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The Founders of Canterbury

Editor's Preface

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Editor's Preface.

My Father, the late Edward Gibbon Wakefield, was the author of the system of colonization under which public land in the colonies came to be sold, instead of given away, the proceeds being applied to emigration, surveys, roads, churches, and schools, and other necessary adjuncts of sound progress in colonizing. This system was first adopted for the Australian colonies by Lord Howick (now Earl Grey), the then Secretary of State for the Colonies, so far back as 1831. In 1836, South Australia was founded on those principles, Mr. Wakefield taking the chief share of the founders' work. In 1837, at his instance and by his efforts an Association was formed, having for its object the colonization of New Zealand on those principles. This Association resulted in the creation of the New Zealand Land Company of 1839, which in that and succeeding years, under that name and the succeeding one of the New Zealand Company, founded the settlements of Wellington, Nelson, New Plymouth, and Wanganui.

In the end of 1843, Mr. Wakefield conceived the idea of a Church of England settlement in New Zealand, under the auspices of the Company: and he corresponded on the subject with page ivboth myself and my uncle, Colonel William "Wakefield, then Principal Agent of the Company, at Wellington. On my return to England in the end of 1844, this project was still further considered: but various circumstances contributed to postpone its being carried into effect. Among these were:—the hostile attitude of the Maori population for a series of years following upon the Wairau Massacre, in July, 1843; the determined opposition of the Colonial Office, combined with the Missionary bodies in England, to the farther action of the New Zealand Company, whose resolute perseverance and Parliamentary influence, fostered and guided by Mr. Wakefield, alone saved it from annihilation and its settlements from ruin; and the continued obstruction offered to the obtaining real representative institutions for the Colony, by the Colonial Office at home, and by Sir George Grey (then Governor of New Zealand for the first time) as the faithful servant of the Office in the Colony.*

The idea, however, of a Church of England

* Sir George Grey, indeed, pretended to be favourable to such institutions, and tried to persuade the Colonists to accept sham ones as though they had been real. And when he found that real ones, through the strenuous exertions of their promoters both, at home and in the colony, were inevitable, he not only accepted them with apparent fervour, but claimed the merit of having originated them, and recommended them for adoption by the Home Government.

page vColony in New Zealand was not abandoned. A project similar, in regard of provision for Ecclesiastical and Educational Institutions to be endowed out of a portion of the purchase-money of land, but in connection with the Free Kirk of Scotland, began to take shape under the auspices of Mr. Wakefield, in the middle of 1845. The late Captain William Cargill took the same place with regard to that project, that Mr. Godley afterwards filled in the organization of the Canterbury Settlement; and, in August, 1845, was in close conference with leading Directors of the New Zealand Company on the construction of the Otago scheme.

In October, 1845, I went to Dublin at my father's request, on purpose to confer with Dr. Samuel Hinds (afterwards Dean of Carlisle and Bishop of Norwich), then Prebendary of Castle-knock and First Chaplain to the Archbishop of Dublin, on the subject of the proposed Church of England settlement. The rough outlines of a plan were then considered and discussed. Archbishop Whately himself took great interest in the proposed enterprise: so much so as to offer me many valuable suggestions; although Dr. Hinds explained to me that the Archbishop's name as a patron of the project might at that particular time do it more harm than good. I find, from the diary which I kept at the time, that the Archbishop described Mr. (afterwards the Right page viHonorable Sir James) Stephen, then permanent Under-Secretary for the Colonies, as a decided enemy to, and indeed sceptic in, colonization; and said that he had received a letter from him in the latter spirit, in answer to his enclosing a complaint against some instance of mis-government in Western Australia. He added that he had hut small hopes for the colonies, while the principal rule over them was exercised by a man who held an obstinate opinion that they could not, and ought not to, succeed.

In the end of 1845 and beginning of 1846, I visited Glasgow and Edinburgh, for the purpose of consulting with Captain Cargill, Dr. Aldcorn of Oban, and other leading workers and friends of the Otago project. I mention this, although not strictly relating to the foundation of Canterbury, because the Free Kirk of Scotland Colony was the first instance in which my father's plans for securing a good kind of colonization by means of ecclesiastical and educational endowments from the land-fund were carried into practice, and because the example thus afforded was of considerable service afterwards to the Founders of Canterbury.*

* In the "Memoir of John Robert Godley," prefixed to the selection from his "Writings and Speeches," published at Christchurch in 1863, Mr. J. E. FitzGerald, the editor of that work, and author of the Memoir, has totally lost sight of the above facts. At page 6, he says,— "Mr. Wakefield, although no longer a Director of the New Zealand Company, had still sufficient influence amongst the shareholders to control its action; and it was owing to his exertions that the Company, even in the then desperate state of their fortunes, was induced to lend itself to the formation of a new settlement in the Middle Island. Mr. Godley, however, was the author of the particular design on which Canterbury was founded, and especially of that distinguishing feature of the colony, which required that ample funds should be provided out of the proceeds of the land sales for the religious and educational wants of the community about to be established."

