1873 - Trollope, Anthony. Australia and New Zealand [New Zealand Chapters Only] - Chapter LV. John Robert Godley, p 562-572

       
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  1873 - Trollope, Anthony. Australia and New Zealand [New Zealand Chapters Only] - Chapter LV. John Robert Godley, p 562-572
 
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CHAPTER LV. JOHN ROBERT GODLEY.

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CHAPTER LV.

JOHN ROBERT GODLEY.

FROM Otago we went north into the province of Canterbury, --a name which was selected for a then undetermined part of New Zealand about twenty-five years ago. As far as I can ascertain, the Canterbury Association, so called, was first started in 1848; but the idea of such a settlement, to be established in some part of New Zealand, had existed for a considerable time before that date. Mr. Gibbon Wakefield, in a letter to Mr. John Abel Smith, dated 30th November, 1847, says, "We adhere to the old plan of a settlement to consist of 300,000 acres, with right of pasturage attached, to be purchased from the Company for 10s. per acre, or £150,000. The place to be, if possible, the valley of Ruamahanga, near Wellington, which is delineated in the illustrations of my son's book." Wellington, however, is in the northern island, and the Province of Canterbury is in the middle island. The settlement was to be made in strict connection with the Church of England, and was to be a model colony. Without a doubt the aspirations which produced first the idea and then the thing were nobly philanthropic. Many colonizing reformers, among whom were such men as Mr. Adderley, Mr. Aglionby, Mr. J. A. Smith, Lord Lyttelton, and Sir John Simeon, were strongly of opinion that British men and women seeking a home in the new lands which their country possessed were not put in the way of effecting their purpose happily by the operations of the Colonial Office. The old belief, which had created the New Zealand Association, still remained. There was the same

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NEW THEORY OF COLONIZATION.

desire to establish a colony with which our Colonial Office should have little or nothing to do. There existed a feeling that something great might be done for a small portion of the British race, by establishing a settlement on an entirely new footing, in which the best of everything English should be retained, English habits of life, English principles, English local government, English freedom, and above all the Church of England. And there existed also a feeling that the interference, bureaucracy, and incapacity of the Colonial Office in Downing Street had up to that time debarred our existing colonies, such as Canada, New South Wales, and Van Diemen's Land, from the enjoyment of these blessings. I can hardly but fail in expressing at the same time, and with equal strength, my admiration for the spirit in which these gentlemen worked, and my conviction that they were wrong both in their condemnation of the Colonial Office and in their theory as to the construction of a settlement in which colonists should live a blessed life after some special fashion to be fixed by them. The scheme had all the merits and all the faults which have attended the fabrication of Utopias, since the benevolence of men has taken that direction. But it has to be acknowledged that they did succeed in creating a prosperous settlement--though the success has not been of the nature which they anticipated. Many of their aspirations have been realized, --especially that of so-called responsible local government; but the local government has come, not specially to Canterbury, but to Canterbury as a part of New Zealand; and not especially to New Zealand, but to New Zealand as one of those thoroughly British dependencies of the mother country which have gradually acquired for themselves the power of parliamentary self-government.

The two names which are most prominent in the history of the Canterbury settlement are those of John Robert Godley and Edward Gibbon Wakefield. I put that of Godley first because in truth it was his heart and courage which founded the settlement rather than the head of the man who first formed the plan. Mr. Wakefield had been a colonial reformer of an early date, who had for many years devoted himself to preparing schemes of colonization, and who in the prosecution of his schemes had fallen very foul indeed of the office in Downing Street. Mr. Wakefield, as I have said, in speaking of South Australia, had been perhaps the author, certainly one of the authors, of the plan by which that colony was originated. His scheme had been by no means fully carried out, and he had conceived great enmity against the officials of the Colonial Office who had not sympathized with his ideas as to the settlement of a

