On the other side were the native tribes, who, as the price of land went in those days, had certainly received the equivalent for a considerable territory.  There was room for an equitable arrangement just as there was most pressing need for promptitude.  Speed was the first thing needful, also the second, and the third.  Instead of speed the settlers got a Royal Commission.  A Commissioner was appointed, who did not arrive until two years after the Governor, and whose final award was not given for many months more.  When he did give it, he cut down the Company’s purchase of twenty million acres to two hundred and eighty-three thousand.  As for land-claims of private persons, many of them became the subjects of litigation and petition, and some were not settled for twenty years.  Why three or four Commissioners were not sent instead of one, and sent sooner, the official mind alone knows.  Meantime, the weary months dragged on, and the unfortunate settlers of the Company were either not put in possession of their land at all, or had as little security for their farms as for their lives.  They were not allowed to form volunteer corps, though living in face of ferocious and well-armed savages.  Yet the Governor who forbade them to take means to defend themselves had not the troops with which to defend them.  To show the state of the country it may be noted that the two tribes from whom Colonel Wakefield bought the land round Port Nicholson quarrelled amongst themselves over the sale.  The Ngatiraukawa treacherously attacked the Ngatiawa, were soundly beaten, and lost seventy men.  At first, it is true, settlers and natives got on excellently well together.  The new-comers had money, and were good customers.  But as time went on, and the settlers exhausted their funds and hopes, they ceased to be able to buy freely.  And when they found the Maoris refusing to admit them to the farms for which they had paid L1 an acre in London, feeling grew more and more acute.  The Company’s settlement at Port Nicholson was perversely planted just on that place in the inner harbour which is exposed to the force of the ocean.  It had to be shifted to a more sheltered spot, and this the natives denied they ever sold.  That was but one of a series of disputes which led to murder and petty warfare, and were hardly at an end seven years later.  The settlers, though shut out of the back country, did, however, hold the townland on which they had squatted, and which is now the site of Wellington, the capital of New Zealand.

Cooped up in their narrow plots by the sea, Colonel Wakefield and his settlers established a provisional Government.  Captain Hobson, hearing probably some very exaggerated account of this, sent down his Lieutenant, Mr. Willoughby Shortland, in a Government vessel, with sailors and marines, to put down this act of insubordination.  Mr. Shortland, who suffered from the not uncommon failing of a desire to magnify his office made the process as ridiculous as possible.