Nearly all such alliances have been between Pakeha men and Maori women. There have been instances of Englishwomen marrying men of the other race, but they have been very rare, nor do I recollect any such case myself. An Englishwoman, even of the lowest class, would find it difficult to reconcile herself to the life of the wharè and to the abject servitude, which is the lot of even the helpmate of an ariki. The condition in which they keep their wives is even yet little better than it used to be in former days. Moreover, there would always be the fear of polygamy.
Polygamy is not often met with now among the Maori, yet it is not entirely extinct, though it has become somewhat unofficial in kind. The missionaries set their faces against it from the very first, and made the putting away of his superfluous wives the condition of a convert's acceptance for baptism. They seem, indeed, to have carried their opposition to polygamy to rather too great a length, forgetting that a new phase of thought, when it operates practically, should be a gradual growth, if its effect is to be deep and permanent.
Under the first strong influence of conversion the Maori readily gave in to missionary insistence in this matter; but after awhile the old habit reconquered them. Then came individual relapses into barbarism, individual antagonism with the missionaries, and much division and heart-burning. It would have been better, in my humble opinion, to have ignored polygamy, or at least not to have pointed at it so particularly. It would have been better to have allowed things to remain as they were, in this respect, and to have relied on bringing up the young generations to the Christian observance of matrimony. Indeed, some few missionaries did adopt a line of action something like this, and found it the wisest in the long run.
By-and-by, the Maori began to seriously argue the matter. They took their Bibles, which they had been taught to regard as the standard of right and wrong, and asked the missionaries to show them where polygamy was forbidden. Nay, was it not divinely sanctioned in many parts of the Old Testament?
The Maori is naturally an acute reasoner and casuist, and those missionaries who stood out so emphatically against polygamy now found themselves worsted on their own ground. The arguments that have prevailed throughout Christendom in favour of monogamy were not accepted by the Maori. They wanted direct Biblical ordinance, and as that was not forthcoming they assumed that polygamy was lawful, or, at least, some of them chose to do so. Then there was great joy. There were marriages and giving in marriage, after the good old custom. Probably, this controversy on the matrimonial question was one of the causes that afterwards eventuated in Hau-hau.