The Founders of Canterbury
Reigate, 12th March, 1850
My Dear fitzGerald,
—I shall be happy to see you whenever you please: for I am writing to Godley, and would gladly tell him by way of postscript to a gloomy account of Canterbury prospects, that there is a likelihood of that sort of work which carried through the first colonizing proceedings of South Australia and New Zealand. The Canterbury enterprise will not do itself: it needs incessant and earnest attention from the managers, of the same kind as that which makes a large and complicated private business succeed. Above all, it needs the constant origination of fresh exertions. I am afraid that when Godley left, it lost its soul; and I am no longer disposed to press this view on his friends, because I fancy that my urgency is not very welcome to some of them. And indeed, I do not know them well enough to put myself in the light of interfering with them. But I can speak plainly with you, and will in confidence as I write this.