Government and General Order.

It having been represented to His Excellency the Governor that the commanders and seamen of vessels touching at or trading with the islands of New Zealand, and more especially that part of them commonly called “The Bay of Islands,“ have been in the habit of offering gross insult and injury to the natives of those places, by violently siezing on and carrying off several of them, both males and females, and treating them in other respects with injudicious and unwarrantable severity, to the great prejudice of the fair intercourses of trade, which might be otherwise productive of mutual advantages, and His Excellency being equally solicitous to protect the natives of New Zealand and the Bay of Islands in all their just rights and privileges as those of every other dependency of the territory of New South Wales, hereby orders and directs that no master or seamen of any ship or vessel belonging to any British port, or to any of the colonies of Great Britain, resorting to the said islands of New Zealand, shall in future remove or carry therefrom any of the natives without first obtaining the permission of the chief or the chiefs of the districts within which the natives so to be embarked may happen to reside, which permission is to be certified in writing under the hand of Mr. Thomas Kendall, the Resident Magistrate in the Bay of Islands, or of the Magistrate for the time being in said districts.

It is also ordered and directed by the authority aforesaid that no master of any ship or vessel belonging to Great Britain, page 329 or any of her colonies, shall land or discharge any sailor or sailors, or other persons, from on board his ship or vessel within any of the bays or harbours of New Zealand without having first obtained the permission of the chief or chiefs of the place, confirmed by the certificate of the Resident Magistrate, in like manner as in the foregoing orders.

Any neglect or disobedience of these Orders by the masters or seamen belonging to ships or vessels trading from hence to or having any intercourse with New Zealand or the adjacent isles will subject the offenders to be proceeded against with the utmost rigour of the law on their return hither; and those who shall return to England without resorting to this place will be reported to His Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Colonies, and such documents transmitted as will warrant their being equally proceeded against and punished there, as if they had arrived within this territory.

And, with a view to carry these Orders into due effect, His Excellency is pleased to direct that the following chiefs of New Zealand—viz., Dewaterra, Shunger, and Kora Korra—be and they are hereby invested with power and authority for that purpose, and are to receive due obedience from all persons to whom these Orders have reference, so far as they relate to their obtaining permission to remove or carry away any of the natives of New Zealand or the adjacent isles, or to land or discharge any sailors or other persons thereon.