’Why, he would be a very bad man; a man deserving of most severe punishment.’

’If a man brought about the death of several other men, what would you say?’

’Who could be so cruel?  It is not possible that anybody could be so wicked.’

’If that is your view, Tawhiao, what words would you have for a man who destroyed the happiness of a whole nation, and that his own?’

Tawhiao could not frame words for such a person, more especially as he now began to realise that the parables were fitting himself.  ‘Yes, yes,’ was his exclamation, ‘I understand, I understand!’ Then he cried like a baby.

What judgment would England pass upon King Tawhiao if, while a visitor there, he gave way to drink?  He would disgrace, not himself only, but the whole Maori race.

‘Alas, yes,’ sobbed Tawhiao; ‘what can be done?’

‘I’ll tell you,’ said Sir George gently.  ’We’ll both sign a pledge, agreeing to abstain from alcohol in any form.  That pledge will mutually bind us for a term of years, and there could be no more sacred contract.’

It was a bright contract for Tawhiao.  And now here he was, at a New Zealand wayside station, where there drew up the train carrying Sir George Grey, on his last New Zealand journey, to the Plymouth-bound liner.  ‘I wished him farewell,’ Sir George described this parting, ’and he wept.  I was much touched, remembering that he had been all through a Maori war against me.’

That was retrospect.  The second Maori war afforded Sir John Gorst an experience not without humour.

In Sir George Grey’s phrase, Sir John Gorst went out to New Zealand to do good and did it.  He conducted a school for the education of the Maoris, and acted as Government Commissioner.  ’He had been at work for some time,’ Sir George added, ’and had achieved excellent results altogether.  He was popular with the Maoris, and indeed they never had a truer friend.’  However, some of those ardent in the ‘king movement,’ regarded his mere presence in the heart of their territory, as an influence against its success.  The crisis arrived from an encounter of wits which fairly set the Waikato river on fire.

‘The Maoris,’ Sir George retailed this affair, ’had founded a paper to propagate the king movement.  They christened it by a name which might be freely translated as “The Giant Eagle Flying Aloft.”  With my approval, Sir John Gorst brought out a protagonist to the Maori weekly.  I furnished the requisites for the venture, the money coming from revenues applicable to native purposes.

’The idea was to counteract the teaching of “The Giant Eagle Flying Aloft”; to show how absurd it was for any section of the Maoris to think they could beat the English.  Our organ was designed to be educative, and in that respect to help in the maintenance of peace.  The title of the Maori paper was in allusion to a great eagle, which, at a remote period, had existed in New Zealand.