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Farewell Address on Leaving New Zealand.

On Saturday the 18th December 1852 a farewell breakfast was given to Mr. and Mrs. Godley, on the eve of their departure for England. It took place in Hagley Park, in a capacious marquee which, had been erected for the Horticultural Exhibition. One hundred and fifty persons, comprising all classes of the community, assembled to do honor to the occasion, and to testify their respect and esteem for their guests. A most excellent entertainment was provided, and Captain Simeon took the chair at 1 o'clock. After the usual toasts the Chairman read, and afterwards presented to Mr. Godley, the following Address.—

Canterbury Settlement, New Zealand

December 18, 1852.

Sir,—We, the undersigned inhabitants of the Canterbury Settlement, having learnt with deep regret that your departure, which we had hoped would have been long deferred, is about to take place, desire to express in the warmest terms the high sense we entertain of the many and important services, both public and private, which you have rendered to the Settlement during your residence amongst us from the time of its foundation.

"We are anxious to convey to you this Public Testimony of the uniform urbanity, zeal, and earnest regard for the interests of all, with which you have for two years discharged a very responsible and difficult position; and to assure you, that, both by the ability and integrity with which you have administered public affairs, as well as by the example which you have set in private life, you have won our confidence and esteem.

"It is a matter of sincere and just congratulation, that you have been permitted to witness the undertaking, of which you were one of the chief promoters, crowned with so great a measure of success; and, especially, that the Government of this Settlement, and of the whole Colony, has been at length established, to a great extent in accordance with those principles which you have ever steadily advocated.

"We should deeply regret to think that the connection between us were now to be wholly severed; but we are persuaded you will never cease to feel a lively interest in the welfare of a Settlement with which your name has been so closely linked; and that, in any future measures which may be contemplated in England affecting its prosperity, we may rely upon a con-page 167tinuance of your services, to defend or advocate our rights and interests. Especially, in the final adjustment of the relations which are to exist between the Canterbury Association and the Settlement, we earnestly hope you will take an active part, as possessing the entire confidence of the great majority of its inhabitants, and being fully competent to express their sentiments and wishes.

"We desire at the same time to offer our acknowledgments of the part, in private life, which Mrs. Godley has borne with yourself, by influence and example, in conducing to the friendly feeling existing throughout our young community. We are at a loss how to pay a just tribute to her worth, but we cannot do less than convey to her the very sincere expression of our regret at her departure, and of the high esteem in which her name is held by all classes.

"In conclusion, we beg to offer, both to yourself and to Mrs Godley, our warmest and heartiest wishes for your future happiness and prosperity; and to assure you that, should you ever return amongst us, you will be welcomed back with the same cordial feelings of affection and respect with which we now bid you farewell."

After the reading of the Address, which was received with loud expressions of approbation, the Chairman called upon the ladies and gentlemen there assembled to prove, by the manner in which they would receive the toast he was about to propose, how entirely they concurred with him in the sentiments he had expressed to their departing guests. He then proposed" The health of Mr. and Mrs. Godley, and may health, happiness, and every blessing, ever attend them." He begged that this toast might be drunk with nine times nine, and as many more cheers as they chose to give.

Mr Godley, after the cheering had subsided, rose and said:—Ladies and Gentlemen,—It is at best a miserable thing to say farewell. That must be a desolate and cheerless spot, which a man with a heart in his bosom, after having long lived in it, can look upon for the last time without regret; and those must indeed be uninteresting or unamiable people of whom such a man, when he has mixed with them for years in familiar intercourse, can think without a pang that he will never see them again. How much more, then, must I feel, I to whom Canterbury has become a second home, dearer if possible than the first, I, in whose affection so many of its inhabitants have placed themselves beside my oldest and most intimate friends, page 168how much more must I feel at the thought, that taking the ordinary chances of human life into consideration, I may be addressing the people of Canterbury for the last time. Don't mistake me; I earnestly hope, nay, (if I may say so without presumption), I confidently expect to see you here again; I hardly know how I could make up my mind to leave you if I were not supported by the anticipation of visiting you again within a few years, of recalling myself to your recollection, and of exulting in the progress which you will have made during my absence. (Cheers.) But notwithstanding this consolatory hope, it is impossible for me to forget that human plans depend upon very many things besides human will; that man's life is precarious and frail; and that I, more than most men of my years, have cause to shrink from talking of what I will do years hence, or next year, or even to-morrow. When, therefore, I go to the other end of the world, with the intention of spending four or five years there at least, I cannot but feel a sinking of the heart and a dimness of the eyes, when I try to realize the thought of coming back.

