, and though their age lies not so far
behind us in point of time, it really belongs to an order of things
quite different from our own.

The first point of contrast with our present somewhat overgoverned
society is the absence of authority. The missionaries and settlers were
sent out to a wild country to do the best they could. The bishops of the
Church in England did not claim, nor believe that they possessed, any
jurisdiction over them. The direction of the mission lay with the
Committee of the C.M.S., but unless it sent out a sentence of dismissal,
what could such a distant body do? If it sent out instructions to New
Zealand, no answer could be expected for a whole year, during which time
circumstances might have altogether changed. Short of actual dismissal,
its power of discipline was but slight. Much of its power must of
necessity be delegated to Marsden in Australia, but Marsden's authority
was limited in the same way, though not quite to the same extent. He
could not visit the mission often, nor could he secure that his
instructions should be obeyed. As a matter of fact they were often not
obeyed. "I know nothing I can say will have any influence upon their
minds," he once wrote in despair; "they have followed their own way too
long, and despise all the orders that have been given them by their
superiors." This censure applied to certain individuals among the first
settlers, and when one reads the letters and journals of these same men,
one cannot help feeling some sympathy with them in their position.
Possibly Marsden, with his exceptional powers, expected rather much of
average human nature. But the point is that the position of an early
missionary was an independent one. There was no civil government at all,
and the instructions from ecclesiastical superiors were necessarily
infrequent, often lacking in knowledge, never quite up to date, and
backed by no compelling force except the threat of "disconnection" from
the Society.

Under such circumstances everything depended on the personalities of the
men themselves. Those who came before 1823 were on the whole
disappointing. Marsden frequently compared them to the twelve spies who
all failed, excepting Caleb and Joshua. Unfortunately he never lets us
know who his "Caleb" and his "Joshua" were. But one of them can hardly
have been other than the young schoolmaster, Francis Hall, whose letters
reveal a singularly earnest and beautiful spirit. Even he, however,