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colony without any other control from home than that which might be necessary to make it a part of the British empire in reference to foreign affairs. In February, 1849, he brought out a book on the art of colonizing, which professes to be a correspondence between himself and an English statesman, in which he propounds his scheme. But by far the greater part of the book is devoted to exposing what he believed to have been the evil policy of Great Britain to her colonies, and especially to the virulent abuse of one special minister for the colonies, --namely, the present Earl Grey. Clever as that work is, I can hardly imagine that it could convince any reader. To me it is one of those books which from first to last creates in my mind a feeling of antagonism to the writer, on account of its special pleading, its injustice, and its egotism. He says himself, in one of his published letters, that the book is "awfully personal to Lord Grey," and in another letter to Mr. Rintoul, the editor of the "Spectator," "You are sure to think the preliminary matter, -- the statement of the subject, and the personalities, and the egotism, --far too long." After reading Mr. Wakefield's book and his letters, I cannot think him to have been a good guide for a young colony; but undoubtedly he did hit upon certain truths, the first and chief of which was the inexpediency of bestowing grants of land on colonists, and the wisdom of selling the public lands at a certain fixed price. In addition to this he saw that the future prosperity of the thoroughly British colonies would render self-government on their part essential. But I imagine that all who gave their minds to the subject saw this also, --differing from Mr. Wakefield only as to the mode in which the concessions should be granted, and the date from which they should commence. It was a part of his theory that a colony, --or set of colonists, --should go out with a full constitution in the pocket of some leading colonist, which should be granted by the Crown, --as a power of ruling was granted by the Crown in former days to Lord Baltimore in reference to Maryland, and to Mr. Penn in reference to Pennsylvania. In this present work I should probably only annoy my readers were I to attempt to show that in the time of Mr. Penn, and still less in the time of Lord Baltimore, the Crown had no power to bestow that superintendence on its colonies which it possessed from the first settlements in Australia, and down to the settlement of New Zealand, and to show also that the constitution of those colonies which were founded under direct superintendence from home, has been much happier than that of the early American colonies established without this superintendence. Such an argument would

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CLASS-COLONIES.

certainly be beyond my scope, probably beyond my ability. But I can hardly give the short description of the settlement of Canterbury which is necessary for my purpose, without stating my impression of Mr. Wakefield's views on colonization. He was an eager, hard-working, clever man, very energetic in his purposes, --but who, in all his colonizing work, seems to have thought more of his own schemes than of the happiness of the colonists whom he proposed to send to their future homes, --and who was quite as anxious to rule his colonists from home by laws made by himself as was ever a Secretary of State in Downing Street.

It was his influence, however, that worked upon Mr. Godley, and induced that gentleman to become the real leader of a special band of colonists to New Zealand. Mr. Godley, whom I remember as a boy at school, thoroughly respected by all his schoolfellows, seems early in life to have been taught by the Tractarian movement at Oxford that the religion of a community should be its most important consideration. He was a religious man himself, and his friends were men whose thoughts about religion were serious, and whose convictions were sincere. His letters to his friend Mr. Adderley have been published, -- or at any rate printed and circulated; and no volume of correspondence ever fell into my hands which left upon my mind a higher impression of the purity, piety, philanthropy, truth, and high-minded thought-fulness of the writer. They are written with all the elegance which education gives, and all the abandon which the privacy of loving friendship produces. I fear that they are only known among his friends. It appears that Mr. Wakefield and Mr. Godley came together in 1847, when Godley's thoughts had been turned towards colonization by the state of the Irish during the famine. He was an Irishman belonging to one of the poorest counties in Ireland, and ideas as to a happier home for his countrymen were thrust upon him by the tragedies of the famine and the pestilence which followed it. But with those ideas were others which sprang from his devotion to the Church which he loved, and of these Gibbon Wakefield took advantage. Mr. Wakefield was ever at work seeking for colonists who would act under his impulses, and who would do credit to his theories by their education, character, and social position. For him I doubt whether the Church of England had any special charms. He had been instrumental in founding a colony in South Australia, of which, according to his friends, it should have been one leading feature, one governing principle, that there should be no ascendant Church. He had assisted in establishing a Scotch, and therefore a

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Presbyterian, colony in Otago, --in regard to which it was his intention that the Presbyterians should have complete ascendancy. It is rumoured of him in New Zealand that at one time he had set his mind on the formation of an Anglo-Jewish settlement, a community which should be subject to the British Crown, but in which the Jews should govern themselves after their own laws. It is told how he propounded this to a wealthy Jew in New Zealand. "What, --no Christians!" said the Jew. "None at all," said Mr. Wakefield; "not a Christian; --why should not Jews have a happy home to themselves as well as others?" But the Jew dissented. "I do not see how Jews shall thrive without Christians to make money by," said the wise Jew; --and that scheme fell to the ground.

