done.'110 This added point to Governor Bowen's opinion that 'If the entire Maori people were to unite against us now [1868], we could probably hold [in the North Island] only the towns of Auckland and Wellington.'111

Clearly, the Maori independence movement was yet to be broken because, in Belich's words 'the simple fact of the British victory had been insufficiently demonstrated'.112 Nor was such a victory likely to come, given the exposure of the inability of the so-called 'self-reliant' government to create a permanent and effective defence force; the reluctance of the imperial government to finance what had patently become a colonists' war;113 and 'the removal of the English regiments before any tender of submission was made by, or any peace ratified with, the Maori King, and the tribes which adhere to him.' 114

The 'Pacification' of Hauraki Tribal autonomy largely intact

If, as is suggested here, those campaigns in the Waikato and Bay of Plenty, 1863-65, ended in a military stalemate, the process of pacification so much associated in Hauraki with the efforts of James Mackay, is to be seen in quite another light. Pacification was less a matter of a victorious colonial power imposing its will, than the cementing of a truce, likely to be upheld by both sides because the advantages that would come from avoiding conflict in the forseeable future were greater than those likely to follow from needlessly provoking it. For their part, the Kingite chiefs were prepared to maintain peace so long as their autonomy was respected.115 Such a kind of prudent realism was not far distant from the viewpoint of moderate elements within Hauraki ranks who were in the ascendant by late 1863 when Mackay set about persuading them to give up arms as a gesture of loyalty to the Crown. But they were not pacific because they had been cowed. Theirs was, rather, a policy of inaction rooted in 'wait and see'. This mood was even more marked among Kingite sympathisers in Hauraki ranks. They were aware that the King Movement was still intact in 1865 because, in Belich's words, 'the British were militarily unable to destroy it'.116

110 F.E. Maning to J.C. Richmond (Native Secretary), 29 March 1868, AJHR, 1868, A4, p.2.

111 G.F. Bowen to the Duke of Buckingham, 7 Dec. 1868, AJHR, 1870, Al, p. 5.

112 Belich, The New Zealand Wars, p. 198.

113 Ibid., p. 199.

114 G.F. Bowen to the Duke of Buckingham, 7 Dec. 1868, AJHR, 1870, Al, p. 2.

115 Hutton, '"Troublesome Specimens"', pp. 44, 54.

116 Belich, The New Zealand Wars, p. 200.

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