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The Life and Times of Sir George Grey, K.C.B.

(Note D.—See page 131.) — Church Endowments in New Zealand: Speech of Sir George Grey, June 18th, 1851

page 484

(Note D.—See page 131.)
Church Endowments in New Zealand: Speech of Sir George Grey, June 18th, 1851.

"Sir George Grey said that any information on this subject in the possession of the Government rested, he believed, solely on his own personal knowledge. All he knew regarding it was that the Agent of the Canterbury Association had read to him the draft of the letter, in which, as far as he remembered, was a recommendation that an application should be made for an extension of the block of land which was to be subject to disposal under the peculiar rules of that settlement. He had, however, heard rumours on the same subject from other sources. As far as he was informed of the intentions of the Home Government and of Parliament, he believed that they were in no way desirous that this particular mode of disposing of lands should be forced upon the inhabitants of this country. In fact, they were solely desirous of promoting the welfare of the inhabitants of New Zealand, and of consulting, in as far as practicable, their wishes. It therefore was the duty of those persons who disliked the portion of the islands they lived near being subjected to such regulations to state their objections to them. The points which appeared to require attention were these:—A district containing nearly three millions of acres, including within its boundaries Banks' Peninsula, and embracing one of the most fertile districts in New Zealand, which contained also—before the present regulations were established—many persons of a different faith from that of the Church of England, was placed under the control of the Canterbury Association; and then regulations were made, an important feature of which was that until three millions of pounds were paid for the purposes of the Church of England, the whole of that district could not be used, as their necessities required, by civilised man; nor could any part of it be used for these purposes until the proportionate part of the three million pounds which was due under these regulations upon that part was paid over for the purposes of the Church of England: even for the depasturing purposes the land could not be used under the present regulations except at a rate which, calculating that a hundred acres would feed thirty sheep, required a payment of nearly twopence per head per annum for the same purposes. Now, page 485as he understood from rumours, it was intended to ask that a farther block of perhaps three millions or four millions of acres should be placed under the same regulations, so that the case would then be, that, before the whole of this block could be used, seven millions of pounds must be paid for the purposes of the Church of England, and no part of it could be used until the proportionate amount due on that portion had been so paid. This appeared to involve questions worth}' the consideration of all classes in New Zealand, as the power of the humbler classes to acquire properties for their families was involved in it, the amount of the produce of the country was involved in it, and the extent and value of the commerce greatly depended on it. The only argument he had ever heard used in defence of this arrangement was that Great Britain had done much for New Zealand, and therefore had a right to make such regulations for the disposal of its lands as were for the benefit of the population of the whole Empire. This argument he admitted in its fullest extent; but he could not consider it for the benefit of the Mother Country that one of the most fertile portions of the Empire should be closed by such restrictions, which, in as far as he understood them, placed obstacles in the way of industrious men raising themselves from a state of want by the use of lands which, in their wild state, were useless to mankind. As a Churchman, he viewed this attempt with the utmost alarm, although on this subject he spoke with great diffidence, as he had the highest reliance upon the judgment of many members of the Association; indeed two right reverend prelates belonging to that Association were his intimate friends. Yet it did not appear to him—at the time that so large a portion of the population of Great Britain were in such distress—to be in accordance with any rule of Christianity that the poor of the earth should have closed against them by such restrictions so large a tract of fertile country which a bounteous Providence had placed at the disposal of the human race. It did not appear to him to be in accordance with the principle that those who preach the Gospel should live by the Gospel, because it wrung contributions to a Church from those who were not friendly to that Church, but whose absolute necessities compelled them to buy land necessary for their operations; and because it made the clergy, in the early stages of the scheme, dependent for their support, not page 486upon their flocks, not upon the members of tbe Church, but solely upon the amount of land to be sold; so that almost involuntarily men might be ted to aid in the sale of lands—a duty foreign to their calling. He thought, therefore, that this system of obtaining an endowment was objectionable, whilst he thought the endowment itself far too large, and likely ultimately to introduce habits of sloth and negligence into the Church, and thus to be injurious to its own welfare. He would rather have seen the virtuous and industrious, who could find no place at home, encouraged to occupy such a country upon terms which would have enabled them easily to acquire homes for themselves and their families, and readily to develop the resources of the country, and to have seen a busy, active clergy, by acts of kindness and Christian virtue, gaining from the members of their own Church, in that fertile district, a love and gratitude which would readily have yielded ample endowments for all their wants. He feared the present system would injure the Church; it led men incautiously, even in the publications issued under the authority of the Association, to hold out the elergy as a feature of attractiveness, and even to use such language in support of what is termed the religious principle as that 'the merest land speculator has an interest in the Canterbury Bishopric.' He thought that such arguments, whilst they might gain endowments for the Church, must injure the very religion they were meant to support. It therefore behoved those who objected to having the lands in their vicinity placed under such regulations to state their views upon the subject."—New Zealand Spectator, June 21st, 1851.