HISTORICAL REVIEW OF NEW ZEALAND. 



1001 



England, was to belong to the employer, the cultivation of it to the workman, who, 

 however, could easily work up into the position of a proprietor. The public lands wen- 

 sold at such a price as would preclude their too easy acquisition, and labourers were to 

 be conveyed from the one hemisphere to the other by the proceeds of the sale of the 

 soil. The system was one of the means devised to provide labour and a public works 

 fund, but the discovery of gold-fields in California and in the South Pacific about the 

 middle of the century tended in some measure to destroy its applicability. 



A month before the rejection of the Association's Bill a public meeting was held 

 at Kororareka, in the Bay of Islands, to consider the best means of preserving life and 



TIIK BREAKWATER, NEW PLYMOUTH. 



property in the district, when the Kororareka Association was formed on the lines of 

 vigilance committees in America. Soon after the information of the proceedings at 

 Kororareka reached England, the Colonial Office saw that further delay would be fatal 

 to British interests, and the annexation of Xew Zealand to the Empire was resolved on. 

 Still it proceeded tardily. In December, 1838, it was proposed that a British Consul 

 should be appointed to reside in New Zealand, and Sir George Gipps was officially 

 informed of the intention ; but it was not until the middle of the next year that the 

 selection of a consular agent was made, and it was determined that " certain parts of 

 the islands of New Zealand should be added to the colony of New South Wales as a 

 dependency of that Government, and that Captain Hobson, R.N., should proceed thither 

 as British Consul to fill the office of Lieutenant-Governor." In June and July the 

 arrangements were gazetted ; in August, Lord Normanby gave the Consul his instruc- 

 tions, and that official at once prepared to proceed with his family in H.M.S. Druid to 

 Port Jackson, where he arrived on Christmas Eve of 1839. 



Captain Hobson's instructions were to establish a form of civil Government with the 

 consent of the natives, to treat for the recognition of her Majesty's authority over the 



