Bishop Selwyn had helped to make peace at Taranaki (New Plymouth) in 1855, but discontent continued to smoulder both amongst the Maoris and the Colonists. The English continued to be eager to acquire more land and not scrupulous enough as to the means used to acquire it. Disputes about title deeds and the right to certain bits of land were frequent. The Maoris were suspicious of the constant encroachments of the British power. They felt that by degrees their country was passing from them into foreign hands. They had no representation in the Parliament which had been set up in New Zealand by the Constitution of 1853, and practically no share in the general government of the country. Colonel Browne, the Governor, was obliged to report to the Colonial Office in England the unsatisfactory state of affairs. The difficulties were increased because the respective powers of the Governor and his executive were not clearly defined, and by the want of sympathy with the natives shown by the colonists. Maori chiefs were often treated with indignities when they went to Auckland. Bishop Selwyn said that “he was quite ashamed to travel with his native deacons, men who dine at his own table and behave there like gentlemen, because he cannot take them into public rooms where a tipsy carter would be considered perfectly good society.” After the first trouble at Taranaki had been settled for the time, Bishop Selwyn uttered the solemn warning which he was so soon to see justified that “while nothing is more easy than to extinguish the native title, nothing will be found more difficult than to extinguish a native war.” Slowly the country was drifting towards war. In the Waikato country, the Maori chiefs held a conference in 1857, at which both Selwyn and the Wesleyan missionaries were present, and the chiefs chose a king for themselves. No rebellion was meant, for they put up the flag of their chosen king and the Union Jack side by side on the same staff, and the Governor did not think it necessary to take this king movement seriously. In Taranaki, the chiefs had also formed a land league and refused to sell land to the whites. This was very irritating to the settlers along the coast, who saw land, of which they were in great need, lying idle. When one chief of his own accord sold some land to the whites, the chief of the Maori land league refused to allow the sale. The Governor, however, maintained that the sale was legal, and sent troops to the spot to support the rights of the purchasers. This was the beginning of long and disastrous war. At first the Maoris gained some advantage over the troops and the settlers were much alarmed. It was feared that the war would spread to the Waikato, and the general anxiety increased when the irritation of the natives was inflamed by the discovery of a Maori, lying killed by a gunshot wound in the forest thirty miles south of Auckland.