IST - ITY 
CIVILIZATION 

THE SOUTH PACIFIC 



W. ALLEN YOUNG 



HUMPHREY M1LFORD 
FORD UNIVERSITY PR 

LONDON ttDINBURCH AGEN 

NEW rOWN 

BOMBAY 




THE LIBRARY 

of 
VICTORIA UNIVERSITY 

Toronto 

Ecumenical Forum 



The George A. warDurron 
Memorial Collection 

Presented To 

The Canadian school of Missions 
by A. A. Hvde, Esq., Wichita, Kansas, 



Christianity and Civilization 
in the South Pacific 

Title influence of missionaries upon European 

expansion in the Pacific during the 

Nineteenth Century 

(The Robert Herbert Memorial Prize Essay 
1920) 

BY 

W. ALLEN YOUNG 



HUMPHREY MILFORD 
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 

LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW COPENHAGEN 
NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE CAPE TOWN 
BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS SHANGHAI PEKIN 

1922 



Printed in Great Britain 
Turnb-ull &> Shears, Eelinl-vrgk 



TO 
MY WIFE 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

FOREWORD 7 

PART I 
A GENERAL SURVEY 9 

PART II 

BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

CHAP. 

I. EXPLORATION ..... 45 

II. THE ANNEXATION CONTROVERSY 54 

III. PEACEMAKING .... 65 

IV. THE LABOUR TRAFFIC ... 86 
V. " NEW GUINEA FOR THE NEW GUINEANS" 96 

VI. "THE NEW GUINEANS FOR NEW GUINEA . in 

PART III 
CONCLUSION 125 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 133 



FOREWORD 

THE subject of this essay is so wide that the writer has 
found himself compelled to limit the field of his inquiry 
in two directions. 

First, this essay will deal only with the British 
missionaries, but there is justification for this besides 
the necessity of brevity. For it was the British mis 
sionaries whose influence upon European expansion was 
most marked, since they attempted, and in part suc 
ceeded, in directing it along channels consistent with 
their faith ; while the initiative of the French and of 
the German missionaries was curbed by their respective 
states, upon whom they were more dependent for pro 
tection and upon whose policy therefore they had less 
effect. 

Secondly, this essay will not attempt to treat inten 
sively the whole field of British missionary work. The 
writer has confined himself to pointing out certain land 
marks in a short general survey, and afterwards to 
looking at the history of British New Guinea in rather 
more detail, since it provides the most vivid illustration 
of his argument. 

The following brief summary of that argument may 
help the reader in following the writer s rapid glances 
at the history of islands which are dotted in a curious 
and untidy profusion over an ocean covering about one 
third of the earth s surface. 
. i. The history of the Pacific in the nineteenth century 



S FOREWORD 

is remarkable for the appearance of a new ideal in the 
theory of colonization, namely, the protection and the 
development of the native races as a duty of the expanding 
race, whose best interest, however, is bound up with the 
performance of it. 

2. The British missionaries were the sponsors of this 
ideal ; and by their own organization and work, and by 
the direct influence they exerted upon the government 
at home, and upon those in the colonies, and upon the 
administrators in the Pacific, they were able to mould 
policy in conformity with this ideal. 

3. They were able to do this more completely in New 
Guinea than elsewhere, because here their methods were 
more in harmony with their ideal, and the territory was 
fortunate in having administrators who realized the value 
of their assistance, and made full use of it. 

British New Guinea received its present official name 
" Papua " in 1906, but I have retained the name by which 
the territory was known during the period under review. 

I am much indebted to Mr Evans Lewin, the Librarian 
of the Royal Colonial Institute, and to Mr J. Pike, the 
Assistant-Librarian, for their invaluable help in research. 

My gratitude is also due to Mr George Johnson for 
information upon German policy ; to Sir George R. 
Le Hunte, G.C.M.G., for his commentary upon the 
more recent history of Missionary work in Papua ; to 
Mr David Chamberlin of the London Missionary Society 
for kindly revising the proofs ; and to Mr J. C. Masterman 
of Christchurch for his unfailing sympathy and en 
couragement. 

W. A. Y. 

CHRISTCHURCH 

OXFORD 

1921 



PART I 

A GENERAL SURVEY 

" The dervishes asked me : 

Whom you think a rare man that you have met in your life ? 
A man without a right ideal. 

" They asked again : 

And whom you think a still rarer man ? 
A man without a wrong method. " 

R. A. VRAN-GAVRAN, 
The New Age, April 4, 1918. 

TO-DAY there are many who are returning anxiously to 
a study of Western civilization in the light of its recent 
failure. The acquisitive instinct, which has been a 
mainspring in the development of both individuals and 
of groups, has resulted in a war which has menaced the 
existence of the civilization the same instinct has helped 
to produce. The complicated framework of Western 
society, which has hitherto stood, and grown, by means 
of a delicate adjustment of human relationships based 
upon rights, rather than duties, appears to be tottering. 
Those who notice and deplore the divorce to-day between 
religion and politics, and between ideals and methods, 
are looking despairingly to the recent past for a sign 
of a new political principle, which might be used to 
repair and gradually to rebuild the civilization of the 
West. 

For such gloomy thoughts, a study of the history of the 
Pacific during the nineteenth century is a good antidote. 
The value of a civilization is judged best in its relation to 



io A GENERAL SURVEY 

others, and it is in the impact of the West upon the races 
of the Pacific during the nineteenth century, that there 
appears a new ideal in Western political thought. For in 
spite of grave blots upon this page of history, the leaders 
in colonizing theory no longer accepted the view that the 
colonizing race had a right to demand from the savage 
race submission, and labour, and wealth, but underlined 
the record upon this page with a new principle, that it was 
the duty of the colonizing race to serve the interests of 
the native inhabitants by protecting and educating them. 
And the very blots emphasized this, for these leaders 
opened the eyes of Europeans to the recognition that 
the record was marred, and not decorated, by these blots. 

The leaders who did this were the British missionaries. 
To appreciate rightly the significance of the part they 
played in European expansion during this century how 
ever, it is necessary to glance at the characteristics of 
that expansion in the previous centuries. 

The history of European expansion in the Pacific 
divides roughly into three periods. The first starts 
at about the time of the Papal Bull of 1493 x when, 
worse than a divorce between religion and politics, 
religion lost its identity in the ambitions of kings. 
The second starts in 1577, when Drake sailed forth 
in defiance of the religious imperialism of Spain, and 
it is marked by the absence of a religious motive, 
and by the predominance of the commercial motive. 
But in 1795 the third period begins with the founding 
of the London Missionary Society. This Society, and 
other similar societies, breathed a new life into theories 

1 In a Bull dated May 4th, 1493, Pope Alexander VI. divided the 
new world between the kings of Portugal and Spain prohibiting any 
others, " although of Imperial and regal dignity," from trading or 
travelling "without special licence" of them >" under the pain of the 
sentence of excommunication." 



A GENERAL SURVEY n 

of colonial statesmanship, and its members preached 
successfully a forgotten ideal, moulding the policy of 
an expanding state by the force of their religious 
convictions. 

During the first period, the Church, the State, and 
the adventurers the servants of the State all took a 
political view of religion. This was the time of the 
ascendancy of Spain and of Portugal, and of the menace 
to England of Catholic Imperialism, already straddling 
across Europe, and now stretching out greedy hands to 
the New World as well. 

For a time those Imperial and Papist hands were 
active in converting the savage inhabitants of the new 
lands to Christianity, by sending them to heaven to taste 
its sweetness. And from their dead bodies and their 
outraged lands they took gold, and silver, and precious 
stones for the glory of Catholic altars. 

"These discoverers," writes Mr J. D. Rogers, in an 
illuminating summary of the period, " were one and all 
state servants sailing in state ships, cross in one hand 
and sword in the other, to enter on the government of 
some kingdom and receive tribute from it." l 

The friars who went with them the missionaries 
of that time were state servants also, and acted under 
the orders of the commander of the expedition. Members 
of a Church still under the Jewish influence upon 
Christianity, having still the magical conception of God, 
as a hostile Being who had to be appeased by rites, 
and by the slaying of His enemies, they did not, however, 
hesitate to countenance occasionally the sin of Saul, 
who " destroyed all the people with the edge of the 
sword " but " spared . . . the best of the sheep and of 

1 A Historical Geography of the British Colonies, 1907. J. D. Rogers. 
Vol. vi. p. 6. 



12 A GENERAL SURVEY 

the oxen and of the fatlings, and the lambs, and all that 
was good." 1 

But though they were the apostles of their Church, 
they had less influence upon the manner in which 
Christianity was carried to these heathen lands than 
the navigators and the soldiers. And they acquiesced 
in the most sacred symbol of their religion, the symbol 
of sacrifice and of love, being set up by a conqueror as 
the sign of his triumph, and as an assertion of the rights 
claimed by his king in virtue of it. 2 Also, strangely 
enough, some years after the Pope had first struggled to 
retain his supremacy over the temporal head of England, 
there were priests with Quiros who did not protest 
when the Blessed Sacrament was preceded in procession 
by the banner of Spain. 3 

1 1 Samuel xv. 8, g. 

" Among the 1200 warriors sent by King Emmanuel to follow up the 
discovery of Vasco da Gama were included a band of friars, and the 
commander of the expedition received the following instructions : 
Before he attacked the Moors and idolaters of those parts with the 
material and secular sword, he was to allow the priests and monks to 
use their spiritual sword, which was to declare to them the Gospel . . . 
and convert them to the faith of Christ. . . . And should they be so 
contumacious as not to accept this law of faith . . . and should they 
forbid commerce and exchange ... in that case they should put 
them to fire and sword, and carry on fierce war against them. " (The 
Project of a Commonwealth, 1915, p. 131, quoting Hunter, A History 
of British India.} 

2 " Magellan set up at the top of the highest mountain a very large 
cross as a sign that this country belonged to the King of Spain . . . and 
gave to the mountain the name of the Mount of Christ, made rude 
chiefs mumble Aves, Paternosters and Credos like parrots, and do 
homage and swear fealty to the King of Spain." (Rogers, loc. cit., p. 7.) 

3 Quiros, in describing to the King of Spain his occupation of 
Espiritu Santo, wrote : " First, Sir, we erected a cross and built a church, 
in honour of Our Lady of Loretto. Then we caused twenty masses to 
be celebrated there . . . and made a solemn procession and observed 
the feast of the Blessed Sacrament, the which was carried in procession, 
your banner being displayed and marching before it, through a great 



A GENERAL SURVEY 13 

The subordinate part which the religious motive 
played in European expansion during this first period 
is well illustrated in the eighth petition, addressed by 
Quiros to the King of Spain, begging him to " give com 
mand to have a goodly and great city built in this port 
and bay" in this country, 1 which would prove to be 
" another China and Japan " in riches, and able " to 
nourish 200,000 Spaniards." 2 For the emphasis is 
laid in this appeal almost entirely upon the commercial 
possibilities of settlement, and upon the glory and 
wealth which would come from dominion there. But 
the predominant thought of the period comes out in 
a few lines at the close of a long description of the riches 
of the land. In these, Quiros, although the second 
period was already overlapping the close of the first, 
still clings to the thought that religion provided a sanction 
for the conquest of foreign lands, and for the ex 
ploiting of their wealth, and he brings forward, almost 
shamefacedly, " the principal reason " for settlement 
" that this is the sole ordinary way to establish the 
knowledge of God and faith amongst them " (the savages). 
Then he naively adds, as knowing what alone appealed 
to his king : " And this ought to be embraced with the 
more readiness, because it is the channel to convey and 
disperse all abundance of commodities amongst your 
subjects. And hereby you shall be eased of many 
vexations, which will assuredly be put upon you in case 
the enemies of the Church of Rome should enter, and 
nestle there, and should vent their erroneous doctrines 
amongst them, whereby they would . . . arrogate unto 
themselves the names of the Lords of the Indies." 3 

circuit of countries which were honoured by the presence of the same." 
(Terra Australis Incognita. J. Callander, 1766, vol. ii. p. 176.) 

1 Espiritu Santo. a Callander, he. cit., p. 173. 

.* Callander, he. cit., p. 177. 



14 A GENERAL SURVEY 

Thus Quiros reacted to his memories in calling the 
spread of the Catholic faith " the principal reason " for 
settlement, and in asserting the old view that religion 
had a political value. But in mentioning this " principal 
reason " only as an afterthought, he intuitively recognized 
that it was no longer a reason for expansion at all, and 
that men had begun to divorce motives of religion from 
those of commerce and politics. 

While Quiros was thus petitioning in vain, the enemies 
of Spain had already launched forth upon their piratical 
raids upon her commerce. Mr Rogers writes : " They 
wished not to discover but to oppose " ; l but it should 
be added, they went not to oppose Catholicism, or to 
claim new converts to Protestantism. As an example 
of Drake s thirst for silver and gold, this writer instances 
the Spaniard who was found asleep with bars of silver 
beside him. They robbed him of the silver and left 
him. But here, too, is symbolized the attitude of the 
Protestant navigators towards missionary work, and 
its contrast with the attitude of the Catholic navigators. 
Religion in its aspect of the relationship of a chosen race 
to the heathen made no appeal to them. There is 
probably not a single recorded instance of an attempt 
made by them to convert Catholic prisoners to Protes 
tantism, for it mattered not to them whether the souls 
of the queen s enemies passed to perdition, or to paradise, 
so long as they speedily left their bodies. 

This change of attitude was revolutionary and lasting. 
For a period religion becomes entirely a personal relation 
ship of the individual with his God, unaffected by, and 
unaffecting, the relationship of the expanding nations 
with the backward races, or with each other. Drake 
is forced into antagonism with Doughty, when the 
1 Loc. cit., p. 9. 



A GENERAL SURVEY 15 

latter plays traitor to their temporal faith, and Doughty 
is condemned to die. But before Doughty leaves the 
cabin, Drake and he bear witness to their common 
religious faith and partake of the Blessed Sacrament 
together. 1 

Thus the missionary friars, who have acted as chorus 
to the royal players and their attendants, are driven 
off the stage by pirates, who do not stop to argue with 
them upon the meaning of their chants. 

The pirates are followed by traders, whose only interest 
is commerce and who come as servants of capitalist 
companies, their orders drafted in the counting-house 
instead of the palace. Australia and Tasmania are 
discovered, and New Zealand sighted, by Dutchmen in 
search of markets and supplies, and of sites for trading 
stations. Tasman is instructed to take possession only 
of uninhabited lands (some of his countrymen had been 
murdered by savages not long before), and elsewhere to 
behave well and friendly to the natives in spite of the fact 
that they were heathens. Thus religion as a motive for 
enterprise loses its power in the seventeenth century ; and 
where Magellan planted a cross, Tasman might have placed 
a golden calf but for the fact that a trader could not be 
extravagant. And so he put up posts and tin plates 
instead. 2 

The trading motive gathered power in the eighteenth 
century, and found an outlet in a new channel. At the 
close of the previous century English sovereigns reasserted 
their right to play a leading part, and the state became 

1 Doughty was in command of the sloop Swan during the first months 
of Drake s voyage round the world. He deserted off the coast of 
South America, was overtaken and executed at Port St Julian. There 
is evidence that he was in Spanish pay. Froude, English Seamen in 
the Sixteenth Century. 1907, pp. 114-117. 

2 Rogers, loc. a /., pp. n, 12, 



16 A GENERAL SURVEY 

patron of trade. 1 But the state naturally before long took 
a broader view of expansion, and thought not only of 
money bags, but of colonists 2 but of these, in no sense 
as missionaries of civilization to the natives. 

The initiative came from France, who now started 
upon her career of rivalry with England, and the 
competition between the two powers resulted in the 
completion of the discovery of the Pacific lands, and in 
the assertion of national claims by written notices upon 
the trunks of trees, and by plates. 3 But beyond De 
Brosses suggestion of planting convict settlements, out 
of which possibly sprang the colonization of Australia, 
there were no theories upon how the new lands were to 
be peopled or administered, and no forethought upon 
the problem of how this expansion would affect the 
native inhabitants. At least records of it are hard to 
find, and both those who passed excitedly from one new 
island to another, and those who heard of their adventures, 
probably had no other hopes than those of dominion 
and wealth. 

This is the period of the assertion of rights of the 
right of the discoverer to take territory from savages 
who were not developing it, and of his right to hold it 
against those with intentions similar to his own, who 
were unlucky enough to arrive after him. 

1 Cook held a royal commission to advance " the honour of this 
nation as a maritime power . . . and the trade and navigation thereof." 
His secret orders were " to take possession in the name of the King of 
Great Britain of convenient situations in such countries as you may 
discover that have not already been visited or discovered by any other 
foreign power." (Rogers, loc. cit., p. 20.) 

a De Brosses declared that trade would " create new nations." A 
state did not lose its rights over its people when it exported them, 
for the state was the tree and its colonists the branches (quoted by 
Rogers, loc. cit., p. 18). 

3 Rogers, loc. cit., pp. 20, 21. 



A GENERAL SURVEY 17 

It is not strange that, in these Southern Seas, Darwin 
found an atmosphere fitting to his meditations upon 
the law of struggle. Yet even while he cruised there, 
accumulating material evidence for the truth of his 
theory, the atmosphere was changing ; and curiously 
enough, he actually met some of those who were re 
sponsible for the change. For he visited Tahiti, 1 where 
the missionaries had already started to bear witness to 
a new principle of progress, based upon the inter-relation 
not of rights, but of duties. 

Yet this principle, like many of the islands where its 
truth was proved, was new only in its re-discovery, and in 
the manner of its application. For the missionaries were 
only pioneers of thought in that they were the first to 
apply to political conduct the principles of personal 
conduct, to which Europeans in their churches had 
blindly, like automatons, long paid lip-service. Both 
they, and later the administrators whom they advised 
and influenced, did sincerely try to carry out the com 
mandment of the Nazarene to love their neighbour as 
themselves, even though he was of a backward race. And 
for their reward they obtained the fulfilment of His 
promise. For it has been the meek who have inherited 
the Pacific. 

At the close of the eighteenth century, therefore, the 
islands of the Pacific lay open, awaiting the outflow of 
colonists from Europe. There can be few more astonish 
ing changes in the kaleidoscope of history than this that 
those who first came with enthusiasm to the new lands did 
not come like their predecessors to assert rights of posses 
sion, but disinterestedly, to claim their right to serve the 
native inhabitants. 

It is still more astonishing to find that John Williams, 

1 The Pacific, Its Past and Future. G, H. Scholefield, 1919, p. 7- 



i8 A GENERAL SURVEY 

the pioneer missionary, in a flash of intuition, realized, 
in part, the significance of the change which he and his 
followers were making. After noticing, with wonder, the 
extraordinary enthusiasm with which the project of Dr. 
Haweis had been received, and the ease with which the 
L.M.S. had collected 10,000 to carry it out, he wrote of 
Tahiti :- 

" Little did its discoverer think when hoisting the 
broad pennant on the Tahitian shores and taking 
possession of the island in the name of his sovereign, 
King George III., that in a few short years the Missionary 
sent by the liberality and sustained by the prayers of 
British Christians, would follow in his track . . . unfurl 
another banner, and take possession of that and other 
islands in the name of the King of kings." 1 

The new motive behind expansion is made clear by 
the phrases of Williams. These first settlers in the 
Pacific Islands came, not as Christian Britishers, but as 
" British Christians." The conversion of the native was 
their sincere purpose, and was not merely a means 
towards obtaining control of his territory. 

The relation of their loyalties was different from that of 
the navigators and friars and traders, in that loyalty to 
their faith was the supreme loyalty, but yet supreme 
only in that it included their national loyalty. So 
Williams assured his sovereign in dedicating his book to 
him, declaring that the missionaries " in prosecuting the 
one great object to which their lives are consecrated, 
. . . will keep in view whatever may promote the 
Commerce and the Science, as well as the Religious 
glory, of their beloved Country." 2 

Within the limitations imposed by his supreme loyalty, 

1 A Narrative of Missionary Enterprise. Rev. J. Williams, 1837, p. 3. 

2 Loc. cit. y p. v. 



A GENERAL SURVEY 19 

Williams is ready to serve his nation, and although he 
himself did not attach the first importance to the political 
results of missionary work, he realized that " wherever 
the missionary goes, new channels are cut for the stream 
of commerce," 1 and that shipping would find security 
in harbours where previously from fear of savage in 
habitants it had not entered. 2 

Indeed, in his general appeal at the end of the volume, 
he Addresses himself to the " statesman," pointing out 
the political advantages to be gained by national support 
of missionary work. But it is not political support he 
requires but unofficial service by the provision of funds 
and by individual work, and also recognition from the 
highest in the land that his cause is good, and that the 
profession of missionary is as noble as that of statesman 
or soldier, and worthy of the sons of the nobility. 

But it is clear that the background of his thought was 
that the political advantages to be gained by the nation 
were not to be found by seeking them, but only by 
serving the Ideal through the missionary organization 
established to preach it. And he wished his countrymen 
to share with him his enthusiastic belief that these political 
advantages were unimportant compared to the glory 
which was to be won, by prosecuting with the missionaries 
" the one great object to which their lives were conse 
crated " the conversion and civilization of the heathen. 

Williams is thus the first of the new patriots those 
who point their nation to the glory to be achieved by 
giving instead of by acquiring. His national loyalty did 

1 E.g. Williams introduced the Cavendish banana into the Pacific 
Islands by obtaining some plants from the Duke of Devonshire, one 
of which survived the journey out there and was planted in Samoa 
(The New Pacific, C. B. Fletcher, 1917, pp. 76, 77). Marsden introduced 
wheat into New Zealand. 

2 Loc. cit. t pp. 582-584. 



20 A GENERAL SURVEY 

not take the form of a desire to see the British flag 
triumphant in the Pacific, but rather to see its islands 
filled with British servants, who should be the noblest 
his country could produce. 

His views and those of his followers were not anti- 
Imperialist, as critics have declared, but rather the vision 
of a new Imperialism, and he saw the conversion of Tahiti 
as a centre for missionary expansion, " from whence the 
streams of salvation are to flow to ... the Fiji, the 
New Hebrides, New Caledonia, Solomon s Archipelago, 
New Britain, New Ireland, and above all the immense 
island of New Guinea." l 

Of this idealism the missionary kingdoms of Tahiti 
and Tonga were the natural results. For in the early 
part of the century the only people to be governed in 
the islands were the natives, to whom the missionaries 
came as spiritual teachers, but of whom they were forced 
to become the social and political advisers as well. 

There seems no reason to disbelieve Williams when he 
denied that the missionary desired to establish theocracies. 
" I would not, however, be supposed to advocate the 
assumption of political authority by the missionary," he 
wrote, " but on the contrary, that he should interfere as 
little as possible ; and whether it be in civil, legal, or 
political affairs, that he should do so solely by his 
advice and influence. There are circumstances, however, 
especially in newly-formed missions, where he must step 
out of his ordinary course and appear more prominent 
than he would wish." z 

These so-called missionary kingdoms were unsuited, 
however, to the control of white settlers and traders, and 
when the latter began to visit the islands, missionary 
policy underwent a change. After acting as a stimulus 

1 Loc, oit. } pp. 6, 7. z Loc. cit., p. 140. 



A GENERAL SURVEY 21 

to expansion, the missionaries, disillusioned by the form 
that expansion took, felt obliged to oppose it. 

This process of disillusionment is well seen in the early 
history of New Zealand. The Gospel came to this country 
owing to the faith of Samuel Marsden in its future, and 
his energy in fitting out an expedition there, in spite of 
the opposition of the Government. For as in New 
Guinea later, only disinterested motives at first were 
strong enough to move men to risk the dangers from 
savages, and since the Governor of New South Wales 
refused permission unless a vessel could be chartered, 
and since no captain could be found to venture for less 
than 600, Marsden bought a ship with his own money 
and sailed for the islands with a party of thirty-five, on 
November 19, I8I4. 1 

The missionary enthusiasm of Marsden, who had more 
of the colonist s spirit than Williams, had been awakened 
by occasional meetings with Maoris on the quay at Port 
Jackson, and more especially by the interest and sym 
pathy aroused by a chief, Duaterra, whom he had be 
friended, on finding him a victim of unscrupulous white 
traders. 2 Thus Marsden s views show a development 
from those of Williams. Where Williams wished to 
replace the national flag by an imaginary banner of a 
spiritual King, Marsden welcomed the hoisting of the 
national flag at the first Christian service held in New 
Zealand, considering it "as the signal and the dawn of 
civilization, liberty and religion in that dark and benighted 
land." " I never viewed the British colours with more 
gratification," he wrote, " and flattered myself they 
would never be removed till the natives of that island 
enjoyed all the happiness of British subjects." 3 And 

1 Life and Work of Samuel Marsden. J. B. Marsden, 1858, pp. 90-95. 

2 Ibid., pp. 64-68, and 92. 8 Ibid., p. 101. 



22 A GENERAL SURVEY 

almost at once he endeavoured to explain to the natives 
British customs and institutions, such as trial by jury, 
pointing out to them the evils of theft and lying and 
cannibalism. 1 

Marsden was thus in agreement with Williams in re 
garding the responsibilities involved in national expansion, 
rather than the profits to be obtained from it. He differed 
from Williams in believing that it was through their 
political organization as much as through their missionary 
societies that those duties could be performed by 
" British Christians." 