Mr. FitzGerald has made several other mistakes in the Memoir in question. For instance, he speaks of the plan for an Irish colonization of Canada on a gigantic scale as Mr. Godley's alone; whereas it had long been a favorite project of Mr. Wakefield's, he having proposed it, to my personal knowledge, to both Daniel O'Connell and William Smith O'Brien; and my father and Mr. Godley worked together most cordially at it. Indeed it was through my father's introduction that the Memorial to the Premier on the subject appeared in the London Spectator newspaper, as mentioned in that Memoir. It was after forming an estimate of Mr. Godley's great capabilities for colonizing work by means of joint labour in this and various other branches of it, that it occurred to Mr. Wakefield to suggest to him that him should become the principal ostensible promoter of the project of a Church of England settlement in New Zealand, which he (Mr. W.) had cherished for four years. The letter, which commences the Correspondence in this Volume, marks by its date when this suggestion was first made. But my father and Mr. Godley had been fellow-workers on other kindred colonial and colonizing subjects for some time previously. Mr. EitzGrerald, who did not join the Canterbury enterprise till more than two years afterwards, in February, 1850 (see pp. 219 and 220 of this volume), was probably not fully acquainted with the early history of this combination of two colonizing minds, which resulted in the acquisition of many powerful converts, and eventually in the foundation of Canterbury

page vii

The first part of 1846 was taken up in endeavours to procure Parliamentary measures, including some for good representative institutions, page viiifor New Zealand,—first from Sir Robert Peel's Government by means of pressure from the Whigs,—and after the middle of the year from the latter, who had come into power. But Earl Grey and Mr. B. Hawes, who had both professed, when in opposition, to be earnest Colonial Reformers, were no sooner installed as Chief and Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, than they succumbed to the influence of Exeter Hall, secretly represented by Sir James Stephen, the permanent Under-Secretary of the Department; and devoted their energies and official influence to the extinction of the New Zealand Company, whose Parliamentary influence had always, hitherto, been powerful enough to check, at least, both Exeter Hall and the other permanent obstructors of colonization in the Colonial Office. The disappointment on an already over-worked brain caused a severe attack of illness, with which Mr. Wakefield was stricken down at his hairdresser's shop in the Strand, on the 18th August, 1846. For some weeks he was at death's door, given up, indeed, by Dr. Tod and Dr. Mar-page ixshall Hall, two of the first physicians then in London. He revived, however; travelled about England without any worry of business for some time; resumed it in a moderate degree while living in a cottage "belonging to Mr. John Abel Smith, at South Stoke, in the valley of the Arun, under the walls of Arundel Park, in Sussex; completed his resuscitation by a few months of the water-cure and entire freedom from business at Great Malvern, in the autumn of 1847; and came to London on the 6th of November in that year, in time to protest against the arrangements by which the Colonial Office and some of the leading Whig Directors were putting an end to the New Zealand Company. It was during the interval between his first attack and his return convalescent from Malvern that he made the acquaintance of Mr. Godley; and it will be seen that, in the end of November, he first suggested to that gentleman the part of becoming the main instrument of organizing a Church of England Settlement in New Zealand. The Correspondence almost tells the rest of the story, up to the actual foundation of Canterbury in 1850–51. Many of Mr. Wakefield's conceptions for laying that foundation on the best possible footing, unfortunately, broke down. Circumstances interfered to prevent the Rev. Cecil Wynter, Rector of Gatton in Surrey, from accepting the Bishopric; and the subsequent selection of the page xRev. Thomas Jackson, who had been Principal of the Training College at Battersea, proved a damage rather than a benefit to the cause. The Correspondence shows how many stout-hearted, brave men contributed to the foundation of Canterbury. Mr. Godley, unaided by Edward Gibbon Wakefield, could never have completed the task. My father himself must have failed to give that indispensable aid had it not been for the frank and unflinching support of such men as Lord Lyttelton, Mr. (now Sir) John Simeon, Bishop Hinds, the Hon. Francis Baring (now Lord Ashburton) Mr. C. B. Adderley, Mr. Henry Sewell, and, especially as regards the superior quality of the earliest labouring immigrants, the late Mr. William Bowler. A special notice is due to the memory of the late Robert Stephen Rintoul, sole proprietor and editor of the celebrated London Spectator Newspaper, who opened the columns of that influential journal freely and heartily to the exposition of my father's views, both as to home and as to colonial politics, for a long series of years: besides supporting them, because they were akin to his own, by his own personal influence; being one of the men of his age who, more than any other out of Parliament, imparted the earnestness of his own character, and its hatred of shams, to the leading men with whom he associated in literary and club life.

