The Lyttelton Times

Lyttelton Times, Volume II, Issue 66, 10 April 1852, Page 4

The Lyttelton Times

April 10, 1852. The first visit of his Excellency the Go-vernor-in-Chief to Canterbury is an era in our settlement. We sa/ the first visit, for Canterbury was not, when Sir George Grey was here before, at the arrival of the first body of colonists.

The most prominent idea which occurs to the mind is that the representative of Majesty arrived, remained, and departed amidst a sad and omuious silence :- —no cheerful greeting met him on landing ;—no demonstration of public joy marked his stay : no testimony of public respect hespoke the loyal and affectionate attachment of the people to the representative of the Government under which they live. Thomas Styles or John Brown might just have come, and gone, with the same amount of public notice.

"Why Avas this ? It was well known that Sir George Grey came down charged with a task the most beneficial to the welfare of the colony. He came to see if he could not complete the Sumuer road, a work which every one is deeply anxious to see accomplished. Why then was his Excellency so coldly received at Canterbury ? We will not pretend to assert, but we will try to o-uess at the cause. It may be the Canterbury settlers have not forgotton the bitter hostifity displayed by his Excellency in his speeches in the legislative Council: but we doubt whether their motives .were so purely personal. May it not be rather that Sir George Grey is unknown in this Settlement, except as the public enemy of British institutions in the colony. Solemnly, deliberately, unshrinkingly he has declared that, so far as in him lies, British political institutions shall not be introduced into the.colony; for Sir George Grey is the author of the Provincial Council's Ordinance, which is diametrically opposed to such institutions. Can we wonder, then, that a Governor, no matter how exalted his position, or how brilliant his administrative abilities, should pass unwelcome and tinhonoured throughout the limits of his Government, when he has taught men to see in bim the foe to all which they cherish with the most affectionate attachment. Sad is the condition of that people, and deep the responsibilities of those who are set over them, when the feelings of loyalty and of liberty are arrayed in unavoidable hostility.

But there is another side to the picture. If we credit the rumours flying about, Sir George Grey's visit has been of great benefit to Canterbury. It is the "on dit" amongst the officials that a number of little details, about which they might have written a dozen letters to Wellington or Auckland, and obtained no reply, were disposed of by His Excellency with his usual ability and courtesy. Now what does this teach us ; mainly this, the difference between a government^ and no government. Why should the details of government be dependant upon the visit of his Excellency ? Why should government be reduced to a question of fair wind or foul wind, accident or sea-sickness. The very advantage said to have been gained in every office of government by His Excellency's late visit is a fresh example before our very eyes of what we are always urging, the need of Local Government— of some present authority ; that, whatever authority there is, at all events it should be here, not far off. And if this is the case between Lyttelton

and Wellington, is not the case ten times stronger between a colony and the mother country. If so much annoyance and obstruction arises for the want of local authority to manage Lyttelton affairs at Lyttelton, is not the injury ten times greater, in proportion to the magnitude of the interests involved, by the want of a local authority in all colonial government.

We need not pursue the subject, but we could not but record it as a puMic calamity to our settlement that its inhabitants have been deprived of an opportunity ofdoing- honour to the representative oi'.l Majesty : not that the time honoured and traditional loyalty of Englishmen is fo. gotten amongst us: but that honest and consistent men may not indulge the feeling when their liberties are In peril.

It must have created some disappointment that Mr. Godley does not feel himself in a position to state publicly the grounds of his declining any longer to act as Agent to the Canterbury Association. His reasons for this refusal is sufficient. He has not received any answer from the Managing Committee, and of course is debarred from taking any step which might tend to embarrass the future policy of the Association or of his successor. The " Stag," which may now be daily expected, will, no doubt, put an end to the present state of uncertainty, and either bring Mr. Fox, or such instructions as will enable Mr. Godley to satisfy the public as to the line about to be adopted in future.

