1856 - Fitton, Edward. New Zealand: its Present Condition, Prospects and Resources - CHAPTER XV. CONCLUSION.

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CHAPTER XV.

CONCLUSION.

IN the preceding pages an attempt has been made to sketch the early history of New Zealand, and the gradual arrival of English settlers in the country. Some account has been given of the general appearance of the country and the chief occupations of those who seek to find in it better fortunes than they have quitted, and a few words of advice are offered to the emigrant making his preparations for the journey. I have mentioned the prospects in store for labourers desirous of emigrating, and have referred them to the places in London where they may apply for assistance in the outward voyage, and have lastly endeavoured to enable the reader to judge of the comparative merits of New Zealand, and of colonies in other parts of the world. I have not exaggerated the pleasures, nor I hope discouraged the reader by alluding to the drawbacks and disadvantages which must be encountered in a colonist's life in New Zealand;

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and as I am fully convinced of the truth and sincerity of every word which I am about to quote, I feel that I cannot better conclude this notice of its prospects and resources than by some extracts from a speech delivered in the country itself, in December, 1852.

Mr. Godley, by whom these words were spoken in reply to an address presented to him by the colonists of Canterbury, previous to embarking on his return to England; was for four years chief agent in New Zealand for the Canterbury Association, and was most justly esteemed and beloved by all who had the advantage of his experience and friendship.

I may premise, that although Mr. Godley speaks only to an audience in Canterbury, there is no part of New Zealand to which his words are not applicable; and I would particularly recommend to the reader's attention those passages in his speech in which he alludes to the causes of failure and disappointment to some emigrants, who, by a little forethought, while yet in England, might have avoided for themselves and their families many unlooked for and unmerited hardships on the other side of the world.

After a few observations more immediately

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suited to the occasion and place, on which his address was delivered, Mr. Godley proceeds:

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 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 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 civilisation 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 their families, when invested in New Zealand, not only necessaries but luxuries in profussion, 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 enterprise that has greatness in it without being often and sorely disappointed, because nothing great is ever

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done without enthusiasm, and enthusiasts are always over-sanguine."

Mr. Godley then describes the ideal picture which he had drawn in his own mind of the possible condition of a new colony in New Zealand, and the difference which his actual experience as a colonist had taught him, between the rather highly coloured picture of the colony of his imagination, and the reality. He then proceeds:

"But 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 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 colonization? Should not our motive rather be a desire to find a freer scope and a more promising object for our toil and our trouble? We all know that when men colonize, more, perhaps, than in any other walk of life, they have to eat their

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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 workhouse 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 find 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 is the business of colonizers to assert is the nobility of work,--work of any kind, so that it is hard and honest work; and a sound and true principle it is, though it has its own dangers and abuses, against which colonists will do well to guard. But this is digression. To return to what I was saying. 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. One is the case of a gentleman of good family and education, who landed in this colony with a and order for 50 acres and £300. He has now horse and cattle alone to the value of his original capital £300. He has built an excellent house, has fourteen 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 was informed it was just £30. He had 50 acres of land, and a large family--two grown up sons. I visited his farm the other day,

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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 and 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 looking 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 shew that those who said that this colony would prove a fine field for 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 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 that 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

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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 as soon as he shall have made money enough. No amount of money could tempt a man deliberately to make an El Dorado his home. Now, I 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 shews that when once 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 Australia 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."

Mr. Godley's observations upon the probable

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influence of Australia over the prospects of New Zealand have been fully borne out by recent accounts. The crowded state of Australia has already proved beneficial to the New Zealand colonists; not only by opening a market for their produce, but also from the increased facilities for sea travelling which the vast amount of shipping now visiting the Australian Seas has occasioned. It is an undisputed fact, that, but a small number of the colonists have quitted New Zealand for the Gold Diggings of Australia; and some even of those who had been tempted to visit the gold-producing country, so easily accessible from their own colony, have returned to New Zealand after a few months spent in Australia.

It has also been shewn in Chapter XIII. that of late, the vast crowds now congregated at Melbourne have in some measure contributed to supply the colonists of New Zealand with the labour of which they stand so much in need. And in further corroboration of Mr. Godley's observation made in 1852, I submit to the reader's notice the following remarks from the Lyttelton Times of June, 1854.

"Notwithstanding the attractions of the neighbouring gold fields, the population of New

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Zealand has continued to increase. During the last three years the revenue has steadily improved, and the exports of the colony, for the same period have increased with an unexampled rapidity.

"For the year 1853 the population, customs, exports, and shipping, were for the provinces of

	Population.	Customs.	Exports.	Shipping, including Coasters.
Auckland	11,000	£30,811	£125,902	777
New Plymouth	2,000	3,311	8,613	41
Wellington	7,400	20,740	95,389	287
Nelson	5,148	5,551	45,779	69
Canterbury	3,895	5,837	14,395	57
Otago	1,800	2,276	6,344	20

"Thus it will appear that in addition to their native inhabitants (estimated to amount to 100,000 souls) these islands have now an European population of 30,000, that their customs revenue amounted for the last year (1853,) to nearly £70,000.; and that the exports for the same period, arising too, in no small proportion, from the proceeds of productive industry applied to the cultivation of the soil, amounted in value to upwards of a quarter of a million sterling."

THE END.