For a time he continued to take an optimistic view of 
British expansion, and after one of his occasional visits 
to New Zealand in 1821, he wrote hopefully of the spread 
of the Gospel and of the blessings of civilization in the 
South Seas, adding in emphasis of the religious view of 
politics which he held, that " to impart these blessings 
to the New Zealander is an object worthy of the British 
nation ; a more noble undertaking could not be suggested 
to the Christian world." 2 

Unfortunately demoralization crept in through white 
traders, whose actions could not be controlled, and even 
owing to missionaries who proved unworthy of their 
trust, so that on his last visit in 1837, ne was distressed 
to see the unhappy state of the Bay of Islands " where 
drunkenness, adultery and murder are committed," and 
remarked that l{ some civilized Government must take 
New Zealand under its protection or the most dreadful 
evils will be committed by runaway convicts, sailors and 
publicans." " When I return to New South Wales," he 
added, " I purpose to lay the state of New Zealand before 
the Colonial Government." 3 

The writer has been unable to find any record of the 

1 Ibid., p. 104. * Ibid., p. 158. 3 Marsden, loc. cit., p. 258. 



A GENERAL SURVEY 23 

action Marsden took, but there is circumstantial evidence 
which suggests that missionary influence had something 
to do with the refusal of Lord Glenelg to sanction the 
granting of a charter to the New Zealand Company, 
and with the appointment of Captain Hobson as British 
Consul with orders to negotiate a treaty with the Maori 
tribes. For Lord Glenelg in informing Lord Durham of 
his decision x drew attention to the report of Captain 
Hobson, 2 who had visited the Bay of Islands and had 
been impressed by the power of the missionaries, and 
who described the evils noticed by Marsden in much the 
same words as the missionary used, and proposed the 
same preventive and cure for them. And Wakefield in 
his evidence before the Select Committee of the House 
of Commons in 1840 complained bitterly of the fact that 
Lord Glenelg, James Stephen, and Sir George Grey were 
all officers of the Church Missionary Society, and that 
the Secretary of the latter was apparently consulted on 
several occasions by the Colonial Office. 3 Many of the 
missionaries on the spot, however, were not supporters 
of the policy of Government intervention. In 1833 James 
Busby had been appointed British resident in New 
Zealand, and Goderich wrote to the chiefs that Busby 
would endeavour to protect them from the violence and 
crime of white adventurers of bad character. 4 

But although Busby was " specially accredited to the 

1 February 5, 1838. PP. 1840, No. 582, p. 153. 

2 PP. 1838, No. 122. 

a PP. 1840, No. 582, pp. 4, 7, 8, 148. 

Although Under-Secretary, Stephen had great influence, his colleague, 
Sir H. Taylor, declaring that " for many years he literally ruled the 
Colonial Empire " (Diet, of Nat. Biography). He was a son-in-law of 
John Venn, one of the founders of the Church Missionary Society. 

4 The Pacific, Its Past and Future. G. H. Scholefield, 1919, pp. 204, 
205. 



24 A GENERAL SURVEY 

missionaries and directed to consult with them " ; owing 
to a difference of opinion upon minor points of policy he 
found himself opposed by them at a critical moment. 
Without sufficient powers his position rapidly became 
ludicrous and useless, and he decided to invite both the 
Wesleyan and the Church Missionary Society mission 
aries to a conference "to consult whether it might not 
be prudent for them to induce the chief ... to petition 
His Majesty for assistance in reducing their country to 
order, and establishing in it an efficient Government/ 
But the Wesleyans excused themselves with an apology, 
and the members of the Church Missionary Society 
neglected to attend without a word of explanation. 1 

In spite of this incident Busby, in requesting Governor 
Sir R. Bourke to ask the British Government to undertake 
the protection of New Zealand, declared that although he 
could no longer co-operate with the missionaries, he was 
in accord with their opinions in general and respected 
their zeal, and advocated " a defined and specific share 
in the government of the country" being allotted to the 
missionaries, as otherwise " that influential body, in the 
character which they have assumed to themselves of 
guardians to the natives," might " conceive it their duty 
to use their influence in opposition." 2 

The evidence of Busby therefore shows that the mis 
sionaries resident in New Zealand took a narrower view 
than Marsden partly no doubt because, unlike Marsden, 
they had not had an opportunity of appreciating the 
colonist s standpoint from personal experience and that, 
as Scholefield suggests, they were " hostile to the intro 
duction of British sovereignty, for the very human 

1 PP. 122 of 1838. 

a June 1 6, 1837. Forwarded to Lord Glenelg, September 9, 1837. 
PP. 122 of 1838, pp. 10, ii. 



A GENERAL SURVEY 25 

reason that it would tend to detract from the position 
of influence, almost of power, which they themselves held 
with the natives/ 1 

However, as had occurred before in the case of Australia 
and afterwards in the case of New Guinea, it was the 
action of a foreign power which settled the question of 
sovereignty. Fear of French enterprise induced Busby 
to call an assembly of chiefs, which declared the Inde 
pendence of the United Tribes of New Zealand, receiving 
the recognition of William IV. Fear of French enterprise 
four years later forced the Government to send out 
Captain Hobson to obtain by treaty from the native 
inhabitants the cession of their sovereignty to Great 
Britain. 2 

Upon the landing of Captain Hobson, missionary policy 
passed into its final phase. Stimulus to expansion had 
resulted in the immigration of bad characters, opposition 
had failed to check the flow, and native government under 
missionary influence had lamentably failed. In 1839 the 
New Zealand Company " in direct defiance of the authority 
of the Crown " 3 broke through the checks placed upon 
private enterprise by missionary influence at the Colonial 
Office, and by shipping one thousand settlers to New 
Zealand made a bad position much worse. The inter 
vention of the Government for strategic reasons gave 
the final blow to missionary hopes of establishing an 
independent Maori state under a government advised 
by British missionaries. 4 From henceforth all the 
missionaries could do was to act as interpreters in the 
widest sense to the Government, and to provide an 
influence upon it which should ensure that the natives 

1 Scholefield, loc. cit., p. 205. a Ibid., pp. 205-207. 

3 Report of Select Committee of House of Commons, 1844. PP. 
556, p. xvi. 4 Life of Marsden, pp. 255, 256. 



26 A GENERAL SURVEY 

were not treated with injustice, either by intent or owing 
to negligence or ignorance. 

This gradual development of missionary policy under 
the force of circumstances was acknowledged by Dandeson 
Coates, the Secretary of the Church Missionary Society 
in his examination by the Select Committee of the House 
of Commons in 1840. In answer to the allegation of 
Wakefield that, at a stormy interview with three members 
of the New Zealand Association, he had threatened the 
latter with opposition and had carried out that threat, 
Coates declared that it had been the wish of the Society 
that a native government should be established in New 
Zealand with the help of the Government. His Society 
had no wish to discourage colonization, but had been 
opposed to the assumption of sovereignty by Great 
Britain, believing it to be " a violation of the fundamental 
principles of international law," but in view of the growth 
of the existing evils they " felt perfectly satisfied " with 
the general instructions under which Captain Hobson 
was proceeding, " and they have remained perfectly 
quiescent with regard to all subsequent proceedings." 1 

Those instructions included the information that to 
overcome the difficulties he would have to face from 
ignorant and distrustful natives, Captain Hobson would 
" find powerful auxiliaries amongst the missionaries, who 
have won and deserved their confidence " ; and he was 
told " to afford the utmost encouragement, protection and 
support to their Christian teachers," and to give them 
" pecuniary aid." 2 

1 PP. Report, New Zealand, 1840, 582, pp. 80-83. 

2 Earl of Normanby to Capt. Hobson, August 14, 1839, quoted in 
A.P.S.,pp. 60, 61. 

Compare Para. 10 of instructions to Sir Peter Scratchley, November 17, 
1884, PP. 1885, c. 4273, p. 30 ..." you will doubtless receive willing 
and efficient aid from the missionaries who have settled in New Guinea 
and established a friendly intercourse with the natives." 



A GENERAL SURVEY 27 

The missionaries on the whole did not prove unworthy 
of the hopes of the Government, and the claim of 
the Aborigines Protection Society is well-founded. The 
Committee of this Society in 1846 pointed out to the 
" late Secretaries of State for the British Colonies," that 
when the colonization of New Zealand was determined 
upon, " fruitless opposition was not vexatiously con 
tinued," and it was probable that " the influence acquired 
by the missionaries indirectly, if not directly, facilitated 
the arrangements regarding the acquisition of land, as it 
unquestionably did the transactions of the Government, 
first for declaring the independence and subsequently for 
effecting the annexation of the country." 1 

In one important instance, however, this was not the 
case. Fortunately the Government at home met with 
opposition from a missionary bishop, when it proposed 
to Governor Grey that New Zealand should be provided 
with a constitution which would have shut out the natives 
from all voice in the Government, and must have placed 
the latter largely in the hands of the New Zealand Com 
pany. Sir George Grey s biographer emphasizes the firm 
friendship which existed between him and Bishop G. A. 
Selwyn, and the influence the bishop exerted upon the 
statesman. 2 When the constitution passed by the 
British Parliament in 1846 was referred to the Governor, 
Selwyn wrote to him (and to Earl Grey) " vigorous and 
outspoken denunciations " of it, and Sir George Grey, 
who refused to accept it, received from his friend " warm 
sympathy and vigorous aid," in bravely and successfully 
maintaining his opposition. 

The farewell address of the Maori to Sir George Grey, 

1 On the British Colonization of New Zealand, 1846, pp. n, 12. 

2 Life and Times of Sir George Grey. W. L. Rees, 1892, vol. i. pp. 
118-146. 



28 A GENERAL SURVEY 

in 1854, probably gives a true picture of the co-operation 
which existed between these two, and suggests the value 
of this, and also of the early missionary work to the 
native population of New Zealand : 

" When the missionaries came first to this land/ de 
clared the Maori orator, there was little industry, and 
little good was visible . . . and all lived in ignorance. 
Then God kindled His light, and lo ! it became as day. 

" After this came Governor Hobson, and then a little 
fear came over us. After him came Governor Fitzroy, 
and things went on in a similar way. But when you 
came, oh Governor Grey, it was like the shock of an 
earthquake ; your fame rose to the centre of the island, 
and extended to the waves on the ocean s shore. You 
came with two lights, and these are they : The lamp of 
God, and the lamp of the world. 

" Your efforts on behalf of God s cause are the estab 
lishment of schools, the erection of houses of prayer 
thus following in the footsteps of the Church. These are 
the things you did in regard to the body ; encouraged 
industry in the cultivation of the soil, pointed out the 
means of acquiring property, and raised this island to its 
present state of prosperity. . . . You have been as one 
of the ministers of the churches, 1 therefore we call you by 
these names : The Peacemaker, the Honourable, the 
Friendly One, the Loving One, the Kind One, the 
Director, the Protector . . . and the Father. 

" Although we heard of your projected departure, we 
thought, nevertheless, that you would stay. Both you 
and Bishop Selwyn are going. New Zealand will thus be 
left without a parent." 2 

The language of savages like that of children sometimes 

1 It is difficult to say whether the compliment was the greater to the 
missionary or to the statesman. a W. L. Rees, loc. cit., p. 184. 



A GENERAL SURVEY 29 

has an aptness unapproachable by the phrases of a maturer 
vocabulary. To be a parent, and not a taskmaster to the 
subject race here surely is the ideal of the British Pro- 
Consul. And is not this also the true imperialism to 
bring and not to take ? To bring two lights : The lamp 
of God and the lamp of the world ? x 

Forty years only had passed since Marsden first landed 
in New Zealand. When he first planted the seed of the 
new Imperialism, he could hardly have hoped that, in so 
short a time, young and vigorous shoots would appear. 

Missionary policy went through much the same de 
velopment throughout the Pacific as in New Zealand, 
and it is best to turn to Fiji for a good example of what 
the advice of even a single missionary could effect in 
moulding Government policy to conform to principles of 
justice towards the native races in the settlement of land 
claims. 

There is no more difficult problem of colonial states 
manship than to regulate the sale of land by the native 
inhabitants to those who, by reason of their superior 
civilization, claim the right to buy hundreds of acres of 
it for a few firearms and a keg or two of liquor. While 
the settlers with some justice may complain that much 
of the land is undeveloped, and for that reason " the 
natives can have but a qualified dominion over it, or a 
right of occupancy only " ; 2 others who are anxious that 
justice shall be done to the natives, assert that " if these 

1 It is worth noticing that from a suggestion by W. La wry, the General 
Superintendent of National Missions in 1847, and from the experience 
of Grey and Selwyn in their voyage together through the Pacific 
Archipelagos, sprang the Federation scheme, rejected by Earl Grey, 
to form a self-governing and self-supporting Empire in the Pacific, 
moulded by Christianity and European civilization. (Rees, W. L., 
loc. cit., pp. 128, 129, and Scholefield, loc. cit. t 1919, pp. 278-280.) 

2 Sir G. Gipps, quoted in PP. 1844, No. 556, p. iii. 



30 A GENERAL SURVEY 

can procure the means of bettering their condition " 
there is no level to which they may not rise, 1 and that 
their proprietary rights ought to be considered. 

Although the British Colonial Office throughout the 
nineteenth century was unwilling to annex fresh territory 
on account of the responsibility which, in the view of the 
missionaries, the more civilized nation owed to the back 
ward race, replying that " the hope of a conversion of a 
people to Christianity, however specious, must not be 
made a reason for increasing the British dominions," 2 yet 
when annexation was forced upon it by the strategic 
situation in the Pacific, it held nobly to the policy initiated 
by missionary influence in the thirties, and endeavoured 
to administer the new territory in conformity with justice 
to the native. 

In this the missionaries were of great assistance, since 
they were conversant with the native language and 
customs, and, being disinterested, were thus qualified 
both by their knowledge and their character to give an 
authoritative opinion upon the nature of native law. 

This was particularly so in the case of Fiji. Previous 
to the cession in October 1874, many thousands of acres 
had been " sold " to white men of various antecedents, 
and one of the earliest actions of the Government after 
the sovereignty of the island had been assumed was to 
appoint a commission to inquire into Land Titles. Sir 
John Thurston held the view that the lands of Fiji 
were vested in the ruling chiefs, and that the remainder 
occupied it upon a basis of feudal tenure which could be 
terminated at will by the ruling chiefs. 3 Sir H. Robinson 
supported him, holding that the land title, as well as the 

1 Marsden, loo. cit., p. 138. 

2 PP. 1862, No. 2995 (quoted by Scholefield, loc. cit., p. 79). 

3 Quoted by Rev. L. Fison. Land Tenure in Fiji (first published at 
Suva in 1903), p. 28. 



A GENERAL SURVEY 31 

sovereignty of the group, had been transferred to Her 
Majesty by the chiefs. 1 

In fact the system of land tenure in Fiji was much 
more complicated. The discovery of this was due to the 
work of a missionary, Lorimer Fison, who delivered a 
lecture upon it at Levuka, when the Lands Commission 
was about to sit. He proved conclusively that by 
custom, i.e. by law, the land was held in common by 
Mataqali, 2 that it was entailed to posterity, that it could 
be occupied by force, but could never be possessed by 
any Mataqali other than the one owning it, and that 
chiefs had no right to dispose of it, although by an act of 
despotism they might do so illegally. Fison concluded 
his lecture by declaring that " in ceding the Fiji Islands 
to the British Crown the chiefs most certainly understood 
that they were making over the lands as well as the 
sovereignty of the Group. . . . But it is equally certain 
that they had not the land title in their hands. In all 
righteousness, therefore, it is the management, not the 
ownership, of the Fijian estate that has come into the 
possession of the Crown." 3 

This lecture had a profound effect upon British policy 
with regard to the land question not only in Fiji but also 
later in New Guinea. 4 The Hon. V. A. Williamson, 
Chairman of the Lands Commission, wrote to the Colonial 
Office that it was only gradually that the Commissioners 
who were at first " profoundly ignorant " of native customs 
came to understand the native point of view. " I believe 
I am quite correct," he declared, " in expressing my con 
viction that the lecture of the Rev. L. Fison (forwarded 

1 Ibid., p. 28. 

2 A part of a village community literally, " a band of men twisted 
together," of which " the twist is a common descent." Ibid., p. 4. 

3 Ibid., p. 34. 4 Fletcher, The New Pacific, p. 173. 



32 A GENERAL SURVEY 

herewith) . . . operated quite as a revelation to the 
European population." l 

The lecture was quoted by the Lands Commission in 
their final report of February 2, 1882, as an authority 
upon the ancient Fijian customs as to land tenure (par. 
37), and upon the rights and power of chiefs to override 
that custom (par. 44). In the controversy with the 
German Foreign Office upon the legality of the decision 
of the Commission, it appears to have been the deciding 
factor. It was enclosed in toto to the German Ambassador 
(October 24, 1882), together with the letter of Williamson, 
who based his contradiction of the claims of Messrs 
Hennings upon it. The full history of the controversy, 
and the effect upon it of the lecture, is given in The New 
Pacific, by Mr Fletcher, who declares that, as a result of 
the study of its conclusions, " any claims possible to the 
Crown upon lands not in use by the natives were allowed 
to lapse." 

It is possible to argue that recognition of the native 
rights in land has complicated the labour question, placed 
unnecessary obstacles in the way of the settlement and 
development of the Group, and tended to demoralize the 
natives. But that is a debatable question outside the 
scope of this essay, which is only intended to trace the 
influence that missionaries like Fison have had in securing 
the acceptance by British administration of the principle 
that the interests of British colonists shall only be pursued, 
in so far as they do not impinge upon the rights and 
interests of the natives. 

This was how the natives rights in land were dealt 
with when there were missionaries ready to give advice, 
and administrators wise enough to take it. "As far as 
Germany was concerned, however, the lecture remained 

1 PP. 1883, c. 3584, p. 66. 



A GENERAL SURVEY 33 

a dead document, and German claims upon native lands, 
rejected in Fiji, were uniformly allowed at all the vital 
points of German expansion in the Pacific." 1 

The transactions upon which those claims were based 
are referred to in the report by Sterndale of 1 874.2 The 
property of Godeffroy at Apia, for instance, " com 
prising about 25,000 acres of purchased land, of which 
the greater proportion is not to be surpassed in fertility 
in any region of the tropical world," was " bought at a 
low rate . . . and paid for chiefly in ammunition and 
arms." 

Such were the claims allowed when Germans used 
their " best influence to obstruct and exclude " the 
missionaries. 3 

It was not merely that the Germans, and the British 
too, when they were uncontrolled by the missionaries or 
administrators, swindled the natives, but that they pro 
vided them with the means of demoralization. Stern- 
dale relates it is difficult to judge whether with pride 
or with his tongue in his cheek that " during the pro 
gress of the civil strife which has prevailed for several 
years back upon the middle island of Samoa, the Messrs 
Godeffroy enjoyed exceptional advantages in dealing 
with the natives from the fact of their possessing a manu 
factory of arms at Liege, in Belgium, whereby they were 
enabled to supply the belligerents at a very cheap rate 
with the material of war." And Messrs Godeffroy and 
Son, he declares elsewhere, " deservedly rank among the 
most enlightened merchants of Europe." 4 

1 Fletcher, loc. cit., p. 178. 

* Papers relating to the South Sea Islands, New Zealand Blue Book, 
1874. (A copy is in the Library of the Royal Colonial Institute.) It 
is constantly referred to by Mr Fletcher in The New Pacific and in 
Stevenson s Germany. * Ibid. * Ibid. 

C 



34 A GENERAL SURVEY 

Against such commercialism carried on by such " en 
lightened merchants," the British missionaries from the 
first determinedly set their face. If George IV. and his 
entourage had shown as much perception as Marsden they 
would not have given presents of muskets l to Shugie 
when that chief visited England in 1819 ; for the latter, 
upon his return, quite naturally proceeded to massacre 
his enemies who had none. As a result the natives de 
manded muskets as the only medium of barter, and 
the settlers, among whom were two missionaries whose 
dismissal Marsden afterwards procured, were willing to 
supply them. 2 

Marsden, upon his first landing, had prohibited the sale 
or barter of fire-arms or ammunition on any pretext. " I 
told them/ he wrote, " that the smith should make axes 
or hoes or any other tools they wanted, but that he was 
on no account to repair any pistols or muskets . . . no, 
not even for the greatest chiefs upon the island." 3 In 
1820, therefore, he was much disturbed at the situation 
created by the folly of his sovereign, and urged the settlers 
on no account to supply arms, and wrote to the Church 
Missionary Society in London that it would be " better to 
give up the mission for the present than to trade in those 
articles." * 

Those who followed Marsden took up the same attitude, 
and Blue Books contain records of the support the mis 
sionaries afforded to the Government, in its endeavours 
to stamp out the traffic. 

Equally demoralizing to the natives was the liquor 
trade, and the history of this also contains evidence of 
the restraining influence of the missionaries, who always 

1 And other presents, which were exchanged for muskets at Port 
Jackson. a Marsden, he. cit. t pp. 147, 170, 171. 

3 Ibid., p. 104. 4 Ibid., p. 147. 



A GENERAL SURVEY 35 

opposed wholeheartedly anything which involved the 
exploiting of the ignorance of savages for an immediate 
commercial advantage. 

The nation which " obstructed " and " excluded " them 
held different views. In 1876 the British and American 
Consuls in Samoa " applied to the German Consul, Mr 
Poppe, to join them in forbidding the sale of intoxicating 
liquors to the natives, it being reasonably feared that, 
under the influence of drink, fresh outrages would take 
place. But this Mr Poppe declined to do, for reasons of 
his own/ which he declined to give. Messrs Godeffroy 
practically monopolize the imported liquor trade in 
Samoa." This was the manner in which German officials 
supported " the most enlightened merchants of Europe " 
in maintaining their hold over the islands in which they 
traded. 1 

The Sterndale report contains a description of the pros 
perity and good order existing in Rarotonga which may 
serve as an instance of the opposite policy to the German, 
carried out by one of the greatest of the British mis 
sionaries, James Chalmers. On taking up his duties there 
in 1867 Chalmers was faced immediately with the problem 
of diminishing what he termed " the curse of all curses." 
The account of the means he took to put a stop to it, in 
which he was eventually successful, is too long to quote, 
but is well worth reading. 2 By his personal influence he 
induced the chiefs to keep the restrictive law hitherto a 
dead letter really in force, he turned a native volunteer 
corps to good account, and he persevered in hut-to-hut 
visiting until the natives took a pride in them and started 

1 Disturbances had occurred over the attempt of a Colonel Steinberger 
to seize control over the island. (Coral Islands, H. Stonehewer Cooper, 
1880, vol. ii. p. 46.) 

a James Chalmers s Autobiography and Letters, ed. by R. Lovett, 
1902. 



36 A GENERAL SURVEY 

to spend their wealth upon materials and tools. Since 
his efforts were based upon the principle that if the 
natives " spend their money upon their homes and dress 
they will have less to spend upon strong drink," economic 
law aided him. The new demands called out from 
Auckland the more respectable type of trader who could 
satisfy them ; and the " miserable traders from Tahiti 
. . . who would sell their own souls to make a few dollars " 
were gradually replaced by " traders of a very different 
stamp from Auckland . . . who brought Manchester 
and Sheffield goods, excellent in quality and abundant in 
quantity, as well as provisions and what other things the 
natives may like." " These find it their interest," 
Chalmers added, " to oppose the liquor traffic." l 

But the evils of the arms and liquor traffic were petty 
compared with the gross crimes of the labour trade. And 
the value of the services of the missionaries in fighting it, 
and in mitigating its bad influence upon the relations 
between the civilized and the savage races was corre 
spondingly greater. Here alone there is sufficient matter 
for an interesting book, but the writer who later deals 
shortly with the part the missionaries of New Guinea 
played can only now find space to refer to two Blue 
Books in support of his general argument. 

In the report of a Commission of 1884 to inquire into 
the working of the Western Pacific Orders in Council, 
much of the evidence of abuses is taken from a statement 
by Rev. H. A. Robertson, a missionary at Erromanga 
from 1872-1883. The Commissioners paid a strong 
tribute to the missionaries, " who form a power ever avail 
able to assist in upholding order, too often at the imminent 
risk of their lives," and they cited the cases of Bishop 
Selwyn and the Rev. J. Bice, who had helped to arrest 
1 Ibid., p. 108. 