I have said that Canterbury is to me a second home. Have I not a right to say so? It is true that I have never possessed, and probably never shall possess, an acre of land in it, and that I cannot be said, therefore, to have a stake in the country, in the ordinary, vulgar, sense of the word; yet I venture to say that no man ever had in a more true and living sense a stake in a country than I have in this. For the last five years, ever since the plan of founding a settlement of Church people in New Zealand was first suggested to me, I think I may almost say without exaggeration that the thought of it has hardly been for a moment out of my mind; I have become, for the time at least, a man of one idea, to which everything else, public and private, has been made subordinate. Almost every intimate friend I have in the world has been induced by me to take a part in this enterprize; whatever reputation I may enjoy, or look to enjoying, is bound up with its success; indeed, I have often felt as though if this Colony had proved a failure, I could never page 169again have had the heart and the courage to engage in any public enterprise. But this is not all; my affection is not, I can assure you, for the abstract idea of Canterbury alone; I have formed since I came here, relations of a far closer and more attaching kind. Nearly every inhabitant of Canterbury is, more or less, known to me as I am to them; with a large proportion, I had nearly said with the greater part of them, I have been in constant personal intercourse. I have watched the foundation and growth of nearly every house, the cultivation of every field, the progress of every crop, in the settlement, as if it were my own. I have superintended the construction of your public works, the building of your churches, the management of your schools. I have borne a part in all your political proceedings, and attended all your public meetings; in short, the affairs of this settlement have become part and parcel of my very life and being, to an extent which could hardly have taken place under any other combination of circumstances. All former local ties,—the ties of patriotism, of hereditary attachment, of early association, appear weak in comparison with those which bind Canterbury and myself together. No other country can ever be to me what this country is; no other people can be to me what you are. So that, when I meet you here to exchange farewells and blessings before we part, I feel rather like a man tearing himself from a family circle to which he was intimately and affectionately attached, than like an officer resigning a public trust into the hands of the community whose affairs he has administered. I am grateful, my friends, beyond what words can express, for the manner in which you have received me here to-day. This scene will live in my mind and in my heart to my dying hour. For any service which I may have rendered to you it is a rich reward. Indeed, if I had done twice as much, I should be more than abundantly repaid by this demonstration of your sentiments towards me. I thank God that I have been permitted to witness it. I am thankful, too, that my wife has been allowed to be present. I think I may say it will be an page 170epoch in her life; and that she will ever cherish, among the most precious treasures of her memory, a recollection of the attachment and regard expressed towards herself and her husband by the people of Canterbury on this day. I will not pretend to say that all this was unexpected by me. It is only in accordance with the kindness which I have ever experienced in this settlement. The duties which I have had to perform have been in many respects of a very invidious character. Having the whole responsibility of the public service on my shoulders, a great deal has been expected of me; more perhaps than under any circumstances one individual could have done; more certainly than under the actual circumstances I had the means of doing. Those who came to me with requests, suggestions, claims, seldom were fully aware of the difficulties which I bad to contend with, and the restricted nature of my powers, so that I feel as if for the last two years I had been engaged in perpetually saying no, to people who thought they had a right to yes. Then, too, besides these unavoidable clashings and differences, I know I have many short-comings and faults to plead guilty to. I say so, not in the conventional language of one who is fishing for a complimentary contradiction, but solemnly and sorrowfully. There are many even here present to whom I ought to apologise for hasty words and inconsiderate recriminations; for indolence, carelessness, and ill-temper; many whose presence here is doubly grateful to me as an earnest of their forgiveness. But what I have been coming to is this; notwithstanding that I have held a position so invidious and so productive of occasions of offence and misconception, I declare to you that, on a careful retrospect of my intercourse with all of you, I can hardly call to mind one single expression of unkind or angry feeling towards myself personally. The allowance that has been made for me—the consideration shown to me, have, I assure you, often appeared to me almost incredible, nay, have often and often put me to the blush from feeling how little I deserved them. I take advantage, then, of this public opportunity of thanking most page 171sincerely the people of Canterbury for their uniform kindness to me, shown not only on the present occasion, but invariably, always, everywhere, both in my public and private capacity. If my life be spared, and if I am ever again engaged in the public service elsewhere, I may have in many ways, fewer difficulties to contend with; I may have ampler means, a less restricted authority, freer scope to follow out my own plans, and to act at my own discretion; but one advantage I well know I shall never have again in an equal degree; the advantage of having to deal with people disposed to receive any proposal of mine with favour; disposed to indulge rather than to cavil; disposed always, even whenever I most widely differed from them, to give me credit for wishing and endeavouring to do what I thought most conducive to the public good. Again, I am anxious to take this public opportunity of expressing my grateful acknowledgments to those gentlemen who have been engaged, in conjunction with me, in administering the colonial affairs of the Canterbury Association. In fact, I am the more bound to do so, as they have been the means of conferring on myself a great deal of undeserved credit. I know that visitors have often gone away from hence, loud in praises of the arrangements at our Land and Emigration Offices, of the excellence of our surveys and maps, and of the regularity of our accounts, and have spoken of them as though they were due to me. But the fact is, that, as you all know, my share in these matters has of necessity been exceedingly small. The credit which those departments have earned is due to the gentlemen who have had charge of them, and to whom the people of this settlement are more indebted than most of them are aware of. I may add, that it is a most gratifying reflection to me, that with one painful exception, I have not only never had occasion to dismiss any of the servants of the Association, but I have hardly ever had occasion to find fault; there has rarely been a difference of opinion among us; never, I believe, a single offensive or angry word. But I have said enough, and more than page 172enough, about myself, and my own feelings. I could not say less, in justice to those feelings and to your kindness; but I must not forget that time is passing, and that you ought not to be detained too long. Still I know you will, with your usual kindness, bear with me while I say a few words upon the position in which I leave the colony, which I have taken so active a part in founding. On the whole, that is, looking back at our enterprise as a whole, not dwelling upon this or that detail, not indulging in the plaintive truism that we might have done it better if we had had more experience; but looking on it, I say, as a whole, I am prepared to maintain not only that it was a great and noble enterprize, but that it has been successfully carried out. We have a magnificent colony in embryo, certain (humanly speaking) to prosper in a material point of view, as rapidly as any other colony of modern times, and to become within a man's lifetime, a great people; actually containing too within itself as much of the elements of high civilization as, I now believe, it is possible to plant in a new country, unless where some forcible instrumentality happens at a particular period, to expel from the old a large section of its people. We have a branch of the Church of England planted here, with a competent supply of clergy, and ample permanent endowments, although the Association, acting, I have no doubt, in ignorance of the value of land in a new country, have made a mistake in trusting too exclusively to land endowments, instead of reserving a fund to meet ecclesiastical expenses until they should be provided for out of those endowments. We have provision for the higher and lower branches of education to as great an extent, I now find, as there is an effective demand for, among a population situated as this is; we have, moreover, to the best of my