There is no reason why the same man should not propose a Church of England colony, a Presbyterian colony, a Jewish colony, and a no-Church colony, and should not be equally anxious for each, --as a minister for education may be zealous both for sectarian and undenominational schools. No blame attaches to a man for so wide a sympathy. But the wide sympathy is not compatible with strenuous advocacy of a peculiar doctrine. The anxiety of Mr. Wakefield was more in regard to his scheme than to the Church. When in the course of his letters we find him struggling to get first one man as a bishop for his colony, and then another, trying to overcome one man's scruples, and then loud in praise of another of whom we are aware that he could only have heard the name the day before, we feel that he had caught, or was trying to catch, an obedient sympathizer with his plans, and a colonist who would prove himself to be a Wakefieldite rather than a staunch ecclesiastical supporter. In every word that he wrote and spoke and in every act he was fighting the Colonial Office at home for colonial influences, not propagating either one church or another. With Godley it was very different, he brought to the joint work strong religious convictions and a warm philanthropy. It was in his heart to be one of the means by which a country might be built up in which men should live religious lives in peace and plenty, --and with this view he was ready to devote himself to the cause either at home or in the colony. But he allowed himself to be imbued with his fellow labourer's especial views, and was for a time as hotly in favour of a colonial government, carried on by the Canterbury Association at home in lieu of one administered from Downing Street, as was Mr. Wakefield himself.

And it must be admitted that many others shared these views, including those whose names were mentioned at the beginning of

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COLONIAL CONCESSIONS.

this chapter. The idea seemed then to prevail, as it has at all times prevailed with regard to one or another of our public departments, that the man entrusted with power was of all men the least capable of exercising that power with wisdom, and the least likely to exercise it with fidelity. The barque of the British empire has upon the whole been steered with success, --and yet the man at the helm is always being denounced as blind, and feeble, and foolish. No sooner is a leading man advanced to high place than in the minds of many of us he is already condemned for undertaking a task which it must be manifestly the duty of some one to perform. In regard to the colonies this was much more strongly the case twenty-five years ago than it is at present, as twenty-five years ago the question of constitutional government in the colonies was not settled as it is now. I will not say that the battle for colonial parliamentary governments was being fought, because I do not admit that there was an enemy with whom to fight. Before parliaments could be established it was necessary that there should be a distinct assurance that they were desired, and before they could sit and act, some proof that there were men to sit in them. I think that the future writer of the history of the Australian colonies will acknowledge that representative government was given to each colony at any rate as quickly as the circumstances demanded. With reference to the proposed Canterbury settlement, and to the Canterbury Association by which it was produced, it was desired that perfect powers of self-government should be bestowed upon it at once, and that it should start, not as a part of New Zealand, but as a thing separate, standing alone, ruling itself. This the government of the day would not allow, --and Canterbury now exists as one province of the colony which we call New Zealand, and has never held the position in which Mr. Wakefield was anxious to launch it upon the waters.

Mr. Godley had intended to work for the Association at home, -- at any rate to remain at that work longer than he did; but in 1849 his health failed him. His chest was weak, his lungs in danger, and his friends recommended that he should leave England for a while. Though the eldest son of a man of property in Ireland, he was himself poor, and therefore some payment for the work of his life was necessary to him. In these circumstances he undertook to proceed to New Zealand as the salaried officer of the Canterbury Association, --not as a colonist himself in the usual acceptation of the term, not as one bent on making a new career and a fortune for himself and his children, but as an agent who should busy himself exclusively for the advantage of others. Bearing this in mind he never owned

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an acre in Canterbury. With this intention and these prospects before him he left Plymouth for New Zealand, in December, 1849. As he started he wrote to Mr. Gladstone a letter on the condition of the colonies generally, which I venture to reprint in an appendix (Appendix No. 8.), as it gives a fair sample of the man's mind, and shows the intensity of his patriotism and the noble eagerness of his convictions. There is not much in that letter with which I agree. I have no fear that the British empire will be broken up through the discontent of her children. I think that the colonies should remain attached to England or be separated from them, not with reference to England's prestige or glory, --but as such continued adherence, or such separation, may be best for the happiness and prosperity of the colonists. If the colonies were separated on friendly terms they would, I think, by no means be rendered less available than at present for British immigration. I think that the writer's fears were groundless, ---and that the anticipation of shipwreck felt by the colonial reformers of that day arose from an imperfect study of the subject. But not the less is the letter the genuine production of an ardent and most philanthropic man, who was grandly anxious for the welfare of others.