A GENERAL SURVEY 37 

native murderers, and also the case of Chalmers, who 
had acted as a guide to a punitive expedition. The 
missionaries . . . " placed as they are all over the Pacific," 
would prove valuable aids to the Deputy-Commissioners, 
and the Commission advocated co-operation between 
them, for the mission stations were a " powerful deter 
rent to crime." 1 

Although in this way they assisted the Government 
officers to arrest murderers and maintain order, the mis 
sionaries were careful constantly to point out that native 
violence was nearly always a reprisal for the excesses 
committed by the labour ships. In the correspondence 
which passed between the administrators in the Pacific 
and the Colonial Office from 1877-1883, the missionaries 
are often cited as witnesses of the fact. 2 In many cases 
articles written by them to colonial papers are the form 
their evidence takes, proving that they not only influenced 
the Government against the traffic, but more important, 
perhaps, colonial public opinion as well. 3 

Thus the missionaries during the final phase of their 
policy influenced Government policy in the direction of 
the aim with which they had originally entered the 
Pacific, and by their energetic efforts to solve the land 
question justly, and to put a stop to the labour trade and 
the arms and liquor traffic, " they and the powerful re 
ligious bodies at home which support them, did much to 
establish the principle that it was the duty of the Govern 
ment to protect the rights of native races." 4 

There is an odd paradox, though, to notice in the history 

1 PP. 1884, 6.3905, pp. 27, 32. 

2 E.g., PP. 1883, c. 3641, p. 140. 

3 But the allegations of the missionaries were sometimes exaggerated : 
e.g. Rev. J. G. Paton in Melbourne Argus, December 5, 1881. See PP. 
1883, c. 3641, p. 136. 

* The Character of the British Empire. Ramsay Muir, 1917, p. 29. 



38 A GENERAL SURVEY 

of this final phase ; for when, owing to the action of 
unscrupulous traders, the missionaries were forced into 
acting as a check upon expansion, they eventually found 
that the only method of doing this was to act as a stimulus 
to it. In order to control the unofficial movement of 
expansion they were driven to urge an unwilling Govern 
ment to give its official sanction to it, and hence to assume 
responsibility for it. The policy of the C.M.S. in regard 
to official expansion in New Zealand had proved ineffective, 
and on the whole the later policy throughout the Pacific 
was to demand " that the British Government ought to 
assume control in order to keep the traders in order." 1 

This was more especially the case towards the close of 
the century. In the agitation for the annexation of New 
Guinea and the New Hebrides and the adjacent islands, 
the missionaries were the leaders of Australian opinion. 

Dr George Brown, 2 under the name " Carpe Diem," wrote 
a series of articles for the Sydney Morning Herald advo 
cating an annexation policy in the Pacific which attracted 
much attention, 3 but the two missionaries who urged it 
most energetically upon the colonists and the colonial 
Governments were J. G. Paton and D. MacDoriald. 
From July 16 to October 29, 1883, inclusive, thirty public 
meetings were held in Victoria demanding annexation of 
the New Hebrides. 4 Paton lectured at eleven of them, 

1 The Character of the British Empire. Ramsay Muir, 1917, p. 29. 

z As the influence of this missionary was chiefly upon German ex 
pansion, for his field of work lay mainly in New Britain and New 
Ireland, he is hardly mentioned in this essay. He did, however, ably 
assist Sir John Thurston in removing the tyrannical Baker from Tonga 
in 1889, and in restoring a just order there. He is cited by Fletcher 
as an important witness against Germany. (Autobiography, 1908, 
pp. 418-461), (Fletcher loc. cit.). 

3 The New Pacific, loc. cit., p. 23-31 and e.g. The Sydney Morning 
Herald, June 9, 1883. 

* PP. 1884, c. 3863, p. 88. 



A GENERAL SURVEY 39 

and at nine of them the resolutions were either proposed 
or seconded by a Presbyterian minister. Copies of these 
resolutions were then forwarded to Lord Derby by the 
Governor. 

The organization of these meetings was in order to show 
Lord Normanby and Lord Derby that the demands 
advanced by the missionaries through the Premier, 
J. Service, were not those of a few individuals who were 
directly connected with the affairs of the islands, but 
were sanctioned by a large body of opinion in the colony. 

In a letter forwarded to Lord Derby on June 27, 1883, 
Service enclosed four documents for which he asked " the 
gravest consideration." l The first was a letter from the 
Rev. D. MacDonald, giving some cogent reasons for 
annexation. This New Hebrides missionary pointed out 
that the strategic argument applied equally well to these 
islands as to New Guinea which had been annexed, and 
that the majority of the traders and planters there were 
British. But he laid most emphasis on two facts : first, 
that the labour outrages there had been worse than in 
New Guinea, and that therefore to the " helpless " in 
habitants was owed a " national debt of reparation," and 
secondly, that the four missions in Polynesia were all 
British, the Presbyterian in the New Hebrides being the 
oldest and largest, and costing in British and colonial 
money about 6000 per annum. 

The second document was a report of the argument 
advanced by a large deputation, which included several 
missionaries five of whom spoke. Stress here too was 
laid upon the British money spent and British blood spilt, 
only apparently in order that another nation might step 
in and reap the harvest. 

The third was an imperfect return of the petitions 

1 PP. 1883, c. 3814, p. 23. 



40 A GENERAL SURVEY 

that had been presented for the annexation of the 
New Hebrides between 1862 and 1882, inclusive. Two 
were by natives through missionaries, one by the New 
Hebridean mission, three by colonial churches, and one 
by representatives of all these assembled in a conference 
at Sydney in 1882. 

And finally there was a memorandum by Paton giving 
some reasons for the annexation of the New Hebrides. 
He urged that the natives wished it, that twenty-one 
members of the mission, including Bishop Patteson, had 
died or been killed in civilizing the group, that over 
140,000 of British money had been spent in missionary 
work, that owing to the work of the mission the islands 
were now comparatively safe, and that there was no 
other way to suppress the labour traffic . 

In forwarding these documents Service summarized the 
political reasons ; and added, " As is well pointed out by 
the missionaries, there are considerations of humanity and 
civilization which seem to add a clenching force to every 
other consideration." 1 

The following month, Service wrote again to Lord 
Normanby regretting the decision of the British Govern 
ment with regard to New Guinea, and repeating the 
arguments previously put forward for the annexation of 
the New Hebrides and the adjacent islands. In citing the 
documents which he had previously enclosed, and also a 
report of a meeting held in Melbourne Town Hall on 
July 1 6, at which three missionaries seconded the three 
resolutions in favour of this policy, Service drew atten 
tion to " the personnel of the movers in this matter." 

" The political advantages of the annexation had long 
been apparent to me and to other public men in these 
Colonies," he wrote, " but it was a letter from the Rev. 

1 PP. 1883, c. 3814, p. 23. 



A GENERAL SURVEY 41 

D. MacDonald, a well-known New Hebrides missionary, 
followed by a large deputation of missionaries, clergymen 
and other prominent philanthropic gentlemen, which 
formed the means of bringing to a focus the existing 
feeling on the subject." l 

The British Government, however, refused to take the 
step demanded of them, and the controversy dragged on 
until 1906, when a Convention was signed by France and 
Great Britain providing that the New Hebrides with the 
Banks and Torres Islands should form a " region of joint 
influence." Elaborate provision was made under Article 
VIII to control the labour traffic and to settle land dis 
putes, and the traffic in liquor and arms was prohibited. 2 

Although the missionaries did not obtain a British 
protectorate for these islands they were at least successful 
in obtaining for Great Britain a half -measure of control. 
It is true that the system of joint control has not proved 
efficient, and that the education of the native has been 
neglected, so that he lives in idleness and the plantations 
are undeveloped. But it is not improbable that he would 
have been in worse case if French designs there had not 
been opposed at all. 3 

Apart from the possibility of the group becoming a 
penal settlement, early in 1883 there was an attempt 
made by a French colonization company, with capital 
alleged by Pat on to be 22,000, to colonize the New 
Hebrides with Frenchmen, and thus to force their 
Government s hands. It was shown by the missionaries 
that they had bought much land on one of the islands, 
Efate, 4 of which the missionaries claimed to have the title- 

1 Forwarded to Lord Derby, July 27, 1883, PP. 1884, c. 3863, p. n. 

2 The Pacific, Its Past and Future. Scholefield, 1919, pp. 256-272. 



a See post, Conclusion, pp. 126, 127. 
*. In the New Hebrides. 



42 A GENERAL SURVEY 

deeds. Pat on and another missionary informed the 
Colonial Office, whose inquiries substantiated their state 
ment. 1 A protest was made to the French Government, 
and the incident was closed by the consideration received 
by the natives for the land being returned to the 
buyers. 2 This incident provided later a good argument 
in the case for annexation. 

Thus there seems no reason to dispute the statement 
of Sir William Macgregor that " it was chiefly due to the 
Presbyterian mission in that group, and to the Victorian 
Government, that Great Britain was not edged out of 
these islands." 3 As to the part the statesmen played in 
it, Sir Charles Dilke held the view, which is borne out by 
the evidence of the Blue Book, that " the agitations for 
saving the New Hebrides from France and for obtaining 
New Guinea for ourselves . . . took their shape " from 
the Premier of Victoria. 4 But Service himself thought 
that " it was a letter from ... a well-known New 
Hebrides missionary followed by a large deputation of 
missionaries . . . which formed the means of bringing 
to a focus the existing feeling on the subject." 5 

It would not be right, however, to argue from the 
missionary demands for the annexation of more territory 
to the British Crown, that they were consciously striving 
to smooth the way for British colonists throughout the 
nineteenth century. If this short survey, briefly illus 
trated, is a true sketch of the influence of the missionaries 
during this period, it proves that although their policy 
developed until they were eager for the British Govern- 

1 March i, 1883. 

2 October 29, 1883. PP. 1884, c. 3863. 

3 Scottish Geographical Magazine, May 1918. 

4 Problems of Greater Britain, 1890, vol. i. p. 221. 
* See ante, p. 40. 



A GENERAL SURVEY 43 

ment to assume control of the Pacific, their energy 
sprang from their faith in a new principle that duties 
which demanded performance, and not rights which 
might be claimed, were the only justification for 
European expansion at all. 

At first they acted as a stimulus upon that expansion, 
constantly crying out for fresh workers in the missionary 
field. But as the native gradually cast off his savagery 
under their civilizing influence, the islands became safer 
and traders and adventurers began to frequent them. 
Thus, inadvertently, the missionaries encouraged an ex 
pansion which was a menace to their plans. 

They had hoped to train up the native races until 
they grew to Christian nations. But the methods, which 
proved adequate to produce and maintain order, when 
there were only natives to control, broke down when it 
became necessary to govern the " civilized " white man. 

For a time missionaries still clung to the ideal of 
Williams, who saw sufficient glory for his nation in 
disinterested work on behalf of the natives, without any 
political dominion over them, energetically opposing 
those whose expansion was a menace to this, and en 
deavouring, successfully on some occasions, to influence 
the British Government to do the same. 

But this policy also failed, and they were finally driven 
by the force of circumstances to demand that " the 
British Government ought to assume control in order 
to keep the traders in order." The British Government, 
however, was unwilling to do this, and one by one the 
islands of which the cession was declined, passed into 
the hands of other nations. In others, strategic argu 
ments led the Colonial Office reluctantly, and after much 
delay, to accept responsibilities which the missionaries 
and the natives were eager to thrust upon it. Only in 



44 A GENERAL SURVEY 

the case of Fiji did it annex in order to control the 
relations of whites and natives. 

But wherever the British flag was hoisted the mission 
aries worked indefatigably to mould the policy of the 
administration in accordance with their principle, and 
to encourage it to perform those duties which they had 
first taken upon themselves, but which circumstances 
had taken from them. 

But the delay which occurred before this transference 
of responsibility took place, and the fact that in many 
cases it never took place at all, was due partly to a failure 
in the missionaries to realize the moment when their 
methods were no longer applicable to their ideal. The 
evils of no-government and of misgovernment were the 
result. 

But in the Southern portion of New Guinea partly, 
here also, owing to strategic considerations the trans 
ference took place before much harm was done. And 
when Southern New Guinea became a British Dependency 
it was blessed by the co-operation in its service of an 
administrator who was a missionary, and a missionary 
who was an administrator. It is, for these two reasons, 
chosen for more intensive treatment, as an illustra 
tion of the gradual development of missionary policy, 
to mould changing circumstances in conformity with a 
fixed principle. 



PART II 

BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

" They asked again : 

* And whom you think the rarest man of all ? 

A man whose ideal and method are neither opposed to nor separated 
from each other. " 

R. A. VRAN-GAVRAN, 
(Loc. tit.). 

CHAPTER I 

EXPLORATION 

ALTHOUGH New Guinea was discovered in 1511, and the 
Spaniard Torres touched at the Louisiade group as early 
as 1606, little was known of the mainland, and nothing 
of even the fringe of the interior, when the two pioneers 
of the London Missionary Society, Rev. A. W. Murray 
and Rev. S. Macfarlane visited Yule Island and Redscar 
Bay in 1871, on a voyage from the Loyalty Islands, to 
put native teachers on the islands in the Torres Straits. 1 
There had been surveys of the southern coasts by various 
naval officers during the forties, and the Dutch had 
established some trading posts and missionary stations 

1 Rev. J. King (at one period Australasian Organizing Agent of 
the L.M.S.) attributes the first suggestion that the L.M.S. should 
undertake work in New Guinea to a conversation between Captain 
Banner, a trader, and the Rev. J. Jones in 1866. The latter brought it 
before the L.M.S. Foreign Secretary in 1870. (W. G. Lawes of Savage 
Isfand and New Guinea. J. King, 1909, p. 48.) 



46 BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

on its north-western shores ; and in 1873-74 Captain 
J. Moresby carried out a more elaborate survey of the 
south-eastern coast, hoisting the flag on Hayter Island ; 
but before the advent of the missionaries no serious 
attempt was made to open up " this vast unknown 
country," as Rev. W. W. Gill described it to the Colonial 
Treasurer in I873. 1 

In 1872 Murray started superintending mission work 
from Cape York ; two years later he was joined by 
Rev. S. Macfarlane and Rev. W. G. Lawes ; and at the 
same time the steamer Ellengowan was given to the 
mission by a Miss Baxter of Dundee. In 1874 Lawes 
landed at Port Moresby, and in 1877 the Rev. James 
Chalmers joined him. Macfarlane, Lawes and Chalmers 
were the leaders of Protestant missionary enterprise in 
New Guinea ; and from the first they showed them 
selves eager to make their religious work an excuse 
for adventurous exploration with results which, if not 
as important as the political influence they wielded, 
were by no means negligible. Indeed the missionaries 
received the thanks of the President of the Royal 
Geographical Society as early as 1875, two years 
before Chalmers had started his fine achievements. 2 
Some of these achievements were recounted by the 
Hon. Secretary of the Royal Australian Geographical 
Society, in a paper read before a general meeting of the 
Society in 1883, when he gave to the missionaries an 
important place in the history of New Guinea exploration. 
He recalled Chalmers s attempt in 1879 to cross the Owen 
Stanley Range, and the " splendid view " he had obtained 
of a country which, in Chalmers s own phrase, " had no 
equal in New Guinea." After referring to the discovery 

1 PP. 1876, c. 1566. 

2 Royal Geographical Society, February 22, 1875. 



BRITISH NEW GUINEA 47 

by Chalmers of the Laroki Falls, the lecturer went on to 
outline an ambitious scheme for future exploration, in 
which he allotted the missionaries a part. "As to the 
country between Port Moresby and the extreme south 
east/ he declared, " we may leave to them the task of 
completing our geographical knowledge of that part 
of New Guinea." x 

During the eighties the Proceedings of the R.G.S. 
(London) contained many communications from New 
Guinea missionaries. 2 Indeed, their enterprise contrasts 
strikingly with the sluggishness of the Dutch in the north 
west, where Signer D Albertis in 1872 found that from 
Sorong to Dorei the interior was entirely unexplored, 
" although Dutch missionaries had lived there for more 
than twenty years." 3 But Chalmers in the second year 
of his appointment discovered and named more than 
ten separate hills or mountain ranges in the country 
north of the Papuan Gulf. 

The Roman Catholic missionaries to Eastern New 
Guinea followed gallantly in the steps of the first 
Protestant pioneers. In the report of the Special Com 
missioner for 1888 it is noted that the " French Catholic 
Missionaries at Yule Island are likely to be useful 
pioneers "... they " have explored the San Joseph 
River " ; 4 the firstfruits of which are seen in the report 
of the following year, which contained detailed informa 
tion for the Government about the land, climate and 
population of this district. 5 

1 Sydney Morning Herald, June 23, 1883. Also R.G.S., 1880, ii. 
P- 313. 

E.g., Account of the Kemp-Welch River, by Rev. T Beswick. 
R.G.S., 1880, ii. p. 511. 

1 What I Did and What I Saw. L. M. D Albertis, 1880, i. p. 208. 
4 PP. 1889, c. 5620-3, p. 9. 

* PP. 1890-91, c. 6269-5, and PP. 1891, c. 6323, pp. 150-161. 



48 BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

It is true that the claims of the missionaries were some 
times extravagant. For Chalmers, on the return of 
Theodore Be van in 1887, who had discovered and ex 
plored the Douglas and Queen s Jubilee Rivers for nearly 
a hundred miles, chose to minimize the value of this 
enterprise, declaring " that nearly seven years ago I had 
named much that Mr Be van has now named." 1 A 
bitter controversy followed, which was revived by Lawes 
a year later, when the President of the Royal Geographical 
Society of Australia supported Bevan, demolishing Lawes s 
case and showing that the Wickam River of Chalmers 
was but a mouth of the Queen s Jubilee, up which 
Chalmers had only claimed to go ten miles, whereas it 
was found by Bevan to be thirty miles long. The 
President added : " Mr Chalmers s accounts are character 
ized by a vagueness that greatly detracts from their 
geographic value." 2 

This criticism is sufficiently just perhaps to have 
finality, but it in no way detracts from the political 
value of Chalmers s exploration work. Chalmers, and 
other missionaries such as Lawes who were less pro 
minent in this field, were interested not so much in the 
shape of a mountain or in the depth of a river, as in the 
fact of their existence and of their consequent influence 
upon the mission. Mountains were viewed as obstacles 
to communication between districts, but also as bearing 
upon their slopes, just as rivers did upon their banks, 
hitherto unknown villages which provided new oppor 
tunities. During a cruise along the south coast in 1878, 
out of two hundred villages which were communicated 
with, ninety were visited for the first time by a white 

1 Autobiography and Letters. J. Chalmers, edited by R. Lovett, 1902, 

p. 293- 

2 British New Guinea. Theodore Bevan, 1890, pp. 185-210. 



BRITISH NEW GUINEA 49 

man, and the diaries of all his expeditions show Chalmers 
to have been viewing every place he visited as a possible 
new field of labour. " Gimenumu will make a fine 
mission station," he writes in 1879 > " a large village 
1900 feet up ; fine plantations and plenty of water." He 
was interested, too, in trading possibilities, noting sago 
in large abundance in the villages on the banks of the 
river he named Coombes, and elsewhere, and foretelling 
that " a very large trade will yet be carried on by 
foreigners in the Gulf in sago and copra." 1 

He has information, too, for prospective settlers, noting 
carefully the healthy and fertile districts, such as about 
Kivori, where he found " well-kept plantations in the 
hills." In addition, he writes of the flora, notes the 
presence of elephantiasis in one district, and utters a 
warning as to the presence of a treacherous tribe. 2 

Such diverse information, it may be argued, any ex 
plorer is expected to give ; but it must be remembered 
that Chalmers was a " pioneer missionary " and made 
" no pretence to be a pioneer explorer." 3 Thus writes 
one of his critics, and he has the evidence of Chalmers s 
writings to support him. In 1878 the missionary wrote 
that he still had a desire to cross the Peninsula to Huon 
Gulf, not as explorer but as missionary, " but I do wish 
to know all there is to be known about New Guinea," 
he adds. 4 Nine years later, in describing some of his 
early expeditions, he asserted that their aim was to 
discover suitable spots for mission stations and for 
native teachers. 5 There were some, however, who con- 



1 Ibid., pp. 63, 123, 137, 150. 

a Ibid., pp. 107, 108, 141, 142. 

3 Hon. Sec. R.G.S. (London), quoted by Bevan, loc. cit., p. 264. 

* Autobiography, loc. cit., p. 190. 

6 Pioneering in New Guinea, 1887, p. i, 

D 



50 BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

sidered that he made a better explorer than those who 
liked to claim the title. 1 Certainly he covered more 
ground than many of them. Deputy-Commissioner 
Romilly declared with his accustomed vigour that " the 
conceit of these so-called explorers made him very 
angry," 2 all the more because they rarely mentioned 
the missionaries, " the source of most of their in 
formation." 3 

Even if the geographic value of his work may have 
been slight, as some of his critics held, the value of the 
political information collected by him and other mission 
aries cannot be denied, for they are cited as authorities, 
not only in the press by political controversialists, 4 but 
also by Government departments, 5 and by administrators <] 
in official correspondence. Both Lawes and Chalmers 

1 Deputy-Commissioner Romilly Reports, November 1883. Armit 
of the Argus reached a point forty miles from coast, which had been 
previously visited by Mr and Mrs Lawes. He suffered severely from 
fever, and one of his party died. " These private expeditions led by 
men of no experience will do much harm if any more should be organ 
ized." PP. 1884, c. 4126, pp. 17, 18. 

2 Letters and Memoir (1893), p. 194. 

3 The Western Pacific and New Guinea (1886), p. 242. Hugh Romilly. 

4 E.g., In a strong article in the National Review of September 
1887 in favour of annexation, W. D. Hay quotes Chalmers s statement 
that there were possibilities of successful sugar, coffee and cotton 
planting in the island, and recalls his estimate of the density of popu 
lation (" really scanty, about 200,000 ") to show that fears on this 
score were groundless. 

6 E.g., A paper by Rev. W. Gill read before the R.G.S. in 1874 was 
cited by the Admiralty to the Colonial Office, September 22, 1875 
(PP. 1876, c. 1566). 

6 E.g., In the report of the Special Commissioner for 1888 (PP. 1889, 
c. 5620-3), pp. 65, 66, Deputy-Commissioner A. Musgrave encloses a 
report of a lecture by Rev. S. Macfarlane declaring, inter alia, that the 
colony could be made self-supporting, emphasizing this by a letter from 
Capt. C. Bridge, R.N., in agreement, who states that his opinion had 
been " confirmed by several conversations with my distinguished 
friend Mr Chalmers." 



BRITISH NEW GUINEA 51 

described in much detail the character, customs, and 
manner of life of the natives with whom they came in 
contact, 1 so that no one visiting those tribes as Govern 
ment official or merely as adventurer could complain 
that he need lack knowledge of the conditions he was 
entering, or of the manner in which the missionaries 
had successfully faced them. " To them we are in 
debted," declared La Meslee, " for the knowledge we 
possess of the inland tribes around Port Moresby," 2 
that settlement of the London Missionary Society which 
was destined to become before long the seat of govern 
ment, and principal port of British New Guinea. 

Indirectly also, exploration owed much to the mission 
aries. Something of the initial stimulus came from them. 
D Albertis attributes to Macfarlane the first suggestion 
of exploring the Fly River ; 3 Mr Lindt suggests that a 
conversation with Lawes and a promise of hospitality 
in 1885 encouraged him to visit New Guinea ; 4 and a 
letter of Chalmers to the " Town and Country Journal " 
in 1878 was described to the Secretary of State as 
" very favourable to the country," and " certain to 
stimulate of (sic) new the zeal of all the adventurers in 
Australia." 5 

1 E.g., Notes on New Guinea and its Inhabitants in R.G.S., 1880, ii. 
p. 602, dealing chiefly with the inhabitants under headings such as 
native customs, occupations, houses, canoes, goveniment, moral con 
dition. 

Pioneering in New Guinea, ]. Chalmers, 1887, pp. 162-188, in 
which the customs, habits and beliefs of the Motumotu and Motu 
tribes are tabulated in a manner very useful to traders and 
administrators . 

8 Sydney Morning Herald, loc. cit. 

3 Loc. cit., vol. ii. p. 3. 

4 Picturesque New Guinea. J. W. Lindt (1887), Preface. 

5 Acting-High Commissioner Gorrie to Sir M. Hicks-Beach, October 14, 
878.- (PP, 1883,^.3617, p. 87.) 



52 BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

Many explorers could not have reached New Guinea 
as easily and safely as they did had not passages been 
given to them in the mission steamer Ellengowan. 
Octavius Stone in 1875, Goldie in 1877, Armit in 1885, 
and others made use of the steamer; and indeed both 
D Albertis and Stone in 1875 went in her with Macfarlane 
on exploring trips to the Fly River and Stone to the 
Baxter River. 

Travellers were always certain to receive help and 
hospitality at the missionary stations. It is rarely 
indeed that a book on travel in British New Guinea does 
not contain a grateful tribute to the kindness of the 
missionaries. Dr Otto Finsch, who in 1882 found at 
Port Moresby " an excellent field for his anthropological 
studies . . . thanks to the little interference with native 
customs on the part of the missionaries," acknowledges 
" a friendly welcome," an empty house being placed at 
his disposal. 1 Macfarlane in the early days at Somerset 
provided Stone with stores in the absence of some ordered 
from Brisbane, in order that the expedition of September 
1875 should not be indefinitely delayed. It is not 
necessary to multiply instances. For our purpose the 
attitude of the missionaries to strangers has been ade 
quately summed up by the Chairman of a Royal Com 
mission in 1906. " Their homes," declared Colonel 
Mackay, " have always been centres of hospitality . . . 
while their wives have nursed many a fever-stricken 
wanderer back to health." 2 

And these relatively unimportant acts ought not to 
be forgotten; for they must have had a cumulative 
influence on the enterprise of those who sought trade,, 



1 R.G.S., vi., 1884, p. 38. 

8 Across Papua. Col. K. Mackay (1909), p. 40. 



BRITISH NEW GUINEA 53 

specimens, or adventure in New Guinea, and they must 
have helped to lessen the creaks of the crude machinery of 
civilization in its irregular advance. Advice and warning 
as to the best way to approach the savage inhabitants 
no doubt gained added force in coming from those who 
showed such a sincere desire to soften the process of 
invasion, not merely for the invaded, but also for the 
invader. 



