THE CANTERBURY ACCOUNTS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume IV, Issue 183, 8 July 1854, Page 8

THE CANTERBURY ACCOUNTS.

[From the 'Australian and New Zealand Gazette,' February 4.] We have at length these accounts in an intelligible form. In May, 1848, the New Zealand Company agreed to guarantee an advance of £25,000 for preliminary outlay on the part of the Association ; this being the only sum at their disposal previous to the sale of land. Of this sum, £23,964 was expended by the surveyor of the Association, Captain Thomas, in the colony, in preparation for the emigrants, and in other necessary matters. As soon as the Association was in a condition to sell land, they appointed Mr. Felix Wakefield their agent for the sale thereof, at a remuneration of 5 per cent.; that gentleman having assured them, in a letter addressed to the Association, that lie could sell 100,000 acies forthwith; the Committee, says Mr. Selfe, " relying on these confident anticipations of Mr. Wakefield." On Mr. Godley's arrival in the colony, lie found that Captain Thomas had expended £24,000: so that Mr. Godley, having no funds, was Necessarily compelled to suspend farther outlay. In April, 1850, the committee of management entered into what Mr. Selfe calls an " ill-advised arrangement" with Mr. Bowler to charter ships, paying him a commission of 7| per cent, on the first expenditure of £20,000, and a commission of 5 per cent, upon all further

expenditure; an arrangement which, will be regarded by our mercantile readers as not a little amusing. It is needless to say that both the appointments of Mr. Felix Wafcefield and Mr. Bowler were through the influence of Mr. E. G. Waketield, the brother of the former oentleman. On the Ist of July, 1850, in place of the 100,000 acres which Mr. F. Wakefield had confidently stated that he could sell, only 8,650 acres were sold ! This, says Mr. Selfe, " was disheartening." So the Association appears to have turned to the concomitant trade of shipbroking, which, in the end, they found to be "disheartening too. Fancy a committee of noblemen and gentlemen turning shipbrokers under the advice of Mr. Wakefield and Mr. Bowler, long conversant with colonial shipping. Whatever may be heavenborn, shipbrokers are not, as the noble committee found to its cost, and as the merest tryo in a shipbroker's office could have told them beforehand. With this crab-like progress, the Association "mooted tlie propriety of postponing the scheme ; but as this would'have been virtually, to abandon it," they determined to struggle on. An Act of Parliament was procured, which revived the power of the Association to sell land, but it provided that they should sell £50,000 worth of land annually ; failing in this the Secretary of State reserved the power of putting an end'to-the disposition of land by the Association. Armed with fresh, power, the Association again went to work, and sold an* additional 4,500 acres of land ; making altogether 13,150 acres sold, in place of 100,000, and producing £39,450, one third of which came within the Ecclesiastical and Educational Fund. Of this sum, £9,000, and an additional £1,000 collected by the Rev. Mr. Jackson, was paid over to the trustees of the Colonial Bishopric Fund, without which preliminary the Government refused to create a bishop's see. This left only £3,500 for the Ecclesiastical Fund ; and of this £675 was invested in 225 acres of land r with the concurrence and approbation of Mr. Jackson. Other investments for religious purposes were at the same time made in land, and the whole transaction was approved by the Government inspector. Then the Government inspector did not do Bis duty. The investment of money in land which had art actual value, would have been another affair. But this was waste land of the Association, and it is admitted that the Association could not sell the land, 39,000 acres only having been sold in place of 100,000 upon which latter sale the calculations of the Association must have been based. It was neither,, then, right for the Association thus to invest money in waste land which they could not sell —this being only another way of using the money—and still 'less was it right for the Government inspector to pass such a transaction. He was more to blame than the Association, for he had let in a false principle, this very fact proclaiming his unfilness for his office. We have not the slighestt doubt that both the unbusinesslike members of the Association and the Rev. Mr. Jackson believed this to be a good form of investment — i. c. they never thought of the obloquy which would arise from this method of disposing of actual cash in case of failure—but the business heads of the Association must have known belter. This is what we have all along complained of. It was not investing the money at all. It was keeping it for other purposes merely under the name of investment. Money cannot toe said to be invested in that which did not exist—viz., in unmarketable waste land— for that was the nature of the investment. These small sales of land we.ye attended, "in a financial point of view, with inconvenience." In other words, the committee had no funds, and in this emergency, Lord Lyttelton, Mr. Simeon, j-ud Mr. Cocks, gave a guarantee to the Union Bank of Australia for £10,000, upon which Mr. (iodley was authorised to draw ; and a most liberal act this unquestionably was, considering the even then hopeless state of the Association. In this state of things, Mr. Selfe admits thai the notice inserted in the Canterbury Papers was "too positive and unqualified, ftnd was calculated to encourage unfounded expectations of the extent to which the colonists raig-hi k.ok for the outlay of funds, which their own laud .sales had not provided;" This !s candid. Mr. Selfe does "not know who wrote the notice." We are sorry for this; this

