1875 - Carter, C. R. Life and Recollections of a New Zealand Colonist. Vol. III. [NZ sections only] - CHAPTER XIX. DR. FEATHERSTON...p 226-240

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CHAPTER XIX.

On the 2nd of May 1871, I received the following short note from Dr. Featherston.

During the evening of Saturday (July 22nd, 1871), Dr. Featherston arrived at Charing Cross Hotel. I met him there on the same evening, and found him in good health.

As far as making enquiries was concerned, I had done what,

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in his note he had requested me to do. Shortly afterwards I succeeded in engaging for him a furnished villa at Croydon: I also inspected some offices at 7, Westminster Chambers, and recommended him to rent them, which he did by leasing eight rooms, for seven years, at a rental of £440 per annum.

Sometime in September of this year (1871) when I was with the Doctor--now Agent General for New Zealand, at a salary of £1500 a-year, and travelling allowances--at Charing Cross Hotel, he unexpectedly asked me what appointment I would accept on his staff. He took me a little by surprise, as I had never solicited him for an appointment. However, I replied that I was very willing to assist him in the emigration department, in any way I could. He next said, "what salary am I to give you? I want you to be my right-hand man." I replied, I should be content with £300 per annum, and £1 per day for Hotel and travelling expenses, when in the couutry away from the office. (The latter sum, I afterwards found to be insufficient, but I did not complain.) He at once said, "I will give you it."

What were my duties? may be asked, and I may fairly reply that they were multifarious. I had to deliver oral lectures on New Zealand: making out the quarterly emigration returns fell to my lot: sometimes I acted as Despatching Officer to our emigrant ships sailing from London, and once, one from Hamburg: I had to assist in preparing the Charter Parties for emigrant ships the Agent-General contracted for, and see them properly signed: sometimes I had to correspond with the Local Agents: often I had to select and approve of large bodies of emigrants: and finally, the control of the printing and advertising was entirely in my hands.

The work was hard, and the hours long: so much so, that my health entirely broke down, and on two occasions I was obliged to recruit it by an occasional sojourn at the sea-side for a few weeks.

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In the year 1872, there was great discontent and agitation amongst the agricultural population of England. There was a rising--in a peaceable way--for a rise of wages. The social and physical condition of the farm laborers of England was discreditable to a highly civilized country like ours. The prime mover and leader of this movement was Mr. Joseph Arch-- originally a farm laborer by occupation, and a Methodist local preacher by profession. I first met Mr. Arch on Good Friday, at Leamington in 1872. He appeared to me then about forty years of age. He looked as if he had lived hard, and worked hard. He was of full middle height, with a strongly built frame, and a dark complexion: he was fluent in speech and strong in voice. When I first heard him speak--on the above Good Friday, at a public meeting at Leamington--I thought his speech the most heart-stirring and manly address I had ever heard delivered by a working-man.

I had on this occasion two interviews with him on emigration to New Zealand. He was not favorable to it then. At this time (1874), he is encouraging emigration, but chiefly to Canada: his influence however seems to be on the wane. Still New Zealand has received thousands of farm laborers who would never have been induced to emigrate but for his movement.

I had sometimes to attend night meetings of these agricultural laborers. Occasionally the meetings were held in tents, on the village green or in a field adjoining it--on cold winter nights. On one night--in the autumn of 1874--when I addressed a meeting held under some trees, at a village near Cirencester, it rained hard, but our meeting though a wet one was a lively one, for there was a band of music which headed the procession to and from the meeting, and played inspiriting tunes at intervals, at the meeting itself.