CHAPTER II 

THE ANNEXATION CONTROVERSY 

BY their services of exploration the missionaries prepared 
the way for the expansion of a European race in New 
Guinea. They were the first to penetrate the barrier of 
mystery which had protected the savage race living 
there from European visitors, 1 and they placed the 
knowledge thus gained at the disposal of any lay ex 
plorers who needed it. 

A writer in the sixties drew attention to the reports of 
navigators that it was " a rich and magnificent country," 
but added that " at present the hostile disposition of its 
savage occupants renders it inaccessible to European 
explorers." Fears such as these delayed the exploration 
of the country until the missionaries visited it, who, 
although more concerned to gain converts than to make 
geographical discoveries yet, incidentally to their main 
purpose, acted as explorers. In this way they did much 
to remove the feeling of awe with which this cannibal 
land had been regarded, and to foster in the public 
mind a feeling of confidence in the possibilities of its 
colonization. 

Although there is sometimes a tendency to overrate the 
dangers to which pioneer missionaries are exposed, in the 
case of those who went to New Guinea it must be remem 
bered, to their credit, that the current opinion of the 

1 Australia : Its Rise, Progress and Present Condition. W. Westgarth, 
1861, p. 132. 



BRITISH NEW GUINEA 55 

savagery of the inhabitants was such that, when the 
Colonial Secretary told the New Guinea Company in 
1867 that adventurers " must neither look for aid nor 
protection from the national forces," the Company 
thought the risks too great to proceed with the enterprise. 1 

And in 1874 the Governor of New South Wales, in reply 
to the request of Lord Carnarvon for his opinion upon 
annexation, said : "At present there is not throughout the 
whole of New Guinea one European resident, not even 
a missionary, and the Papuans are savages of a type 
which experience has shown . . . incapable of becoming 
civilized." He laid great stress upon the fact that the 
inhabitants were " warlike cannibals." 2 

In December 1874, however, the London Missionary 
Society moved the headquarters of the mission from Cape 
York to Port Moresby, and in 1877 Lawes was joined 
there by Chalmers, who lost no time in showing that by 
approaching the natives in a friendly and not a menacing 
manner it was possible to explore the country and to live 
there, if not in security, at least in comparative safety. 

The effect was immediate. Individual adventurers 
such as Goldie, and, early in 1878, gold prospectors, were 
no longer afraid to enter the country, 3 and fresh interest 
was aroused in Australia by the reports sent back by the 
missionaries of the possibilities of developing the country, 
and of civilizing the natives hitherto believed to be "in 
capable of becoming civilized." 

The Council of the Royal Colonial Institute seized the 
opportunity to re-open the annexation controversy, by 
arguing that as the Papuan was now being brought more 
in contact with white men the question of the control of 

1 PP. 1876, c. 1566, p. 27. 

2 September 7, 1874. PP. 1876, c. 1566, p. 12. 

3 See post, p. 76. 



56 BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

this increasing influx had become acute. 1 And Mr F. P. 
Labilliere, who had originally opened the question, 2 was 
able to reply 3 to Sir H. Robinson s statement of 1874 
that not even a missionary was in the island, by pointing 
out that " now several missionaries have been for some 
time permanently established there." 

The stimulus which Chalmers gave to the movement 
for annexation was thus important, but it was from the 
first, and continued to be until the final decision, the 
stimulus of example. For Chalmers s name hardly figures 
at all in the correspondence of the annexation controversy. 

Other missionaries, however, took a prominent part in 
it and supported those who pressed for annexation with 
the same kind of arguments. These were mainly three. 

First, the strategic argument that, should a foreign 
power obtain command of Torres Straits and of the 
harbours of New Guinea, British commerce would be 
endangered, since traffic through the straits was said to 
be rapidly increasing. 4 

Secondly, the necessity to control immigration in order 
to avoid evils brought upon the native population of 
other islands such as Fiji, where the whites had first 
entered uncontrolled. 5 

Thirdly, the possibility of a foreign power making a 
penal settlement there, with its resulting menace to the 
order and security of Australian colonists. 6 

1 July 9, 1878. PP. 1883, c. 3617. 

* March 26, 1874. PP. 1876, c. 1566. 

* September 18, 1878. PP. 1883, c. 3617. 

* Labilliere to Ld. Carnarvon, loo. cit. PP. 1876, c. 1566. A. Michie, 
Agent-General Victoria at the R.C.I., March 16, 1875. Sir P. 
Scratchley. Australian Defences and New Guinea, G. K. Cooke, 1887, 
pp. 243-257. 

* Labilliere, loc. cit., 1874. 

8 A point first raised by Rev. W. W. Gill to Colonial Treasurer, 
January 28, 1873, cited by Sir H. Robinson, loc. cit., September 7, 1874. 



BRITISH NEW GUINEA 57 

It appears that of these three the first carried most 
weight, and in fact the actual decision of Queensland to 
take formal possession was justified to the home Govern 
ment on the grounds that it was necessary " to prevent 
foreign powers from taking possession." l 

It is interesting to notice that missionaries like Gill and 
Macfarlane, who were eager for annexation, did not lay 
stress upon the second argument, but grasped clearly 
the political as distinct from the ethical issues involved, 
and spoke and wrote from the orthodox political stand 
point. Hence they often took the political view of 
missionary work and saw the value of the latter in its 
ability to " open up the country." This was the phrase 
used in a discussion at the Royal Geographical Society in 
1873 by Rev. S. Macfarlane, who recognized the strategic 
value of New Guinea, and emphasized its wealth, in 
cluding gold, but thought that missionary enterprise 
was first necessary. 2 A little over a year later, during a 
discussion provoked by a paper from Captain Moresby, 
the President of the R.G.S. took a similar view and 
thought that England should be content with a gradual 
progress achieved by the pioneers, such as the mis 
sionaries. 3 Thus both regarded the missionaries as the 
forerunners of British Imperialism. 4 

Again, Sir H. Robinson, in his unfavourable comment 
upon the annexationist policy (September 7, 1874), en 
closed for the information of Lord Carnarvon a letter 
written to the Colonial Treasurer by Rev. W. W. Gill 
(January 28, 1873), who suggested that the time for 
British expansion in New Guinea had not yet arrived. 

1 Hansard, 1883, v. 278, c. 324, Agent-General to Lord Derby. 

2 R.G.S., November 24, 1873. 
8 Ibid., February 22, 1875. 

4 Compare ante, pp. 10-18. 



58 BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

" Meantime," Gill added, " we hope gradually by mis 
sionary and colonial enterprise to open up this vast 
unknown country/ 

Gill made his attitude perfectly clear by stating that 
he wrote "as an Englishman " rather than " as repre 
senting any religious society," and as one who hoped that 
" should our missionary enterprise happily succeed, the 
interests of English colonization and civilization will be 
effectually promoted." And he declared emphatically 
that New Guinea should be kept free from any foreign 
power. " At any cost (save the dire curse of war)," he 
urged, " let not the rich prize fall into other hands." x 

Although, as the controversy developed, the mis 
sionaries came to lay more stress upon the second 
argument, the protection of the natives Lawes for 
instance made the influx of gold-seekers a reason for 
demanding the establishment of British authority in 
New Guinea 2 with the exception of Chalmers they 
never did more than lend support to the arguments used 
by administrators and other laymen, 3 and their peculiar 
profession failed to lend a distinctiveness to their point 
of view. 

To Chalmers the problem appeared in quite a different 

1 PP. 1876, c. 1566. See ante, p. 56. 

2 PP. 1883, c. 3617, p. 100. Received at the C.O., January 31, 1879, 
by which time the Secretary of State had already informed Sir A. 
Gordon (December 31, 1878) that in consequence of the final failure of 
the gold expedition in October it was now " unnecessary to entertain 
the question of the annexation of New Guinea." 

3 E.g. Rev. H. R. McDonald, a missionary, addressed a meeting in 
Melbourne, July 16, 1883, and supported the Mayor in a deputation 
afterwards to the Governor of Victoria. PP. 1883, c. 3814, p. 4, and 
PP. 1884, c. 3863, p. ii. See ante, pp. 40, 41. 

A resolution was laid before the Inter-Colonial Convention, November 
n, 1883, from three religious bodies, and included a letter from J. G. 
Paton. PP. 1884, c. 3863, pp. 153, 161. 



BRITISH NEW GUINEA 59 

light. The important question for him was not Who 
should govern New Guinea, but How New Guinea should 
be governed. His influence in deciding the first question 
was probably negligible ; but it was very far from 
negligible in deciding the second. 

It is curious that Chalmers, who was not much inter 
ested in the first, apart from its connexion with the 
second, should have been mainly responsible for raising 
it by the stimulus given to enterprise by his active work 
in New Guinea. Unconsciously and unwillingly he had 
cut a path for his countrymen to enter, and trade, and 
settle, in their own interests, when he had only thought 
of making a channel along which the interests of the 
natives could be served. 

The view of Chalmers was radically different from that 
of the imperialist missionaries. For, like Marsden, he 
took an ethical and religious view of politics, judging 
political action, such as annexation, by the criterion of 
its effect upon the native race whether it would aid 
or hinder them in their progress towards the ideal of 
a Christian nation, and refusing to consider the intro 
duction of Christianity as a method of preparing the way 
for British expansion. 

Chalmers could not change his ideal by speaking, " not 
as representing any religious society," l and where Gill 
was fired with patriotic enthusiasm, Chalmers was most 
eloquent when he pleaded for the interests of New Guinea, 
" the land of his adoption." 2 

But although, like Marsden, he could never have 
acquiesced in a cross raised by a British missionary as a 
symbol of British political dominion after the manner of 
Magellan, yet the intervening years since Marsden saw 

1 Rev. W. Gill, loo. cit. 

2 R.C.I., January nth, 1887, vol. xviii. p. 104. 



60 BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

the British flag as a symbol of Christian politics had 
left behind them disappointment and bitterness, and 
Chalmers could hold no illusions about the evils possible 
under British rule. 

Although he was reconciled to the Protectorate by the 
manner in which Commodore Erskine had proclaimed it, 
and by the pledge contained in the proclamation, yet he 
could not control an expression of his almost cynical view 
of British expansion when the British flag was hoisted on 
the top of Cloudy Mountain, and wrote in his journal, 
" In solitude as well as busy scenes Britain s voice must 
be heard ! Some Britons think the world was made for 
the Anglo-Saxon." l 

Chalmers had only one desire, to serve the natives and 
to bring them to see the Christian vision, and around that 
aim all his sympathies were centred and, for its achieve 
ment, he was ready to use any method which proved 
suitable. 

Unlike the missionaries of Rotumah he realized that 
mental and industrial development were equally neces 
sary to the native as conversion, while in contrast to 
Macfarlane, who noted the wealth of the country, and 
believed the conversion of the natives would enable his 
countrymen to possess it, Chalmers saw in commerce 
with the natives, under restriction, a means of civilizing 
them. Teach our natives, encourage them in trade," 
he said, " and I feel sure they will never want your 
charity." 2 

Every factor in the position or prospects of the country 
was fitted by Chalmers into his plan to develop New 
Guinea for the natives and by the natives ; and he hoped 
that no attempt would be made to force British civiliza- 

1 Pioneering in New Guinea, p. 196. 

8 January n, 1887, R.C.I., vol. xviii. p. 105. 



BRITISH NEW GUINEA 61 

tion upon them, but that " a more suitable and better 
civilization should be theirs." l 

This was the distinctive background to Chalmers s 
opinion of the three arguments used in favour of annexa 
tion, and explains his neglect to take a prominent part 
in the annexation controversy, which was to settle Who 
was to govern New Guinea, and not How it was to be 
governed. 

Because Chalmers made the fulfilment of the pledge 
the aim of policy he was non-committal in his view upon 
annexation when he made his only important considered 
statement upon it. 

" If for the sake of defending our colonies from foreign 
aggression," he declared, " a protectorate is sufficient to 
prevent the intrusion of another power, I would advocate 
leaving N.G. under the protectorate, provided that it is 
possible to carry out the proclamation. If, on the other 
hand, annexation would be a benefit to the natives and a 
necessity to Australia, I would support the proposal to 
annex the country." 2 

Thus in Chalmers s eyes it was not a sufficient recom 
mendation that the protection of the native should follow 
upon annexation. To be justified annexation must 
" benefit " the natives. He thought always more of the 
duty the white race owed to the brown than of the rights 
which might be asserted by the white race without doing 
harm to the other. 

The avowed imperialists, both lay and missionary, took 
a negative view of the rights of the native, and considered 
that justice was done if those rights, as conceived by 
themselves, were not injured in the carrying out of their 
positive policy, which was to seize and develop the 

1 Ibid., p. 105. 

8 Ibid., p. 104. (Italic* are the author s.) 



62 BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

country in their own national interests. Chalmers, on 
the other hand, took a positive view of the rights of the 
native, and believed that it was unjust to the native to 
stop short at protecting them from oppression, and that 
the chief duty of the expanding race was to educate as 
well as to protect the native, and that its own alleged 
right to share in the prosperity caused by the develop 
ment of the country, and by the civilizing of the inhabi 
tants, did not exist apart from its duty to them, and 
lapsed if it became inconsistent with that duty. 

He was strengthened in his position by the arguments 
the annexationists put forward. These laid much stress 
on the strategic value of New Guinea, upon the import 
ance of its position rather than of its soil or of its labour, 
and they were more concerned to keep Germany and 
France from fortifying its harbours or from placing a penal 
settlement there, than to make use of the resources of 
the country. So that Chalmers must have felt that his 
audience at the Royal Colonial Institute would not be 
unsympathetic to him when he declared : " Annexation 
cannot be asked for on the plea of need for land. We 
need no more territory whilst Australia ... is still un 
occupied and will be so for another century." He was 
afraid annexation would lead to injustice towards the 
native, because " the young, pushing, daring Anglo- 
Saxon " would see in every native right an impediment 
to colonization. 1 From the time when he had realized 
that the strategic value of New Guinea might lead to its 
annexation, 2 he had also realized that because its value 
was mainly strategic, an unrivalled opportunity would 
be offered of governing it entirely for the benefit of the 
native inhabitants. 

1 January n, 1887, R.C.I., vol. xviii., p. 104. 

2 Work and Adventure in New Guinea, p. 17. 



BRITISH NEW GUINEA 63 

It is not, however, entirely true to say that Chalmers 
was uninterested in the question of Who should govern 
New Guinea. For instance, he supported Lawes against 
it being " handed over to the tender mercies of 
Queensland." l 

But he was only interested in Who should govern it as 
far as it affected the possibility of its good government. 
This is where his view contrasts vividly with the Im 
perialist. For the latter was content to leave the question 
of How the country was to be governed until the first 
question was settled -being prepared to stake a decision 
upon the question Who ? upon grounds of Imperial 
policy. For if the Imperialist ever thought of the effect 
alternative forms of government would have upon New 
Guinea itself, he did not speculate upon the future of 
the native, but upon the future of the settlers there, 
separated from Queensland by a comparatively short 
extent of sea. Much of the desire to protect the native 
from outrage came from the wish to protect the traders 
from reprisals, and not from any strong sympathy with 
the native race. In fact, Lord Derby stated that prior 
to the independent action of Queensland, the Agent- 
General for that colony had put before him amongst 
other arguments in support of annexation, that since 
New Guinea was practically beyond the reach of British 
law it was becoming or was soon likely to become the 
resort of bad characters of all kinds, and these might 
become " a serious source of annoyance to the Colonies." 2 

Had Chalmers and not Archer put forward arguments 
for annexation on that occasion he would have said that 
the bad characters were likely to become a serious source 
of annoyance to the natives, 

1 Chalmers s Autobiography, p. 238. 

2 April 20, 1883. Hansard, 278, c. 728, 



64 BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

It is possible to argue that Chalmers was conceited in 
imagining that Lawes and he were " the only possible 
interpreters " and " alone " had the confidence of the 
natives. 1 But that he agreed with Lawes in preferring 
Crown Colony rule when there was a prospect of Queens 
land controlling the country ; 2 and that, when this 
prospect faded, he was inclined to prefer a protectorate 
governed by a Special Commissioner, to Crown Colony 
rule, 3 does not show him to have been inconsistent as well 
as conceited. For from the start he never moved from 
the position that it was the interests of the native race 
that were important, and that any form of government 
which insured the full performance of what he considered 
to be the duty of a Christian nation to the native race 
was worthy of support. 

Perhaps too much space has been devoted to an 
attempted explanation of Chalmers s attitude to the 
annexation controversy, but it is his attitude to that 
controversy which gives the key to the nature of his 
influence upon the colonial statesmanship of his day. 

1 Chalmers s Autobiography, p. 261. * Ibid., p. 237. 

8 R.C.I.y January u, 1887, p. 13. 



CHAPTER III 

PEACEMAKING 

THE missionaries resident in New Guinea, led by 
Chalmers, endeavoured from the first to secure that 
British immigration should be an inflowing of educa 
tors rather than exploiters. The problem of adjust 
ment arising out of the impact of a " civilized " upon 
a " savage " race demanded a solution in the Pacific 
long before the Government became officially the source 
of energy behind the immigration. In the case of New 
Guinea the missionaries did much towards solving the 
problem before the protectorate was established, and 
aided the Government to find a more complete and 
perfect solution afterwards. Their influence took both 
a direct and an indirect form. 

Their influence was direct in that they impressed the 
natives by their patience and devotion, that the white 
men were their friends, and also by their advice and 
practical assistance they induced the white men to 
assume and maintain an attitude of friendship towards 
the natives. 

It was indirect in that they pulled political strings 
to effect this whenever direct influence was found to 
be impotent. 

As it has already been pointed out, much of the original 
exploration work in what afterwards became British New 
Guinea was undertaken by the missionaries, so that 
the natives of a great part of the island came first in 

E * 



66 BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

contact with the nobler representatives of Western 
civilization. 

It was well for British New Guinea that this was so. 
Even in the history of this fortunate dependency however, 
there is ample evidence of the difficulties bequeathed 
to the Government by the ill-considered action of lay 
pioneers. 

The chief characteristic of both the Polynesian and 
the Papuan is "a shy suspicious timidity," l which 
renders them ready to use their weapons on a stranger. 
This is coupled with a vivid memory of injuries com 
mitted against them. 2 It was, therefore, of more than 
usual importance in this case, that the first white men 
with whom the natives came in contact should do 
nothing to stimulate the immediate suspicion of the 
inhabitants from fear to hatred, but rather should do 
their utmost to allay that suspicion. Not merely dis 
interested motives in favour of what prove, too often, 
to be the unfortunate aboriginals, but also selfishly com 
mercial motives should demand that tact and patience, 
rather than violence, be used in order to lay a secure 
foundation for future intercourse between the invaded 
and the invader. 

But the ordinary explorer is sometimes unfortunately 
so intent upon his maps or his collecting-boxes, that, 
like D Albertis, he is not greatly disturbed if he opens 
up the country " by frightening the natives away from 

1 British New Guinea, Country and People. Sir W. Macgregor, 1897, 
p. 36. 

a " It is a humiliating but undoubted fact that the more natives 
have been in contact with white men the more difficult they are of 
access." This is explained, Romilly writes, by their vivid memory. 
" Those who have had no experience of white men have no injuries 
to avenge." (Western Pacific and New Guinea. H. H. Romilly, 1886, 
pp. 16, 17.) 



BRITISH NEW GUINEA 67 

their villages and ransacking them for specimens. " l 
Sir William Macgregor testified to the harm wrought by 
this explorer in a paper read before the Royal Geo 
graphical Society in 1895, declaring that even by that 
time the natives on the Upper Fly River, whose tribe 
had been in contact with D Albertis in 1875, could not 
be trusted, but those near the frontier did not appear 
to be hostile. 2 Of other expeditions, that of the Age 
newspaper in 1883 failed with the loss of stores, and the 
wounding of its leader, owing to unwise use of firearms, 
and the neglect of a native warning ; 3 and that of 
H. 0. Forbes in 1887 was cut short by flight from the 
opposition, aroused by the reckless violence of a member 
of the expedition towards a native. 4 Even Theodore 
Be van, who proudly claims to have carried out his 
expeditions successfully without having taken the life 
of a single native, supporting this with the testimony 
of the Hon. J. Douglas, on one occasion acted contrary 

1 Prof. Haddon to the R.G.S., February 25, 1895, quoted by 
Macgregor, loc. cit., p. 97. 

2 Macgregor, loc. cit., p. 15. 

The responsibility must unhappily be shared by Rev. S. Macfarlane, 
who suggested the first expedition in 1875, and accompanied it in 
the mission steamer Ellengowan, and apparently did not protest when 
at the very start D Albertis frightened native canoes away by firing 
over and at them. (D Albertis, loc cit., vol. ii. pp. 21, et seq.) 

3 Deputy-Commissioner Romilly reports, November 20, 1883, to 
Acting-High Commissioner for Western Pacific. PP. 1884, c. 4126, 
pp. 17, 18. 

" The two so-called exploring expeditions have done no good. One 
of them has unfortunately done much harm " . . . " Morrison, a boy 
of twenty-one, of the Age, reached a point " certainly not more than 22 
miles from the coast " (though he claimed to have gone nearly 100 
miles from the sea). " He arrived at Port Moresby wounded in two 
places. His rifles and ammunition fell into the hands of the natives." 
(Morrison afterwards achieved fame as the Pekin correspondent of 
The Times.) 

4 Report of Special Commissioner. PP. 1888, c. 5249-31, pp. 64-68. 



68 BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

to the advice of those who were doing their best to pre 
pare the country for settlement without bloodshed, by 
going upon a trading trip to a hostile district in defiance 
of a warning from an official, considering it a case 
for " self-assertion." But both he and others were 
fortunate in apparently not having to pay for such 
recklessness. 1 

Fortunately for British New Guinea, although it was 
reported by a visiting correspondent that the relations 
of exploring parties with the natives in some instances 
" have been very unfriendly," and that " the effect 
of this on the native mind is lasting," these instances 
were the exception rather than the rule. 2 And this it 
cannot be too often repeated, was a vital matter, for in 
a savage country the echoes of a shot fired at random 
do not die away in a single generation, or sound only in 
a small district, but the whisper is heard by natives a 
hundred miles away, and animates the revengeful club 
or spear perhaps more than thirty years later. 

The reason for such bitterness being largely saved 
to New Guinea was not only that so much of the original 
exploration work was carried out by Chalmers, but that 
both he and Lawes assisted other explorers by advice, 
by practical help, and by the extent of their influence 
even in villages which had never seen them. 3 Well 
might La Meslee declare that the advent of the mission 
aries marks a new period in the history of New Guinea. 



1 British New Guinea. T. Bevan, 1890, p. 137, et seq. 

2 C. Lyne, New Guinea, 1885, p. 229. 

8 Strangers are asked if they know Tamate ; if so, are treated with 
kindness. To many tribes who have never seen him he is " a mighty 
sorcerer," and all like to inquire about him. Sir Peter Scratchley 
(Special Commissioner for British Protectorate, 1885), Australian 
Defences and New Guinea, loc. cit., p. 360. 



BRITISH NEW GUINEA 69 

exploration. " To the great credit of the missionaries, 
their efforts have been attended with the best effects ; 
the Papuans have been made to understand the pacific 
intentions of the white man." 1 

Chalmers was not content with giving advice upon the 
spot to those who sought it, but gave it wider circulation 
in 1885, by publishing papers, containing detailed in 
formation for prospective visitors, how to approach 
natives for the first time, how to avoid arousing sus 
picion by thoughtless acts, how to recognize signs of 
friendship or of hostility in the position and move 
ment of their weapons, in their dress, in the action 
of a limb or the glance of an eye, emphasizing the 
fact that armed natives are not necessarily hostile, 
but uttering an oft-repeated warning to " get away 
as quickly and quietly as possible " at the first hint 
of danger. 2 That such advice was timely was shown 
the same year by the murder of Captain Fryer and 
three others, who met their death as the result of 
negligence and rashness. 3 

Sometimes the missionaries had to try to repair the 
harm caused by those who acted thus. As soon as 
Morrison returned with news of failure, and of a brush 
with the natives, Chalmers left for the Varigadi villages, 
to inquire the reason for the hostility of the natives, and 

1 Sydney Morning Herald, June 26, 1883. La Meslee recalled that 
Alexander Morton, the naturalist, who accompanied Goldie in 1877, 
was asked by the timid natives whether they were friends of Lawes, 
and on hearing so, " they immediately became friendly." " The 
missionary referred to had never been in this part of the district, but 
his name was known to the natives as a byword of peace, and the 
simple fact that the white men were his friends was sufficient to ensure 
a good reception." 

a Pioneering in New Guinea, 1887, pp. 66, 1*9-133. 