belief, a more concentrated population, a larger proportion of resident proprietors, and consequently a greater demand over the appliances and civilities of society, than has been attained before, under similar circumstances, by agricultural colonists. At the same time that we enjoy these special advantages, there page 173has not been any difficiency in opportunities of profitable investment for capital, and of profitable employment for labour. On the contrary, considering the inexperience of the colonists, and among a large proportion of them the want of sufficient means to meet their habitual requirements, there have been wonderfully few instances of actual failure; wonderfully few instances of men who are unable to look forward, (through struggles, no doubt, and privations, but still to look forward) to an ultimate and certain competence. I know there are many who will not take this view, and who will feel perhaps more or less angry with me for expressing it, as though I insulted their disappointments. Yet, at the risk of offending them I must remind them that though there have been cruel and undeserved disappointments, there have been also many which were caused by people's expecting impossibilities. I don't blame them for it; for to a great extent, I did so myself, but such is the fact. They expected that such an edifice of civilization as it has taken many laborious centuries to build up at home, could be created in a few months out here; while they expected, in addition to this, that a capital, of which the interest would not have supplied them with the commonest necessaries of life in England, would provide for them and for their families, when invested in New Zealand, not only necessaries, but luxuries in profusion, without difficulty, or anxiety, almost without toil. I will not say that I have not been disappointed in many things myself. No man in this world can go through any enterprize that has greatness in it without being often and sorely disappointed, because nothing great is ever done without enthusiasm, and enthusiasts are always over-sanguine. When I first adopted, and made my own, the idea of this colony, it pictured itself to my mind in the colours of a Utopia. Now that I have been a practical colonizer, and have seen how these things are managed in fact, I often smile when I think of the ideal Canterbury of which our imagination dreamed. Yet I see nothing in the dream to regret or to be ashamed of, and I am quite sure that without page 174the enthusiasm, the poetry, the unreality, (if you will), with which our scheme was overlaid, it would never have been accomplished. This colony, full of life and vigour, and promise, as it is, would never have been founded, and these plains, if colonized at all, would have fallen into the hands of a very different set of people from those whom I see around me. Besides, I am not at all sure that the reality though less showy, is not in many respects sounder and better than the dream. Take for example that common notion which so many educated and intelligent people have of colonization, the notion that it will enable them to live a sort of careless, indolent, easy-going life, under their vines and their fig-trees, among their children and their flowers, to revel in the spontaneous plenty of an exuberant soil, and to enjoy all the luxuries of civilization without its responsibilities, its restraints, and its labour. This is the kind of life that many of us fondly dreamed of. I will not say that I did not sometimes dream of it myself. But would this, even if it were not out of the question, be a life worthy of a man—of an Englishman? Is the desire to fly from toil and trouble a worthy motive for civilization? Ought not our motive rather to be a desire to find a freer scope, and a more promising object for our toil and our trouble? We all know now that when men colonize, more perhaps than in any other walk of life, they have to eat their bread in the sweat of their face. But this is the advantage, and pride and glory of colonization. It is the corroding evil of old and highly-peopled countries, that in them whole classes, from the Sybarite peer to the work-house pauper, have this curse hanging heavy on their lives, that they have nothing to do; and this it is that justifies us in urging men to emigrate, that in new countries every man must do something, and every man finds something to do. I have seen here clergymen ploughing, and barristers digging, and officers of the army and navy "riding in" stock, and no one thought the worse of them, but the contrary. The principle then which it is the business of colonizers to assert, is the page 175nobleness of work—work of any kind, so that it be hard and honest work, and a sound and true principle it is, though it has its own dangers and abuses, against which colonists would do well to guard. But this is a digression. To return to what I was saying. There may have been disappointments among us to individuals, but on the whole, and to the community, there has been remarkable success; and I say with perfect confidence, that five or six years hence those who battle through the first difficulties will have no more to say about disappointments. I trust I shall be pardoned for quoting, in support of what I say, two or three cases which have come lately to my personal knowledge, and which I have no reason at all to suppose extraordinary or out of the way. There may be many more of a stronger kind, but these happen to have been brought before myself. One is the case of a gentleman, of good family and education, who landed in this colony with a land-order for 50 acres, and £300. He has now horses and cattle alone to the value of his original capital £300. He has built an excellent house, has 14 acres fenced and cropped, and owns 400 sheep and lambs, and, moreover, he does not owe a farthing in the world. The next instance is that of a man whose capital was still smaller. I am informed it was just £50. He too had 50 acres of land, and a large family, including two grown-up sons. I visited his farm the other day, and found the whole of it fenced in, and divided into five separate fields, all with substantial fences. He has a comfortable house, a particularly neat and well-cropped garden, two cows, with their calves, several pigs, and no less than 27 acres (including the garden) under crop; and I am happy to say, I never saw crops look finer or more promising. The third and last case which I mean to quote is this. I was told two days ago by a working mechanic—a man who had no money at all when he arrived, not a farthing—that he had saved and laid by in two years, from the labour of his own hands, no less a sum than £200. Such instances as these show that those who said that this colony would prove a fine field page 176for the exertions of a working man, said nothing but the truth; for I happen to know that there is nothing exceptional or peculiar in the opportunities or advantages which the men whom I have referred to possess; they have simply exemplified the rewards which honest industry can reap in a new country. I have little doubt but that success of a similar kind to this would have been to a still greater extent the rule among our colonists if it had not been for the discovery of the gold-fields of Australia. The check which that discovery has given to our growth has undoubtedly been very severe. We have felt it in the price of provisions, in the emigration of labourers, above all, in the difficulty and expense of procuring stock. But my firm belief is, that within a very short period you will begin to reap the benefit which must ultimately result from the neighbourhood of a country so enormously rich as Australia is becoming. If there be one point on which all those who have visited the diggings agree, it is this; that of the hundreds of thousands that have flocked thither from every part of the world, not one intends to live there. Every man intends to go away as soon as he shall have made money enough. No amount of money could tempt a man to make deliberately an El Dorado his home. Now, I cannot but look upon it as mathematically certain that a very large proportion of these people will come to New Zealand. You may depend upon it, the great majority of those who have come, even with the intention of returning to England, will not return. Experience shows, that when a man, especially a young man, leaves England, and remains for a few years in a new country, he does not care to go back again for good; somehow or other a new set of habits have been generated, not necessarily worse habits, but different ones, which make the thought of a permanent residence in an old country distasteful to him, and he will rather seek for the blessings of order and civilization, if he can get them, in a neighbouring colony, than in the old world, from which he has with such an effort uprooted himself. It is to be remembered, too, that precisely the best people among the immigrants into page 177Australia will be likely to leave it again soon, because the best people are the least likely to be satisfied with such a state of society as a gold-producing country exhibits. I see nothing, therefore, in the Australian gold-diggings to make me alter the sanguine view I have always taken of the fortunes of this colony, or to make me less satisfied with the part which I have taken in founding it.

