And just as one wrong perpetuates itself in the form of others, this confiscation has ever since burned deep into the hearts of the Taranaki natives, and led in the early eighties to what is known as the Te Whiti movement. Like his predecessor, Wiremu Kingi, Te Whiti was a much-misunderstood man. For this state of misconception he may have himself been largely accountable, for as a concession to the Maori love of the mysterious he so combined religion with his politics, and dealt so freely in the mystic, that it was frequently difficult to separate intangible prophecy from the things that really mattered in his material policy. But shorn of all its grotesqueness the movement which centred round the Parihaka prophet and his uncle Tohu was not a repudiation of the Treaty of Waitangi, nor was it a revolt against the authority of the Queen. At its base lay the grievance, or the fancied grievance, which was before them every day in the shape of the confiscated lands. There upon the wide Waimate Plains they saw European homesteads whose occupancy was in their eyes a crime against Maori rights. Te Whiti felt he had two things to do. He had to assert his right to those lands, and he had to agitate for justice. He accordingly sent his faithfuls to plough up the fields of the farmers and the lawns of the settlers, in the mistaken hope that he would be able to force the issue before a competent tribunal and there determine who had broken the treaty--the Maori or the _Pakeha_. The Government of that day saw things differently. They had no desire to exhume the remains of past mistakes with a possibility of being called upon to repair them at a cost of much treasure and more dignity. They preferred to stand upon the settled policy of their predecessors, and instead of sending a Commission to discover what was at the back of the prophet's mind, they sent troops and took him prisoner. Te Whiti may have been a dreamer, he may have been a babbler of vain things, but he was never a rebel, nor the maker of rebels; but for saying "I love my land" he was legislated into rebellion, and made to appear as a criminal.