obtain the power that had eluded the 1st, FitzGerald was too ill to attend. Instead, Henry Sewell (one of FitzGerald's colleagues in the first attempted cabinet) was asked to form a government. In 1857, FitzGerald resigned from Parliament on the advice of his doctors, and also decided not to seek re-election as provincial superintendent. Instead, he left Lyttelton on 30 September on the James Gibson for Sydney and returned to England, where he resumed his work for the Canterbury Association. During his time in England, he was offered governorships of both British Columbia and Queensland, but his ill health prevented him from accepting. By 1860, he had returned to New Zealand on the Matoaka, and shortly afterwards won election to the Canterbury Provincial Council; first for the Akaroa electorate in May 1861, and then in the Town of Akaroa electorate from September 1861 to December 1862. He also founded The Press, which remains Christchurch's largest newspaper today. In 1862, he returned to national politics. The resignation of Thomas Rowley in the Ellesmere electorate caused the 12 July 1862 Ellesmere by-election, which FitzGerald won. He represented the electorate until the end of the parliamentary term in 1866, and then successfully stood in the City of Christchurch electorate in 1866 (elected unopposed), from which he resigned the following year. In Parliament, he strongly advocated peaceful negotiations in the New Zealand Wars, supporting Māori rights and condemning land confiscation as an "enormous crime". He also campaigned to have primary responsibility for relations with the Māori transferred from the Governor to Parliament. Other suggestions he made included reserving a third of Parliament for Māori politicians, recognition of the Māori King movement, and the withdrawal of British troops from New Zealand. FitzGerald strongly believed that if Māori and colonists did not make a deliberate attempt at reconciliation, one or both would eventually be destroyed. On 5 November 1863, he attempted to convince Parliament that the New Zealand Settlements Act 1863 was contrary to the Treaty of Waitangi "which distinctly guaranteed and pledged the faith of the Crown that the lands of the natives shall not be taken from them except by the ordinary process of law—that is, taken within the meaning of the Treaty." He also stated that in his opinion, the purpose of the Act was to acquire Maori land. In 1865, he had a two-month term as Minister of Native Affairs in the