It is impossible for me, my friends, altogether to abstain on such an occasion as this from some allusion to the colonizing association which I have represented in this country. The Canterbury Association has not escaped the ordinary fate of colonizing bodies in two respects at least; it has exceeded its means, and it has incurred considerable unpopularity in the Settlement it has founded. This result seems to be inseparable from the nature of such bodies; they generally manage badly, and they are always disliked for managing at all. Yet, without them, many of our noblest colonies would never have been founded, so that embarrassment and unpopularity are to be taken, I suppose, as part of the necessary burden which those who embark in the glorious work of founding colonies must be content to bear, and for my part, I will willingly take the one with the other; I am content to bear a share of the burden, if I may be permitted to bear a hand in the work. I am not about to defend the Association's policy in detail, but this at least you will pardon me for saying, (and I say so with the utmost confidence), that no body of men ever engaged in a public enterprise with higher or purer motives, or ever prosecuted it with greater zeal, energy, or disinterestedness. They have made plenty of mistakes no doubt; that, as I have said, was inseparable from their constitution as a distant governing body, and nobody has protested against what I believed their errors more strongly than I have; but if they have made such mistakes, the leading members of the Association have nobly done their best to redeem them by voluntary personal sacrifices, which no one had a right to demand at their hands. I know those men page 178intimately; they are not rich, any one of them; they were tinder neither legal nor moral liability to spend their private funds in the service of this Settlement; because, as you know, they were not in the position of a trading corporation, and they could not, under any circumstances, have made one farthing by its utmost conceivable success. Yet sooner than hazard the failure of the enterprise, nay, sooner than that funds should be wanting for its vigorous and rapid prosecution, they came forward cheerfully and simply, and without making a fuss about it, and paid sums, and incurred liabilities, which, in comparison with their means, were exceedingly, almost ruinously, large. Remember this when tempted to forget what they have done for you; remember that errors of judgment and calculation are venial, when redeemed by sincerity, earnestness, and self-denial.

