt harshly with some of the pre-1840 land claimants, particularly James Busby and the missionaries Henry Williams, George Clarke, and James Kemp, and his animus and unscrupulousness marked him as a petty tyrant.
His wilfulness was again evident in 1846 when Earl Grey proposed to introduce representative Government. Grey warned him that this would precipitate a general Maori war as the colonists were still only a minority and unfit to be trusted with powers of self-government. The British Government drew back in alarm, awarded him a knighthood, and left him in unfettered control for another five years. By then, he had drafted his own proposals for a quasi-federal constitution with elected parliaments both at provincial and at colonial levels, and these ideas were substantially embodied in the 1852 Constitution Act. He brought the provincial institutions into existence, but left New Zealand in December 1853 without having convened the first General Assembly.
Grey's reputation in London rested chiefly on his apparent success with the Maoris. Many colonists, especially in the Cook Strait and Canterbury settlements, alleged that his philanthropy was all humbug and that Maori advancement was a myth created by clever dispatch writing. But in this respect his critics did him less than justice. Grey had, after all, won the confidence of most of the principal chiefs of New Zealand. His benevolence was genuine and practical, and his contribution to the progress of the native race was real. The peace he established and maintained was a valuable breathing space in which Maoris and Pakehas could take stock of one another, and think and act in terms of mutual welfare. Grey encouraged and subsidised mission schools in town and country. He set up Magistrates' Courts in native districts and persuaded the Maoris to resort to them for remedy instead of taking the law into their own hands. He encouraged them to grow corn, mill flour, and engage in peaceful trades.
In favoured areas like the Waikato, Otaki, and Nelson, their progress and prosperity proved beyond doubt the capacity of the Maoris to adapt themselves to western ways. The transformation, of course, was very far from complete. The means at Grey's disposal were woefully scanty, many Maori tribes remained untouched by the new developments, and the colonists were for the most part ominously hostile to his benevolent plans, especially when it came to paying for them. Grey was unduly optimistic and did not sufficiently realise either the limits of his achievement or the danger of a relapse. A little self-praise might be forgiven, though it was in bad taste; but his task had only just begun and there was no room for complacency.
South Africa, 1854–61
In 1854 he was appointed Governor of Cape Colony and High Commissioner for South Africa. Here his principal task was to protect and pacify the eastern Cape frontier against a surging mass of disorderly Kaffir tribes. Supported by a large British army and a small annual parliamentary grant of £40,000, he planned to reorganise the tribal life of the buffer province of British Kaffraria under European Magistrates, civilise the African population by means of schools, hospitals, and employment (his old New Zealand formula), and introduce several thousands of white farmers to stiffen the defence of the frontier and provide work, and a good example, for the natives. But he miscalculated the amount of agricultural land available — the province was already over populated — and he seemed not to appreciate that amalgamation of the races must jeopardise white predominance. He wanted British immigrants, but South Africa did not attract them. After the Crimean War, the Colonial Office sent out 3,000 men of the German Military Legion, but they proved quite unsuitable as colonists and the venture was a fiasco.
Meanwhile, the Kaffirs became excited. War was pending between Basutoland and the Orange Free State. Prophets arose predicting the resurrection of defunct tribal ancestors and a new era of youth, beauty, and plenty for all black people who killed their cattle and stopped planting corn. Grey suspected that those chiefs who ordered obedience to the prophet were plotting to use famine as an excuse for war, and he instituted not only relief schemes but also stern police measures. The result of this fantastic episode (1856–57) was the devastation of British Kaffraria and the adjoining Transkeian country, the reduction of its native population to one-third, and the arrest and disgrace of the offending chiefs, and the abject submission of the others. Some 30,000 refugees were removed into the Western Province of the Cape, the Gcalekas were driven out beyond the Bashee River, and white farmers moved in to occupy the “empty” land. Grey's dispatches persuaded the Colonial Office that this was civilisation, and he wanted the system extended throughout Kaffraria, Natal, and Zululand.
Grey incurred official displeasure by sending too few regiments to India during the Mutiny (1857–58), keeping the German Legion mobilised at British expense, and overspending his British Kaffraria account during the 1856 crisis. He did not take kindly to criticism. The tone of his communications to London became curt, truculent, and defiant, and he lost the confidence of one Secretary of State after another. His crowning fault came when, contrary to orders, he broached the question of confederation with the Orange Free State. The idea had much to commend it, but he was trying to initiate a forward policy when the British Government was resolved on economy and withdrawal from responsibilities. He was recalled by Lytton in 1859, but was reinstated by the Duke of Newcastle with a warning that he must obey orders — a thing he never learned to do graciously. He once told his General that his duty to the Queen impelled him “to disregard or to act contrary to orders issued from the other side of the world, in entire ignorance” of local circumstances, and to treat them merely as “general indications of a line of policy” to be interpreted and modified at his discretion. But his independence went beyond any reasonable discretion that the Colonial Office could tolerate. As one Under-Secretary later wrote, it was impossible to let Grey “claim to hold his authority from the Crown on such terms that he was entitled to refuse obedience to the Home Government”.