In truth that which can be done for a new country by government is very little, --very little indeed, for a new colony colonized from Great Britain. Englishmen are so accustomed to be free, have had so little experience of thraldom, that on settling themselves down on new lands they proceed in truth to govern themselves, let the forms of government be what they may. In the establishment of convict colonies, --of penal settlements as they have been better called, --of course it is not so. In them it has been necessary to adapt the life and habits of the place to the requirements of a huge prison; and free men who have chosen to place themselves near to such prisons have of necessity been subject to police regulations. But with this exception our colonists have in fact governed themselves. They have at any rate been as free, --free to go and free to come, free to buy and free to sell, --free to marry and to give in marriage, --free to pray or to let it alone, --free to work and to eat, or to be idle and starve, as have ever been any people on the face of the earth. In their material condition very little change has been made by the substitution of parliamentary for home government, --so little that he who has not busied himself in politics has not felt the change. Of all the colonists who came with Godley to settle in Christchurch, few probably cared aught about the form of government which might be adopted, caring much, however,

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THE CANTERBURY PLAINS.

caring indeed all in all about the nature of the land on which they were to settle. They would trust to England for freedom with an unanxious faith; --but as to the land and the crops which it could bear, as to their future meat and drink and shelter, there were doubt and fear enough, alternate hopes and doubts, --alternate fear and joy. "I am a little puzzled," says Mr. Godley, in one of his letters, "as to what ought to be done in political matters. The people are thinking too much just now of getting on their land to care much about attending public demonstrations." No doubt they were. In the meantime Mr. Wakefield was earnest at home that the colony should be ruled by Wakefield, and not by Earl Grey or any other Secretary of State in Downing Street.

On the 11th April, 1850, the "Lady Nugent," in which Godley had sailed, came to anchor in Lyttelton Harbour, --or Port Cooper, as it was then called. The town of Lyttelton now stands at the head of the harbour named after the nobleman without whose aid the Association could not have made its settlement. The two bold rocks which form the entrance are called Godley Head and Adderley Head. From that date till the time of his departure, nearly three years afterwards, Godley worked at his appointed task, and no doubt did succeed in forming the settlement of which we used to speak as the Colony of the Canterbury Pilgrims. Land had been purchased from the Maoris by the New Zealand Company, and was repurchased from the New Zealand Company by the Canterbury Pilgrims. This land is that which we now know as the Canterbury Plains. Lyttelton stands down upon a sea inlet, surrounded on every side by mountains, with hardly room around it to grow a few potatoes. On the other side of these are the plains which stretch thence to the range which forms the backbone of the Middle Island. These inner hills must have been a sad affliction to the early comers, as their future farms and future city lay beyond them. Mr. Godley truly wrote word home that the track lay up the side "of what might fairly be called a mountain." I walked it, and found it to be a veritable mountain. Now not only has the city, Christchurch, been built on the other side, and the farms tilled, and the distant country stocked, but a railway has been made through the mountains from Christchurch to the sea-port, at a cost of £200,000, about a mile and a quarter in length. This tunnel was a gallant undertaking for so young a community.

The community throve, --but it did not thrive by reliance on the theory on which it was founded. Godley soon found that the association at home, with Mr. Wakefield at the back of it, was quite as bad

