466 ADVENTURE IN NEW ZEALAND. Chap. XVH. 
denied its own right to take any such course. With- 
out making exceptional laws in favour of the natives, 
according to a wise suggestion of the New Zealand 
Association, contained in Mr. Baring's Bill of 1838, 
the Government had preferred to allow individuals 
among them to become, as it suited their own pleasure, 
exceptions to the laws actually in existence, to which 
they were falsely supposed to be yielding obedience. 
And from the first riots in the Bay of Islands in 1840 
to the JVairau massacre, and to the recent stamping 
on the constables in Pipitea pa, there had been nu- 
merous proofs of the nonentity of the Treaty in this 
respect, whether by the connivance, the timidity, or the 
sheer incapacity of the Government by whom it had 
been originated. 
Of course, this tangled web of imbecility clashed 
violently with the efforts of the Company and of the 
colonists to adopt a more extended philanthropy. As 
the Colonial Office was prompted by the influential 
Missionary Societies at home in its unreasonable war 
upon the Company, so the missionaries and the Govern- 
ment officers in the colony were leagued against the 
Agents of the Company and the settlers who had come 
out under its auspices. The noble system of Reserves 
was smothered in its birth, and a schoolboy son of Mr. 
Clarke sent to protect the natives from the wild pro- 
jects of their would-be benefactors. And then the 
effects were laughed at, and held up to scorn as the 
results of the system of the Company and their settlers. 
This was but a poor apology for the total want of such 
provisions in the settlements of the Government. 
If a chieftain was favourable to the plans of the colo- 
nists, like JVarepori or E Puni, he was degraded by 
the neglect of the authorities, and his claim to land or 
chieftainship was considered little or none. But if. 
