MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 August 1938, Page 2

MAORI MEMORIES

THE N.Z. COMPANY. (Recorded by J.H.S. for “Times-Age.”) The inner finance of the New Zealand Company’s ten years’ operations prior to 1850, is embalmed in reports of the House of Lords and in the files of “The Examiner” of those days. The company was granted a charter to raise another £500,000 about 1843; but the public had lost all confidence in them, and failed to subscribe. Even the Maori land owners fought shy. The British Government lent them another £236,000, to be repaid by 1850 or them to surrender their property to the Crown. In and out of Parliament, in the Press and in the street, it was stated that “there had never been such a job.” Lord Grey said Gibbon Wakefield was a false guide, and the press was still more severe.

Governor Fitzroy said their wasteful expenditure was like the South Sea Bubble, the Hudson Bay Company, the Canterbury Association, and all other emigration concerns. In 1858, with the aid of the British Government, £200,000 of the company’s debt was cancelled. The directors were said “to have got drunk on a theory, but the early colonists felt the headache.” Yet, in reporting the meeting of directors in 1858 the London Times said: “Never was there a more satisfactory meeting or more unanimity in complimenting each other on their usefulness, and in denying the charges of rapacity so often urged against them.” In 1851 there were 26,000 settlers in New Zealand, 15,000 males and 11,000 females, one-half were of the English Church, and the others of many denominations. Of these, there were 60 Jews, only one of whom had ventured to work his way among the Scots of Otago.