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as Downing Street. His complaints on this head are most amusing, as showing the difference which had been achieved in so short a time by experience between Utopian theory and practical reality. "I often think," he says to Mr. Adderley, "of the fun we should all have taken in old times out of the didactic despatches which are written to me, if they had emanated from Downing Street." Again, "So long as the practical management of Canterbury affairs is carried on at Adelphi Terrace,"--the domicile of the Association, -- "we have no right to complain of the Colonial Office." Again, "I earnestly hope and firmly believe that we have now seen the last of colonizing associations. I long held with Wakefield that they were positively good; then I came to look on them as lesser but necessary evils; --now I am convinced that they do more harm than good." Again, "Wakefield out-Herods Herod in the outrageous virulence of his abuse; tells me I am inconsistent, ungrateful, wild, furious, incapable, worn out, perverse, delirious, and winds up by advising me to retire into the country." This was the dear friend who had acceded with warmth to all Godley's Church views, and had declared Godley to be absolutely essential to Canterbury, --as long as Godley had agreed with him! The less colonists are meddled with by powers outside themselves the better they will thrive; but meddling by responsible government officers is better at any rate then meddling from an association.

In his letters Godley says very little about the Church of England characteristic of the settlement. After a while a bishop was found who came out, but did not suit the place, and went back again. After that the present bishop, Dr. Harper, --who is now primate of New Zealand, --accepted the see, which he has since administered with success. But there has been no strong Church of England peculiarity about the community. Dr. Harper's see, which is, I believe, coterminous with the province of Canterbury, as it was before the West land gold-fields were divided from it, contains a population of 62,158, of which 30,038 are claimed by the Church of England. The proportion is no doubt greater than in the Australian colonies or other parts of New Zealand. It would have been odd had no results come from the efforts which were made to found a Church of England settlement. But the numbers show the impracticability in these days of dictating to any community the religious convictions by which it shall be guided. In a few years the very idea of Canterbury being specially the province of one denomination will be lost to the memory of the colonists themselves; --unless indeed it be perpetuated by the huge record

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STATUE OF GODLEY.

of their failure which the town of Christchurch contains. In the centre of it there is a large waste space in which £7,000 have been buried in laying the foundations of a cathedral; --but there is not a single stone or a single brick above the level of the ground. The idea of building the cathedral is now abandoned. It was a sad sight to me to look down upon the vain foundations.

Opposite the spot where the door would have been, stands a statue, by Woolner, of my old schoolfellow, --the great ornament of the city of Christchurch. Judging from portraits of the man, the likeness is excellent, though the artist never saw his subject. The statue itself, which was known to many Englishmen before it came out to New Zealand, is very noble. Among modern statues, I know no head that stands better on its shoulders.

Godley came home to England, held high office for some years in the Civil Service, and died on November 17th, 1861, of the disease which had made his journey to New Zealand a necessity. Of a better or more earnest man I do not remember to have read the record.

I cannot finish this short notice of one of those men, who with true energy and in a real spirit of philanthropy instituted the colony of Canterbury, without making some reference to another of the body, without whom Canterbury must have been a failure. This I may perhaps best do by quoting a passage from a speech made at Christchurch on Feb. 6th, 1868, at a breakfast given to Lord Lyttelton and Mr. Selfe, who were then visiting the colony with which their names are so intimately associated, Mr. T. E. Fitzgerald, than whom no New Zealand colonist is better known, in proposing the health of their English guests, spoke as follows of Lord Lyttelton; --and spoke with accurate truth: --

"I well remember soon after I first joined the Canterbury Association, and when we were falling into all kinds of difficulties, when we had no money to pay our agent's expenses in the colony, when bills were coming due and we had no funds to meet them, and when in fact there began to be every appearance of an awful failure--I well remember, after a long conversation with Mr. Gibbon Wakefield, going down to consult Lord Lyttelton, and appearing before him suddenly at eleven o'clock at night at Brighton. The result was that his Lordship came up at once to London and took charge of the affairs of the Canterbury Association; and from that time, and for a long time afterwards, laboured in those affairs as few men ever did labour in any public office. Without the smallest prospect of remuneration, he advanced thousand after thousand of pounds to keep the settlement going till the time should come when its own funds would be available. The very roads on which some of you may have worked were made out of funds supplied out of the pockets of two or three members of the Canterbury Association, of whom Lord Lyttelton was the foremost. [Loud

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cheers.] It is a fact of which Canterbury may be justly proud--nay, without which none of us could dare to show our faces here to-day--that the debt thus incurred has been repaid; but though the money has been repaid we can never forget the feeling with which it was advanced, nor cease to remember how much we owe to the generous self-sacrificing spirit which carried the colony in safety through the difficulties that beset the first year of its existence."


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