New Zealand Company ships
The New Zealand Company was a 19th-century English company that played a key role in the colonisation of New Zealand. The company was formed to carry out the principles of systematic colonisation devised by Edward Gibbon Wakefield, who envisaged the creation of a new-model English society in the southern hemisphere. Under Wakefield's model, the colony would attract capitalists who would then have a ready supply of labour—migrant labourers who could not initially afford to be property owners, but who would have the expectation of one day buying land with their savings.
Constitution of New Zealand
Busby convened the Confederation of Chiefs of the United Tribes of New Zealand, which adopted the Declaration of Independence of New Zealand at Waitangi in 1835. While the Declaration was acknowledged by King William IV, it did not provide a permanent solution to the issue of governance. In 1839 Letters Patent were created purported to extend the jurisdiction of the colony of New South Wales to New Zealand, in effect to annexe "any territory which is or may be acquired ... within that group of Islands known as New Zealand". This strategem was adopted by the Colonial Office in order to allow time for Captain William Hobson to legally acquire sovereignty from the United Tribes of New Zealand by treaty.