* For an account of the inquiry into Fryer s murder, sec PP. 1886, 
5i-Sess. II., p. 36. 



70 BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

to make peace with them, and to re-establish their con 
fidence in the white man. 1 

That Chalmers in his own exploration work practised, 
as well as taught, the peaceful method of approaching the 
natives, is borne out by the resulting devotion of those 
who knew or heard of him. 2 Something of the story of it 
can be found by the curious in his published letters and 
writings. Let it suffice here to lay stress on the im 
portance he attached to going amongst the natives 
unarmed, and trusting to presence of mind, and a quick, 
vivid imagination to save him in danger. 3 " I can do 
more for the natives unarmed," he wrote ; and so he 
went amongst them with a walking-stick. 4 

It may of course be objected that Chalmers carried 
his policy to the verge of rashness, and that he eventually 
paid for it with his life ; but had he shown less courage 
or demanded less from those around him, he would 
probably only have purchased the immediate safety of 
himself and those he led, at the price of a long-continued 
hatred for white men in general on the part of the tribes, 

1 R.G.S., vol. vi., 1884, p. 217, and Pioneering in New Guinea, 
p. 124 seq. 

2 " The fame of Tamate has been noised abroad, so that people from 
China Straits and even from the Louisiade Archipelago visit him." 
H. M. Chester, Magistrate at Thursday Island to Colonial Secretary, 
Brisbane, August 30, 1878. (PP. 1883, c. 3617, p. 80.) 

3 Work and Adventure in New Guinea, 1885, p. 213. 

4 G. R. Askwith (Scratchley s Secretary) in Australian Defences and 
New Guinea, p. 360. 

In December 1877 an attack was made upon the mission lugger 
May vi, the captain of which was wounded. Chester, in forwarding the 
latter s report to the Colonial Secretary, Brisbane, added : " It appears 
they (the missionary party) have firearms but Mr Chalmers will not 
allow them to be loaded." No action was taken against the natives 
by H.M.S. Sappho beyond warning them. (PP. 1883, c. 3617, pp. 47-51.) 
See also Chalmers s Autobiography, pp. 146-151, and Work and Adventure 
in New Guinea, p. 58-62. 



BRITISH NEW GUINEA 71 

so that New Guinea, like New Zealand, might have 
become later a battle-ground for the two races. 

He certainly could never otherwise have obtained that 
influence over the natives which enabled him, and in 
a lesser degree, enabled Lawes to render such conspicuous 
service to explorers, and gold-seekers, and to the 
Protectorate. 

The broad-minded religious policy of the missionaries 
increased, and helped to maintain the influence gained 
by their peaceful bearing. They came as educators as 
well as protectors, and they were careful not to render 
the principles they taught unpopular, by attempting 
to put savages, accustomed to licence, into the strait- 
waistcoat of European convention. They emphasized 
their creed, not by trying to enforce a rigid code of 
European manners, but by interpreting the Christian 
inspiration in terms suitable to a different climate and a 
different race. 

Chalmers, after describing how he had joined with 
the natives in sports on shore and in bathing, declares : 
" All we want is to lead the New Guinea children to Him 
by no means to Anglicize them, believing that He will 
receive them without their adopting English customs." x 
And he goes on to describe the method they must use 
to do this : cannibalism which flourished at East Cape 
in 1878, was dead by 1882, due to the missionaries 
" learning the language, mixing freely with them, making 
friends . . . assisting them in their trading, and in 
every way making them feel that their good only was 
sought." 2 This attitude Chalmers assumed from the 
moment he arrived in the South Seas. The Earl of 
Pembroke and George Kingsley threw an interesting 

1 Work and Adventure in New Guinea, p. 243. 
a Ibid., p. 250-252. 



72 BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

sidelight upon it when they were received by Chalmers 
and his wife at Rarotonga in 1873. " This warm-hearted 
sensible Highland lady and gentleman," they wrote, 
" are very different people from the typical missionaries 
of the South Pacific. . . . By no means believing that 
they can wash the brown-a-moor white by a sudden 
application of Calvinistic whitewash, they try to make 
him as good a brown-a-moor as they can, and their 
labour is certainly not in vain." x 

Chalmers himself did not attach very much import 
ance to religious observances as evidence of the progress 
of the native, or as means towards that progress. 2 He 
was much more anxious that they should come to trust 
the white man through their experience of the mission 
aries devotion, whose guidance was found to lead to a 
hitherto unknown security and prosperity. Provided 
that could be secured, he was not one who cared much 
for the conventional results of Christianity. Not, of 
course, that he neglected to preach the Gospel, but 
that he refused to regard the ceremonies and customs 
which have been gathered around it, as most important 
to the salvation of savages. 

1 South Sea Bubbles, 1873, pp. 158-197. There is a vivid description 
of an entertainment given in their honour in which Chalmers led a 
deputation of natives with gifts, " dressed principally in a white shirt, 
with a native cloak of many colours, barefooted, and bearing a weapon, 
half-paddle." He " frisked and bounded and . . . gasped and 
roared, and bellowed like the most Bashantic of bulls." . . . "Is 
it worse than whiskey and water, this harmless effervescence ? " the 
writer asks. " All honour to you, M. le Missionaire, for your solid 
good sense." 

2 E.g. On one of his expeditions, the native paddlers made Sunday 
an excuse for putting in to land. Chalmers would have none of it. 
Pioneering in New Guinea, p. 28. When there is a good attendance 
at service, he only exclaims, " Alas, they are but savages . . . rejoicing 
in the prospect of an unlimited supply of tobacco, beads, and toma 
hawks." Work and Adventure in New Guinea, p. 211. 



BRITISH NEW GUINEA 73 

Lawes was also quite definite upon this point. To 
those who demanded for them better clothes, and in 
struction in the common decencies of life, he replied 
that those agencies were not effective, that the savage 
was averse to clothing, and that " a savage in a shirt 
is no better than one without," and that " Christianity 
was the true civilizer." l The introduction of Christi 
anity, however, was " no easy task." 

The language difficulty could only be overcome by 
speaking the " one language which is understood all 
the world over by every tribe of men . . . the language 
of human kindness . . . the master key which fits every 
human lock." At first all they could do very often was 
to let the natives handle them, and feel them, and to 
give them a little present, and come away. Red beads, 
strips of cloth, and hoop iron thus became " evangelizing 
agents of far greater power than Bibles and tracts in an 
unknown tongue." " As soon as we have gained their 
confidence sufficiently to be allowed to land and live 
amongst them, the Christian work begins, not by oral 
teaching, but by that which is more important by our 
life. We have to give them practical lessons in Christian 
living. . . . We do not neglect teaching . . . but it 
is not easy to awaken their interest or arouse their 
attention." 2 

Although this educational policy of the missionaries 

1 One wonders whether Lawes s view of the importance of clothes 
was modified by contact with Chalmers, who was opposed to the clothing 
of natives. In his earlier notes Lawes writes : " The people (on Niue, 
Cook Islands) when we first knew them, imported nothing and ex 
ported nothing. One native woman had a cotton print dress, and a 
very few men had cotton waist-cloths. When we left the entire popula 
tion was decently and in some cases grandly clothed." (W. G. Lawes, 
Joseph King, 1909, p. 40.) Unfortunately this note is undated. 

Paper read to the L.M.S., May 15, 1879. (W. G. Lawes, J. King, 
pp.- 132-150.) 



74 BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

can no doubt be criticized in detail 1 in its broad results, it 
was effective. The existence of the blood feud was the 
first chief obstacle to European expansion in New Guinea, 
the sanctity of human life was unknown, and the native 
had no more security for himself or his relatives than the 
white man who visited him. No doubt an enterprising 
Government, backed at home by a nation which was 
willing to pour out money on its behalf, could have 
conducted a successful war, and thus brought peace to 

1 Bevan made much of the fact that English was not taught in the 
schools. But great difficulty was found at first in teaching the natives 
to read in their own language at Port Moresby, and in replacing the 
many dialects by Motu language. By neglecting to teach English 
at first, the missionaries were able to concentrate more upon impressing 
new ideas by teaching them in a language already understood by many 
natives ; they assisted the progress of friendly relations between tribes 
previously hostile to each other by teaching the Gospel to those in 
dividuals of them which met at Port Moresby, in a single native language ; 
and they probably unwittingly made it almost imperative to Europeans 
who came to New Guinea to do business with the natives only through 
those who knew not merely the language but also their sensitive childish 
character, and who w r ere thus able to watch effectively over critical 
moments, when the two races came in contact. Bevan also attacked 
the missionaries for not putting a stop to senseless superstitions, and 
enforcing "rules of sanitary science." Romilly claims the opposite in 
his book From my Verandah in New Guinea, 1889, pp. 76, 77 ; and in 
his report to the Special Commissioner (PP. 1888, c. 5249-31), writing 
that " the tribe at Port Moresby have come so much under the 
influence of the L.M.S. that they are discarding to a great extent 
their superstitions." 

(Bevan, loc. cit., p. 281. See also a report by Chester on the English 
classes in Port Moresby school, April 1883, in PP. 1883, c. 3691. Also 
Sir Peter Scratchley s Secretary on Lawes s school, 1885, in Australian 
Defences and New Guinea, loc. cit., p. 359. For the difficulties found in 
teaching see Chalmers s Autobiography, p. 139, and Lawes, loc. cit., p. 71, 
and also p. 121 for a description of Port Moresby as a centre for barter 
where " natives speaking eight different languages have sometimes been 
at the same time.") On the demand of Sir William Macgregor English 
was eventually taught in all mission stations. But the situation was 
then very different. (R.C.I., vol. xxvi. p. 225, and Official Handbook, 
1919.) 



BRITISH NEW GUINEA 75 

New Guinea by robbing the natives of their land and 
afterwards exterminating them, and replacing them 
possibly by coolie labour, but short of that, there was no 
other way of bringing civilization to the country except 
by very gradually raising the character of the native, 
and liberating him from the tyranny of savage tradition 
through the power of a genuine devotion to his welfare. 1 

In the absence of lay pioneers, who were willing to 
do this, the missionaries did so ; and they did it more 
efficiently than others could have done, since they were 
always thinking not how much they could take from the 
natives, but how much they could give to them. That 
they thus prepared for the development of the territory 
as a British dependency, was an incidental result of 
their policy, and not the aim of it. 

Although, as Lawes declared in 1879, the results of this 
somewhat unorthodox policy were largely intangible, 
and could not be tabulated statistically, and there were 
no baptized converts, yet the emphasis laid upon prin 
ciples of life rather than upon dogma and European 
customs, was even at that date proving effective, so that 
Lawes could claim that the principles of peace were 
spreading, and that to a great extent they had " won 
the confidence of the people " ; being known all along the 
coast as " the men who bring peace." 2 

1 The somewhat youthful and explosive Bevan (born 1860), who 
claimed to be the first to champion the cause of the traders " against 
those who advocate keeping New Guinea for the New Guineans (and the 
missionaries)," declared that " the shiftless aboriginal," must learn " to 
bend his back to the yoke of Adam s curse or make room for those who 
will." Loc. cit., pp. 273, 276. 

a J. King, loc. cit., pp. 145, 147. Chalmers writes in 1884, "We preach 
the Gospel in many ways ; one of our best at present is making peace 
between tribes." (Autobiography, p. 227.) Sir W. Macgregor reports in 
1889 that the Papuan was not as yet " deeply impressed by the truths of 
the Gospel," but the labours of the missionaries " have to such an extent 



76 BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

This claim was abundantly justified at the time, and 
by events, and there is nothing more striking in this 
history than the general testimony to the influence of 
the missionaries as peacemakers. 

Goldie reports to the Royal Geographical Society in 
1878 that his " safety lay simply in the fact that 
Europeans had never harmed or done anything wrong 
to the coast tribes, the Rev. Lawes being the only 
European that had ever visited even the coast tribes, 
and his name at present acting as a password of 
safety." * 

Early in the same year, there occurred the first rush 
of gold-seekers to New Guinea, causing some anxiety 
lest conflict with the natives should result. The 
London Missionary Society brought the danger to the 
notice of the Colonial Office, which arranged for the 
despatch of a man-of-war to Port Moresby (July 6, 78), 
and Chester s powers as Police Magistrate at Thursday 
Island were temporarily extended by his appointment 
as a Deputy-Commissioner. 2 But all went well. 
Kindness and help by the one, and steadiness and 
gratitude by the others, enabled the missionaries and 
the diggers to be the best of friends. This was enough 
to obtain for the diggers the confidence and help 
of the natives. A report from H.M.S. Sappho forwarded 
a statement by a leader of the expedition telling of the 
good reception they received from the natives and of the 
influence Chalmers had upon the diggers. A service 
was held at Port Moresby, attended by them all without 
distinction of creed, at which Chalmers advised them 

modified the ways of thinking and the social relations of the natives 
that the good they have done is incalculably great." PP. 1890, c. 5897- 
33, P- 38. 

1 R.G.S., 1878, vol. xxii. p. 220. 

8 PP. 1883, c 3617 



BRITISH NEW GUINEA 77 

both to have no religious discussion, as being likely to 
create division amongst them, and also to keep on good 
terms with the natives. He also visited the mining 
camp with Chester where he again impressed this upon 
them. 1 This advice and the fact that the diggers " were 
to a great extent dependent on the good offices of the 
natives for the means of subsistence when exploring 
for gold/ resulted in their relations with the natives 
being " quite friendly." 2 Chalmers received a testi 
monial in gratitude from the diggers, who wrote : 
" You have in our intercourse with the natives aided 
us to establish a friendly footing." In July of the 
same year, the L.M.S. was asked by the miners and 
others, resident in Port Moresby, to send back to them 
Lawes (who was at that time in England) because of 
his influence with the natives. 3 

The same year Chester went with Chalmers on an 
expedition from South Cape to Milne Bay through a 
population of cannibals quite safely ; which, Chester 
declares, was only made possible by the assistance of 
Chalmers and " the confidence with which he had in 
spired the natives." 4 

It made no difference to the determination of the 

1 PP. 1883, c. 3617, p. 62. Corroborated by Chalmers s Autobiography, 

P- 134- 

3 The only serious incidents apparently were a case of rape of a native 
woman at Port Moresby, and a disturbance caused by the theatrical 
manner in which the confidential agent of the Queensland Government 
dealt with what the Acting-High Commissioner called " trifling acts of 
theft," by violence and a " parade of force." This the Commissioner 
much regretted, especially as the agent himself reported that the 
expedition felt a " perfect sense of security from harm as regards the 
natives." (PP. 1883, c. 3617, pp. 89, 54.) 

3 Quoted by Lawes in a demand for annexation and forwarded to C.O. 
by Sir A. Gordon, January 31, 1879. (PP. 1883, c. 3617.) 

* Report, August 30, 1878. (PP. 1883, c. 3617, p. 84.) 



78 BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

missionaries to act as peacemakers, when the hands of 
the home government were forced and a protectorate 
was established. Although they laid themselves open 
to the bitter attacks of those who wished to exploit the 
country and its inhabitants immediately, without any 
thought of duty to the native race, or of the permanent 
prosperity of the dependency, the missionaries con 
tinued to act as a moderating and curbing influence 
upon the savage passions of the natives, and upon the 
rashly adventurous spirit of some white men, and upon 
the greed of others. 1 To the representatives of the British 
and Queensland Governments they acted as wise coun 
sellors, loyal interpreters, and staunch friends. 

A short telegram from Commodore Erskine to the 
Admiralty, November 26, 1884, reporting the proclama 
tion of the Protectorate was not so short that tribute 
could not be paid to the missionaries. " November 9, 
The Protectorate has been proclaimed," it reads, " (by) 
H.M.S. Nelson, British flag hoisted at nine places. . . . 
Received everywhere with satisfaction. The confidence 
(of) the natives is wonderful. Success is due (to) in 
fluence (and) assistance (of) missionaries." 2 

Another telegram dated January 19, 1885, reporting 
the extension of the Protectorate, reads, " Bridge reports 
Chalmers rendered excellent service." 

But so impressed was the Commodore by the help 

1 In a cutting from the Brisbane Courier enclosed to Lord Derby 
by the Administrator of Queensland, Sir A. H. Palmer, October 24, 
1883, there is a vivid picture of Chalmers " the tyrant missionary," 
as his enemies called him, " who will not be kept back " from asserting 
native rights when other missionaries were timid of stepping beyond their 
work. (PP. 1884, c. 3863.) Chalmers himself wrote in September 1883 
that no amount of abuse would turn him from opposing those who 
were trying to exploit the country selfishly, and gloried in being called 
" the tyrant missionary." Autobiography, pp. 240-242. 

a PP. 1885, c. 4273. 



BRITISH NEW GUINEA 79 

thus rendered to his command that in his written report 
he dealt at some length with it. He declared that his 
programme was only made possible by the " invaluable 
assistance of Chalmers and Lawes, and that the wonder 
ful confidence shown by the natives must be entirely 
attributed to their influence." 

" From the moment of my arrival," he continued, 
" these gentlemen have placed their invaluable services 
entirely at my disposal ; they have been ready night 
and day to assist me in every possible way ... in 
translating and explaining the terms of the proclamations 
and addresses . . . and in collecting the numerous 
chiefs, who but for them would never have come near 
the ship. These gentlemen . . . have by their firm, 
but conciliatory and upright dealing established such 
a hold over the natives as many a crowned head would 
be proud to possess. I have been lost in admiration 
at their influence. During our cruise it has happened 
that a boat has been sent in the middle of the night 
to bring off a chief ; when it is imagined what it is to 
suddenly surprise and wake up the inhabitants of a 
native village, and for the chief to comply without 
demur to a request to go off immediately to a huge man- 
of-war, it will be understood what a magic effect is 
produced by a few words spoken by Tamate (Chalmers) 
or Missi Lawes (Lawes)." l 

The Reports of the Governors of British New Guinea 2 

1 Enclosure in Admiralty to C.O., December 1884. (PP. 1885, c. 4273, 
p. 123.) This is corroborated by a correspondent of the Sydney 
Morning Herald, who was present at the declaration of the Protectorate 
and wished to see Chalmers amongst the natives and judge of his in 
fluence for himself. He owns to being astonished at Chalmers s power. 
New Guinea, C. Lyne, 1885, p. 68. 

a Sir Peter Scratchley, Special Commissioner, August 22 December 
2, 1885 (appointed October 1884). H. H. Romilly, Deputy-Commis 
sioner, December 2, 1885 February 26, 1886. Hon. John Douglas, 



8o BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

are unanimous in their testimony to the peace-making 
influence of the missionaries. 

" Peace is one great result of the missionary teaching," 
writes Sir Peter Scratchley s secretary, who recognizes the 
value of Chalmers s work and influence amongst the coast 
tribes, who had been perpetually at war before his arrival. 1 

Dr Doyle Glanville, who was on Sir Peter s staff in 
85, also bore witness to this. 

" Was it not Tamate," he declared, " who turned their 
(the natives) quarrels into peace ? Had not Tamate 
been known, when two opposing tribes were approaching, 
to go and take the two hostile chiefs like two turbulent 
children and insist upon their being friends and not 
fighting ? " " Had it not been for that gentleman," he 
continued, " whatever work had been accomplished on 
the expedition could never have been done without his 
valuable help. His profound knowledge of the native 
character, his wide experience and his great tact placed 
us on a footing with the natives that otherwise would 
have been impossible." He taught the Commission 
how to understand the natives and the natives how to 
understand the motives of the visitors. ..." Wherever 
the power of the missionaries is felt, there law, order, 
and peace are established." A mission village, even if 
presided over by a native teacher, was always safe for 
life and property. " Like a system of moral police, the 
missionaries establish a subtle, but very strong restrain 
ing influence that checks certain unprincipled persons 
and encourages honest traders and adventurers." 2 

Special Commissioner, February 27, 1886 September 3, 1888. Sir 
William Macgregor, Administrator of British New Guinea, September 4, 
1888 March 13, 1895 ; Lieut-Governor, March 13, 1895 September 10, 
1898. 1 Scratchley s Autobiography, loc. cit., p. 360. 

2 This very warm praise loses part of its value from the fact that 
Chalmers was present at this meeting and Glanville rose after a very 



BRITISH NEW GUINEA 81 

Thus in 1887 Scratchley was able to claim that " under 
present conditions a single white man unarmed can go 
fifty miles into the interior from any point between Port 
Moresby and Hula in perfect safety. Much of this is 
due to the native teachers." 1 

Deputy-Commissioner Romilly in 1885, when returning 
native labourers to their homes, felt the difficulty of his 
task increased by the absence of Chalmers, who was away 
exploring. So impressed was he by Chalmers s person 
ality and work that he went so far as to say that the 
safety of many white visitors was due to the influence 
and assistance of the missionaries and that the success 
of future Government measures would be largely due 
to Chalmers, Lawes, and Macfarlane. 2 

The reports of the Hon. J. Douglas corroborate this. 
In that for 1887 it is noted that the natives of Manu- 
Manu " are now perfectly peaceable." 3 In that for 
1888 it is claimed that there had been no instance of 
outrage of white on native or vice versa, and that there 
had been no period during the last ten years when these 
relations had been on " a more friendly or satisfactory 
footing." 4 

And finally there is the evidence of Sir William 

eloquent speech by him ; but even so with every allowance for the 
influence of the moment, it remains a striking tribute. R.C.I., vol. 
xviii., 1886-1887, PP- 107-111. Scratchley, loc. cit., p. 290. 

1 Scratchley, loc. cit., p. 291. 

1 Letters, ed. S. H. Romilly, 1893, p. 228. The Western Pacific and 
New Guinea, 1886, p. 242. 

3 PP. 1888, c. 5249-31, pp. 5, 7. It is only fair to note that the 
Government officials as well as the missionaries were peacemakers. 
G. Hunter is reported as having founded a Government station between 
Rigo and Kappa, and as having "exercised a considerable controlling 
influence over these tribes. It is quite certain that there are now much 
fewer acts of violence than there used to be," 

4 PP. 1889, c. 5620-3, p. 3. 

F 



82 BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

Macgregor, who reports in 1889 that there had been 
" very considerable progress by the L.M.S. in softening 
the manners " of the tribes in the Maiva and Kevori 
districts, although this " had not yet reached such a 
stage as to put a stop to the long-continued feud of the 
two septs." x The resident magistrate of the Central 
Division points out in the same report that native policy 
reflected the consideration shown to the natives in 
better relations between tribes and in a more friendly 
attitude to foreigners. The Saroa and Rigo people now 
fearlessly went to villages on the Kemp Welch River ; 
Kapake people went to Aroma and Aroma people 
went to Port Moresby visits mostly for the purpose of 
trading, a new and encouraging feature in native policy. 
He adds that " no foreigners have been molested in this 
district during the last year," and that explorers were 
treated everywhere with kindness and attention. 2 

Thus there is no lack of evidence to support the view 
of missionary policy taken by Sir William Macgregor 
when he declared that " its influence has sometimes 
prevented inter-tribal war and has reduced the frequency 
of murder, and in all cases tends to make the work of 
the magistrate lighter. Peace is easier to establish, and 
when established, is easier to maintain in a mission 
district than elsewhere." 3 

To recapitulate, the first and most important service 
that the missionaries rendered to the cause of British 
expansion in Papua was that of peacemaking. 

After acting unconsciously, even one might say, un- 

1 PP. 1890-1891, c. 6269-5, pp. 25, 54. 

2 Ibid., p. 53. Famine in the Rigo district was met by food being 
given in return for work, and in the case of the infirm, free. Lawes 
raised a fund for relief around Port Moresby. 

3 Paper read before R.G.S., February 25, 1895, reprinted in British 
New Guinea, Country and People, 1897, p. 92. 



BRITISH NEW GUINEA 83 

willingly, 1 as a stimulus to expansion, their function 
changed. Once the check of a traditional fear had been 
removed, enterprising lay pioneers were certain to follow 
each other in a constantly increasing stream, which the 
missionaries would be powerless to stop. But in the 
absence of a government of any sort, theirs was the only 
moderating influence, the only external force which could 
direct the stream into peaceful channels. 

Their will and their function therefore now became 
harmonized. Increasingly rapid immigration threatened 
to produce a crisis which would make difficult the 
gradual adjustment of New Guinea affairs by the 
missionaries. They therefore felt it their duty to check 
rather than stimulate the tide of adventurers. 

Although Bevan writes with the exaggeration of a 
partisan, yet he was inaccurate in degree and not in fact 
when he represented the missionaries as being hostile to 
the immigration of settlers and traders. 2 It was fortu- 

1 The missionaries hoped to interest their countrymen in the land 
as fit for missionary stations, not as suitable for squatters ; and in 
its population as heathen awaiting conversion, not as labourers without 
work. But their political significance in this case does not depend 
upon their motive. 