New Zealand, 1861–68
Meanwhile, the first Taranaki war (1860–61) had broken out in New Zealand, and Grey was sent back in the hope that his influence with the Maoris might enable him to restore peace, or, if there were to be war, that he could win it quickly and dictate a humane settlement afterwards. The task proved beyond him. Certain tribes had lost faith in British justice and even Grey could not restore their belief. The settlers' demand for land was insatiable, and Maori resistance groups in the Waikato, Taranaki, and elsewhere were determined to prevent any extension of white settlement and white man's law. Grey wanted the Maori King party to recognise his authority as Governor, and offered them local self-government through their own runangas (councils). But he also urged them to open their lands to roads and white settlement, which made his offers suspect. And while he proffered peace, he prepared for war by moving troops into the lower Waikato and building military roads. His equivocal behaviour provoked renewed hostilities in Taranaki, Waikato rebelled, and the war spread through most of the North Island.
Grey was tired, overwrought, and too aware of his personal responsibilities. Moreover, he was now handicapped by having to deal with an elected General Assembly and a responsible Ministry. His efforts to retain direction of native policy and military affairs strained relations with his responsible advisers and produced complete deadlock during the Whitaker–Fox ministry (1864). He was on somewhat better terms with his next Prime Minister, F. A. Weld, but he became involved in a most acrimonious quarrel with the General Officer Commanding. When General Cameron set out deliberately to thwart the Wanganui-Taranaki campaign (1865) by “go-slow” tactics, Grey had the effrontery to come to the field of battle himself and capture Weraroa pa by means of colonial troops and friendly Maoris, after the General had said that attack would be too costly. Cameron criticised Grey and his Ministers in “secret” letters to the War Office, and the Home Government, accepting Cameron's view that the war was being fought at British expense for the profit of the colonists, ordered Grey to curtail the amount of land confiscation, stop the war, make the colony pay its share of the cost, and send the troops back to England. Grey believed that the colony was still in danger, and with the connivance of his last Prime Minister, E. W. Stafford, defied the Colonial Office and retained and employed the troops till the British Government had no option but to terminate his appointment (1868). “I do not imagine,” wrote the Duke of Buckingham, “he is likely to be re-employed!”
Later Career, 1868–98
After a short retirement to Kawau Island and a visit to England, where he failed in an attempt to enter Parliament as a Gladstonian Liberal, he re-emerged in New Zealand politics in 1874, as Superintendent of Auckland Province and member of the House of Representatives, in an unavailing effort to prevent the abolition of the provincial system of government. He continued in the House of Representatives for nearly 20 years, and was Prime Minister (1877–79), but his administration was defective and his leadership poor. He announced many of the principles of the later Liberal and Labour Parties (electoral reform, land tax, breaking up of large estates, regulation of wages and hours, education, etc.), but his ideas were too radical for his contemporaries and he failed to build up a party to implement his programme. His oratory was impressive, but often unduly maudlin and petulant, and too much given to declamation. “This,” he said, “is a revolt against despotism…. What I am resolved to maintain is this, that there shall be equal justice in representation and in the distribution of land and revenue to every class in New Zealand … equal rights to all — equal rights in education, equal rights in taxation, equal rights in representation … equal rights in every respect.” He would utter bitter personal recriminations against his political opponents, whom he was forever accusing of land jobbery, and he defied parliamentary etiquette by making personal attacks upon the Governor and the Secretary of State. “Keep your rank; keep your wealth; but do not send us out men who care nothing for us, with high titles, to make great fortunes out of us, and who refuse us dissolutions when constitutionally we are entitled to them. I say that of the Secretary of State we absolutely know nothing — for the Secretary of State we absolutely care nothing … He could confine himself to his own business.” His frequent lack of self-restraint earned for him Tancred's famous description of “a terrible and fatal man”.
In the realm of world affairs, Grey entertained visions of New Zealand expansion in the Pacific islands, and forecast with uncanny accuracy the development of the modern British Commonwealth as a group of autonomous States in friendly association with the United States of America.
