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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 78

The First Parliament

The First Parliament.

And that there was a large percentage of able men amongst them can be at once seen if we scan a list of the members of our first Parliament in 1854. and consider how short the history of New Zealand had been at this time, and the small number of white inhabitants in the colony. The first colonisers of New Zealand landed in 1840. I do not forget that there were stray settlers in New Zealand before that date, whalers, and some that had drifted from New South Wales, but the first real attempt at colonisation began in 1840. when settiers landed in Wellington and Auckland. Later there were settlements made in Taranaki and Nelson, and in 1848 in Otago, and in Canterbury in 1850. The total white population in 1854 of the whole colony was only 31, 243. and yet if we examine a list of the members of our first Parliament we will find among them men like Bartley, Cargill, Carleton, Clifford, Cutten, Featherston, Fitzgerald, Forsaith, Hart, King, Ludlam. Macandrew, Merriman, Monro, Moorhouse, Revans, Rhodes, Sewell, StuartWortley, Taylor, Travers, two Wakefields—Edward Gibbon and Edward Jerningham—and Weld in the House of Representatives, and in the Legislative Council such men as Dillon Bell, Bellairs, Petre. Richmond, Swainson, and Whittaker. I venture to say that we could not now produce out of any 31,000 of our people so many able and distinguished men. And in succeeding Parliaments we had other men of rare ability, such men as Domett, Fox, Fitzherbert, Stafford, and Gillies, the two Richmonds, Tanered, Wood. Mantell. Crosbie Ward, Pollen, Russell, Menzies, Johnston, Jollie, Logan Campbell, Williamson. Atkinson, and many others, and outside of Parliament, we were fortunate in our early settlers. In the churches we had Mars-den, Selwyn, Hadfield, Harper, Burns, Bruce, Barclay, Buller, Watkins, Reid; and as Judges we had Martin, Chap-man. Johnston, etc. We had also merchants, settlers, bankes and farmers who were able and experienced men. And they were men, as the earliest debates in the House of Representatives and the Legislative Council show, who were imbued with what may be termed philosophical radicalism, Liberalism placed on the true foundation of science and philosophy, and not on a system of obeying the passing whim of the populace. One cannot but be impressed in reading the debates by the far-reaching prescience of most of the members, and their devotion to the true idea of colonisation—the foundation of a nation that would be the home of a great and free people.