Liardet recovered but he returned to England and his post as Resident Agent for the Company was assumed by John Tylson Wicksteed who had been appointed in London. Arriving in May 1842 he found the settlement in considerable confusion and experienced great difficulty in finding land for the settlers 'because of native obstruction'. During his five years in office he persuaded the Maoris to cut a track towards Wellington east of Mount Egmont, but nearer New Plymouth he had repeatedly removed fences erected by natives on land acquired for settlement. B. Wells records: 'Wicksteed was in some respects a remarkable man 21 In his early years he was sub-editor of the London Spectator under Mr Rintool, the friend of Mr Edward Gibbon Wakefield and of Sir William Molesworth. Under these circumstances his connection with colonial affairs can be easily accounted for. His reports to the New Zealand Company outlines the escalating troubles of the Maoris over land disputes and there were glaring examples of his failure in relations with the Company and Government officials such as Captain King, Carrington, Cutfield (who was then the Company's storekeeper and immigration agent) and many ofthe European "villagers" at Henui whose wages were reduced as the result of the New Zealand Company's policy of retrenchment.' In September 1926 W. H. Trimble ofSt Leonards, Otago, wrote to W. H. Skinner, a New Plymouth historian, enclosing a large book contain- ing letters written by Wicksteed between 1842 and 1844 to Colonel Wakefield. They contained reports on the progress of the settlement, candid references to the difficulties Wicksteed had in his association with many of the settlers, and they revealed much of the character of the man himself. Many of the letters have never been published and are beyond the scope of this work.P Perhaps the most unusual-even tragic from a historical point of view-aspect is the manner in which the letters were obtained. In his letter Trimble explained that in 1893 while employed in the District Lands and Survey Office, Wellington, 'part of the old provincial council building' was demolished. A strong room containing many old documents was found to have a leaking roof and an officer was instructed to despatch to the City Council's destructor any papers that were of no official value or too rotten or too wet to be of any use .
One day while this operation was proceeding I carelessly kicked at this piece of waste material when I noticed on a scrap of paper the name or signature of J. T. Wicksteed. Knowing that Mr Wicksteed was an important person in New Plymouth of early days ... I carried them away for investigation Some years after this I made a typed copy of the whole record The original papers were so much rubbish (and) were destroyed .' Trimble did not say what other historic documents were consigned to the City Council destructor! Wicksteed relinquished his post in 1847 and took up land at Omata. In 1852 he was editor of the Taranaki Herald; he was elected an independent member of the legislative council of New Ulster and in 1853 contested the first election for provincial superintendent. The fact that he received only 12 votes was a significant pointer to his popularity during a particularly difficult four years in the New Plymouth settlement. In 1853 he moved to Wanganui where he edited the Wanganui Chronicle and he died there in January 1860. Wicksteed was superseded by Francis Dillon Bell as Company agent in June 1847. In less than a year's occupancy of the post Bell was able to purchase and mark out with great difficulty the 'Bell Block' of about 600ha before he was appointed to a similar position at Nelson. He was called by William Gisborne, a member of the House of Representatives for Gisborne, one of the best public officers New Zealand has ever known. William Halse, held the position until 1852, when the New Zealand Constitution Act (UK) enabled Governor Grey to abolish the provinces of New Ulster and New Munster, and create six provinces of New Zealand, the smallest of which was 'The Province of New Plymouth'. Grey at this stage, was still responsible to London, and the reaction to the passage of the New Zealand Constitution Act went almost unnoticed in Britain except from one newspaper report which said: 'The European population is estimated at twenty thousand souls. To this population, amounting to barely one fourth of the number required to constitute a single State of the American Union, it is proposed to apply a constitution not dissimilar in its outlines to that of the United States.
There are 26,000 people who seem to require an enormous amount of government. They are to have seven legislative assemblies (the General Assembly was no doubt included) and seven governors to administer the single affairs of a rude and elementary state of society. In New Plymouth there was different reaction. The Taranaki Constitution Association met on December 1, 1852 to consider nominations for superintendent and members of the Provincial Council. The meeting was well attended. Thomas King declined nomination; the issue lay between Charles Brown and his political rivals William Halse and James Wicksteed. Brown's sponsors included a formidable array of the settlement's most influential members. Brown won the election with 173 votes over Halses 138 and Wicksteed's 12. The Provincial Council's Speaker was Issac Newton Watt, and the area responsibility consisted of the Omata, Grey and Bell districts, plus the town of New Plymouth which was represented by Samuel Vickers (replaced later by Thomas King) and Watt. The Council's powers were limited. Under the Constitution Act the Central Government retained responsibility for such things as surveying, customs, justice, criminal law, weights and measures, the postal services, shipping and port dues and currency.