2 Occasional letters by missionaries upon the evil of the climate 
probably discouraged some. Macfarlane, in a letter published in the 
Times, October 6, 1875, emphasized the danger to emigrants of 
fever, and Lawes wrote in the Australian Medical Gazette, May 
1887, " that New Guinea was entirely unfitted to be the home of the 
Anglo-Saxon " for that reason. Although A. Musgrave, in the Report 
for 1888 (PP. c. 5620-3), gave figures to disprove this, and Sir W. 
Macgregor, in the Official Handbook of the dependency, 1892, wrote that, 
" by reasonable care and by taking appropriate remedies whenever 
fever threatened, the danger from it to a person actively employed 
and otherwise healthy is not at all great " ; yet at a meeting of the 
R.C.I., April u, 1893, opinions of competent authorities were divided, 
and as late as 1907, the Handbook (page 9) declares that " a very 
great misconception appears to exist as to the unhealthiness of the 
climate for Europeans." That the missionaries had some good ground 



84 BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

nate for British New Guinea that they were, since peace 
was the more easily kept between a small number of white 
men and the natives, and under missionary influence the 
problem of the adjustment of the interests of the civilized 
and the savage race was solved gradually and peacefully, 
to the common good of both races, so that the foundations 
of the future prosperity of the dependency could be 
founded upon mutual confidence between the races, as 
far as such was obtainable, and not upon the bitterness 
resulting from a racial war. 

Their value did not diminish when the country came 
under the control of administrators. By force of per 
sonality they were able to impress upon these the im 
portance of not alienating the sympathy and respect of 
the natives, and their knowledge of native customs and 
of the native character enabled them to render invaluable 
assistance to the administration in putting this principle 
into practice. Perhaps they best protected the native 
from the ambition and the ignorance of the white man 
by explaining him to the latter. They protected the 
native to some extent from his own savagery by ex 
plaining to him the white man s intentions and deeds. 
Their genuine disinterestedness enabled them to retain 
the confidence of both races, so that they were enabled 
gradually to forge a link to join the two together in work 
for the dependency. Sometimes they may have acted with 
a prejudice for native interests, but if so, it was a good 
fault, for the native had no other champions, and might 
have been led to rely upon himself with the disastrous 
result of another native war. At least they never showed 
themselves so prejudiced that they forfeited the respect 

for their fears is of interest but not of great importance. That their 
fears may have assisted to check a rush of settlers, however, was of 
very fortunate importance for the future of the dependency. 



BRITISH NEW GUINEA 85 

of the best white men. Although they were often 
violently attacked by those who had no interest beyond 
plunder, they and their successors have retained not 
merely the respect but the admiration of succeeding 
administrators. 

This is not surprising, for it was due to the missionaries 
that the Administration possessed, as the native back 
ground for policy, respect and not hostility, and gratitude 
instead of bitterness. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE LABOUR TRAFFIC 

THE determination of the missionaries to assert the rights 
of the natives against any white men desiring to exploit 
them, and to oppose the action of any individual or group 
which might react unfavourably upon friendly relations 
between the two races, is evident in the attitude adopted 
by them towards the labour traffic. 

In the opinion of all those who \vere unprejudiced by 
self-interest, this traffic was a great obstacle to peace. 
Commodore Erskine indeed, in forwarding the appeal of 
the chiefs for its cessation, described it in 1884 as " the 
only obstacle in the way of friendly relations " as the 
natives had shown an implicit confidence in the pro 
tecting arm of Great Britain. 

New Guinea suffered less than some islands, partly 
because its coasts were not surveyed until after the 
Pacific Islanders Protection Act of 1872 had enabled the 
Government to exercise some control over the traffickers, 
partly because the island was believed to contain a more 
than usually savage race of cannibals ; and when, thanks 
to the missionaries, it became less dangerous to visit it, in 
another sense it became risky to do so owing to the 
alertness of Chalmers and Lawes to any invasion of the 
terms of the Act, and owing to their influence with high 
officials. 

Yet New Guinea by no means escaped scot-free. Even 
Be van, who rarely appears as witness for the native 

8<5 



BRITISH NEW GUINEA 87 

against the white man, inveighs against the traffic, and 
admits that the narratives of " escapees " must have in 
flamed the natives against " their white seducers, 
oppressors, and aggressors," and quotes Captain Fryer as 
declaring that the suspicion aroused by labour vessels 
had made native labour unprocurable for beche-de-mer 
trade, and that the latter had been almost crushed, 
adding that the labour traffic would cost " dozens of 
heads." l After the testimony of such a white partisan, 
it seems hardly necessary to refer for corroboration to 
official reports, such as that of Romilly for 1887, who 
attributed the change for the worse in the demeanour of 
the savages in the South-East Islands and Milne Bay 
during the previous six years to the work of the 
kidnappers. 2 

The missionaries played an important part in opposing 
the traffic. Not content with acting as a curb upon the 
activities of the slave-traders by the simple fact of their 
presence in a locality, 3 and with occasionally rendering 
assistance to " escapees," 4 they put pressure upon the 

1 Bevan, loc. cit., pp. 86, 105. 

2 PP. 1888, c. 5249-31. 

3 The following question and answer are contained in the report 
of the inquiry conducted by Commodore Erskine into the Hopeful 
case. 

Q. 17. " How did the white men treat the natives of the places 
they called at while you were on board ? " 

A. "As long as in reach of missionary they were not cruel, when 
away from reach of missionary they got guns and burnt villages, and 
got men by force." PP. 1885, c. 4273, p. 106. 

4 E. F. Hely, a Government agent, declared during the same inquiry 
that through the influence of the Reverend S. Macfarlane (on Murray 
Island) he consented to take back some runaways to their home instead 
of to the plantation. See also The Times, December 5, 1884, for 
a letter of Lawes, describing the arrival of an "escapee " at Port Moresby, 
as a stowaway upon the Ellengowan, after being received kindly at 
Murray Island. 



88 BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

Government, informed public opinion of the facts, and 
used their personal influence with the local administrators. 

The menace of the labour traders did not overshadow 
New Guinea until Queensland sent Chester to take 
possession on April 4, 1883 ; for the risks and difficulties 
w r ere less at the smaller islands. But the supply was 
running out there, some islands, indeed, having become 
entirely depopulated ; and rumours, exaggerated, no 
doubt, but partly true, reached the missionaries that 
Queensland desired possession in order that her labour 
ships might visit the coasts to secure cheap labour under 
the protection of the High Commissioner for the Western 
Pacific. 1 

Chalmers, whose views upon the traffic are on record 
in a vigorous letter to a friend, 2 took immediate steps to 
lay the case of the natives before the Government of 
Queensland and the Government at home. In May he 
left for Queensland with Baron Maclay, and on his way 
thither with the latter, wrote a joint letter to Lord Derby, 
asking that not only might native rights in land be 
respected, but that both the liquor and the labour trade 
might be prohibited. 3 

He received a curt reply, dated September 3, 1883, 
that " H.M. Government are not prepared to enter upon 
considerations of questions relating to the land and 
natives of New Guinea at the present time." 

For, in fact, the Government had only just begun to 

1 Chalmers s Autobiography, pp. 222, 237. 

2 We have had the man-stealers at the East End, but I hope their 
day is ending. They abuse me villainously, for which I am glad. One 
paper says that I teach the natives that white men are cannibals. I 
could truthfully teach them that they are fiends incarnate. I shall 
keep at it with home and the colonies until the horrible traffic is 
stopped. (Autobiography, p. 228.) 

3 PP. 1884, c. 3863; also Autobiography, p. 240. 



BRITISH NEW GUINEA 89 

move in the direction of establishing a protectorate. In 
the debate in the Lords on July 2nd, the fear of annexation 
and the regulation of the labour traffic, on which opinion 
as to abuses was divided, were the chief notes of the 
debate. Lord Derby was characteristically cautious, and 
declined to favour an annexation policy. 1 

On August 21, in the Commons, Mr Gorst noted the 
failure of the Pacific Islanders Protection Act of 1875, 
and asked what was the Government s policy in the face 
of the " frightful crimes " committed by both whites and 
natives ? Hon. Evelyn Ashley, who replied, emphasized 
Lord Derby s despatch to the Governor of Queensland, 
by suggesting that a protectorate might gradually be 
established by increased naval activity in the neigh 
bourhood. A committee was about to report. 2 

Chalmers s letter, therefore, which asked the Govern 
ment to consider the manner in which the Protectorate 
should be governed, arrived when Lord Derby had not 
yet made up his mind whether a protectorate should be 
established, 3 and probably received little notice. But for 
all that, historically it marks the start of an active 
campaign by the missionaries against any increase of the 
labour traffic in New Guinea, and in favour of its total 
abolition, a struggle in which they were eventually 
victors. 

On arrival in Queensland Chalmers tried to convert 

1 Hansard, 1883, v. 281, c. 3. 

* Ibid., 1883, v. 283, c. 1549. 

3 PP. 1883, c, 3691, Lord Derby was opposed to annexation, but 
would consider the question of a protectorate if Queensland would 
provide " a reasonable annual sum" (dated July n, 1883). 

On July 21 Lord Derby received a joint letter from the Agents- 
General of the Australian colonies advocating annexation not only 
on strategic grounds, but because " the state of things in the Western 
Pacific has at last become intolerable." PP. 1883, c. 3814. 



go BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

both the Government and public opinion to his view. He 
writes in his journal that he had a long interview with 
the Premier, " a stubborn, good, honest Scotchman," 
extracting a promise from him that if coolies could be 
obtained the traffic would be stopped. He also inter 
viewed the Leader of the Opposition, " editors of leading 
newspapers, and many other men of more or less in 
fluence," and he " addressed two large meetings at one 
of which the editor of a leading newspaper took the 
chair." * 

In November the Protectorate was proclaimed ; and 
the task of the missionaries became easier, since their 
efforts could now be concentrated upon the British 
Government, which was now responsible, upon its 
servants, the officials of the Protectorate, and upon 
British public opinion. 

Evidence of their new opportunity of influencing policy 
is contained in the very first telegram of Commodore 
Erskine, reporting the proclamation of the Protectorate. 
The chiefs pray Her Majesty (to) cause natives that 
have been taken (to) Queensland (to) return home," he 
wrote, and then concluded with the tribute to the 
missionaries already quoted. 2 Bearing in mind the 
astonishing impression that Chalmers and Lawes made 
upon the Commodore, it is not unfair to deduce that this 
reference to the labour traffic was inserted in the telegram 
at the suggestion of the missionaries, who were the only 
interpreters available, and who would have been likely to 
have seized such an opportunity of pressing upon the 
home Government their point, that the labour traffic was 
the chief menace to the peace of the new Protectorate. 

The following month a letter from Lawes appeared in 

1 Autobiography, p. 240. 

2 Loc. cit,, see ante, p. 79. 



BRITISH NEW GUINEA 91 

The Times. It was dated September 15, 1884, but 
between its despatch and its publication on December 5, 
the situation, as we have seen, had changed favourably 
for the missionary policy. The British Government could 
no longer silence criticism, or ignore petitions, by declaring 
that it was " not prepared to enter upon consideration of 
questions relating to the land and natives of New Guinea," 
since it had been forced to assume responsibility for a 
large part of the island. In addition, the report of one 
of its officers had declared very vigorously that the support 
of the missionaries had been indispensable to him. His 
phrase that " they had established such a hold over the 
natives as many a crowned head would be proud to 
possess," 3 must have recalled unpleasant memories of the 
missionary kingdom of Tahiti, and must have made the 
Government more ready to keep the New Guinea mis 
sionaries quiet by listening to their complaints, and by 
encouraging them to think that the independence of a 
missionary kingdom was unnecessary for the protection 
of the natives. In this letter Lawes gave instances of 
some recent abuses in the traffic, and concluded thus : 

" If the confidence of the people at the east end of New 
Guinea is not restored by the speedy return of their sons, 
husbands, and brothers, complications will ensue, and 
reprisals on innocent white men will take place. The 
British Government, whatever form it may take in New 
Guinea, will be discredited, and looked on with suspicion 
by those who believe they have been deceived, and their 
homes desolated, by the white man. 

" All these alleged misdeeds have taken place at the 
extreme eastern end of New Guinea, but the report of 
them, with many additions, will travel all along the 
coast." 

1 PP. 1885, c. 4273, No. 134- 



92 BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

Lord Derby acted with surprising promptness, and 
forwarded a copy of the letter to the Governor of 
Queensland for the latter to take action upon it. Some 
recruiting agents were subsequently apprehended and 
sentenced to death and penal servitude, for " murder in 
kidnapping " and for kidnapping. 1 The commission 
which was appointed to make enquiries into the allegations 
of Lawes, recommended that all natives improperly 
recruited should be returned to their homes at public 
expense ; and 405 were accordingly returned on June 13, 
1 885,2 a number, Lawes wrote, " only 58 short of the 
whole number affected/ 3 

But the most important achievement of the mis 
sionaries existed in the interpretation of the Proclamation 
of the Protectorate. In actual phrasing the address to 
the natives differed slightly at the various places where 
it was delivered, but in every case this promise was 
made to the natives on behalf of the White Queen : " No 
one will be allowed to take you against your wishes from 
your homes." 4 

This was the very definite interpretation placed upon 
the written proclamation 5 by the missionary interpreters 
with the sanction, and on behalf of the officer proclaiming 
the Protectorate, and it proved eventually to be the death 
sentence passed upon the labour traffic in New Guinea ; 

1 PP. 1885, 4273, Nos. 63, 67. 

2 PP. 1885, c. 4584, Nos. 93, 125. 

3 The Times, September 23, 1885. 

4 Quoted from the address to the chiefs at Toulon Island, November 
14, 1884. (PP. 1885, c. 4273.) 

6 The preamble read : " Whereas it has become essential for the 
protection of the lives and properties of the native inhabitants of 
New Guinea . . . that a British Protectorate should be established 
over a certain portion of such country and islands. . . ." (Handbook 
of the Territory of Papua, compiled by the Hon. Staniforth Smith, 
3rd Ed., 1912, p. 101.) 



BRITISH NEW GUINEA 93 

for the proclamation was ever afterwards quoted by the 
missionaries, and by those who took a similar view of 
policy, as a solemn pledge which the Government could 
not repudiate without dishonour, and which it was 
eventually forced to confirm by legislative enactment. 

Four years only were to pass before the British Govern 
ment asserted its sovereignty over the Protectorate, but 
it was a long enough period to give proof beyond question 
that only the powers of complete sovereignty were suffi 
cient to fulfil the promise given in 1884. 

The Protectorate failed for the same reason that the 
High Commission for the Western Pacific failed because 
of its limited jurisdiction. Romilly, whose report of 
1887 that kidnapping was having an evil effect on the 
natives, has already been quoted, 1 complained bitterly 
in his private correspondence at that time, that he 
had no legal power to punish any natives, and indeed 
could be tried for murder if any native was shot by his 
orders. 2 

The position was pointed out clearly by Sir J. Garrick, 
Agent-General for Queensland, on January n, 1887, at 
a meeting of the Colonial Institute in London. 

" It is clear," he declared, " that matters cannot con 
tinue as they are." There was no remedy for a state of 
insecurity for life and property, except the declaration of 
British sovereignty in order to establish jurisdiction over 
both natives and foreigners, and provide an administra- 

1 See ante, p. 87. 

a Letters and Memoir, 1893, PP- 2 97> 39 1 - A memo, of the High 
Commissioner of February 26, 1881, read : " The jurisdiction of the 
High Commissioner extends over all British subjects in the Western 
Pacific, but over British subjects exclusively. He has no authority 
whatever to deal, whether judicially or in his executive capacity, with 
the offences of natives of islands not under dominion of the Crown," 
PP. 1883, c. 3814, p. 6, 



94 BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

tion which would secure imperial and Australian interests 
while adequately protecting native interests. 1 

This speech was made in a debate following upon a 
paper read by Chalmers, which was probably the most 
eloquent and, without doubt, the most important address 
he ever gave. In it he outlined what ought to be the 
future administrative policy in New Guinea, and he took 
as the basis for it the pledge made to the natives a little 
over two years before. He was anxious, and emphati 
cally urged that the straight path marked out by the 
proclamation should be followed ; and he hoped that 
" we should never break faith with the native." 

The Colonial Conference of 1887 provided an oppor 
tunity for British statesmen to review the whole question 
in council. They confirmed the sentence passed upon 
the labour trade with New Guinea three years before, 
and the pledge there given to the natives was incorporated 
in paragraph 10 of the Schedule for the proposed " British 
New Guinea (Queensland Act) of 1887," which read : 

" No deportation of natives to be allowed either from 
one part of the Territory to another or to places beyond 
the Territory. . . . " 2 

Upon the Act receiving the royal assent, instructions 
were issued to the first Administrator of the Territory 
June 8, 1888, of which section 12 of paragraph 10 
read : 

" The Administrator shall not assent to any Ordinance 
providing for deportation of natives either from one part 
of the Possession to another or to places beyond the 
Possession." 3 

And Sir William Macgregor signed an Ordinance pro- 

1 R.C.I., vol. xviii. p. in. 

2 Proceedings of the Colonial Conference. PP. 1887, c. 5091. 

3 Handbook of Papua, loc. cit., p. 108. 



BRITISH NEW GUINEA 95 

hibiting such deportation immediately upon taking up his 
appointment. 1 

Perhaps a word might be said in defence of this legis 
lation. The bad effect of the labour trade upon the 
relations of the white man with the native has already 
been sufficiently emphasized. 

It must also be remembered that native labour procured 
under such conditions was never satisfactory or of a long 
life, for the savage, enslaved and miserable in a strange 
country, and usually under cruel masters, soon fell ill and 
died from depression. 2 

On the other hand the Papuan was found to show 
" considerable intelligence," and to be an " excellent 
worker " in his accustomed surroundings under good em 
ployers. The Labour Ordinance therefore gave those in 
industry in Papua " the advantage of being able to draw 
their labour supply from the natives of the territory, thus 
obviating the heavy expenses of importing coolie labour." 3 

1 Ordinance III. of 1888. 

2 In answer to a question how one of them liked plantation life, 
during the inquiry conducted by Commodore Erskine, a native replied, 
" When in our own land, work well, but on plantation, all cry, work 
bad, eat nothing, only food in morning, work, work, all day, in evening 
too tired to eat pannikin of rice." PP. 1885, c. 4273, p. 108. 

3 Handbook of the Territory of Papua, loc. cit., p. 84, 85. 



CHAPTER V 

" NEW GUINEA FOR THE NEW GUINEANS " 

THE British Government of the time has been much 
criticized because of its opposition to the further ex 
tension of the Empire in the Pacific. But although 
it is difficult, even impossible, to defend the attitude 
of the British Colonial Office, in refusing to take responsi 
bility for the islands adjacent to Australia and New 
Zealand until it was forced to do so by the indignation 
aroused in the Colonies by foreign annexations, and by 
the disorder in Pacific waters, their attitude to unofficial 
enterprise is justifiable. 

Both in New Zealand and in Fiji much trouble was 
stored up for the Government by the short-sighted com 
mercial policy of a colonization company, and so its 
opposition to the plans of any company formed to 
colonize New Guinea was not unreasonable. 

As far as missionary influence affected the question 
it strengthened the Government in their attitude, and 
missionaries also warned them of attempts to flout their 
policy. 

In 1875 a deputation of the Anti-Slavery Society 
waited upon Lord Carnarvon to request him to oppose 
the project of the Australasian Colonization Company, 
which was organizing an expedition to New Guinea. 
Rev. A. W. Murray of New Guinea and Dr Mullens, 
Foreign Secretary of the London Missionary Society, 
were members of the deputation. 1 

1 November 17, 1875. PP. 1883, c. 3617, p. 62, 



BRITISH NEW GUINEA 97 

In 1878 Acting-High Commissioner Gorrie pointed 
out to Sir Michael Hicks-Beach the objectionable nature 
of the scheme. The Company proposed to claim 60,000 
acres for plantation and 50,000 more if gold was not 
discovered, and for the protection of its servants, five 
swivel cannon were to be taken, also a supply of small 
arms and ammunition, and a circular fort of boiler 
plate, J-inch thick, pierced for rifles. 1 

It is not surprising to find that Sir M. Hicks-Beach 
approved of the reply of the High Commissioner to the 
Company on July 17, 1878, declaring that he would 
" make use of his powers to oppose . . . any enterprise 
calculated to compromise the Imperial Government, or 
likely to produce collisions with the native inhabitants 
of New Guinea, which might seriously embarrass the 
future relations of British subjects in that region." 2 

A few years later Lord Derby refused permission to 
Brigadier-General H. R. Maciver to proceed with a New 
Guinea Trading Corporation, which had much the same 
views of colonization methods as the earlier company, 
in spite of the protestations of its officers. 3 

The characteristic common to all such enterprises was 
the determination to buy land from the natives. Where 
the natives were unable to understand a selling contract 
of land, and the colonizers had no other aim beyond 
the selfish one of financial interest, it was not unreason 
able of the Government to fear the result, or unwise 
of it to refuse to countenance any such attempts at 
settlement. 

It is doubtful, though, whether the chief danger to 
the future dependency came so much from colonization 

1 August 19, 1878. PP. 1883, c. 3617, p. 53. 

2 PP. 1883, c. 3617, p. 47. 

3 November 1883. PP. 1884, c. 3863. 



98 BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

companies as from individuals. So much preparation 
and advertisement was required in order to finance 
an expedition, that the Government could not fail to 
hear of any organized attempt to colonize the country. 
Indeed it was unlikely that any such attempt would 
be made without Government permission. Shareholders 
would be rendered anxious by the refusal of the High 
Commissioner to protect the companies servants, should 
they be attacked by the natives, and they would be 
unlikely to run the risk of his disapproval growing to 
armed opposition, as Sir A. Gordon seemed to threaten. 

But a single enterprising individual, although running 
graver personal risk, might escape exposure, and, his 
dealings being on a much smaller scale, he might even 
chance to have his claims confirmed. 

Native discontent, however, can quickly grow from 
a small seed. Both in its possible ultimate effect 
upon native relations, and in its power as a dangerous 
precedent, the sale of land to an individual was as much 
to be feared as the sale of land to a colonizing company. 

The first attempt of an individual in New Guinea to buy 
land as a speculation was also the last. For Chalmers 
and Lawes acted promptly in directing the attention 
of the Government to the fact, and to the dangers 
involved. 

Shortly after Chester had annexed South-Eastern New 
Guinea to Queensland, a trader named Goldie, who had 
been successful in maintaining friendship with the natives, 
bought nominally on behalf of a Sydney syndicate, about 
15,000 acres of sugar land. The various accounts of the 
transaction differ in the details, but it appears that 
Goldie and a surveyor named Cameron were offered by 
a native of the Kabadi tribe, Paru, this land which in 
reality belonged to the chief, Urevado. Lawes was 



BRITISH NEW GUINEA 99 

apparently persuaded to make out a deed in Motu 
language, 1 which was translated then by a native teacher 
into Kabadi. The price paid for the land according to 
Cameron was the equivalent of 140 (which, he protested, 
was more than he had ever paid for land in Fiji for sugar 
or cotton growing). 2 

On October 17, 1883, Baron Maclay drew the attention 
of the Colonial Office to a telegram from Chalmers to 
the Colonial Secretary, reporting the transaction. On 
December 3, Lord Derby telegraphed to the Governor 
of New South Wales for information. The latter con 
firmed the news, and said that the forthcoming Con 
vention would probably deal with such cases. On 
December n, G. Palmer, M.P., a member of the 
Aborigines Protection Society, forwarded a letter from 
Lawes, " a most trustworthy man," to the Colonial 
Office. 3 

Lawes asserted that only about 10 worth of trade 
was given for the land, and quotes the speculators own 
statement that they only gave 70 worth. " They have 
now gone along the coast to make other purchases in 
the same way," he continued. " We feel sure that if 
the facts of the case are laid before Her Majesty s 
advisers, they will never sanction the wholesale transfer 
of native lands, especially when it carries with it no 
responsibility with regard to the future of the true owners 
of the land." If the Government did not refuse to 
recognize " any purchase of land from natives by private 
individuals . . . collision with the natives is inevitable, 

1 This is strange in view of the opposition of Lawes afterwards. 

2 Sydney Morning Herald, November 23, 1883, quoted in PP. 1884, 
c. 3863. Cameron asserts that the acreage was : sugar, 1000 ; cotton, 
2000; and some swamp. Chalmers says that the price was id. per 
acre, i.e. half the figure Cameron gives, 

3 PP. 1884, c. 3863. 



ioo BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

and British interests will be damaged for the aggrandize 
ment of a few land grabbers and sugar planters. The 
evil that must ensue to the natives is self-evident. A 
large influx of foreigners, for whose good behaviour no 
one would be responsible, and who would be under no 
restraint but self-interest, could only result in cruelty, 
wrong, and injustice. The natives would soon be cleared 
off the land." 

" Whatever the relations between the British Govern 
ment and New Guinea may be, it is of the first importance 
that the land of the natives should not be at the mercy 
of white men making haste to be rich/ If there is 
to be any transfer of native land, it should only be 
through the representative of a responsible Government. 
Only thus can anything like justice be secured between 
barbarous and civilized races. . . ." 

He declared that it was the interests of the natives 
generally that had to be considered, and continued : 

" Every district, such as that of Kabadi, supplies a 
large outside population with food in return for pottery 
and other articles of trade. The alienation of any large 
tract of country would cut off the food supply of neigh 
bouring places, close a large market, and stop useful 
native industries. These are responsibilities which none 
but a representative of a civilized Government can 
assume, and no other can protect native interests." 

