llington had been in 1843 and
1846, for preservation from hostile attack.

Yet this was the man whom the Government now drove into opposition and
rebellion. What were his crimes that he should be so treated? In the
first place he and his tribe owned the beautiful Waitara lands which lay
close to New Plymouth, and a Naboth is always open to the old charge,
"Thou didst blaspheme God and the king." Governor Gore-Browne, upon whom
lay the direct responsibility in native matters, was an honourable man
and the brother of a highly-respected English bishop; but, Ahab-like, he
was brought to regard Te Rangitaake as a "rebel" and "an infamous
character." And who was the Jezebel in this case? The Government of the
day had much to do with the governor's decision, yet the Stafford
ministry is looked upon as the ablest and not the least upright that has
occupied the treasury benches in New Zealand. These ministers also (it
is said) had been misled. By whom? The blame is laid upon the land
commissioner, Mr. Parris, whose later reports were certainly very
misleading. Yet Parris began with a desire to be fair to all parties. He
also succumbed to outside pressure. If we enquire further, we come upon
the ugly serpent of sectarian jealousy. Taranaki was in the Wesleyan
sphere of influence: Te Rangitaake was a churchman. For the crime of
belonging to the Church of England he incurred the violent enmity of a
certain Wesleyan minister, who had never forgiven Bishop Selwyn for
refusing to allow him to sign a church burial register. Yet this
minister thought himself in the right, and could at least point to a
murder which had been committed, not by Rangitaake himself, but by
another Maori with whom this chief had formed an alliance. Who can
judge in such a case, especially when the tangled skein is still further
complicated by the action of an astute Maori whose affections had been
wounded by a damsel who deserted him in order to become the
daughter-in-law of Te Rangitaake? But it is no pleasant thought that the
decision to seize the Waitara was made by the Government in Auckland
during the very days when the first General Synod was sitting in
Wellington, and that amongst the men who thus forced on an unjust and
unholy war were at least two who had sat in the Taurarua Conference and
had helped to shape the constitution of the Church.

The war thus begun in injustice and ingratitude, was marked by what
seemed a contemptuous defiance of religion