I must just say one word about your new Constitution. I rejoice to see so lively and intelligent an interest taken in its working, but I clearly foresee that there will be a re-action and that there will be great disappointment with it at first. I clearly foresee that a great many of you, probably the best people among you, will be disgusted with the turmoil and agitation and strife inseparable from the working of a popular constitution, and disappointed because its beneficial results will in all probability not become very obviously or rapidly visible. But you must fight against this feeling. You must remember that we were never meant to enjoy quiet lives. Quiet lives are for beings of a higher or a lower nature than man's; for beatified spirits, or the brute creation. It is the business of man, and most of the noblest men, to work, to struggle, and to strive. Life is a battle, not a feast; and those conditions of existence are the best and the most wholesome, which must tend to strengthen and harden us for the combat. It is in this light that I have learned to regard and value political liberty; not primarily because it tends to promote material prosperity, ease, and enjoyment, but because by providing a page 179high object for our aims, and a noble field for our intellectual exercise, and by forcing us to take a part in matters which do not concern our individual selves alone, it tends to form a great and glorious national character. Try to work the new system with these aims, and in this spirit, and you will learn to exercise with satisfaction and advantage that most troublesome as well as most precious privilege, political freedom. Forgive me if I have seemed to speak in too presumptuous and didactic a tone. My approaching departure, and my deep interest in all that concerns you, together embolden me to express myself freely; and I know I speak to indulgent ears.

I must now offer my best and most cordial thanks, on behalf of my wife, for the manner in which you have received her to-day. She bids me say that she has to thank the people of Canterbury for two of the happiest years of her life; she bids me ask you not to forget her, as she can never forget you; she bids me say that she never could have believed she would have felt such sorrow as she now feels, in parting from any country but her native country, from any people but her own people. But it is time for me to stop—if I were to go on till I had said all that I want and should like to say, till I had expressed all the fulness of my heart, I feel as if I should hardly ever come to a conclusion. But the parting word must come—that word which I have been dreading to pronounce—farewell. God bless you and prosper you. God grant, if it be His pleasure, that we may meet again on earth, and that whether we meet on earth or not, we may meet in the everlasting mansions of His kingdom.

Mr. Godley resumed his seat amidst loud cheers, a great portion of the company being deeply affected by his parting words.

Mr. and Mrs. Godley, accompanied by several personal friends, embarked on board the "Hashemy" on Wednesday morning soon after 7 o'clock; it was not, however, until the following morning that the "Hashemy" left the harbour, having been detained by a contrary wind and calms.