A SPRING IN THE CANTERBURY SETTLEMENT.

New Zealander, Volume 9, Issue 779, 1 October 1853, Page 3

A SPRING IN THE CANTERBURY SETTLEMENT.

nv C. WAREN ADAMS, Esc.

(From the “Literary Gazette,” March 13.) This volume appeal's opportunely, a controversy at the present moment existing as to the real position and prospects of the Canterbury Settlement in New Zealand. The report of an unbiassed and impartial witness is of importance. A long sea voyage and a bracing climate, having been recommended to Mr. Adams by bis medical attendant, a, voyage to New Zealand was consideied to unite both these requisites, and accordingly he sailed in June, 1851, in the good ship C ante) bury, lor the col on v of the same name, in lively style, An. Adams relates the circumstances ot the voyage,ot the arrival at New Zealand, and his impressions of Lyttelton and Christchurch. The latter is the inland Town, and the former the port or the Canterbury settlement. An account is also given pf excursions to the bush and the plains, with

descriptions of the farming, trading, and other occupations of the colonists, and notices the maories or natives. The details on these subjects will be read with avidity by all who have any interest in the colony. On the general principles of the Canterbury settlement, and its present condition, it is impossible not to receive a most unfavourable impression from Mr. Adams’s hook. With every inclination to speak well of the ,experiment, and expressing his hope that all may turn out well eventually, he cannot forbear from speaking with censure of the ruinous crotchets which have characterised the whole enterprize. To carry out to a distant colony some organized provision for religious order and instruction is praiseworthy and desirable ; hut the rttempt to plant in a new country a miniature of the medieval ecclesiastical systems of Europe is a scheme unworthy of the age in which we live. The purchaser of every acre of land has paid three times its ordinary value to create an ecclesiastical fund, which receives one pound for every acre of waste land sold, and as thirty-five thousand acres have been sold, the sum now available for church purposes should be £35,000. It appears tin t only £IOOO has hitherto been expended in churchbuilding, and on the ship Canterbury arriving in tbc colony, Mr. Adams and the passengers were set upon for subscriptions for a church at Lyttelton. As there is at present a public investigation going on as to the affairs of the Canterbury Association, especially with regal’d to the use of the Church funds, it is better not to refer further to this part of Mr. Adams’s volume. He only expresses, however, the feeling of all pei’sons ot common sense, both at home and in the colony, when be says, aftex - hoping that the colony may soon have sufficient churches and schools, with efficient clergy and a bishop,—“it maybe doubted whether any of the other dignitaries of the Established Church in the old country are requisite, and whether a Dean and Canons, where there is neither a cathedral to keep in repair, nor corporate funds to administer, may not be dispensed with.” Mr. Adams speaks well of the climate and soil of the settlement, and hopefully of its future prospects ; but at present the colonists are for the most part living on the capital taken out with them, and few who read this impartial statement will be tempted to emigrate to Canterbury until some alteration is made in the charter of the colony and in the administration of its affairs. Of the agent of the Association at Lyttelton, Mr. Godley, the author speaks with high praise. With labour dear, carriage difficult and expensive, markets far distant, heavy rates, and many other drawbacks, the Canterbury Settlement appears on the whole an ill-conceived and an ill-managed experiment in colonization.