But at the bottom of the mischief was the attempt of the missionaries and officials at home to act as though a handful of savages--not then more, I believe, than 65,000 in all, and rapidly dwindling in numbers--could be allowed to keep a fertile and healthy Archipelago larger than Great Britain.

The haste, the secrecy, the sharp practice, of the New Zealand Company were forced on the Wakefields by the mulish obstinacy of careless or irrational people.
Their land-purchasing might have taken place legally, leisurely, and under proper Government supervision, had missionaries been business-like, had Downing-Street officials known what colonizing meant, and had Lord Glenelg been fitted to be anything much more important than an irreproachable churchwarden.
Meanwhile the Company had been advertising, writing, canvassing, and button-holing in England, had kept a newspaper on foot, and was able to point to powerful friends in Parliament and in London mercantile circles.

By giving scrip supposed to represent plots and farms in its New Zealand territory, it secured numbers of settlers, many of whom were men of worth, education, and ability.

The character of the settlers which it then and afterwards gave New Zealand may well be held to cover a multitude of the Company's sins.

Towards the end of 1839 its preparations were complete, and, without even waiting to hear how Colonel Wakefield had fared, the first batch of its settlers were shipped to Port Nicholson.