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I beg that you will lay before the Committee of Management the determination at which I have, not without the most careful and anxious deliberation, arrived with respect to the future administration of the affairs of the Canterbury Association. Every day's experience convinces me more and more strongly that the evils necessarily incident to distant government very far exceed those to which the Settlement may become exposed if the Government be transferred to the colony, by the comparative inexperience of its inhabitants in affairs, by their possible inferiority in legislative and administrative ability, or by the risk of losing to some extent that weight and influence which the Canterbury Association, as at present constituted, possesses in public estimation. It is impossible, I fear, for anybody living in England to appreciate fully the extent of inconvenience, embarassment, and bad feeling engendered by such a relation as now exists between the colonists and the Association. I assure you I open each bundle of dispatches that arrives with fear and trembling, not knowing whether they may not convey to me an intimation of some regulation having been made which it would be most inexpedient to enforce, or some contract entered into which I should be unable to fulfil. On the other hand, it is most difficult for the dispatches of an officer called upon to carry out under such circumstances as mine the instructions of a distant authority to be otherwise than a series of remonstrances and complaints, and this even though there may be, as in the present case, the most entire and well-grounded confidence in the ability, disinterestedness, and zeal of the members composing the governing body. On the other hand I feel perfectly certain that the Committee must constantly feel a want of the materials for legislation, caused by defective information from their agents in the colony. This will always be the case; people on the spot are generally so much engaged with the administrative business of the moment that they forget to report many things which those at a distance would page 204like to know; indeed, the familiarity which results from local conversance, leads almost invariably to a misapprehension as to the kind of information which those who have no such familiarity require. Finally, the time required for intercourse is so great that one often abstains in dispair from writing about matters which must in all probability be decided one way or another before the answer returns; I repeat that these objections to the centralisation of either legislative or administrative functions appear to me decisive, and I should not be acting up to the strength of my convictions on this all-important point, if I consented to administer so radically defective a system for an indefinite period, trusting only to the general assurances of the Committee that, so soon as they think it safe and right, they will transfer the management of affairs to the colony. I will not abandon the hope that they may have thought it safe and right to do so before they are called upon to answer this dispatch, and that with the arrival of the "Main Body" I shall receive an intimation that my services as the agent of a central governing body in England will be no longer required. But should such not be the case, I beg you will lay before the Committee my resignation, with a request that if unfortunately they should determine upon a successor to me, they will do so immediately upon the receipt of this dispatch. I trust it is unnecessary for me to say that, if it should be determined by the Committee to make at once that radical change in the system which I believe to be imperatively required, my services will be at the disposal of the Association and the colonists whether in England or in the colony, as may appear most desirable, for the purpose of assisting to effect such a change, and of making it work satisfactorily and well. But upon no other understanding would it be right or possible for me to remain here. My position as the representative of a system which I consider emphatically pernicious is too false and too painful to be endurable, and it is infinitely better for all parties that my functions should devolve upon some one who could exercise them without scruple, and with all his heart.