THE CANTERBURY COLONY

Lyttelton Times, Volume VI, Issue 423, 22 November 1856, Page 4

THE CANTERBURY COLONY

(from the •' Guardian,' July 16.) "' We give elsewhere tho account of a dinner held by the members and friends of the Canterbury Association to celebrate.their own euthnn;usiu, and the successful termination of the enterprise in which they have been engaged ; and we do not like to let the omission "pass without saving a lew words on the history and issue of that rernarkablu project. _ The-Canterbury Association was formed about eight years ago for the purpose of founding a colony m New Zealand, and must of our readers remember how this scheme afc first ran its cour.se as a „; nu { ], iys > won j cr> t , ft( , r t}u , „„,_,. Lriiish fashion; how it was grossly misrepresented and mwioderato.lv pulled; had its medjngH, and breakfasts. :, m ! newspaper articles : involved its supporters in severe pocuniary lokscs; aud was finally set down, with universal clamour, us a " failure."

We never participated in the general sentiment about this enterprise; we always thought the promoters of f he scheme were far t ensanguine as to the extent to which they would he ahle 1« carry out their views,' mid we could not but disapprove m many instances of the moan* I>\' which ihey .sought to do to. Uut, at (he i-am'o tune, we fell, convinced that the men wer« in earned, and that their principles were sound an 1 fnu-wentw that, beneath all this noise and extravagance, a great nnd stihi-fantial work wn-; going on : and we recorded from lime to time our conviction that it would not be long b^brc

the public would have to reverse its verdict of failure;

And now that verdict is reversed, and the members of the Association meet with no contradiction when they point to their colony as presenting greater collective success, with less of individual failure, than any other colony in the empire did at the same period of its growth. Nor are these mere assestions, with respect to tho truth of which there may be a difference of opinion ; they are founded on known and incontrovertible facts. From the latest accounts we gather that the population of tho Canterbury province is now 5,000 f that their public revenue is estimated this year at £25,000,0r £5 a head; their exports at £60,000, or £12 a head; and that they subscribedupwards-of 1,400Z, or nearly 6s. a head, to the Patriotic Fund. If the above statistics be compared with those of the United Kingdom, it will be found that, to correspond with them, we ought to show a revenue of £150,000,000 ; an export of £600,000,000 ; and a contribution to the Patriotic Fund of £8,000,000.

But this is not all; the Canterbury Association can not only boast of the material progress of their colony; they can point also to the triumph of the leading principles of colonisation on which it was founded. Those principles were.—.l* The establishment of free political institutions in the colony at its very birth. 2. The endowment of the Anglican Church, and encouragement to the immigration of members of that Church. 3. The institution of a uniform price of waste land sufficiently high to prevent gambling in land, and to check inordinate dispersion. They have been carried out as follows : —1. Within a year and a half after the arrival of the first ships, the most liberal constitution which has been given to any British colony since the foundation of Rhode Island was bestowed upon New Zealand, and it is not too much to say, mainly through the exertions of the Canterbury Association. 2. At the last census of the province, we find that upwards of four-fifths of the people were returned as Churchme l; while the ecclesiastical endowments of the province are now producing upwards of £1,500 a year, or 6s. per head of the population; and as that endowment is in land, its value will increase as the population increases. 3. The experiment of a high price for land has been considered by the colonists themselves, after a fair trial, so successful, that on the waste lands being handed over to their management last year, they established, with universal assent, a uniform price of £2 an acre, which is just double the highest upset price affixed to land in any other new country.

Tried, then, by all the ordinary tests of success, the Canterbury colony must be said to have succeeded, and it has just given a signal proof of the high moral sense of its people, as well as of their gratitude to their founders, by assuming tho .outstanding liabilities of the Association to the extent of £31,000.

But, notwithstanding all this, the warmest friends of the Canterbury Association must admit that while it has accomplished a great work, aud achieved.an amount of success sufficient to satisfy all reasonable ambition, still it has fallen short of the anticipations of its most earnest and sanguine members; and a valuable lesson may be learned from its shortcomings as v well as from its triumphs. The Canterbury Association professed to transplant to New Zealand a section, complete and perfect in itself, of English society. But it has not done so even approximatively';—and why? Because the conditions of such an enterprise are impracticable. JSatura oppoxttit -fines. You cannot build up a complete civilisation in a year, or in a century. It is physically impossible to transport across 15,000 miles of ocean the accumulated materials of comfort and luxury, and refinement, which are of the essence of our daily existence in England. Again, you cannot, generally speaking, induce men and women of opulence, and cultivation, and leisure, to cross the world, for the •purpose of beginning life anew. And if the}'' did, they would have to change "so many of tho habits and traditions of their life, that they would soon be absorbed in a society in some respects better and in some respects worse than English society, but at any rate a perfectly different society. The population, of a new country is, from the necessity of the case, a population exclusively composed of workers, and, to a preponderating extent, of manual workers. Tbero are very few rich men, because rich men do not emigrate; there are very few poor men, because

every man can get on in the world. And there is a constant tendency in society towards an average, or level, in education, manners, habits and, to a certain extent, even in morals and religion—a level far indeed above the lowest in England, but also much below the highest. We have not space to pursue this train of thought farther, but we have said enough to illustrate our meaning,.which is, that any man who goes out to Canterbury, or to any other young colony that ever was or ever will be founded expecting to find in it " a section of English life and society," will inevitably be disappointed. To the great majority, indeed, of those who go, the fact that it is very different from England, inasmuch as its peculiar conditions offer them superior opportunities and increased comforts, is the reason for going, and such as have not that motive had better stay at home. But there are many persons in England whose position does not satisfy them; who desire a freer scope for. their energies, or a better provision for their children, but who yet enjoy moral and social advantages which they will not consent to lose; who hesitate to go where they cannot command access to the service of their Church, a good education for their children, the society of gentlemen and ladies, and the enjoyment of complete political freedom. To such persons we can say with confidence—-Emigrate to Canterbury.