“PASSING MAORI MEMORIES."

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 325, 5 January 1937, Page 2

“PASSING MAORI MEMORIES."

RECORDED BY J.H.S. FOR “THE TARANAKI CENTRAL PRESS.” Religion and Finance.

Even yet we do not realise the eventual benefits to the whole world which will be conferred upon mankind by transport facilities. In 1850, with bullock drays, Maori canoes, and small sailing craft, the six main centres were sis far apart as the poles to-day. The man we don’t know is the one we don't like, and this isolation brought about jealousies among the six main settlements rivalling that of the old Maori tribes. Each cdmcunlty was known to the others as the Otago cockneys, Auckland coves, Wellington swells, Melson snobs, Taranaki exquisites, and Canterbury pilgrims. Subsequently, when AhuTiri (hill of anger) was named after the hero of Scinde, the young settlers adopted the proud nitkname "Napier boys.” Wanganui was beneath their notice. Otago and Canterbury alone were religious monopolies, and as such, however captivating to one's taiagination, are apt to adopt a spirit which checks prosperity. According to Parliamentary records of 1852, 200 Otago settlers complained that this had produced grave disputes.

In Canterbury, three million acres were reported as being shut uip for settlement by prospective settlers of one church, “as no true memlber of other sects would buy it, and thus support a church which he believed to be wrong.” But the Constitution Act of 1852 happily ended such monopolies. In 1854 a Canterbury memlber of the General Assembly complained that the Otago Provincial Council refused to sanction the purchase of land upon which to erect an Episcopal Church, “while Canterbury settlers drink their ale at the Mitre tavern, live in streets named after English prelates, and that Puseyism is seem in their feeble attempts at intoning, and the glimmer of two candles at noon in a wooden church.” Happilv in 1858 this last feature of an exclusive colony disappeared with the liquidation of the New Zealand Company, leaving a burden of a quarter million on the Shoulders of a struggling little community. Created to live 40 yea!rs, the New Zealand Company died in 10.