Chap. XVII. CONFLICTING SYSTEMS OF GOTERNMENT. 465 
" several independent chiefs :" but this being a simple 
untruth, it has passed for nothing ; and in fact it is 
admitted on all hands that the Treaty of IVa'itangi 
has no application to the Middle Island. But that 
is not all. Governor Hobson did not wait till he had 
obtained his 512 signatures, to proclaim the Queen's 
sovereignty over New Zealand. On the 21st of May, 
when Governor Hobson had only obtained the sig- 
natures of the chiefs of the Bay of Islands, Hoki- 
anga, Kaitaia, and Manukau, (if indeed he had then 
received the signatures from the last-named,) he 
proclaimed the Queen's sovereignty over the North 
Island. 
The Treaty of TVaitangi has been truly described by 
the House of Commons' Committee of last year as 
" little more than a legal fiction." 
The succeeding acts of the Government towards the 
native population were akin to this first step in im- 
becility. Still guided by the all-powerful missionaries 
in the person of Mr. Clarke, they had insisted upon 
the interpretation of that part of the Treaty which re- 
lated to the lands of the natives, according to the com- 
plicated and intricate rights of property which prevail 
in the oldest and most civilized state, although these 
were surely more incomprehensible to the natives than 
are even their vague ideas on the subject to ourselves. 
But they had constantly remained in doubt as to the bear- 
ing and effect of that clause which related to the subjec- 
tion of the natives to the sovereign dominion of Great 
Britain. Vacillating, feeble, and uncertain, guided by 
no sound or consistent principle, and unassisted by a 
single man of really enlarged and unshackled mind, the 
Government had now enforced the Treaty with the 
utmost rigour in one or two instances ; in others had 
only vainly threatened to do so ; and in some had even 
VOL. II. 2 H 
