Chap. IX. HARMONY INTERRUPTED BY A STRANGER. 270 
the injfliction of summary punishment as vengeance by 
the oiFended party, according to their former customs. 
The first serious interruption to the working of the 
young institution had been caused by a stranger. A 
dispute had arisen between Captain Pearson, the master 
of the barque Integrity, and Mr. Wade, who had char- 
tered her from Hobart Town. The charterer had applied 
for the interference of the authorities, and the captain 
had been arrested, on the 14th, by warrant and brought 
before the Police Magistrate. He had refused to re- ;:s' 
cognize the court, and had accordingly been committed. 
He escaped, however, on board his ship, and defied our 
puny constabulary force, which had as yet enforced 
the law rather by the unanimous support of the body 
of colonists than by its physical or numerical strength. 
When I arrived, he was still on board his ship, and 
negotiations were pending as to the manner in which 
the affair might be arranged. 
On the 19th, the Reverend Henry Williams had ar- 
rived from the Bay of Islands, in the Ariel schooner. 
The objects of his mission had not been made publicly 
known ; but they transpired in the course of his com- 
munications with Colonel Wakefield and some of the 
other colonists. 
The Council had truly observed in their address, 
that the recent proclamations of the Governor of New 
South Wales and of the Lieutenant-Governor of New 
Zealand had formally disclaimed the existence of any 
right of sovereignty over New Zealand in the English 
Crown ; and as Mr. Busby, the late British Resident 
in this country, had often been likened to a man-of- 
war without guns, so the next anomaly in politics pre- 
sented to the inhabitants of the Bay of Islands had been 
a Lieutenant-Governor over nothing. 
It appeared that one of the first measures of Captain 
VOL. I. T 