On another occasion, I was addressing a meeting in the market place at Louth in Lincolnshire--when just as I had concluded, a messenger came and informed me that I was

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wanted to attend a laborers' conference early next morning, at a village nine miles away, and he had brought a spring cart to take me. It was past ten o'clock, the good people of Louth were going or gone to bed, the night was cold and damp: but it did not rain. We had not gone a mile before I found my driver was the worse for liquor: yet he was an agricultural laborer, and a Union man: but he was but mortal, and laborers drink too much at times, as well as mechanics--who are better paid and better educated. I wished he had been sober. First he drove to one side of the road, then to the ditch on the other, now one wheel was on a dried mud heap and we were nigh being upset; next he tried several lanes to find the turning he had to take, then I told him he had lost his way. "Oh no," he had not. "This is the turning," he said, as he drove me down a rutty and stony road, and landed, and nearly overturned the conveyance and me in the midst of a lot of manure heaps and corn stacks, in a lonely farm yard. He called and bawled. Nobody came, even the night shepherds were silent. Somehow-or-other we returned to the public road, where I got out of the spring cart, and feeling benumbed with cold I declined to proceed further with him. At a distance I saw a light. I walked to it, and found it to proceed from a laborer's cottage: by accident a laborer lodged there, and had not gone to bed though it was two o'clock in the morning. He allowed me to sit in a chair by the expiring embers of a fire till daylight, when I left and walked back to Louth. The result to me personally being a severe cold and cough which I did not lose for months after. I can hardly say why I incurred these risks, except it was to serve the Colony, and particularly the "Doctor," who, I knew, wanted this class of emigrants badly, and was being abused for not procuring and sending them out. Certainly my object in doing so was not a pecuniary one: I had enough of means without that. I do not know of a more unsatisfactory and worrying

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business than that of carrying on a large scheme of emigration like our New Zealand one, which involved sending out during the years 1872-3-4 no less than 50,000 people to New Zealand. From July 29th, 1871, to September 30th, 1874, the actual number of emigrants despatched to New Zealand was 47,138. Of these 26,937 were English; 7,129 Scotch and 8,300 Irish. The remainder consisted principally of Germans, Danes, Swedes and Norwegians. The actual number sent out during the first three quarters of the year 1874, was no less than 28,645 souls--a greater number I should imagine, than was ever shipped to one Colony--in the same period of time. In fact the total number ordered to be sent out, between March 1st, 1874, and March 31st, 1875, reached the formidable total of 39,200 --which is 14,000 more than the whole population of New Zealand was when I first settled in it in the year 1850.

Here we have something like 53,000 emigrants which had to be selected from a probable number of 250,000 applicants. These emigrants had next to be placed on board ships, housed and supplied with provisions and medical assistance, during a voyage, varying from three to four months in duration. About 190 ships were chartered--up to the end of 1874--to convey the 53,000 souls to their destination.

The exact number of vessels required for the transportation of the first 47,138 emigrants, was 167. All these passengers reached New Zealand--on the average of the whole number-- with but a small mortality, and no lives were lost through shipwrecks, though one ship the "Surat"--from gross carelessness--went ashore on a part of the coast of the Province of Otago.

On board several ships the deaths from fever and other diseases were serious--but to a great extent were unavoidable. Sometimes the emigrants went on board with the germs of infectious diseases in their constitutions--no doctor could discover this on their embarkation: how therefore could the

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disease be prevented from breaking out on board, and after the ship had been at sea for several days?

As regards the character or quality of the emigrants sent out, every possible care was taken in their selection. No doubt a few--very few, bad characters out of 53,000 crept in unknown and unpreventably by the Agency. No impartial or sane man could expect anything else. The fact was the Agency was expected to do and blamed for not doing, impossibilities. It was urged to send out a vast number of people--over 50,000 --who were to be the creme de la creme--of the labouring class. They were to be the pick of the people of the United Kingdom, who were to be selected, shipped and landed in New Zealand, with spotless characters and in perfect health: it was not in human nature to supply this demand. 260 Local Agents accepted men they considered good, whose certificates had to be, and were, scrutinized by officers at the London Agency; and if not properly filled up they were rejected; 320 advertisements appeared in 213 newspapers, and the labor in answering letters from applicants, applying in consequence of these advertisements, was enormous. It was the Local Agents, combined with advertising and placarding, that procured the great bulk of the emigrants, despatched to the Colony by the Agent-General. The special Agents sent home (excepting the one from Canterbury) could not, and did not do much good in the way of procuring emigrants.