A correspondent who signs himself, oddly enough, " Impartial," appears to be ver> t angry with our former remarks upon Mr. Fox's appointment. If " Impartial " would read more carefully, hewould not have accused us of an attempt to** injure Mr. Godley's successor. We are sufficiently well acquainted with Mr. Fox's career in New Zealand ; and are not likely to utter a word in depreciation of his real merits. We know that he has been the steady advocate of the rights of the colonists ; that he has doners much as any man to defeat the endeavours of Government to deprive the colony of representative institutions, that he is well fitted to express the political sentiments of the settlers in England. But that is not the question for us here at Canterbury. The question for us is, what opinions is Mr. Fox to represent here ? and we can make up our minds upon this before his arrival as well as after.

_ The question at issue between the Colonists and the Association, as far as we can learn, is whether local powers of administrating the affairs of the Association responsible to the Colonists shall or shall not be transferred to the Colony, and the question which Mr. Fox's appointment suggests, is which side will he take in that dispute ? For our own parts we have no doubt, that when he finds what the state of public feeling is, he will side with the Colonists ; but that is not the only question, and it was in relation to this second point we applied the word " unfortunate" to Mr. Eox's appointment. The main feature of the Canterbury Association, and we believe its most attractive feature in England, was its plan for establishing an ecclesiastical system in the Settlement, and a system of public instruction 'through the agency of the Church. This may be called* bigotry, or what you please, but it was their system. Now Aye believe that Mr. Fox's views are wholly opposed to such a scheme. We are not saying that the Association is right, or that Mr. Fox is wrong, but we will say that the appointment by such a public body as the Canterbury Association of a gentlemau

to act as their agent who is opposed to all their views upon so important a subject, seems to indicate an entire abandonment of the principles of that scheme, upon the faith of which the great majority of the Settlers Jentered into relations with the Association.

We beg the especial attention of our readers to an article in the "Wellington Independent" of April 3rd. The view which that journal takes of this affair is thoroughly straightforward and consistent, and fully coincides with our own.

We cannot allow the Society of Land Pur-

chasers to die, without notice ; both its existence and its fall contain lessons in the act of Colonization' which it may be well to remember. Thirty-nine gentlemen, so its records relate, in that novel and exciting period when they had made up their minds to become the founders of a new Settlement, sat themselves down around a table in the Adelphi, and themselves a Society for the purpose of dealing with the public affairs of the Settlement they were about to found. So deeply seated in the mind of every Englishman is the principle of popular representative Government that he finds it impossible to co-operate for any object whatsoever without immediately recurring' to the same mode of action ; and so those gentlemen round their table in tbeAdelphi, though having nothing to do, which required such organization, anticipated with the instinct of their race, the occasion when it would be required. The remarkable feature in their early proceedings is their ex-

treme simplicity; there was no scleme, no

grand plan ; a few plain resolutions stated the v ''objects and defined the mode of action of the society ; from time to time these resolutions were amended or altered, as necessity required sqnd the plan of the Society was developed by circumstances. That it was eminently beneficial in England, in bringing the first body of Colonists into each others' society, and in keeping alive a spirit of unity and of enterprise, no one who recollects it during the summer of 1850 can deny. Still its founders appear from the first to have contemplated its existence in the colony as the ultimate sphere of its usefulness. When the first ships sailed, its meetings were formally adjourned to the colony, and all were carefully excluded from the Council except those who sailed with the first expedition. There was, however, one unavoidable error in its construction: so long as the Colonists were in England, the purchase of land was the only test of membership which could be adopted, for the land purchasers were the only persons who were known to he Colonists at all ; but the moment they landed in the colony the case was altered •, then all in the Colony were Colonists; and the Society of Land purchasers found itself in the position of attempting to express the public opinion of the Settlement, whilst it comprised but one class of the community. This difficulty became apparent at once ; and as early as our third number we took occasion to protest against the Society of Land Purchasers being accepted as a sufficient orgauiza-