fact would have been worth knowing, as explaining many of the subsequent reprehensible acts ot the Association, Like the inspector's passing the investment of the Ecclesiastical b und, it was another bad principle let in; so true it is, that one false step must be supported by another. When an advertising tailor tells us that he clothes the nobility, for that a nobleman would not look like a nobleman unless dressed at his shop, nobody is deceived—all understand the puff, knowing that the tailor never in his life sold a coat to a nobleman. But when exaggerated statements are put forth in the names of noblemen, the case is different. No one suspects "puff" and men are deceived. No one will suspect the noblemen of the committee of the Association of writing that exaggeration, but they were responsible for. it, and are therefore reprehensible. In October, 1850, the Rev. Mr. Jackson sailed for New Zealand. His mission, says Mr. Selfe, was successful, but necessarily involved the Association in considerable expense. In short, "this expense, and the outfit, passage, and clergy who left England in 1850, absorbed the amount received for the Ecclesiastical and Educational Fund in that year." Why has not this been made known before? How much obloquy upon this important point might have been averted. In January, 1851, came the shipping report of Mr. Bowler. Of this Mr. Selfe says, "I am bound to say that it merits much of the condemnation which has been bestowed upon it: it is sufficient to say that a closer examination of its contents shows it to be fallacious and untrustworthy ; and I, for one, feel that we deserve much blame,, as men of business, for not detecting earlier its omissions and inaccuracies." And yet those "omissions and inaccuracies" were clearly enough pointed out at the time. Mr. Selfe further says, that "the Association ought not to have been misled by the report, nor ought they to have published it, with expressions of approbation which ife did not deserve." We wish Mr. Selfe had told us who was really the author of Mr. Bowler's report, for he must know that Mr. Bowler could not possibly have been the writer thereof. However, Mr. Bowler is not here to defend himself, so we let the matter pass. We thank Mr. Selfe for his candour on the next point; viz., " In February 1851, the New Zealand Journal was revived at the instance of Mr. Gibbon Wakefield.'' We must put this in a somewhat stronger light, and state that in February 1851, the Neiv Zealand Journal was purloined by the Association from the proprietors of the Australian Gazette.*' We can readily forgive the Association for the act, from the good which it did us on a comparison of the two papers.. Mr. Selfe quite makes amends; for he says, "On the face of that Journal was a standing notice to the effect that the New Zealand Journal was entirely unconnected with the Association!" "This" continues Mr. Selfe, " was not true ; and I have never ceased to regret that the Committee of Management did not peremptorily insist on its suppression, or withdraw their subscription (of 200 copies weekly) to the Journal.1' There is no doubt but that the Association has paid dearly for reviving that Journal, but we pass over this as it merely concerns ourselves, and we are treating a public mutter. We have up to this period three distinct Wakefield facts. Ist, Mr. F. Wakefield having misled the Association about the sale of lands, though he was not the man who misled them, for it is absurd that a man who had spent his life as a Government surveyor in Van JDiemen's Land, should know anything of colonization feelings in England. 2ndly, Mr. Bowler having misled the Association by his shipping report, which we know was written under the direction of Mr. E. G. Wakefield, by a clerk in the Association's own office. 3rdly, Mr. Wakelield's having revived the Neiv Zealand Journal, on the face of which, says Mr. Selfe, was a statement which " was not true." Truly the committee must have been " misled," as never committee was misled before. And we most implicitly believe this, as we have all along said. Above guile themselves, they did not suspect it in others. The very worst that can be said of them is, that they were acoinmittee of high-minded, philanthropic, and remarkably easy gulled noblemen and gentlemen, whose good intentions were turned to bad account by men just the reverse of themselves. Oue of them, Mr. Adderley, some time

ago, fell foul of us because we spoke of the '■ Judases who carried the bag," evidently converting himself into one of the bagmen intenr ded ! as he must be in possession of Mr. Selfe's pamphlet, he will now know better. - a Lord Lyttelton again, with that chivalrous sensitiveness for which he is so well known in his native county and elsewhere, must come down from the uneviable position to which we did nothing to raise him, but to which he will persist in elevating himself. "In Mr. Selfe's book,'' siiys his lordship, in effect, "it is all nonsense; you can't separate a committee, all are responsible, it would be an unreal distinction, Sec. But this is all nonsense, and Mr. Selfe's pamphlet, moreover, proves it. Lord Lyttelton did^ not do the dirty work of the Association, and Mr. Selfe honestly and candidly tells.who did. So that Mr. Selfe' convicts Lord Lyttelton and his distinguished colleagues of honourableness and pure-mindedness, in spite of his lordship's persistence in sticking by evildoers. It is an odd fancy truly, but no one will believe his lordship to be an evil-doer because he does so. He has simply, with others, been " egregiously misled" as Mr..Selfe candidly admits ; so that it is no longer of any use for Lord Lyttelton to say that he has not. This has all along been our point,.as regards Lord Lyttelton and other high members of the Association, and Mr. Selfe has proved the very same thing; and with it the correctness of our own views. In a letter to Mr. Selfe at the end of the pamphlet, Lord Lyttelton writes with reference to us—for to no one else can it refer. "It is true that the attacks on our proceedings have been accompanied by a disclaimer of personal imputations agaiust certain members of our body ; and a restriction of the charges to others, not named." Yet we endeavoured to make our reasons for this plain : : first, from a wholesome regard for that beautiful English law which, punishes truth as a libel; secondly, that we are conscious that sooner or later the Association itself would name those whom, from the state of the law, we feared to name. We were not public martyrs, but public writers, and in that capacity we conscientiously believe that we have only done our duty as regards the Association. We thank Mr. Selfe heartily for his indirect corroboration of our motives and acts ; and not to be behindhand with him in candour, we freely admit that we have done our duty somewhat roughly. * [We wish to point out to our readers the very obvious reason (which he unwittingly discloses) why the editor of the Australian and Neiv Zealand Gazette neglects no opportunity of attacking the Canterbury Association. They would not bribe him to his satisfaction. This, however, concerns us little. But it does concern the Canterbury Settlers that the same reason should prompt him to "run down" the Settlement. In the face of an official statement which he publishes,although the revenues of Canterbury are shewn to be exceeded only by those of Wellington and Auckland, he does i>ot hesitate to decry the condition of the Settlement in every possible manner. We propose some day to give a history of the origin of this worthy's antipathy to Canterbury, and also of his New Zealand antecedents.— Ed. L.T.J