I am sure my fellow-Colonists could not be aware of half or a quarter of the anxieties, difficulties and responsibilities attending the procuring and landing 50,000 emigrants in the various provinces of New Zealand, or they would never have complained so much nor have been so hard on the Agent-General; nor yet have winked at the bitter despatches penned by Mr. Vogel, and his satellite the Under Secretary for Immigration--a Mr. H----- both of whom evidently abused the Agent-General (Plaintiffs Attorney) to screen themselves from public censure

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and the consequence of their own acts, in sending home reckless orders for a vast body of emigrants to be procured and sent out in a foolishly short period of time. It is true the Agent General often laughed at these despatches, believing that some of them emanated from the Under Secretary, a discarded gentleman, whom the Doctor, while in Wellington, had publicly charged with having committed an u------1 offence, while acting as naval instructor or chaplain on board Her Majesty's ship Euryalus. This Mr. Mallard, alias C. H----- was an Irishman by birth, and one not likely to forget to avenge this affront-- when an opportunity occurred, even if it were at the expense of truth and justice. In 1874 the Doctor showed me a letter which he had received, and which affirmed that Mr. H----- had either been naval instructor or chaplain on board H.M.S. " Euryalus," and that his real name was "Mallard." Like some others of the same stamp, this person was one of those in office, entrusted with moulding the destinies of New Zealand.

That Dr. Featherston performed the duties appertaining to the office of Agent-General honestly, ably and zealously, I think, his enemies will admit: that he had his faults and committed mistakes while he held the appointment and exercised the functions of Agent-General, I believe will be acknowledged by his friends. He believed too much in himself, and consequently disliked being curbed or instructed by others. He loved unlimited control and the right to exercise an unfettered judgment. His want of business habits was a drawback to his success as an administrator; yet in this respect his excellent memory was of material assistance to him. I have known him when he could not prove an opinion of his to be correct, to say that his instinct told him it was right. He trusted too much, and interfered too little with his subordinates. Details of office work (except in figures, and he was voracious of them) he shunned. Some of his chief officers did pretty well what they liked, others of them, more conscientious, did more than their

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share, or than they had a right to do. Mr. J. Morrison was an efficient officer, but one who liked the pay better than the work, and who aspired to be 'A. G.' Then Mr. Buller was sent home, ostensibly as Private Secretary to the Doctor, at a salary of £400 a-year, but really to bring out his book on the "Ornithology of New Zealand," and to pass as a barrister. Having this work to perform he could do but little work for the Agent-General. To Mr. Buller succeeded Mr. Cashel Hoey, 1 a courteous Irish gentleman, well qualified for Private Secretary, but not giving all his time to his office for £400 a-year. Before being appointed he made many solicitations for the office, and pressed the Agent-General so much, that at last he gave him the appointment subject to the approval of the Government. Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, of Irish and Victorian celebrity, telegraphed (from London) to Mr. Vogel, "appoint Hoey, I will do as much for you another time," or words to that purpose. Further on, we shall see what effect this message produced. There was always something so very persuasive, insinuating, and bland in the manner of Mr. Hoey, who was a genuine Roman Catholic, and was so often recommending Catholic Doctors, and also schoolmasters--who looked like Catholic priests--to the Agent-General for appointments on board the emigrant ships, that one wondered at his zealousness for his faith, and thought him worthy of being a member of an ecclesiastical Order.

During the first part of the Doctor's term of office as Agent-General he lived at Croydon, ten miles from London. He resided there for twelve months, at the end of which, in the autumn of 1872, he removed his family to Boulogne, and afterwards went over to spend Christmas Day with them. On his return to London the next day he looked ill, and told me he felt very unwell, and continued getting worse till New Year's day, 1873, when he was confined to his apartment, which