He had a shrewd insight into the Maori mind, and his published collection of Maori legends is a classic. He bequeathed his large collection of writings on the African language, together with his library of incunabula and manuscripts to Cape Town in 1861, and later donated a second valuable collection to the city of Auckland. An amateur natural scientist of repute, he sent thousands of specimens of the flora and fauna to the British Museum and to Kew Gardens. His island domain of Kawau became a botanical and zoological experiment in the acclimatisation of plants and animals. Always keenly interested in education, his name is connected with many schools and institutions whose foundation and advancement he assisted, including Bloemfontein College, Auckland Grammar School, and Wanganui Collegiate.
Grey died in London on 19 September 1898, and was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. He was a strange mixture — a philanthropist impelled by altruistic motives, a visionary and a prophet, and a man of resolute, often dramatic, action. He made a real impression on those colonies in which he lived and ruled, especially in New Zealand where he spent the greater part of his life. In the final analysis, he fell short of greatness because he was too autocratic and egotistic in manner, lacked true self-control, and could never recognise his own mistakes. He pronounced judgment upon himself when, in November 1845, he boasted to the Maori chiefs assembled at Kororareka, “I never alter what I once say”. Yet, for all his failings, he earned the affection and respect of the colonists over whose destinies he presided, and especially the love of the Maori people, whose farewell message at his death was, “Horei Kerei, Aue! Ka nui matou aroha ki a koe” (“George Grey, alas! Great was our love for thee”).
by James Rutherford, M.A.(DURHAM), PH.D.(MICH.) (1906–63), Historian, Auckland.
Grey Collections (MSS), Cape Town, South Africa, and Auckland, New Zealand; Sir George Grey, K.C.B. (1812–1898), Rutherford, J. (1961); Crown Colony Government in New Zealand, McLintock, A. H. (1958); Origins of the Maori Wars, Sinclair, K. (1957).
HADFIELD, Octavius
(1814–1904).
Missionary, Bishop of Wellington, and Primate of New Zealand.
A new biography of Hadfield, Octavius appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.
Octavius Hadfield was born at Bonchurch, Isle of Wight, on 6 October 1814, the last of a family of 16. The Hadfield family traced its lineage through Derbyshire forebears to a Yorkshire seat. Octavius's father, Joseph Hadfield, married the elder daughter of General White, an Indian Army officer, and lived in affluence in London until a bank failure led to the removal of the family, first to Bonchurch and, later, to Ventnor on the Isle of Wight. The Hadfield family was remarkable for its longevity. Joseph Hadfield lived to the age of 93, his wife to 85; and the average age of their 12 children who survived to adult years was over 80. Octavius was a chronic asthmatic and his life was several times threatened by illness, but he survived until his ninety-first year.
At the age of four, Octavius left England with the rest of his family and for the next 10 years lived on the Continent, first at Brussels where, following the fashion of the time, he walked over the field of Waterloo, and then paid visits to Lille, Paris, and Tours. He returned to England in February 1829 and was admitted to Charter house. Two years later, while in the sixth form, he suffered ill health and returned home to recuperate. In 1832 he went up to Pembroke College, Oxford, where he lived in rooms once occupied by Samuel Johnson, but in May 1833 his health again broke down and he was forced to give up formal university studies. Eighteen months in the Azores restored his health and he returned to England in the summer of 1835 resolved to become a clergyman.
Early in 1836 he decided that, given health and strength, he would offer himself for missionary service. With the assistance of a brother who held the perpetual curacy at Whitchurch, he prepared for ordination. In October 1837 the Church Mission Society accepted him for mission work, but his lack of a university degree proved an obstacle to ordination. It was learned, however, that Broughton, the Bishop of Australia, was prepared to ordain suitable men without a degree for work in Australia and New Zealand. Hadfield left England in February 1838, arrived in Sydney in July, was admitted to deacon's orders in September, crossed the Tasman with Bishop Broughton at the end of the year, and was ordained priest at Waimate on 6 January 1839.
Hadfield lived at Waimate for some months, assisting in the work of the mission and learning to speak Maori. He was intended for the mission station on the East Coast, but when, in October 1839, Tamihana Te Rauparaha and Matene Te Whiwhi arrived at Waimate, seeking a missionary for the Kapiti-Waikanae district, Hadfield volunteered his services. Accompanied by Rev. Henry Williams, senior missionary, he arrived at Waikanae in January 1840 and found himself witness to a battle between the Ngati Awa of Waikanae and the Ngati Raukawa of Otaki. After Williams had negotiated a peace, Hadfield commenced his mission and, in order to avoid any appearance of partiality towards either tribe, established two headquarters and lived alternately at Otaki and Waikanae. The Ngati Awa were well disposed but Ngati Raukawa at first looked upon the Book as a poor substitute for rum and guns and it took two years to win them over. Except for breaks of three months in 1841, five years between 1844 and 1849, and a year between 1858 and 1859, when he was forced by illness to leave his mission, Hadfield lived and worked in the district for 30 years.
