ored peace. So outrageous were the scenes in the Bay that its own
people had to organize some sort of government. This took the form of
a vigilance committee, each member of which came to its meetings armed
with musket and cutlass. Their tribunal was, of course, that of Judge
Lynch. They arrested certain of the most unbearable offenders, tarred
and feathered them, and drummed them out of the township. When
feathers were lacking for the decoration, the white fluff of the
native bullrush made a handy substitute. In the absence of a gaol, the
Vigilants were known to keep a culprit in duress by shutting him up
for the night in a sea-chest, ventilated by means of gimlet-holes.

They were not, however, the only representatives of law and order in
New Zealand. The British authorities in New South Wales had all along,
perforce, been keeping their eye on this troublesome archipelago in
the south-east. In 1813 Governor Macquarie made Sydney shipmasters
sailing for the country give bonds for a thousand pounds not to kidnap
Maori men, take the women on board their vessels, or meddle with
burying grounds. In 1814 he appointed the chiefs Hongi and Koro Koro,
and the missionary Kendall, to act as magistrates in the Bay of
Islands. Possibly the two first-named magistrates were thus honoured
to induce them not to eat the third. No other advantage was gained
by the step. A statute was passed in England in 1817 authorizing the
trial and punishment of persons guilty of murder and other crimes in
certain savage and disturbed countries, amongst which were specified
New Zealand, Otaheite, and Honduras. Two others, in 1823 and 1828,
gave the Australian courts jurisdiction over Whites in New Zealand.
One White ruffian was actually arrested in New Zealand, taken back to
Sydney, and executed. But this act of vigour did not come till the end
of 1837. Then the crime punished was not one of the atrocities which
for thirty years had made New Zealand a by-word. The criminal, Edward
Doyle, paid the extreme penalty of the law for stealing in a dwelling
in the Bay of Islands and "putting John Wright in bodily fear."
Governor Bourke issued a special proclamation expressing hope that
Doyle's punishment would be a warning to evil-doers in New Zealand.
Governor Darling, as already mentioned, prohibited the inhuman traffic
in preserved and tattooed heads by attaching thereto a penalty of L40,
coupled with exposure of the trader's name.

In England more than