The determination of the Maori tribes to establish a King was not in the beginning hostile to the white Government. On the contrary, Wiremu Tamehana, of Ngati-Haua, a man of lofty ideals and altogether admirable character, continually emphasised the fact that the kingdom must be on a footing of friendship with the pakeha; it was simply to govern the Maoris within their own district and to ensure a measure of peace and order which the Queen’s Government could not maintain. The King movement was originated in 1851–52 by Tamehana te Rauparaha—son of the great Rauparaha—who had been on a voyage to England and returned with ideas for the betterment of his race, and by Matene te Whiwhi, of Otaki. The difficulty was to select a suitable chief as King, and one man after another declined the honour, until at last Matene and his fellow-chiefs persuaded the aged warrior Potatau te Wherowhero, of Waikato, to take the position. Potatau, like Tawhiao his son after him, was merely a figurehead; the destinies of the native confederation were decided by the runangas or tribal councils at Ngaruawahia and Kihikihi. Tawhiao succeeded Potatau on the latter’s death in 1860. A variety of elements, social and political, combined to produce a war feeling in Waikato. Iwikau te Heuheu, of Taupo, on his way to a great Waikato meeting in 1857, stayed at the mission station and gave Mr Morgan his reasons for supporting the King. He contrasted the uncouth and inhospitable treatment of Maori chiefs when visiting the towns with the kindness shown by the Maoris to even the lowest grade of pakeha who came to their settlements. Tamehana pointed to the inability of the Government to preserve peace and order among the tribes; this could only be done by means of a native king, and he quoted Scripture and modern history in support of his argument. The blundering of the Government in offering civil institutions and then withdrawing them without a fair trial, the construction of the military road from Drury to the Mangatawhiri River, and finally the heavy losses of the Ngati-Haua and Ngati-Maniapoto in the Taranaki War had a cumulative effect in hastening the outbreak in Waikato. It was when this feeling was simmering in the Waikato that Mr John Gorst—as he was then—was induced by the Government to undertake the difficult task of staying the growing tide of anti-pakeha agitation and of diverting the energies of the Kingite tribes to peaceful industries and crafts. He came several years too late. The institutions and the measure of home rule which Sir George Grey offered to the Kingites in 1863 only to have them rejected would have met with a cordial acceptance had they been put forward five or six years previously. But Grey was in South Africa then, and his predecessor, Governor Gore-Browne, and his advisers went from blunder to blunder in their determination to stifle the natives’ legitimate desire for local self-government.