Hadfield's influence touched the life of his Maori flock at almost every point. His first contribution was as a peacemaker. In the troubled weeks after the Wairau Affray the Wellington settlement owed its safety largely to his restraining influence on Te Rauparaha and Te Rangihaeata. Hadfield believed that the teachings of Christianity and the arts of civilisation should proceed together in mission work. “Next to the communication of direct religious instruction”, he wrote in 1847, “the object of the missionary ought to be the civilization of the natives in every way”. As well as preaching, teaching, and catechising, he instructed in diet, clothing, building, agriculture, and animal husbandry. By 1850 the Otaki mission was looked upon as a model. Selwyn, Grey, the Godleys, and others who worshipped at Rangiatea, the Maori church at Otaki, and inspected the new village, with its weatherboard houses and private gardens, were amazed at what had been achieved so quickly. They were observing Hadfield's mission at the moment of its greatest impact. In later years, when the European population at Otaki increased, when negotiations over the sale of land made for distraction, and when liquor was sold in the district, the mission was unable to retain the single-minded devotion of its converts.
The crucial testing time for the mission occurred during the Taranaki and Waikato Wars. Ngati Raukawa sympathies were strong for Wiremu Kingi Te Rangitaki who, before his return to the Waitara in 1848, had lived at Waikanae. Several times during the war years emissaries, first from the Maori King and later from Te Ua, appealed to the Otaki Maoris to join them against the Europeans. A few joined roving war parties, others lapsed into apostasy; but there were no hostilities at Otaki.
The early years of the Maori Wars were for Hadfield himself a time of great personal anguish. He was an acknowledged authority on the language, life, and customs of the Maori. Grey, during his first governorship, had sought his opinions on the administration of native affairs and was particularly indebted to him for his elucidation of the complexities of native tenure. Gore Browne bowed to his reputation, but heeded other counsels. When fighting broke out at Taranaki Hadfield astonished the settlers and confounded the Government by publicly defending the validity of Wiremu Kingi's claim to the disputed land. With Selwyn, Abraham, Martin, and Swainson, he pressed for the re-examination of the Waitara purchase and the recall of Governor Browne. For many months Hadfield was, as he said himself, very nearly the most unpopular man in the colony. He was attacked in the press as a “pious firebrand” and accused of “something not very unlike treason”. His own analysis of the Waitara dispute is cogently expressed in his letter to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, which was later published under the title of One of England's Little Wars; his replies to his critics are to be found in The Second Year of One of England's Little Wars and the transcript of his examination before the Bar of the House of Representatives. So great was the consternation caused by Hadfield's criticism of the Government that, on 14 August 1860, Parliament took the unusual step of summoning Hadfield and McLean, the Chief Land Purchaser, for judicial questioning. Hadfield stood for four hours before the Bar of the House and, relying solely on memory, answered the 89 carefully prepared written questions that were presented to him. No one in the House disproved his assertions, which were later fully vindicated when the Waitara purchase was studied afresh. It has been claimed of the period July 1861 – May 1863 that this was the last time when the policy of the country was modified by the voice of the Church of England.
Hadfield was for 30 years a missionary; but first and always he was a churchman. His correspondence with Selwyn on the subject of the constitution of the Church of England in New Zealand dates from 1844; he was a member of the select committee that prepared the draft constitution and of the conference of bishops, clergy, and laity that adopted it.
Hadfield began his ministry as a missionary priest and ended it, 55 years later, as Primate of New Zealand. Throughout this entire period his association with the district and diocese of Wellington was continuous. His missionary district at first extended as far north as Cape Egmont and included the Wairarapa and the Marlborough Sounds. Selwyn appointed him Rural Dean of the Western District in 1844 and Archdeacon of Kapiti in 1849. Upon the creation of the diocese of Wellington in 1858, he was offered the See, but his health was precarious at the time and he declined. In 1870, when Abraham followed Selwyn to Lichfield and the office fell vacant, it was again offered to Hadfield and he accepted. He was elected primate in 1890, but retired three years later when he felt himself unequal to the responsibility. He retired to Edale, near Marton, where he lived until his death on 11 December 1904. His wife, Kate, third daughter of Archdeacon Henry Williams, whom he had married in 1852, died two years earlier. There were three children of the marriage.
