MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 August 1938, Page 7

MAORI MEMORIES

EIGHT EARLY SETTLEMENTS. (Recorded by J.H.S. for “Times-Age.”) It was realised in 1852 that lack of financial ability was, as it is today, a feature of most of our religious organisations. Heavy burdens ■of debt are incurred for the sake of effect or show, and the purpose of true religion impeded by an atmosphere of commercial keenness. Thus it was that the Canterbury Pilgrims’ Association was counselled to surrender its interest to the Government of that day. The ability of the Directors lay more in the social and domestic-- relations, and though the Provincial Council of Canterbury was not in any way liable, they generously assumed the debt of £lB,OOO, enabling the optimistic Association to found one of the best church settlements in this country. A graceful tribute in a letter to the superintendent was signed on behalf of the church by a lord, three dukes, three bishops -and twenty commoners. The Canterbury settlement was thereupon referred to as “an instance of a great fact being founded on a great fiction.” Few if any settlements had even been planted with such a flourish of trumpets. Ahuriri, in Hawke’s Bay, and the Bluff, in the far south, were planted on business-like lines. The eight settlements were each characteristically known as the “Napier Boys,” Auckland Loves,” “Wellington Swells,” “Nelson Snobs,” “Taranaki Exquisites,” “Otago Cockneyfe,” “Wanganui Jokers,” and “Canterbury Pilgrims.” The Canterbury scheme locked up nearly three million acres of unoccupied land of good quality, because no true follower of any of the other three denominations would purchase land and support a church he believed to be wrong. After a failure to borrow £500,000 the New Zealand Company was obliged to surrender its charter in 1850.