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he had furnished as a bedroom, adjoining his office. Soon after this, his condition became daily more critical. While in bed he dictated a telegram to his daughter Fanny, at Ashford in Kent. It was to the effect that he was ill, suffering acute pain, and wished her to come up as soon as she could to see him, and also to go with me to take a house. After this I found a suitable residence in Colvill Gardens, Bayswater: still he remained seriously ill at the offices. The late London Agent for the N.Z. Government, Mr. John Morrison, was still with us at a salary of £600 a-year, and the medical adviser of the Agent-General used to come every morning to his patient at the offices. One morning the Agent-General was worse than usual, and myself and Mr. Morrison waited the coming of his medical attendant with unusual anxiety. He came, saw Dr. Featherston, and came into the room where we were, and reported that his patient was dangerously ill, and that he might not be able to continue to sign cheques. This was an official duty that the Agent-General, I knew, was most unwilling to delegate to any one else. His medical adviser left, and Mr. M. and myself were left to ponder over the situation. He thought the Agent-General might not recover, and in the midst of our consultation, he suddenly exclaimed:-- "Carter, the business of the office must not be stopped, somebody must stand in the breach: I will do it, and the Colony will back me up!" He was ready to sign cheques and quickly step into a dead man's shoes. But the Doctor did not die; he began to recover, and soon after a telegram arrived from the Colony, saying that Mr. Morrison's services were to be dispensed with; and so ended his connection with the office and with New Zealand--out of which he had made a large fortune.

Late in February the Agent-General was conveyed to his new residence. He was still far from being well, but soon after he returned to his office. He looked pale, more emaciated than usual, and informed me that he had made up his mind to

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undergo a very severe operation for an aggravated case of fistula. I assisted him to arrange and lock away some of his private papers, and the remainder we tore up and burnt. He underwent the trying operation, and I am happy to say, recovered.

During his illness, some of the despatches he received from Mr. Vogel's colleagues were of a most annoying character. They evidently wished to torment him into resigning: this I can assure them he never intended to do. No doubt it would have suited Mr. Vogel and other gentlemen, supposed to be aspirants to his high office, if he had done so. Later on, (in the session of 1874) Mr. Vogel changed his tactics, and instead of abusing the Agent-General he praised him in a patronizing sort of a way, and blamed and found fault with his subordinates--which gave Mr. Vogel a poor reason for coming home to re-organize the Agent-General's department in London, just when experience, hard work and ability had placed it in a high state of efficiency. Had it been otherwise it would have collapsed under the gigantic task of selecting and sending out over 37,000 emigrants, during the year 1874. Besides this work the Office had to execute large orders for railway plant and material for public works, which, with the cost of emigration, involved the responsibility of expending on an average, nearly £100,000 per month. The actual expenditure by the A. G, in London, for emigration and public works alone, from December 1st, 1873, to November 31st, 1874, was, without fractions, £1,253,396. The annual cost of the Agent-General's establishment, including himself, five heads of departments, eighteen clerks, rent and taxes, at its highest rate, was about £6000. In the course of that year everyone in the office was over-worked. I felt so much out of health from general debility and a bad cough, that I asked the Agent-General to permit me to resign. He would not hear of it. He kindly gave me leave of absence to go to the sea-side; this I did, but at first not feeling much better, I sent in the following letter of resignation:--

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This resignation he refused to accept, and as at the end of July I felt much better in health, he prevailed on me to go back to the office again, where I now am, and from the duties of which I shall not regret to be relieved at an early period. In closing this subject I may be permitted to remark--that whatever faults Dr. Featherston may have displayed, or whatever mistakes he may have committed, it is my belief--taking all things into consideration--that no other gentleman would have performed the duties of Agent-General so faithfully or so well as he has done.

Now it is near the end of the year 1874. The "Doctor" is in good health, and smokes as much as usual. Borrowing continues to be the life and soul of New Zealand prosperity and of its statesmanship. Four millions more are authorized to be borrowed, and to crown all, "Julius the Magnificent," as the Melbourne Argus, styled him, is on his way to England, and is expected to arrive here very early in the first week of January, 1875. For what purpose? To put the Office in order, negotiate a great loan, and float great projects.