Hadfield was a man of wide intellectual interests. In his youth he learned to read Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, and to speak French, Spanish, and Portuguese. He became a master of Maori dialects and idioms. He was a keen student of metaphysics. As the century progressed he found himself out of sympathy with the sceptical tendencies prevalent in philosophy, science, and Biblical criticism. John Mill's system of morals he once dismissed as one of the most marvellous instances of the abuse of human ingenuity which could be produced. Darwinism he reprobated. Essays and Reviews revealed him as a fundamentalist.
His public reputation as a fearsome controversialist arose partly from his passion for truth and his determination that right should prevail, partly from his refusal to suffer fools gladly. He had, as he once said himself, more patience with vice than stupidity, for something could still be achieved with the vicious. “I believe”, he wrote, during the controversy over the Waitara purchase, “that great crimes ought to be called by their proper names and that the interests of truth and justice ought to be paramount to every other motive.”
Hadfield was called many things during his long public career. Jerningham Wakefield, who witnessed the first months of his missionary work, wrote that the Maoris named him Rangatira Pae, the mild white man, because he opposed their ancient customs not by anger or disgust but by gentle reason. Whalers at Kapiti thought he was a gentleman in spite of his being a missionary. Settlers who disagreed with his views on the rights of the Maoris or with his opposition to secular education spoke of him contemptuously as “a political parson”. In his later years he earned a reputation for being austere and dictatorial; but as bishop and primate he felt it his special duty to preserve the Church in New Zealand from changes that were perhaps unnecessary and might prove harmful. With it all he was a shy, reserved man, much loved and admired by those who knew him intimately.
Hadfield's formal writings were concise, transparently logical, and always to the point. They included: One of England's Little Wars (1861); The Second Year of One of England's Little Wars (1861); A Sequel to One of England's Little Wars (1861); various sermons and addresses; and Maoris of By-gone Days (1902). His analysis of Maori land tenure is in the Grey Collection; his evidence before the Committee of the House is printed in A.J.H.R., E-No. 4, 1860; his Letters to the Church Missionary Society 1838–1868 and the Hadfield Family Papers are in the Alexander Turnbull Library; and his Journal, 1839, and Letters to the Hadfield Family 1833–1890 are in the Wellington Public Library.
No satisfactory study of Hadfield has yet been published. He appears prominently in Rangiatea, Eric Ramsden (1952), and From Age to Age, H. W. Monaghan (1957). A useful chronicle of his life is given in Octavius Hadfield: Bishop and Pioneer, A Memoir, R. G. C. McNab, which was printed in instalments in The Press in 1931, and may be read in typescript in the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington.
by William Leslie Renwick, M.A., Inspector of Primary Schools, Wellington.
MARTIN, Sir William
(1807–80).
First Chief Justice of New Zealand.
A new biography of Martin, William appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.
William Martin was born in Birmingham, England, in 1807, the youngest son of Henry Martin, and was educated first at King Edward VI Grammar School in Birmingham. In 1826 he proceeded to St. John's College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1829, with the Second Chancellor's Gold Medal in law. In 1831 he was elected a fellow and tutor of his college and in the following year he took his M.A. In June 1832 he entered Lincolns Inn to study law and was called to the Bar in 1836, but he did not undertake common-law work, specialising instead in drafting and conveyancing in equity chambers.
In January 1841 William Martin was appointed Chief Judge for the colony of New Zealand, taking up his duties at Auckland in September of that year. For over two years Martin was the only Judge in New Zealand and administered justice throughout the colony, but in 1843 a further Judge was appointed who become responsible for the administration of justice in the Wellington district and the South Island, although Martin, as Chief Justice, still retained general administrative control of justice over the whole colony.
Besides his purely judicial duties William Martin also considerably assisted the Government, especially in the first few years, in formulating the legislation necessary for the new colony which at the time of his arrival had merely adopted in quite general terms the law of New South Wales. Martin and the Attorney-General for the colony, William Swainson, laboured to design and formulate legislation specifically adapted for New Zealand conditions. Of special significance, so far as Martin was concerned, were the ordinances setting up the judicial system by way of sessions of Justices of the Peace, Police Magistrates' Courts, Courts of Requests, County Courts, a Supreme Court, and trial by jury. Moreover, from 1844 until 1856 Martin was one of the Commissioners appointed to formulate rules regulating the procedure of the Supreme Court.
