452 ADVENTURE IN NEW ZEALAND. Chap. XVIT. 
The Secretaries of the Missionary Societies were pro- 
bably unable to conceive or appreciate so provident and 
truly great a philanthropy. For they refused to accept 
the assistance in their holy task of a complete Christian 
and civilized community, with its ministers, its colleges, 
its churches, its benevolent and highly educated Withers 
of families, its settlers of high honour and warm heart, 
its humanizing institutions of all sorts ; and, above all, 
its very minute and anxious provisions for the smooth 
gliding of these benefits into the very nature and dis- 
position of the savages, so that no harsh innovation or 
rude shock of change should shatter the rough marble 
while it was being moulded by a delicate hand into 
the perfect forms of life and beauty. 
The unaided efforts of the missionaries were acknow- 
ledged on all hands to be insufficient for the salvation 
of the New Zealanders, while irregular colonization 
could go on under the so-called independent govern- 
ment of the chiefs, the missionaries, and their powerless 
Resident ; which, indeed, extended little further south, 
even by reputation, than the present site of Auckland. 
Colonization, under the truly great and humane sys- 
tem of the Association, promised all the benefits of 
Marsden's plans on a larger scale, joined to a power of 
restraining the lawless obstructors of Christianizing 
improvement by a powerful and acknowledged Govern- 
ment. Accordingly the Association unfolded all its 
views to the Missionary Societies, with a perfect right 
to hope for their cordial concurrence. 
In June 1837, a deputation from the New Zealand 
Association, consisting of Captain Wellesley, R.N., 
my late uncle Captain Arthur Wakefield, and Dr. 
Evans, waited upon Mr. Dandeson Coates, the Secre- 
tary, on the subject of co-operating with the Church 
of England Missionary Society. They received the 