A part of the correspondence, relating to Cap-page xitain E. H. W. Bellairs, an Exon of the Guard, the eldest son of Sir William Bellairs, of Mulbarton, near Norwich, requires a brief explanation. My father had hoped to enlist him as "the leader" of the first colonists of Canterbury. He greatly admired the manly and other attractive qualities of that accomplished gentleman. He prevailed upon him to persuade his father to determine upon migrating to Canterbury with his whole family and property,—which latter would have amounted to about £70,000. By means of his influence with Members of Parliament, and other persons having weight with the then Ministry, my father had managed to obtain the promise of a Baronetcy for Sir William Bellairs, in case he should thus emulate Raleigh and the other noble adventurers of the Elizabethan era. The patent was actually prepared, and ready to be presented to the gallant old Knight on his arrival in the colony. Unfortunately, Sir William obstinately insisted on getting the Baronetcy before he should part with his landed property and become a real colonist. So this favorite project of Mr. Wakefield also broke down. I have, therefore, omitted a considerable quantity of the interesting correspondence relating to it. Captain Bellairs afterwards did emigrate to Otago; "went in," as it is called, for "cheap land"; was named a Member of the Legislative Council, and in that character attended the first page xiisession of the New Zealand Parliament in 1854; but was disappointed with, his colonial career, and returned to England soon afterwards.

The readers of the following letters will see that Mr. Wakefield was always longing to get away from work which over-taxed his brain, and to spend his later years in repose in New Zealand —to lay his bones in the fair land whose British colonization he had originated and fostered for so long a portion of his life. But he felt it a duty, even at the risk of wearing himself out, to stick to working in England for Canterbury until it should fairly have taken root. And, moreover, when he saw the opportunity arriving, he waited to give most valuable help to the cause of obtaining real representative institutions of government for the whole of New Zealand. In the course of 1848, he occupied a residence near Boulogne in Prance, for the special purpose of writing a book on Colonization and Colonial Government, unimpeded by other business or visitors. The Correspondence alludes to this work, as "my Mrs. Harris." Its title is "A view of the art of Colonization." It was published by John W. Parker and Son, West Strand, London; but has long been out of print. It is considered a standard work on the subject by political economists, — notably by Mr. John Stuart Mill, who has published, in one of his standard works, his well-expressed opinion to page xiiithat effect. When the New Zealand Constitution Act had been obtained, my father packed up for New Zealand. He arrived at Lyttelton in 1853, with his pure-bred bull-dogs, in the ship "Minerva"; landed a heifer which he had brought from England, and a bull which was accidentally drowned near Rangiora; and went on to Wellington, where he took up his permanent abode. There, instead of retiring from politics, he plunged into the very thickest of them: opposing, with all his might, the delusive "cheap land" scheme of Sir George Grey. In this cause he became both a Member of the Provincial Council of Wellington, and a Member of the House of Representatives for the Hutt District; and accordingly sat through the first session of the General Assembly of New Zealand in 1854. Having been virulently attacked by his political opponents, the Provincial party of Wellington, during his absence, he called a public meeting at the Hutt on his return from Auckland. He spoke there for five hours and a half amidst impressive silence; returned to Wellington in an open chaise against a south-east gale; sickened; lingered for seven years in the privacy of a sick-room; and died in May, 1862, aged 66. I rejoice that so many of his fellow colonizers have helped me to put his colonizing thoughts on record. A beautiful and truthful portrait of him, and some favorite dogs, has been page xivpresented by me to the Colony, on the condition that it shall be placed in any stone building belonging to any General Government purpose in Christchurch: because, although he was the Founder of New Zealand, rather than a Founder of any particular settlement in it, Canterbury is the portion of New Zealand in which his scheme of colonization has been more completely and effectually carried into practice than in any other portion.

Space has obliged me to break off the correspondence more abruptly than I could have wished: but, if I should receive sufficient encouragement towards publishing the second volume I projected,—to consist principally of letters from leading colonizers to my father,—I may insert in its early portion a few more letters from himself to them.

E. J. Wakefield.