Martin's delicate constitution was steadily debilitated by his official duties and the physical rigours of life in early New Zealand and in March 1856 he and his wife left the colony to spend the winter of 1856–57 in Rome. His health, however, still remained weak and on 12 June 1857 Martin formally tendered his resignation to the Colonial Office on that account. After a further year in England he returned to New Zealand, arriving late in December 1858, and entered into a life of official retirement at Tauraroa. Whilst he was in England, Martin was honoured with a doctorate of civil law conferred by the University of Oxford, and the New Zealand Parliament had in 1858 enacted a statute to provide him with a pension. After his return he was further honoured in 1860 with a knighthood. In 1874 Martin returned permanently to England and settled in Torquay, devoting himself to his interests in religion and languages. In his Cambridge days he had excelled in ancient languages and to these he had, whilst in New Zealand, added Maori and other Polynesian and Melanesian dialects. In 1876 he published the first volume of a work entitled Inquiries Concerning the Structure of Semitic Languages, and completed the second volume in 1878. Martin continued to reside at Torquay until his death there on 8 November 1880. He was survived by his wife, Mary Ann, whom he had married in 1841, and who was the daughter of the Rev. W. Parker, Rector of St. Ethelburga, Bishopsgate, London, and Prebendary of St. Paul's.
Apart from the official duties of his office, Martin also took a deep interest in education and the providing of educational facilities for Europeans and Maoris, and in the establishment and development of the Church of England in New Zealand, particularly in the formulation of its constitution and in its missionary activities amongst the Maoris. From the time of his arrival in New Zealand, Martin had shown a deep regard and sympathy for the Maori people, and was prepared to champion their interests whenever it seemed to him that these were endangered. Thus in 1846 he published his views on the amended constitution enacted by the British Government in a pamphlet entitled England and the New Zealanders, and he joined with Bishop Selwyn, and others in presenting a petition to the Queen against the Government's measure on the ground that it prejudiced the Maori people. Again, after his retirement and return to New Zealand in 1859, Martin vigorously opposed the action of the New Zealand Government in the securing of certain lands in Taranaki from the Maoris. His views were incorporated in a pamphlet entitled The Taranaki Question, and in a further pamphlet, Remarks on the Notes, which was an answer to a Government-sponsored pamphlet entitled Notes on Sir William Martin's Pamphlet. In 1863 Sir William further championed the Maori cause in a pamphlet entitled Observations on the Proposal to Take Native Lands Under an Act of the Assembly. In succeeding years Sir William Martin was consulted by Ministers on various aspects of the Maori problem, but his advice, designed to secure the welfare of the Maoris, was not always followed.
As only one of Martin's judgments is available to us today, it is not possible to make an accurate assessment of his position as an exponent of the law; but it is clear that during his tenure of office his contemporaries considered that as a judge of men he was honourable, able, and just. As a man, it appears that Martin was of quiet and modest disposition, avoiding social ostentation and publicity but resolutely seeking what was fair and honourable in all things. It is significant and indicative of his character and temperament that, although he never took holy orders, he often wore clerical attire and constantly participated in the practices and observances of the church, and that at the time of his death he was preparing notes on the New Testament.
by Donald Edgar Paterson, B.A., LL.M.(N.Z.), LL.M., J.S.D.(YALE), Lecturer in Jurisprudence and Constitutional Law, Victoria University of Wellington.
- Crown Colony Government in New Zealand, McLintock, A. H. (1958)
- History of New Zealand, Rusden, G. W. (3 vols., 1895)
- New Zealand Rulers and Statesmen, Gisborne, W. (1897).
SELWYN, George Augustus
(1809–78).
Anglican, Primate of New Zealand.
A new biography of Selwyn, George Augustus appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.
George Augustus Selwyn was born at Church Row, Hampstead, on 5 April 1809, the second son of William and Laetitia Frances Selwyn. His father, who came of a line of distinguished lawyers, was himself an eminent Queen's Council to whom was given the honour of instructing the Prince Consort in the constitution and laws of his adopted country. His great grand-uncle of the same name was the celebrated eighteenth century wit and dinerout. His mother was the daughter of Thomas Kynaston, of Witham, Essex. Selwyn was one of a family of six children, four boys and two girls.
He received his preparatory schooling at Ealing, the school also attended by the brothers John and Francis Newman. He went on to Eton, where he met William Gladstone, with whom he remained on terms of friendship for the rest of his life. Already at Eton he displayed the attributes of a gifted all-rounder; a contemporary later remarked that he was the best boy on the river and nearly the first in learning.
