Page:The Dictionary of Australasian Biography.djvu/81

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DICTIONARY OF AUSTRALASIAN BIOGRAPHY.
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(priest) named Te Whiti had began to give the Government some trouble by his resistance to settlement and claims to independent and supernatural power. As he had collected in his pa a large number of natives whose attitude was threatening, Mr. Bryce deemed the time had come for energetic action. Not being able to persuade his colleagues to agree with him, he retired from the Ministry, though continuing to give it a general support. Nine months afterwards he rejoined the Hall Government to carry out the native policy he had formerly unsuccessfully urged upon his colleagues. On Nov. 5th, 1881, he occupied Parihaka with a large force consisting of the armed constabulary and volunteers, and arrested Te Whiti and Tohu, one of his chief followers, as well as a notorious murderer named Hiroki, who was afterwards executed. The action was much criticised at the time. Mr. Bryce continued to hold office in the Atkinson and Whitaker Ministries till August 16th, 1884. In 1882 he carried through the House "The West Coast Peace Preservation Bill" by which Te Whiti and Tohu were imprisoned during Her Majesty's pleasure. He also passed the Amnesty Bill, which granted an amnesty to natives who had committed crimes during the war. By the provisions of this bill the notorious Te Kooti obtained a free pardon. Mr. Bryce was re-elected for Wanganui in 1890, and led the opposition to the Ballance Ministry. In Sept. 1891, however, he resigned his seat in the House, owing to a vote of censure having been passed upon certain expressions used by him in debate reflecting on the conduct of the Premier, and which he (Mr. Bryce) regarded as in no sense unparliamentary or objectionable.

Buchanan, Hon. David, M.L.C., fifth son of William Buchanan, of Edinburgh, advocate, was born in that city in 1832, and educated at the High School there. He emigrated to Australia in 1852, and entered the New South Wales Legislative Assembly as member for Morpeth in 1860, and was elected twice for East Macquarie, which he represented from 1863 to 1866. He went to England in 1867, and entered at the Middle Temple in November of that year, being called to the bar in June 1869. He then returned to New South Wales, and practised his profession, being elected to the Legislative Assembly for East Sydney in 1870, and twice returned for the Goldfields. Though outvoted at Mudgee in 1879, he was ultimately declared duly elected. As a politician Mr. Buchanan gained prominence by his sturdy championship of fiscal protection. He revisited England in 1886, and published a selection from his orations and speeches. Having unsuccessfully contested Balmain at the general election in Jan. 1889, he was nominated to the Legislative Council. He died on April 3rd, 1890.

Buckley, William, known as the " Wild White Man," was a native of Macclesfield, England, where he was born about 1780. He was originally a bricklayer, but entered the Cheshire Militia, and subsequently the Fourth or King's Own Regiment of the Line. For some act of mutiny, or, as other authorities state, for receiving stolen goods, he was sentenced to transportation, and was sent to Australia by H.M.S. Calcutta, with the convict party which landed at Port Phillip (afterwards Victoria) under Collins in 1803. Whilst engaged in forming what proved an abortive settlement, Buckley and two convict comrades escaped into the bush, a third being shot in the attempt to do so. The escapees only mustered a trifling supply of rations—a gun, some tin pots and a kettle, and were soon worn out with fatigue and hunger, and the fear of being murdered by the Blacks. From Swan Island they took a view of the Calcutta, and so tired were they of their newly acquired freedom that they signalled their late taskmasters, with a view of returning to bondage rather than endure any longer the isolation and terrors of their lot. They could not, however, make themselves observed, and Buckley's two comrades decided to skirt along the shore with the view of regaining the Calcutta from the spot where they had made their escape. They both, however, perished, whether by hunger or otherwise is not known. Buckley, thus left alone, was, Blair states, preserved by a lucky accident working on the superstitions of the natives. A chief of one of the aboriginal tribes had been buried near Buckley's temporary hut, a piece of a spear being left by his sorrowing subjects to mark the grave. Buckley appropriated the fragment, and meeting some members

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