tion of the Settlers for general political purposes... The Society itself recognised the difficultyr and confined itself for the most part to f questions between the Land purchasers and the Association. Notwithstanding this, we are inclined to regard it as the most useful organization which could for the time have existed. The great mass of the population were uninformed upon the political questions peculiar to Colonies ; they were intently occupied in settling themselves in their new homes ; they would not have taken much interest in public matters ; whilst the society of Land purchasers was, as far as it went, active and useful. It did deal efficiently with one branch of public busi-

ness ; it did procure some substantial benefits for the settlement; and, above all, it kept alive in some measure that yearning for popular institutions the loss of which is a sure sign of the depreciation of the English* character. But the anomalous position in which it was placed could not long be maintained, and was the cause of its fall ; many of the Land purchasers themselves began to question the utility of a Society which did not represent the mass of the Community, and its ranks were but thinly recruited from amongst the more recent arrivals in the Colony. Under these circumstances the Society has acted most wisely in determining — not upon its dissolution, hut rather upon an appeal to the whole community to unite in a general organisation for the purpose of obtaining a faithful expression of the opinion of the whole community upon any public question. We cannot too strongly express our hope that the public will respond to this appeal. It is hard to overrate the advantages of g.n efficient machinery for expressing public opinion : to do so indeed were to deny the utility of all popular government, for the first desideratum in representative government is a machinery by which the people shall be adequately represented. The mind of the people must be ascertained before it can be impressed upon the laws. Although, therefore, the Society of Canterbury Colonists will have no power of making laws, let it not he supposed they will have no power at all. The mightest political engine the world has yet seen, has been voluntary popular organization : by it the Catholic Emancipation became law, aiid the Corn Laws were repealed : the West Indian slaves were emancipated, and the Cape of Good Hope was saved from the degradation of being made a Council Colony. No Government can break its spell or withstand its power. If then this Society is to be real, it must be universal: it must embrace all classes ; it must not be of one party or sect, but of all ; every labouring man and every landed purchaser should enrol his name, and take part in its proceedings : the supporters of Sir George Grey's government, if such there be, and his opponents, should equally join its ranks, and should have an equal chance of stating their views, and submitting them to the public decision. All that we want to see is, that, when any public question arises in the settlement, as for example the question proposed by Sir G. Grey the other day, " How shall the surplus revenues be spent? On the Sumner road, or on the road on the plains?"—an answer shall be found to the question, and all shall acknowledge that answer to he the collective voice of the people. We cannot repeat it too often, that if this Society is not to be a sham, every man in the Settlement must join it: without this it will be a sham. But we do not think so ill of our fellow-settlers ; we confidently expect that the public meetings shortly to be called for the purpose of founding this Society will be generally responded to by the people. If the Society of Land purchasers succeeds in merging its own existence in that of such a society as fwe are contemplating, however men "may differ as to the benefits which have accrued to the Settlement during its life time, all will agree that it has left behind it a legacy of unspeakable value, which will justly entitle its memory to the gratitude of all classes of our community.

We understand that Mr. Godley has determined to remove the Accountant's Office to Christehurch, and to discontinue the Storekeeping Establishment of the Association from the Ist of May next. He has arranged to let the Association's Offices at Lyttelton to the Government for the use of the Resident Magistrate and other public purposes, and the Store for the use of the Custom's department.

We are glad to see that the importation of Stock into "the Colony has begun again. The week before last the " Camilla" came from New South Wales with 70 head of horned cattle and 11 horses. On Saturday of the same week the " Fair Tasmanian" came in from Hobarton with 1,100 sheep and eight horses. The " Henrietta" brought 200 fat wethers from Otago, and we hear that she is likely to return with another cariro. It is to be hoped that these imports are an omen of a rapid increase in the number of cattle ships that will be able to leave the Australian ports for this colony.