His career at St. John's College, Cambridge, to which he was admitted as a scholar in 1827, followed a similar pattern. He bathed all the year round in all states of the weather, earned the reputation of being a great pedestrian, and pulled number seven in the first Oxford-Cambridge boat race, held in 1829. He graduated B.A. in 1831 as second classic of his year, was elected to a fellowship of his college, travelled briefly in France, and, in May 1831, returned to Eton as private tutor to the sons of Lord Powis. He proceeded to M.A. in 1834. Meanwhile he prepared for holy orders. He was ordained deacon in 1833 and priest in 1834, and served in the parish of Windsor, first as a volunteer, later as regular curate. On 25 June 1839 he was married to Sarah Richardson, daughter of Sir John Richardson, a Judge in Her Majesty's Court of Common Pleas. They had two sons and a daughter. The second son, John Richardson (1844–98), was later ordained by his father and subsequently succeeded the ill-fated Patteson as second bishop of Melanesia.
After his marriage Selwyn resigned his fellowship, settled down to domestic life on a modest competency, and waited for the signs of preferment. A comfortable rural parsonage among the domains of Powis Castle appeared not unlikely as an immediate prospect. Instead, he accepted, both as a duty and as a challenge, the appointment of missionary bishop to the newly created diocese of New Zealand. He was consecrated at Lambeth Chapel on 17 October 1841 and, with Mrs Selwyn, their infant son William, and a small ecclesiastical entourage, left for New Zealand in December 1841, his departure providing the occasion for one of the Rev. Sydney Smith's recorded shafts of humour.
Selwyn found Anglicanism in New Zealand in a string of mission stations and left it a properly constituted province of the Church of England. He was the missionary bishop par excellence, combining zeal and energy with vision and a genius for organisation. His several visitations to all parts of his vast diocese have justly been acclaimed as feats of dedication and endurance. His first visitation was characteristic. It lasted six months Selwyn visited every settlement and mission station in the North Island; and he travelled 2,277 miles -1,180 by ship, 249 in canoes or boat, 86 on horseback and 762 on foot. Selwyn once remarked that he averaged about one confirmation for every mile of travel. His second episcopal tour took him 3,000 miles, mostly by sea in tiny schooners, and he visited all the settlements in the South Island, including the isolated sealing stations on Ruapuke and Stewart Islands, and the remote Chathams.
A slip of the pen had inadvertently placed the northern boundary of Selwyn's diocese 34° N instead of 34 S of the equator; and, the error not being revoked, his spiritual responsibilities extended far into the Pacific. Selwyn welcomed the added obligation, prayed that his diocese would become the missionary centre of the Southern Ocean, and, between 1847 and 1851, made four annual cruises among the savage islands of Melanesia, travelling more than 24,000 miles in a 17–ton schooner. During his visit to England in 1854–55, he greatly advanced the work of the Melanesian mission by enlisting the services of the Rev. John Patteson and securing, through public subscription, the Southern Cross as a mission schooner.
Selwyn was deeply convinced of the importance of cathedral institutions. One of his first acts after his arrival in New Zealand was to establish the Theological College of St. John's for the instruction of young men of both races studying for admission to holy orders. In 1850 the Rev. Charles Abraham, close friend of Selwyn during his Eton tutorship, arrived from England and took charge of the college. As the Melanesian mission grew, so did the number and diversity of the native scholars receiving instruction: 10 different languages were spoken at St. John's in 1854. Selwyn developed plans for the establishment of a second theological college at Porirua on land donated by the Ngati Raukawa, but this project came to nothing.
Throughout his episcopacy Selwyn applied himself to the task of creating an organisation and a form of government that would attend to all matters spiritual and temporal touching the Church of England in New Zealand. He took the initial steps in 1844 when he convened his first synod; the final form of the constitution was adopted by the General Assembly in 1858 and brought into operation at the first general synod in 1859. During the late fifties and early sixties, too, the original diocese was progressively subdivided into more manageable episcopal units. Only in respect of its endowments was the Church less than fully self-supporting when Selwyn left the country in 1868.
Selwyn's contribution to the colony was by no means confined to his episcopal duties and the spiritual care of his flock. He took a leading part in the major constitutional and political issues of the time. Especially on all matters touching the rights of the Maori he was both vigilant and well informed; and his advice was often sought by successive Governors and leading men in the administration of the colony. If he believed the actions of governments or settlers to be mistaken or mischievous he did not hesitate to make his criticisms known; in 1847 he entered a timely protest against the land regulations that accompanied Earl Grey's proposed constitution; during the Waitara dispute and the subsequent Taranaki War he incurred the bitter reproaches of the settlers and the censure of the local government for his public defence of Wiremu Kingi. His own explanation of his efforts at mediation between the two races is eloquently recorded in his Pastoral Letter … to the Members of the Church of England in the Settlement of New Plymouth, written in September 1856.
