At this point a new and vigorous opponent directed its energies against the plans of the Association. The Church Missionary Society had been watching its proceedings with a jealous eye, and from the moment of the Association's inception had adopted an attitude of hostility towards it. Rightly or wrongly the Society had conceived the notion that the colonisation of the country must have a detrimental effect upon its Missions, and that therefore a sacred duty devolved upon the Committee to frustrate its consummation if it were at all possible so to do.
Immediately following the publication of the Association's prospectus the Society had communicated with its Missionaries in New Zealand, calling their attention to the scheme, and urging them to furnish the Committee with their views upon it, and so assist the parent body in reaching a conclusion as to its merits. Without waiting for these replies the Committee proceeded to deliberate upon the evidence then available, and on June 6, 1837, formulated the following resolutions, which they ever afterwards consistently made the basis of their attitude towards the Association.
That the New Zealand Association appears to the Committee highly objectionable on the principle that it proposes to engage the British Legislature to sanction the disposal of portion of a foreign country over which it has no claim to sovereignty or jurisdiction whatever.
That the Association is further objectionable from its involving the colonisation of New Zealand by Europeans, such colonisation of countries inhabited by uncivilised tribes having been found by universal experience to lead to the infliction upon the aborigines of great wrongs and most severe injuries.
That the Committee consider the execution of such a scheme as that contemplated by the Association especially to be deprecated in the present case, from its unavoidable tendency, in their judgment, to interrupt if not to defeat, those measures for the religious improvement and civilisation of the natives of New Zealand, which are now in favourable progress through the labours of the Missionaries.
That for the reasons assigned in the preceding resolutions the Committee are of opinion that all suitable means should be employed to prevent the plan of the New Zealand Association from being carried into execution.