To this letter and enclosure the Colonial Office replied 
on December 17, sending a copy of their reply to Acting- 
High Commissioner Gorrie, saying that if the facts were 
as stated " as they appeared to be," H.M. Government 
would " certainly refuse to recognize this transaction 
or any other of a similar character," and noted with 
pleasure that the Australian Convention would support 
them. 



BRITISH NEW GUINEA 101 

Confirmation of the story, and additional emphasis 
upon the important principle of policy involved in it 
came from Sir H. H. Palmer, Administrator of Queens 
land, who wrote to Lord Derby, under date October 24, 
as follows : 

"It is hardly necessary for me to point out to your 
Lordship the very serious difficulties which are likely 
to arise, if speculative Europeans are permitted to trade 
upon the ignorance and simplicity of the natives of New 
Guinea. ... It is highly undesirable that the troubles 
experienced in New Zealand and Fiji should be repeated 
in the case of New Guinea." He concluded by arguing 
that " British rule in some form or other would have 
to be established." Sir H. Palmer s attention had been 
drawn to the transaction by a letter from Chalmers to 
the Colonial Secretary, and by a report in the Brisbane 
Courier. Both the letter and the newspaper cutting 
he enclosed to Lord Derby in order to give greater 
support to his view. 

Chalmers s letter to Sir Thomas Mcllwraith is dated 
September 24. It is worth quoting almost in full. 

" My dear Sir Thomas," he writes, " remembering 
your request, that if we had anything to report we should 
do so direct to the Colonial Secretary, who would attend 
to the same, I therefore beg to draw your attention to 
the following sale of land at Kabadi, off Redscar Bay, 
one of the finest districts in New Guinea." l 

After describing the circumstances of the sale, he 
pointed out that apart from the illegality of it, the system 
of buying land from the natives was bad, and would 
lead to serious trouble in the future. No native thought 

1 It seems probable that this request was made at the interview 
which Chalmers had with Sir T. Mcllwraith in Brisbane earlier in the 
year, already referred to, ante, p. 90. 



102 BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

that he was parting with his land for ever, nor did he 
imagine that any other one would come on to it but 
he who had paid the tomahawk, or that on his leaving 
or dying the land would not revert to its original owner. 

" These natives are like children/ Chalmers asserted, 
" the glitter of the new tomahawk will draw from them 
their best and only real treasure their land." 

Land sales now would be harmful later, for instead of 
a responsible government to care for ousted natives 
there would be selfish capitalists, who would care nothing 
for the natives. 

He corroborated Lawes as to the economic importance 
of the land claimed and continued : 

" The present purchasers think it is a missionary dodge, 
and that we are merely through spleen, or something else, 
opposing them, but I assure you, my dear Sir Thomas, 
it is nothing of the kind ; it is not merely because we 
are missionaries that we are determined to use all our 
influence to upset this land scheme, but because we as 
men feel it to be an unjust act to the ignorant natives 
and an injustice to any government that may come 
hereafter. Why begin now in New Guinea what has 
caused so much trouble in New Zealand, Fiji, and Samoa ? 
Let it be distinctly understood that no native can sell 
land, but through a Government officer, and no land 
sales made in any other way will be recognized, and this 
land lifting will be stopped." 

There is not space to quote the article from the 
Brisbane Courier, 1 but it is interesting for the marks 
it bears of having been, if not written, at least inspired 
by Chalmers. Many phrases in the private letter occur 
almost word for word in the article. It was about this 
time that he was a correspondent for a leading colonial 

1 October 20, 1883. 



BRITISH NEW GUINEA 103 

newspaper, 1 but although he may have written most of 
this particular article, he can hardly have been respon 
sible for it, since it contains a vivid description of " the 
Tyrant missionary . . . who would not be kept back 
from asserting native rights/ The fact that Sir H. 
Palmer relies upon the historical argument of Chalmers 
may not unfairly be taken as an indication of the 
impression which Chalmers was able to make upon 
Administrators by the forcible expression of his views. 2 

Soon after this, Theodore Bevan attempted to obtain 
permission to form a Trading Company on the lines of 
the North Borneo Company. One gathers that his first 
interview with Sir Peter Scratchley was not entirely un 
successful. At least he did not receive a direct negative, 
and was given a permit " to explore and trade/ But 
he says that the Special Commissioner s attitude under 
went a change, and became " cold and stiff towards him." 
This he ascribes to the influence of Chalmers and Lawes, 
especially the former. He alleges that he had a stormy 
interview with Chalmers, who lost his temper, reproached 
him for his attitude to the missionaries, and threatened 
that he would tell General Scratchley to send him back 
to Cooktown. This interview, he adds, was followed by 
a warning from Scratchley not to write against the 
missionaries. He never received permission to form his 
Company from Scratchley, and after the latter s death 
received from his successor a definite refusal. 3 

1 Chalmers writes of this on April 4, 1884, but does not divulge 
the name of the newspaper, (Autobiography, p. 226.) 

2 PP. 1884, c. 3863. 

3 Bevan, loc. cit., pp. 15, 107, 135, 136, 153, 175. Bevan s version is 
probably true. Chalmers suggests that his wife complained of his lack 
of calmness. " Another day she said to me, You know, Tamate dear, 
you are always in such a hurry, you make people feel very uncomfortable. 
Now at your time of life try and take things a little easier, and all your 



104 BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

Thus it is not surprising that Bevan formed a hostile 
opinion of the Protectorate administration, declaring 
that neither Scratchley nor Douglas assisted him, but 
rather thwarted him. 1 However, it was perhaps fortun 
ate that they did. Sevan s view of his own importance, 
combined with his lack of sympathy for the natives, 
suggest that his company would hardly have made 
things easier for the Administrator. 2 

Fortunately, too, the first Administrator who succeeded 
Hon. J. Douglas had very strong views upon the native 
question, and though Bevan received from him a polite 
answer to his request for land, it was non-committal. 3 
Sir William Macgregor was, however, very far from 
non-committal in Ordinances, and in his views set forth 
in his first report, and in the official publication upon 
British New Guinea. 

" It may be stated briefly," he declared in the report, 
" that so far, no district has been found in the Possession 
in which any plan for the settlement of Europeans could 
be carried out. This was owing to the good lands on 
high and drier ground being occupied by the natives. * 4 

And in the Handbook he wrote, two years later "... 
the Government will not, and cannot deprive any 
native of his land. This policy has been deliberately 

friends will feel more comfortable." Chalmers s Autobiography, p. 462. 
And in 1883 Chalmers wrote, " I have become sort of savage . . . very 
unsociable I am told," p. 242. x Bevan. Ibid., p. 283. 

8 The Special Commissioner, in referring to an application for land 
from Bevan in 1888, writes, "that he thought his estimate of 254,000 
acres as a return for his discoveries much beyond what . . . would be 
an equivalent for the discoveries made by that gentleman." (PP. 1889, 
c. 5620-3.) " The shiftless aboriginal " must learn " to bend his back 
to the yoke of Adam s curse or make room for those who will." Bevan, 
p. 276. 

3 Bevan. Ibid., pp. 269, 271. 

4 Queensland, PP. c.c. 105-1890. 



BRITISH NEW GUINEA 105 

adopted by the three contributing colonies and sanctioned 
by the Imperial Government. The great majority of 
the natives are agriculturalists, and live on the produce 
of their lands, which are handed down from parent to 
child and from one relative to another." l 

There was now a moderate area of land available (between 
three and four thousand acres), and the circumstances 
of the Possession had become such as to make it the 
duty of the Government to try to attract the working 
settler possessed of some capital. For the speculator 
in land the country offered no field ; but land could be 
obtained for planting purposes. 

Thus from the first the native of New Guinea has 
been protected from exploitation by the white adventurer, 
and here at least British statesmen have not made ill 
use of " one of the finest opportunities " ever offered 
them. 

The immediate result of this policy was that an 
administration was established and maintained in the 
dependency " without a single soldier " ; although an 
" experienced Australian Governor " had advised the 
Colonial Office " that as the expenditure on the Maori 
War had cost 12,000,000 the acquisition of Papua 
might cost as much." 2 

The ultimate result cannot be estimated. Only we 
know that in the evolution of an Empire which owes the 
stability of its constitutional growth to a regard of its 
rulers for precedent, a precedent such as this for the 
disinterested administration of a native dependency 
cannot but be vital. 

The part played by the missionaries in forming 

1 Handbook of Information, 1892. 

2 Sir W. Macgregor in the Scottish Geographical Magazine, May 1918, 
quoting Governor Sir G. F. Bowen in PP. 1876, c. 1566, p. n. 



io6 BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

this precedent is clear, as far as the period before the 
Protectorate is concerned. It was due to them that 
it was " a clean page " x upon which the lay statesmen 
started to write. 

It is not so clear, as regards the later period. It is 
difficult to estimate how much the support, accorded 
by better formed public opinion to the principle enunci 
ated by Chalmers, 2 was due to the personal influence 
of the latter, and to that of other missionaries. 

In 1888 for instance the Chief Justice of Queensland at 
the Royal Colonial Institute spoke strongly against " the 
cession from the natives of a single inch of land." He 
would allow " no land-speculators to enter New Guinea 
at present," and he thought that "the Protectorate 
should be a strict protectorate." 

He was supporting at this meeting the appeal of Powell 
to save New Guinea from " such a calamity as the landing 
of irresponsible adventurers would inflict." 

It is impossible to estimate how far Sir Charles Lilley 
and others like him owed their opinion to Chalmers s 
vigorous advocacy. But it can be safely asserted that 
this vigorous advocacy by personal interview, 3 by 
lectures, 4 by articles in the press, 5 and by published 

1 Sir Charles Lilley in 1888, at the R.C.I. 

2 R.C.I., January n, 1887, p. 106, " New Guinea for the New Guineans 
and the New Guineans for New Guinea." 

3 E.g. November n, 1886, Chalmers visited Sir R. Herbert " and 
went over New Guinea affairs." (Autobiography, p. 270.) Herbert 
at that time was Under-Secretary. See also ante, p. 101, and 
p. 90. 

4 E.g. R.C.I., January 11,1887, see ante, pp. 60-62. June 5, 1887, 
a meeting at Inverary with the Duke of Argyll in the chair. 
In August 1887 to the R.G.S. of Australia in Adelaide. During August 
he attended many meetings, including one in Melbourne, at which Sir 
Henry and Lady Loch were present. (Autobiography, pp. 283, 289.) 

5 E.g. ante, p. 103. 



BRITISH NEW GUINEA 107 

books l carried on not only by Chalmers but also by 
Lawes cannot have been fruitless. There is ample evi 
dence of the power of their personality in the letters and 
journals of those who came in contact with them. It 
is not likely that the power they wielded was only 
effective in conversation. 

Indeed if Chalmers s journal is to be believed and there 
seems no reason to doubt its truth the Government itself 
did not close its eyes to the value of Chalmers s opinion. 
On May 5 he writes that he saw the Earl of Onslow at 
Northampton who " only wanted me to know that the 
government of New Guinea would be very much on the 
lines of my books and papers," but the real reason was to 
hint at a government position for him if he applied. 
Chalmers, however, was quite content to continue working 
through his personal influence, and with a touch of conceit 
he comments, " They would like me to apply. I will have 
them ask me for a negative." 2 

Much, however, of the credit for the direction of British 
policy in New Guinea has been given, and no doubt rightly 
given, to Sir William Macgregor, who fulfilled the descrip 
tion given by Chalmers 3 of the Administrator, " that the 
dependency would require a man . . . accustomed to 
deal with natives, a man of firmness and commonsense, 

1 E.g. Work and Adventure in New Guinea, 1885. In the Introduction 
it is noted that the English press was deeply stirred at Germany s 
annexation of the Northern coast, but that the missionary enterprise on 
the Southern coast was hardly noticed. Chalmers forecasts the ultimate 
annexation by Great Britain, and suggests the line of policy. As New 
Guinea was of strategic rather than commercial value to Great Britain 
the Government should be for the native races not the white men. 
(This outline of policy was afterwards made the basis for his lecture 
before the R.C.I., 1887.) 

2 Autobiography, p. 271. The writer has attempted without success 
to corroborate this. But Chalmers s own evidence is sufficient. 

3 R.C.I., January n, 1887, p. 105. 



io8 BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

who will choose his own subordinates, and who can act 
independently of missionaries (sic) or beachmen, and who 
will not fear the attacks of small colonial papers. Your 
men of red-tape and wax, without real knowledge and 
stamina, are unfitted for the work, and an ounce of 
commonsense taught by native experience is worth more 
than tons of folios of reports, investigations, etc." 

But although one can agree with Judge J. H. P. Murray 
that " it was to Sir W. Macgregor that we owe the fact 
that this humane and enlightened native policy became 
a recognized part of the Government programme," * it is 
only fair to the missionaries to add that had it not been 
for them there might not have existed any such policy 
to be recognized. 

Mr Fletcher goes so far as to suggest that Macgregor 
owed his views on the land question to his contact with 
Rev. Lorimer Fison in Fiji, declaring that in his pamphlet 
on Land Tenure in Fiji, Fison " started the policy which 
is affecting, or has already affected, British administration 
everywhere in the Pacific. This includes British New 
Guinea, now under Australian control, where Sir William 
Macgregor, ten years after Lorimer Fison s lecture was 
delivered at Levuka, laid down lines in dealing with the 
lands of the Possession which have not since been departed 
from." A few pages previously Mr Fletcher had declared 
that " the name which comes up in the Pacific as that of 
the scientific exponent of native needs and traditions is 
not his own (Sir W. Macgregor s) or Sir Arthur Gordon s 
but Lorimer Fison s." 2 

In addition to the necessity of protecting the native 

1 Papua or British New Guinea, Introduction, p. 81 (1912). 

2 The New Pacific. C. Brunsdon Fletcher, 1917, pp. 173, 146. Mr 
Fletcher s opinion was formed after examining the unpublished corre 
spondence of Lorimer Fison (ibid., p. 172). 



BRITISH NEW GUINEA 109 

from land speculators by prohibiting the sale of land, the 
Government of the Possession had also to protect both 
races from the apple, or rather in this case, the bottle, of 
discord which unscrupulous traders were only too ready 
to throw amongst them. But after the lesson of New 
Zealand no competent administrator was likely to prove 
laggard in legislating against the traffic in both liquor and 
firearms. And in any case it was expressly laid down 
in the British New Guinea Act of 1888 that " the Admini 
strator shall not assent to any Ordinance providing for 
the supply of arms, ammunition, intoxicants, or opium 
to the natives." 

The missionary influence in this case was upon public 
opinion in the days before the Protectorate, when the 
traffic was in full swing at many of the islands of the 
Pacific, and when it was necessary that attention should 
be drawn to the ensuing evils. 

Owing to his experience of the drink traffic at Raro- 
tonga, Chalmers went to New Guinea determined that if 
possible that country should be saved the troubles brought 
upon other islands such as Rarotonga by " drunken 
beach-combers " and " the miserable traders from Tahiti 
. . . who would sell their own souls to make a few 
dollars." 

But afthough he was always active in defending his 
beloved natives from any menace of that kind, 1 neither 
he, nor the other missionaries who did the same, were 
unsupported in their fight by the laymen, including 
those holding responsible posts. 2 And one of the first 

1 E.g. In letter to Lord Derby, and in a letter to a fellow missionary 
to stand fast upon this question (ante, p. 88) 

2 E.g. La Meslee at the meeting in 1883, already referred to (see ante, 
pp. 46, 47), hoped that the Government would exercise control over 
the first settlers, especially with regard to the sale of firearms, liquor, etc. 

Acting-High Commissioner Gorrie wrote to Sir M. Hicks-Beach, 



no BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

Ordinances of Sir William Macgregor prohibited the 
supply of either firearms or liquor to the natives, and made 
it illegal for natives to have firearms in their possession, 
unless with special permission. 1 

It would be more true, probably, to say that the admini 
strators and the British Government were not unsupported 
by the missionaries in their measures against the liquor 
and arms traffic, and that this support was chiefly valuable 
in its effect upon public opinion. 

October 14, 1878, agreeing with Chester upon the advisability of a penal 
law to deal with the liquor traffic. (PP. 1883, c. 3617, p. 87.) 

1 Ordinance No. i of 1888 (Q. PP. c., A. 13-1890). Permits for fire 
arms for special purposes were issued to 78 non-Europeans during 
period September 1888- June 1889, of which 45 were to agents of the 
L.M.S. for procuring food. 



CHAPTER VI 



To safeguard the rights of the native to his land, how 
ever, was by itself but a negative policy, which the 
enterprising white could have attacked with some justice. 
For it would have meant that the development of the 
dependency would have been much hindered. The 
natives both of Polynesia and of Melanesia were accus 
tomed to produce only what was required for their own 
necessities, and had no ambition to develop their land 
beyond a point sufficient to satisfy these. In New 
Zealand the Maori became demoralized on becoming a 
landlord, 1 and in Fiji and in the Solomon Islands he is 
rapidly becoming so for the same reason. " The native 
Fijian will not work," writes Mr Fletcher. " Why should 
he ? A paternal government has secured him in the 
possession of his lands, and now he is able to draw 
a substantial income from them. . . . Naturally the 
natives feel independent in a country where food may be 
grown at a minimum of cost and labour, and where the 
sun is a continual source of profit for lazy folk who are 

1 The necessity of assisting the Maori to settle his own lands was never 
properly recognized (by legislation) and the spectacle was presented 
of a people starving in the midst of plenty." (Report of Commission of 
1907, quoted by Scholefield, New Zealand in Evolution, 1909, p. 341.) 

The Treaty of Waitangi established a native landed aristocracy, and 
the Government, by preserving native rights without encouraging the 
natives to perform the duties of citizenship in helping to develop the 
country, put a premium on laziness and did the native race grave injury. 
(Scholefield, ibid., p. 334.) 



U2 BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

content to live on bananas, bread-fruit, yams, and young 
coco-nuts." 1 Similarly the Solomon islander who has 
nuts in his possession has a bank account upon which he 
draws. He does not need to work, with the result that 
the planter who wishes to cultivate the coco-nut on a 
large scale finds it difficult to obtain labour. 2 

The German solved the labour problem easily by using 
forced labour. At present, although there is not much 
written evidence about his treatment of the native, there 
is sufficient to establish the fact of the principle upon 
which the German developed his possessions, which was, 
simply, to dragoon the native, take his land, and put him 
under Prussian official discipline. The native was not 
considered to be a fellow creature, but was treated as a 
chattel. In the early days of German expansion there 
were probably some ugly blots upon its record, but in 
recent years, before the war, they became comparatively 
benevolent in their slave-driving, since it paid to keep 
their slaves alive and docile. 3 

But for England the problem was more difficult, since 
she entered the Western Pacific partly to protect the 
native, and wanted the development of her Pacific 
possessions to follow lines consistent with that aim. 

1 Fletcher. The New Pacific, p. 52. 

2 Ibid., p. 197. 

3 Ibid., pp. 103, 160, 162, 168, 262, etc. 

The mystery in which German methods in the Pacific are shrouded 
has been regretted by Mr Fletcher in his Stevenson s Germany, the Case 
against Germany in the Pacific. He, however, while admitting that he 
is forced to argue much from suggestion, asserts that "in Samoa itself 
Germans for nearly forty years were slave-owners and slave-drivers 
in the sense that the natives employed by them were not free agents, 
neither at the moment of engagement nor in the manner of their employ 
ment . . . and right through the ocean German ways with the natives 
have been full of treachery, deceit, and devilishness. The German trade 
and labour ideal has been to make as much profit as possible without 
reference to law or gospel." (Published 1920, pp. 73, 74, etc ) 



BRITISH NEW GUINEA 113 

Unfortunately little progress was made in the ideal, 
owing to the form which the method took ; and, in pro 
tecting the native from the white man, the early admini 
strators never realized that the native had also to be 
protected from himself. Thus in New Zealand and in 
Fiji there is a danger that the native races will die out 
from inertia. If that ever happens the epitaph upon 
their graves will be, " Here lie those who died as a result 
of the efforts of their well-meaning friends to save them." 

It was only after a hundred years of British rule that 
the colonist of New Zealand awoke to the fact that the 
Maori race was dying out, because " the necessity of 
assisting the Maori to settle his own lands was never 
properly recognized," and that he could only be preserved 
by encouraging and training him to become an industrious 
citizen. 1 

In contrast to this the first Governor of British New 
Guinea aimed at educating the native character under 
protection, so that the native could ultimately play a 
large part in the development of his country. 

Here again there is a striking similarity between the 
views of Macgregor and Chalmers. For Chalmers, in his 
declaration at the Royal Colonial Institute, did not merely 
cry " New Guinea for the New Guineans," but also " The 
New Guineans for New Guinea." He realized that the 
last was the necessary complement of the first. There is 
justification for guessing that Chalmers drew the attention 
of Macgregor to this, for Macgregor only came to New 
Guinea in 1888, and as early as 1885 Chalmers s book had 
been published, in which he suggested that, in the event 
of British sovereignty being declared, the dependency 
should be governed through the native chiefs by officers, 
who were to superintend and encourage the natives to 

1 Scholefield, he cit., p. 341, 
H 



ii4 BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

work plantations. 1 This suggestion Chalmers elaborated 
later in his speech at the Royal Colonial Institute, 
although, according to his biographer, most of the paper 
had been written in 1885. 

Teach our natives, encourage them in trade, and they 
will never want your charity," Chalmers assured those 
who were frightened of the expense. " Encourage the 
natives in raising produce suitable for the Australian 
markets," he continued, " education will soon cause a 
demand for imported produce. Give them that to 
cultivate which will enable them to meet their wants, 
and a market near at hand which will take all they 
grow." He advocated native-worked plantations under 
English officers governing through the native chiefs. 
" Traders would soon swarm, but no one should be 
allowed to trade with the natives directly but only through 
the Government. If coco-nuts were planted ... a good 
trade in copra could be created." He cited as an example 
of the possibilities of this policy the Hula natives who 
were induced by an L.M.S. native teacher from Eastern 
Polynesia to make plantations which became a market for 
other tribes. 2 

1 Work and A dventure in New Guinea, 1 885, pp . 1 7, 1 8. A utobiography, 

PP- 255-257- 

An undated note by Sir Peter Scratchley appears in his collected 
papers before an entry in his journal, dated August 1885. " The only 
hope of making New Guinea pay is by the employment of the natives. . . . 
New Guinea must be governed by the natives for the natives." (Papers, 
p. 302.) In view of the fact of Scratchley s dependence upon the 
missionaries for advice (see post, p. 120, and Papers, p. 315), this note 
bears out, by its similarity to Chalmers s text (above), the suggestion that 
Chalmers and not Macgregor was the originator of the policy of develop 
ing the country by the help of the inhabitants. 

2 R.C.I., January n, 1887, pp. 105, 106. 

It is curious to notice that an initiative in regard to trade should come 
from the missionaries who have often been attacked for their alleged 
hostility to it, and that in one case at least it was the traders who 



BRITISH NEW GUINEA 115 

For the first few years of his administration Sir William 
Macgregor was content to establish law and order over 
the Possession, but in 1892 he started to carry out the 
policy outlined by Chalmers in 1885 and 1887. In that 
year he wrote in the Official Handbook that the Govern 
ment " was sufficiently firmly established to protect 
settlers and to maintain law and order in the more 
accessible districts." " As tribes become more settled 
they have on their hands more leisure than was formerly 
the case. It was very desirable that this should be turned 
to some use ; that they and the European settlers should 
mutually benefit each other, the one by working with his 
hands for the other, while at the same time becoming 
acquainted with new products and new industries, the 
advantage of which he would learn from his employer." 

Accordingly he made it " obligatory upon the natives 
in the coastal villages, and as far inland as the conditions 
would allow, to plant coco-nuts. Each man was to be 
responsible for his quota, and the trees he planted were 
to be native property." Mr Fletcher notices this 
Ordinance as an example of the imagination of Macgregor, 
but the records of the Royal Colonial Institute suggest that 
it was Chalmers and not Macgregor who " could see in his 
mind s eye a great stretch of coco-nut palms in native 
possession, providing stores of food against famine, ample 
nuts for the making of copra and the stimulation of trade, 
and in expanding revenue for the purposes of administra- 

hampered the development of it. The Cavendish banana introduced 
into the Pacific by John Williams the missionary, which might be grown 
in large quantities in New Guinea, has had to compete with the 
Queensland banana grown largely by Chinese and protected by a heavy 
duty, and with the Fijian banana. The Australian " will pay sixpence 
a dozen for Fijian bananas, very often twice as much, yet here are 
bunches by the hundred thousand waiting his word if he will put his 
hand upon his own government." (The New Pacific, pp. 57, 58 252, 
253.) 



uG BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

tion." l Nevertheless it is to the credit of the Admini 
strator that he had the imagination to see the vision of 
the missionary. 

This Regulation, however, did not immediately take 
effect. 