During the sitting of the last New Zealand Parliament-- the session of 1874--he with a great flourish of trumpets, introduced his wonderful scheme of making the South Sea the domain of New Zealand. There was to be a Zealandic "Dominion," in the south: similar to a Canadian Dominion in the north. He proposed to establish a gigantic Trading

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Company, with a capital of one million sterling, to which New Zealand was to give a guarantee of five per cent, and in return was to have a guarantee of all the trade, of all the Polynesian islands in the Pacific Ocean. His plan was:--

Thus--as if poor New Zealand had not enough of Native difficulties and Colonial debts on its hands at home -- Mr. Vogel was seeking for more abroad, and in the wide Pacific Ocean.

However, this modern South-Sea-bubble was not permitted to mature, for even with a subservient Parliament it would not be passed, and at near the end of the session, he was obliged to withdraw it.

Notwithstanding the introduction and withdrawal of this magnificent project, (which was applauded for its audacity, but ridiculed as chimerical by the London daily press, and condemned by the "Economist," as impracticable and as certain, if

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started, to be unprofitable) Mr. Vogel was modest and conciliatory, for in last September, he telegraphed to the Agent-General to say:-- "Am visiting England to confer with you. Expect arrive early January." In another telegram received the same month, he is going to reform the office, and it then seemed that he had sealed the fate of Mr. Hoey, in the following manner:-- "Advise abstaining from employing Mr. Hoey. Government sending you excellent officer: act under you over departments. He will arrive in February, when Hoey entirely unnecessary." In November, 1874, the Agent-General received a letter from Mr. Vogel. It was dated from Sydney, and intended to conciliate the Doctor, it being, I understand, friendly in its tone, and apologetic for the severity of the despatches penned by himself to the Agent-General. I fear I cannot follow Mr. Vogel in anything, his character is so chamelion-like, and I am sure it would be dangerous to trust him, there being in him so little fixity of purpose.

When I look back to the first year of the Agent-General's period of office, and remember how kindly and considerately Mr. Vogel wrote to him, and hinted how he should like to be made a Knight, I cannot but smile; the more so when I know he got Governor Bowen to intercede for him, and also Mr. Fox, who, though not caring about such uncolonial honors for himself, yet asked the Doctor to intercede for Vogel, at the Colonial Office --not for a C.M.G--Companion of the order of St. Michael and St. George--this did not satisfy him, he wanted to be made "Sir Julius." The Secretary for the Colonies, Lord Kimberley, demurred to this, as it was only usual to confer the title on those who had held high offices, such as Premier or Speaker of the House of Representatives. Dr. Featherston has been repeatedly offered a C.M.G., but has always refused to take anything but a K.C.M.G.--Knight Commander of St. Michael and St. George. This would have been given him, I know, if he would only have accepted the first step--a C.M.G. but he

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has persistently, and I think, unwisely declined, so far, to do so; yet he richly deserves it, far more so than Mr. Vogel, (already C.M.G.) who I am told on the best of authority, now aspires to be made a Baronet. Will this wish be realised? Time will show. He had better wait awhile, until his Public Works and Emigration schemes prove a success, and then he will have earned honors which I should not grudge him, although I disapprove of English titles being conferred on Colonists, who too often leave the Colony to air their titles abroad. If a Colonist is deserving of honors for good service to the public, let him receive his honors from the hands of the people whom he has benefited, and not from an English Colonial Secretary and his underlings, whose opinions and power in bestowing such honors are, to my knowledge, generally obtained by the disreputable means of back-stairs influences. Besides, what does New Zealand want with titles for her Worthies? A spurious aristocracy would be out of place in a country like New Zealand, whose political institutions are likely to be of a republican character. In an illustrated newspaper, called the "Australian Sketcher," of February 21st, 1874, there appeared an excellent portrait of Dr. Featherston, as Agent-General for New Zealand: this was accompanied by a brief memoir, in which it was stated:--

The above may be regarded as authentic, as most of the information was obtained from the Doctor himself, and as I also happen to know the gentleman who wrote the memoir.

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In a former part of this work, I stated that I hoped some day to be able to introduce into, and stock, the Wairarapa --where my property is situated--some feathered songsters. This I have lived to do, for in the year 1873, I sent out a number of game and singing birds, of which, as may be seen in the extract below, a fair per centage arrived in safety,