Several times, when relations between the races were in danger of degenerating or had already degenerated into armed conflict, Selwyn's high sense of duty took him to the scene of disturbance. In March 1845, upon receiving word of the destruction of the town, he hastened to Kororareka and, with the Rev. Henry Williams, ministered to the wounded of both sides and did much to calm the fears of settlers in the north. Later in the same year, with Wellington under the threat of attack by Te Rangihaeata and the Rev. Octavius Hadfield removed by illness from his post, Selwyn took up temporary residence at Waikanae in an effort to preserve the peace. At the request of the Governor he went to Taranaki in August 1855 to do what he could to bring peace to the contending Maori parties in a land dispute that threatened to end in fighting. During the Waikato War he acted as military chaplain to the troops; but his sacramental comfort was administered to Pakeha and Maori alike. The Waikato War and its aftermath brought bitter disappointment to Selwyn in his missionary labours among the Maori people. As he witnessed their alienation from the Church and then, under the influence of the Hauhau cult, their apostasy, he felt himself to be “watching over the remnant of a decaying people and the remnant of a decaying faith”.
But the post-war problems of the Church in New Zealand were not to receive his attention. Selwyn was summoned to attend the Lambeth Conference, which was held in September 1867, and while in England was persuaded to succeed Lonsdale as Bishop of Lichfield. He was enthroned at Lichfield on 9 January 1868. He returned to New Zealand, made his farewells, and, on 20 October 1868, amid scenes of great sorrow and affection, he departed.
For the remaining 10 years of his life Selwyn devoted himself with unabated vigour to the care of an overburdened diocese. As he had done in New Zealand, in Lichfield he brought episcopal influence to bear on the remotest hamlet. He succeeded in introducing synods into the various counties of his diocese; and through his mission work among miners, railway navvies, prisoners, and bargees emphasised the obligation of the Church to men of all sorts and conditions. Characteristically, he distinguished himself by his exertion and his conduct on the occasion of the Pelsall Colliery accident in 1872.
Selwyn died on 11 April 1878 and was buried in Lichfield Cathedral. Bishops Abraham and Hob-house assisted at the burial service and the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone and Sir William Martin were among the pallbearers. As a memorial to his life and influence Selwyn College, Cambridge, was erected by public subscription and incorporated by royal charter in 1882. Selwyn's portrait, by George Richmond, R.A., belongs to St. John's College, Cambridge.
Gladstone said of Selwyn that he reintroduced among the Anglican clergy the pure heroic type. His ideal was a disciplined, duly ordered Church community, and to this ideal his many gifts were completely dedicated. As deacon, priest, and bishop he laboured to strengthen the cathedral institutions of the Church and, through synodal action, to bring the influence of bishops to bear on the laity of all classes as well as the clergy. Roman Catholicism and ritualism were alike repugnant to him; he regretted but tolerated Dissent; and while he prayed for the ultimate union of Christians he set himself the more limited objective of securing peace among the sects.
His frank, manly, and engaging character excited admiration, and many anecdotes are recorded that testify to his generous spirit. His handsome, athletic physique was of equal advantage in the drawing room and in the wilds of his colonial diocese; he was as acceptable to sawyers and sailors as to society ladies. (He was said to have acquired an amount of nautical knowledge that would not have disgraced an admiral. He always kept regular watches when travelling by sea.) He had a masterly power of organising and arranging, combined with the happy art of inspiring others with zeal for his own aims and views. He did not entirely escape the defect of his own virtues, however, and was accused by some of being overbearing in the face of opposition. He was an impressive speaker and had a genius for apt quotation; his sermons delivered before Cambridge University in 1854 were particularly esteemed for their conviction and eloquence. His personal ethics were probably fairly indicated in two sentences which he once offered as advice to all young men: “Be temperate in all things”, and “Incumbite remis” (“Bend to your oars”).
by William Leslie Renwick, M.A., Inspector of Primary Schools, Wellington.
- Letters from Bishop Selwyn and Others, 1842–67 (four vols. typescript), Turnbull Library
- Selwyn Papers, 1839–65 (typescript), Turnbull Library
- Memoir of the Life and Episcopate of G. A. Selwyn, Tucker, H. W. (1879, two vols.)
- Bishop Selwyn, Curteis, G. H. (1889)
- Churchman Militant, Evans, J. H. (1964).