The ideas which were thus working in the young chief's mind were forced into active expression by the treatment he received from those in authority. Early in 1857 he visited Auckland, with the object of making an appeal to the governor for good government among the Maoris. Instead of a welcome, he received a snub from the high officials, who scornfully advised him to go home and help himself. This rebuff drove him to action. Sending messages far and wide, he convened a great assembly of the inland tribes at Rangiaohia in the Waikato. The concourse afterwards moved to Ihumatao on the shores of the Manukau, and within a few miles of Auckland, where the conference was at that very time drafting the church constitution. The one gathering consisted of highly educated clergy and lawyers, the other of unlettered or self-taught Maoris; but the object of both gatherings was the same, and so were the principles which both professed. A Christian law was the object of them both. Tamihana would not allow himself to be put forward as king: he proposed for that honour the aged Waikato chief, Te Wherowhero or Potatau; but he, as king-maker, was the life and soul of the movement. The kingship thus set up was a sorry enough thing in outward appearance, but its flag bore upon it the Cross of the Redeemer; its inauguration at Ngaruawahia (in 1858) was accompanied with prayers and hymns; its object was to bar out intoxicating liquors from the inland tribes, and to keep them from unwholesome contact with the white man and his ways. As Marsden had tried to found a Christian community at Rangihoua, Selwyn at St. John's, and Godley in Canterbury, so Tamihana attempted to set up a Christian State in the interior of the North Island. It is sad to think that he did not meet with more sympathy from the heads of Church and State. "The members of the Government in Auckland," wrote Sir John Gorst, "did not like Te Waharoa [Tamihana]. Few Europeans knew him personally, and it was the fashion to believe him insincere." At a preliminary meeting at Taupo, the Rev. T. Grace did indeed join in the proceedings, but the colonial government soon moved the governor to petition the C.M.S. for the missionary's removal. Bishop Selwyn left the Taurarua Conference to oppose the king movement at Ihumatao. The one man who saw it in a favourable light was Sir William Martin. To him it was "not an enemy to be crushed, but a god-send to be welcomed." The governor, Colonel Gore-Browne, was weak; but he felt that if he could have Sir William Martin and Bishop Selwyn on his council for native affairs, he might be able to walk uprightly. His proposal, however, was declared "inadmissible," and the well-meaning governor was soon hurried into a policy from which he at first had shrunk.