During Brown's first term (he was re-elected in 1861) a Public Works Ordinance was drawn up by which provision was made for the repair and maintenance of roads and bridges; a rate of SOc was levied on all section owners, and an arms count was taken to counter the increasing disturbances over Maori land. The Provincial Council's estimates for the first year of local govern- ment in Taranaki make interesting reading. The Superintendent's salary was $400; he was given $80 allowance for the use of his house and $100 for a private secretary. The Speaker (who was also the Attorney) was voted $300, and the Treasury $80. The jailer (who was also the inspector of weights and measures and slaughter-houses) received $183; the police inspector $250 and each of his men received a horse allowance of $130. Total estimates for the year came to $6887. The Constitution Act empowered the Governor periodically to dissolve the Provincial Councils and order fresh elections, and for the next 22 years Taranaki had six councils and four superintendents. Between 1857 and 1861 George Cutfield, who narrowly defeated Brown, was superintendent. The election of his council in January was declared invalid because the Governor had not give his consent to an increase in the membership of the Council from nine to 15. This matter was rectified in April without a poll being demanded. During Cutfield's tenure the province was embroiled in war, in which several council members, including Brown, were directly involved, and real government lay in the hands of the military. Charles Brown regained his position as superintendent in the third council, from 1861 to 1865. It was during his period of office that the Town Board was formed, to be responsible to the Provincial Council for running the town. But Brown, who had served with distinction as captain in command of the Taranaki Rifle Volunteers and the Militia at the Battle of Waireka in 1860, was among those still required for military service, and for a time his place was taken by the acting superintendent Henry Robert Richmond.
In his second term Brown originated and carried out a scheme whereby the Government authorised a loan to compensate Taranaki settlers who had lost their property during the war. For many years he was in business with John Duthie in the ironmongery business, Brown and Duthie in Brougham Street, which was one of the early firms which issued their own private 'token money' .25 When he retired from business and politics (before his service on the Provincial Council-he was the only man who was associated with all six councils-he had been a Member of Parliament and Colonial Treasurer in the Fox Ministry) he utilised his wide knowledge of the Maori language and customs as an interpreter in the New Plymouth police court. While returning from interpreting a case on September 2, 1901 he was killed by a train crossing Devon Street. H. R. Richmond defeated Brown in the election for the fourth Provincial Council in 1865, and with the abolition of military law it was he who bore the responsibility to govern the war-weary province. The son of a London Barrister, Richmond was a mathematician and a classical scholar-a shy man who, for most of his life had shunned public duties. He came to New Zealand with his brother, James Crowe Richmond, in 1851, landing at Auckland. The brothers walked to New Plymouth, where they bought a small section and began breaking it in. Their sister, Jane Maria who arrived later, married Arthur Atkinson, and the two families, the Atkinsons and the Richmonds, who had been closely associated in England, acquired about 40ha in and around New Plymouth. Memorials exist today in Richmond Cottage, in the heart of the city, and Hurworth, on Carrington Road, home of Sir Harry Atkinson, Premier, both of which are preserved as the historic buildings they are. But the two families left other legacies. Most of the members of this middle-class group of Englishmen and women, were superb diarists and letter-writers, and the collection of their writings> provides a deep and vivid insight into life in New Plymouth and other parts of the country during the second part of last century. Elected Superintendent by 'a good majority', on September 9, 1865 Henry Robert Richmond faced almost insuperable difficulties, mainly of a financial nature. Because British forces were being withdrawn from the garrison, resulting in a depression of trade, efforts were made to market flax for the home trade, to bore for petroleum near the seashore at Ngamotu, and to manufacture steel from the ironsand which abounded on Taranaki's beaches. In addition, although the fighting was 'officially' over-though there had been no declaration of peace- there was continual fear of renewed uprisings, as well as the return of the Nelson 'refugees' to add to Richmond's problems. But in spite of his workload as Superintendent, he managed to continue his scientific studies. In October, 1868 he wrote to C. W. Richmond, 'I am a little uneasy, by the by, about the chance of a bad earthquake at or near the next change of moon . No one should sleep in stone buildings when the earth's crust is in a state of special tension . I believe I have at length the missing link in my physical, or rather dynamic and metaphysical theory of matter. I adopt the ether as my main starting point the transmission of light through space, and all the primary phenomena of heat, light, electricity, magnetism and chemical affinity are easily accounted for as gravity .If I am right it is a most beautiful and wonderful theory . He was married, first in 1858 to Mary Blanche Hursthouse, who died in 1864. His second wife, whom he married in 1871 was Emma Jane Parris, a strong feminist and educationist, and the first woman member of the Taranaki Education Board. After relinquishing the Superintendency he rented the Taranaki News for a year in February 1870. In 1877 he was sworn in as a barrister and solicitor in Christchurch. He died in 1890.