influential period, of the Bay of Islands. Governor and bishop had both
left it, and the war had dealt its missions a blow from which they were
never to recover. The visitor to Paihia to-day sees a few silent houses
ranged along the quiet beach, and amongst them the ruins of the building
in which the first printing-press in New Zealand was set up. A church of
more modern date contains some remains of the early period, and at the
other end of the beach stands the dismantled house in which Carleton
lived and wrote. But the most enduring object is the fine granite cross
which was erected long afterwards by the Maori Church to the memory of
Henry Williams--"a Preacher of the Gospel of Peace, and a Father of the
Tribes."
NOTE.--With regard to the rest of those whom Mr. Collier calls the
"peccant missionaries" there is not much to be said. One of them,
Clarke, was certainly treated with strange injustice. The governor
brought an action against him in the Supreme Court, as already
related. He did not defend himself, but was dismissed by the C.M.S. on
a charge of having gone to law with the governor! A full list of the
landgrants may be seen in Thompson's "Story of New Zealand," Vol. II.,
p. 155. It is not pleasant reading; one could have wished that the
missionaries had not been driven to acquire land as they did. Perhaps
some of them were led on further than was wise or right. Taylor's
claim for 50,000 acres was startling, but he bought the land at Henry
Williams' request to save a war between two tribes who both claimed
it. When the grants came to be legally made by Governor Fitzroy,
Taylor received only 1,704 acres. Maunsell, Chapman, Hadfield, Morgan,
Stack, and some others, never bought any land at all; and the amounts
claimed by some of the others were very small. The total number of
missionaries on the schedule is 36: the total number of acres granted
is 66,713. It must be remembered that the families of the grantees
were generally large, and that the quality of the land was usually
very poor.
CHAPTER XI.
SACRIFICE AND HEALING.
(1850-1856).
We must suffer for the sin of others as for our own; and in this
suffering we find a healing and purifying power and element.
--_Shorthouse._
The land-grant controversy did not, of course, occupy the whole of
Bishop Selwyn's time during the years of its painful and weary course.
The journeys by land and sea were
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