Sir George Le Hunte writes that " there was no means 
of enforcing it, and practically it was purely optional in 
the native to obey it or not. ... It was left to the 
district magistrates to encourage the planting without 
trying to enforce it they could only enforce it on those 
willing to obey." 2 

Sir W. Macgregor also started Government plantations 
at the District Magistrate stations worked principally by 
prison labour, but these made little progress " owing to 
the limited revenue available to run them." 3 

But immediately before the war the outlook was im 
proving. In 1913 about 350,000 acres were under 
cultivation by the natives for their own use, with an 
average of one hundred trees per acre. 4 And the following 
year Judge Murray, after drawing attention to the diffi 
culties of enforcing the Regulation, reported that they 
were being overcome, and that the natives were generally 
being persuaded to obey it. 5 

It was of course hardly to be expected that the progress 
of the Possession would come up to the lofty ideal of the 
missionaries. Methods so constantly break down, even 
when the ideal is clearly seen ; for methods depend 
upon the average man in the subordinate position, and 
although the artist may have a true inspiration, and 
from his imagination create a design for a noble building, 

1 The New Pacific, pp. 248, 249. 

2 See post, p. 123 (footnote i). 

3 Official Handbook, 1913, c. 4652, p. 38. 
* Ibid., p. 38- 

5 Report in 1914 (quoted in The New Pacific, pp. 250, 251). 



BRITISH NEW GUINEA 117 

it is not upon him, but upon the devotion and skill of 
minor architects and masons, that the right execution of 
the plan ultimately depends. 

Lawes and Chalmers anxiously realized this, and were 
constantly striving to obtain keen labourers for their 
building. When plantation development was in danger 
at first, owing to the initial difficulty of obtaining sufficient 
estate managers with practical knowledge of Papuan 
labour, 1 Lawes addressed a letter to The Times. 2 Com 
menting upon Sir William Macgregor s report he em 
phasized the importance of laying a secure foundation for 
the future interest of the Possession upon respect for 
native rights, and went on to plead that as an inglorious 
warfare with the natives would call young Englishmen to 
arms, so much the more should they come forward for 
" the more peaceful and honourable vocation of building 
up a young nation, of developing the great human re 
sources of this new possession." Officers would be 
needed as Government control extended, who would be 
capable of representing the Christian principle and the 
best of English life to the savages, and who, moved by " a 
nobler ambition than that of making money, would con 
secrate their energies and abilities to the work of civilizing, 
Christianizing, raising and ruling the nations of this great 
land." 

Not content with the role of leaders, the missionaries 
helped by labouring themselves to train the native in 
industrial and agricultural pursuits. But although they 
were performing for the State the function of education, 
without cost to it, 3 they treated it as part of the day s 
work, and there is as little reference to it in their journals 
and letters as there is to their work of preaching. 

1 Official Handbook, 1913, p. 36. 

2 August n, 1890, quoted in Biography, J. King, p. 270. 

3 Sir W. Macgregor. British New Guinea, etc., p. 92. 



n8 BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

J. W. Lindt, however, who was lucky enough to see 
the launch of the eighteen-ton yacht Mary, from the 
Papuan industrial school at Murray Island, records the 
fact in his book, adding that the wood was cut and the 
building executed by pupils under the supervision of 
Rev. Samuel Macfarlane. 1 And various official reports 
testify frequently to the progress made by the native. 
In 1888 the Deputy-Commissioner for the Western 
Division reported that " many of the men are now willing 
workers in the beche-de-mer fisheries." And the same 
year, another Deputy-Commissioner, in emphasizing the 
importance of Papuan labour, wrote, "... copra, gum, 
and beche-de-mer exported from the British New Guinea 
coast is all collected by natives, and the two latter articles 
are cured and bagged without supervision once the 
collector has been shown the process." He added that 
the natives had " rendered useful and willing aid to 
traders and visitors in many ways, such as boatmen and 
woodcutters." 2 

Steady progress was thus made, and it is not surprising 
to see in the Official Handbook of 1913 a photograph 
of a native driving a plough tractor. 3 

There is much material not yet available which would 
help in determining beyond all doubt the decisive effect 
of missionary influence in the development of British 
New Guinea, and it is to be hoped that the full evidence 
of the late Sir William Macgregor may one day be 
published. For the time being we must be content witli 
the indicating straws strewn over reports and journals, 
which themselves are fortunately almost conclusive. 

It must be remembered that the Administrators lived 

1 Picturesque New Guinea, 1887, p. 4. 

2 PP. 1889, c. 5620-3, p. 50. 

3 Official Handbook, 1913, p. 32^. 



BRITISH NEW GUINEA 119 

in close personal touch with the missionaries, who were 
not narrow-minded, nor were they timid in expressing 
their opinions, having a clear vision of the goal for which 
they aimed, and overflowing with the " energy, earnest 
ness, and experience " 1 necessary to lead others to it. 
And the Administrators and missionaries were bound 
together by those strong ties of sympathy which are 
forged in the furnace of common dangers and anxieties. 

With no other knowledge than this, one might hazard 
a guess that the missionary influence would be decisive, 
wherever active co-operation existed between missionaries 
and Administrators. 

But it is just upon the question of co-operation that 
the straws of evidence available all point in the same 
direction. In the narrative of the daily work of admini 
stration, the names of the missionaries constantly recur. 
They were invaluable guides for journeys into the interior. 
Their advice was asked upon the relative value of different 
sites. Their stations formed the only link of communica 
tion in a territory which was about eight hundred miles 
in length ; and they themselves and their teachers were 
often the only source of information. In translating 
the Bible into native languages, they compiled much 
valuable information about them ; and owing to the 
expert knowledge thus acquired, they were the best 
qualified for the post of official interpreter. As Sir 
William Macgregor declared : "it practically amounts 
to this, that they are indispensable. It is not known to 
me that any officer that was responsible for the well- 
being and development of a primitive race ever enter 
tained any other opinion." 2 

Because of the value of their help in purely admini- 

1 Sir W. Macgregor. 

2 British New Guinea, Country and People, 1897, p. 92. 



120 BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

strative work, and owing to their close friendship with 
the Government officers, it was inevitable that their 
opinion would also be sought upon executive problems. 

For instance, at the request of Sir Peter Scratchley, 
Lawes wrote a memorandum upon The Future Relations 
of the Natives and the White Race, which put clearly 
before him the two alternative policies, advocated by 
the missionaries and the traders respectively, " to utilize, 
encourage, and strengthen all that is good and capable 
of improvement in native life and habit," or "to put 
the natives on one side, and try to develop the resources 
of the country according to our own ideas without de 
pendence upon the natives at all." The first would be 
slow but promising, and he saw no reason why British 
rule should not become in New Guinea a benefit to both 
the native and the alien race. The second might pro 
duce results more quickly, but these were unlikely to 
be permanent owing to the climate and character of 
the country. 1 

Presumably Sir Peter Scratchley was including this 
memorandum in his reference when he wrote to Lord 
Derby that in considering his plans for arriving at and 
organizing the Protectorate he had received " valuable 
and ready assistance from W. G. Lawes." 2 

Again, the private secretary of Sir William Macgregor, 
who watched the co-operation between his chief and 
James Chalmers, was emphatic in asserting both its 
existence and the value of it, when he had occasion to 
lecture. 

1 Biography. J. King, pp. 244-247. Compare Bacon " Planting of 
countries is like planting of Woods ; for you must make account, to 
loose almost Twenty yeeres Profit and expect your Recompence, in the 
end. For the Principall Thing, that hath beene the Destruction of 
most Plantations, hath beene the Base, and Hastie drawing of Profit, 
in the first yeeres." * PP. 1885, c. 4584, p. 95- 



BRITISH NEW GUINEA 121 

" The aims of the missionary bodies are almost identical 
with many of those of the Government, and thus they 
work hand in hand, each helping each, unity giving 
greater speed to progress," so that he was hopeful of the 
future of the Papuan. 1 

Sir William Macgregor unfortunately has passed, but 
not before he had given many thankful tributes to 
the aid and counsel of missionaries. But history must 
regret that it was before he could give to them the per 
manent form they deserve, with a fuller narrative than 
has yet been written. 2 

It is therefore all the more worth recording the words 
of Sir George Le Hunte, a living witness to the work 
of the missionaries, and to the nature of co-operation 
which existed between them and his predecessor. 

" In New Guinea, as in several other parts of the 
Pacific," he writes, " the missionaries were the pioneers 
of British administration," and he points out " that 
it was fortunate for them and for the natives that the 
first British Administrator was a man of great power, 
ability, experience, and foresight, the late Sir William 
Macgregor, who had many years intimate knowledge of 
the work of the missions in Fiji, and its value to the 
Government and those who followed him, followed also 
the broad and wise lines laid down by their great 
predecessor." 

" It was a far-seeing step that by mutual agreement 
between him and the heads of the several missions they 
confined their activities to the separate divisions of the 
possession where they had established themselves, and 
friction and confusion, especially in the minds of the 

1 T. H. Halton-Richards, R.C.L, 1892-93, vol. xxiv., p. 299. 
8 " I could tell you a great deal of what has been done by ... 
the missionary societies in the Pacific," R.G.S., February 22, 1915. 



122 BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

natives, were thus avoided. This wise arrangement has 
been loyally adhered to by the societies, and has facilitated 
both their work and that of the Government." 

" The missions and the Government may be said to 
work hand in hand, and such were the foundations laid 
down by the great pioneers of both sides that the workers 
who followed them have been able to carry on the build 
ing uninterruptedly, by mutual effort, and with ever- 
increasing stability. 

" The Government, which is responsible for the laws it 
makes, and for seeing them observed, is, through its 
ofncers, in close touch with the missionaries. In some 
cases the missions have established themselves first, 
and the Government has gladly availed itself of their 
work. In others, where the Government has entered 
new ground, it is quickly followed by the mission ; and 
so, step by step, sometimes one and sometimes the 
other leading, the work goes on and religion, law, order, 
and civilization are in their several degrees making pro 
gress, and with wonderful results, as those who have 
been privileged to take a part in it can truthfully testify." 

The missionary societies keep a watchful eye upon 
the interests of the native and are prompt to offer advice, 
sometimes a protest, to the Government in matters of 
legislative or executive action which they may con 
sider to be either advantageous or detrimental to those 
interests. They are sure of a sympathetic hearing and 
careful consideration." 

" Nor are the interest of the white community dis 
regarded. Much has been effected by the mission s 
influence both with the Government and the whites. 
The latter, though often not seeing eye to eye with the 
missionary, respect him, and recognize, though they 
may not admit it sometimes, that he is a force for peace 



BRITISH NEW GUINEA 123 

and good order, as well as for religion, and in the main 
support him." 

" The result of this threefold co-operation has been 
the substantial progress of church, state, and commercial 
enterprise in this vast territory." 1 

The matter might rest there, decided by the opinion 
of one who had personal experience in administering 
the dependency, but it is impossible to conclude a sketch 
of the history of missionary influence in New Guinea 
upon any other note than one of gratitude to an in 
dividual missionary. 

Because the missionaries of New Guinea whose names 
have appeared in this essay have but recently passed 
from their field of action, and because the events which 
they faced and moulded occurred so short a time ago 
that they hardly deserve to be treated as history, it 
is not possible to retain anything but a blurred impres 
sion of their significance as individuals. But although 
they stand too close to be in focus, there is one amongst 
them, James Chalmers, whose figure dominates them. 

There is a striking portrait of him in Mr Lindt s book. 2 
Between Macfarlane of the genial smile and Lawes the 
scholar, in truth, in the words of Stevenson " he re 
presents the essential." His eyes, full open under bold 
somewhat bushy brows, gaze commandingly at the 
reader, so that at the first glance he may not notice 
the jolly twinkle lurking within one of them, or the 
whimsical upward curve of the right eyebrow, as if it 
had caught something of the unexpectedness which re 
mained in its owner s character from the days when he 

1 The writer is indebted to Sir George Le Hunte, G.C.M.G., who 
succeeded Sir William Macgregor in 1898, and was Governor of the 
Territory until 1903, for this note from the records of his personal 
experience. 

2 Loc. cit. To face p. 6. 



124 BRITISH NEW GUINEA 

played practical jokes on his fellow students at Cheshunt 
College. Yet the face, under careful scrutiny, never 
loses the force of the first impression it gave, belonging 
to one who laughs and jokes from his strength, and not 
from his weakness. The masterful poise of the head, 
the hair brushed back over the ears with characteristic 
decision, the determined lines upon the face, tell at 
once that this man is the leader of the three. 

While Law^s was " the plodding translator and 
teacher," whose " great aim was to provide as early 
as possible a translation of the whole Gospel message," 
Chalmers was " the restless pioneer with a roving 
temperament, wedded to a crusader s faith." So that 
their meeting, as Lawes s biographer describes, was that 
of " two streams which were complementary." l 

But it was Lawes, rather than Chalmers, who was 
the tributary joining the main current. For missionary 
policy, which became later the policy of the Government, 
was moulded by Chalmers, and its ideal was diffused 
and its method practised more successfully by him, who 
as its creator was strangely enough also its ablest exponent. 

While the natives knew T AM ATE as their Chief and 
Peacemaker, the missionaries, administrators, and 
officials all drew from his radiant personality, inspiration, 
energy, and wisdom. Although he had faults like other 
men Bevan apparently had a taste of his violent temper 
he was " that rarest man of all, the man whose ideal 
and method are neither opposed to nor separated from 
each other " ; and posterity may well delight to inscribe 
high upon the roll of colonial statesmen the name of 
James Chalmers as one who embodied all that is finest 
in the missionary spirit, and all that is noble in the 
motive of British Imperialism. 

1 Biography. J. King, he. cit., p. 112. 



PART III 

CONCLUSION 

IN an essay dealing with the influence of the mission 
aries upon British expansion, more emphasis perhaps 
might have been laid upon how much they stimulated it. 
But it is very probable that even if the missionaries had 
not opened up the Pacific, traders would undoubtedly 
have done so, not many years later than the date when 
the process did in fact begin. 

Had that happened it can easily be guessed of what 
nature that expansion would have been, and it is not 
impossible that, in the absence of the humanitarian in 
fluence of the British missionaries, the history of the 
Pacific might have borne a dreadful similarity to the 
history of Spanish expansion in Mexico and Peru. 

The true importance of missionary influence lies, then, 
not in the fact that, in part, the missionaries were the 
cause of the expansion, but in the character which they 
gave to it. 

This is brought vividly into relief by placing the motives 
and record of British expansion in the nineteenth century 
against the background of the tendencies of the previous 
centuries. But if the same method is applied to the 
history of German or French expansion a similarity 
instead of a contrast is noticed, and it becomes clear 
beyond denial that the distinctive contribution of the 
British missionaries was that of a new principle to colonial 
statesmanship. 

135 



126 CONCLUSION 

French expansion during the nineteenth century, 
although in method it marked an advance upon Spanish- 
Catholic expansion of the sixteenth century by the 
absence of persecution, belonged to that period in its 
ideals ; and the chief characteristic of French policy was 
the political value attached to the enterprise of French 
missionaries. It may be true that the first cause of 
French expansion was a religious reaction by the 
Catholics to the report of Protestant success in Tahiti, 1 
but the French Government was not laggard in taking 
advantage of the religious enthusiasm of its subjects, and 
had no intention of adopting the attitude of the British 
Colonial Office, which held firmly to the view that " the 
hope of a conversion of a people to Christianity, however 
specious, must not be made a reason for increasing the 
British dominions." 2 

Bishop Patteson experienced the political force behind 
the Catholic missionaries in 1858, when he met Pere 
Montrouzier in conference about their respective policies 
and spheres of influence in the Loyalty Islands, where the 
French Bishop of New Caledonia had placed some priests 
early in that year. Patteson knew at once that he and 
the natives were both in the Frenchman s power, and 
Montrouzier knew it too. " He let me see," Patteson 
wrote, " that he knew he could force upon the Lifu people 
whatever he pleased, the French Government having 
promised him any number of soldiers he may send for, to 

1 " Pour remonter aux origines de 1 action catholique en Oceanic, il 
suffit de rappeler le rapport adresse en 1824, par Duperrey au ministre 
de la marine. Get eloge, sans restrictions, des missions protestantes, 
cut en France un grand retentissement. Des polemiques de presse 
eurent pour effet de creer un mouvement d opinion dans le parti 
catholique, qui resolut de prendre sa revanche a bref delai." (U Expansion 
Franfaise dans le Pacifique Sud. Soulier-Valbert, 1911, pp. 96, 80.) 

z PP. 1862, No. 2995 (quoted by G. H Scholefield The Pacific, 
Us Past and Future, p. 79), 



CONCLUSION 127 

take possession, if necessary, of the island. They have 
one thousand men in New Caledonia, steamers and 
frigates of war ; and he told me plainly that this island 
and Nengone are considered as natural appendages 
of New Caledonia, and practically French possessions 
already, so that, of course, to attempt doing more than 
secure for the people a religious liberty is out of the 
question. He promised me that if the people behaved 
properly to him and his people, he would not send for 
the soldiers, nor would he do anything to interfere with 
the existing state of the island . . . but that if necessary 
he would use force to establish the missionaries in houses 
in different parts of the island, if the chiefs refused to sell 
them parcels of land, for instance, one acre." x 

The French policy was thus something of an ana 
chronism in the nineteenth century, and although Stern- 
dale s judgment is possibly too severe, there is a good 
deal of truth in the summary he gives of the results of 
that policy. 2 

"French colonization in Oceania," he wrote, "... does 
not appear to have produced any useful result. . . . The 
whole may be summed up in a few words : Casernes, 
conciergerie, bureau maritime, mission, cafe, salon de 
billiard, voila tout. The result is indolence, demorali 
zation, stagnation." And to this he adds a violent 
critical description too long to quote. 3 

The German ideal also belonged to the past, and their 
methods showed less advance than the French, being 
more brutal. Theirs was the irreligious commercial ideal 
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the 

1 Life of J. C. Patteson. Charlotte Yonge, 1874, vol. i. pp. 368-69. 

2 Sterndale Report, loc. tit., A. 3b., p. 18. 

3 Compare Dilke, vol. ii., pp. 186, 187, who quoted Julian Thomas 
(a pra-French witness) that in New Caledonia the French had shown 
utter disregard of native rights and property. 



128 CONCLUSION 

German Government was not shy of owning to it, as the 
records of negotiations with it prove. 

Thus under date August 9, 1884, Lord Granville 
writes to the Foreign Office that the German Ambassador 
" wished to take steps to protect more efficiently those 
islands and those parts of islands in the South Sea 
Archipelago, where German trade is largely developed 
and is daily increasing." 1 And Bismarck in conversation 
with Meade declared that " his system was to follow 
trade, not to precede it ... and he had generally replied 
to a request for protection that, where German trade was 
established in a place where there is no foreign jurisdiction 
he would afford support." 2 

Some evidence of what he was supporting has already 
been quoted, and there is an elaborate analysis of the 
nature of the policy of both the supported and the 
supporter in the books of Mr Fletcher. 3 The immediate 
evils resulting were recognized at once by those who held 
different views from the German Government of national 
responsibility to the native races. But later, the German 
Government itself was forced to recognize that Nemesis 
awaits those who solve political problems in the 
counting-house. 

In the German Official Report 4 upon German colonies 
for 1903-4, it is admitted that, for that period the report 
of the Colonial Department " does not give a very satis 
factory account of the relations between the German 
authorities and the natives of New Guinea and the 
neighbouring islands," and it instances the forced with 
drawal of the outlying stations at Hansa Bay, Kaiser 

1 PP. 1885, c. 4273. a PP. 1885, c. 4290. 

3 Stevenson s Germany and The New Pacific. 

4 Consular Reports (C.O.), No. 3519, cd. 2682-44, pp. 44-50; ditto, 
pp. 7, 8. 



CONCLUSION 129 

Wilhelmsland, " owing to the threatening attitude of the 
inhabitants." As a result, the account given of the 
economic development of German New Guinea and the 
Bismarck Archipelago was <v not very promising/ the 
production of copra by the natives having decreased both 
in Samoa and in New Guinea, and the production of 
trepang and tortoiseshell having decreased nearly fifty 
per cent, as compared with the previous year. 

So bad was the position reached by the pursuit of selfish 
interests that it was thought necessary to own that " the 
need of changes in the method of administration of the 
German colonies is generally acknowledged/ and reforms 
taken from the British model were introduced. 

Where France failed by treating her missionaries as 
political agents, Germany failed owing to her neglect of 
them, indeed owing to her active opposition to them. 
The orders of Godeffroy, whom Bismarck thought worthy 
of support, were quite definite upon that point. "Give no 
assistance to missionaries either by word or deed (beyond 
what is demanded of you by common humanity), but 
wheresoever you may find them, use your best influence 
with the natives to obstruct and exclude them " thus 
Sterndale, once their employee, quotes their manager. 
And he adds an explanation of this opposition. "Through 
out the Pacific for the past twenty-five years there has 
been a constant struggle for the mastery between mis 
sionaries and merchants, each being intensely jealous of 
the influence over native affairs obtained by the other. 
Merchants make the greatest profits out of savages, for 
the reason that savages are content to sell their produce 
for blue beads, tomahawks, and tobacco. When these 
savages are brought under the influence of the mis 
sionaries they are instructed to demand payment in piece 
goods wherewith to clothe themselves, and in coin for 



130 CONCLUSION 

the purpose of subscribing to the funds of the missionary 
societies. This reduces the profits of the merchants, who 
bitterly resent such interference/ l 

That is the kernel of the matter " the constant struggle 
for the mastery between missionaries and merchants . " It 
was the fight between the new ideal of the nineteenth 
century, and the old worn-out motive of the eighteenth. 
And upon the issue of that fight depended not only the 
future of the Pacific, but also the resurrection of the 
political life of Western civilization. 2 

It should always remain a source of pride to the British, 
that it was the missionaries of their nation by whom 
that fight was won. 3 In the thoughts of those statesmen 
the title is fitting, for they were Empire builders, 
although they built on strangely new foundations the 

1 Sterndale Report, loc. cit. 

* Compare Article 22 of the League of Nations Covenant. 

" To those colonies and territories . . . which are inhabited by 
people not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous con 
ditions of the modern world, there should be applied the principle 
that the well-being and development of such peoples form a sacred 
trust of civilization." 

3 Unfortunately it appears possible that the successors of Chalmers 
and Macgregor may find themselves engaged in a struggle against 
selfish interests even more severe than that in which those two 
Christian Imperialists fought with success. For it is certain that unless 
Christianity can be infused into the economic development of the 
twentieth century, as it was carried into the political development 
of the nineteenth by Williams and Marsden, and Fison and Chalmers, 
the building whose foundations these missionaries so securely laid 
will never be completed. 

It is not impossible that the increasing control of policy by the inter 
national financier may be exercised in the direction of exploiting the 
Pacific in his interest, and that the twentieth century will see a 
struggle not merely in the Pacific, but all over the world, not against 
" the merchants " but against the financier an unseen and therefore 
a more dangerous foe. (Two very suggestive books, Economic Democ 
racy and Credit Power and Democracy, by Mr C. H. Douglas, have 
recently been published by Cecil Palmer upon this subject.) 



CONCLUSION 131 

nation to-day can find the encouragement and inspiration 
of a noble vision. Although the missionary societies had 
primarily "to provide against an irreligious colonization, 
against the importation of the vices of a more cultured 
race without the antidote that shall sweeten and counter 
act the inevitable tendencies of civilization," l yet the 
leaders were always ready to remind the British people 
of " the proud and enviable position which God had given 
to Great Britain amongst the nations, and of the oppor 
tunities thereby offered to it." 2 They did not oppose 
colonization, but rather advocated it so long as it was 
" consistent with wisdom and justice and conformable 
with the precepts of that religion which Britain, as a 
nation, professes," teaching that it " must unite the 
building up of new states with the confirmation and 
prosperity of one already built." 3 

Those who do not accept the faith they preached must 
yet acknowledge the worth of their ideal ; while British 
Christians will wonder joyfully at the manner in which 
the efforts of the missionaries vindicated the teaching of 
the Gospel, that a nation has but to " seek first the 
kingdom of God and His righteousness," and dominion 
and wealth will in good time be added to it. 

It is true that in the history of that period there were 
many mistakes made by individual missionaries, and much 
neglect of opportunities by the Government at home, and 
that the remedies for the evils of the time were slow in 
coming, and not immediately effective when they came. 
It is true indeed that the practical application of the 

1 Rev. F. Pigou at St James, Piccadilly, Easter, 1877. 

8 Ibid, (see British Museum Library, G. A. Selwyn, 44623, 5, 1877). 

3 On the British Colonization of New Zealand, by the Committee of 
the Aborigines Protection Society, 1846, p. 39. (Of the members of 
the Committee of the A.P.S. in 1846 at least one Rev. John Burnet 
was also a Director of the L.M.S.) 



132 CONCLUSION 

missionary ideal failed in the early days because it was 
premature, and for the same reason, perhaps, the nation 
awoke but slowly to an understanding of the tradition 
the missionaries were building up, so that only at the 
close of the century did British administration conform 
radically in its methods to their ideals. 

But idealism only remains idealism and retains its dis 
tinctive value so long as it is impracticable, and although 
the practical application of the missionary principle was 
premature, the worth of the principle itself remains un 
altered. To that idealism indeed we owe the distinctive 
character of British Imperialism to-day. Has there been 
any body of men in our Empire s history from whom we 
have received a more glorious inheritance or a more sacred 
trust ? 



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