# The Story of Christchurch, New Zealand/Chapter 2

Chapter II.
1847–1849.
The Foundation of the Canterbury Settlement.
John Robert Godley: his appointment as leader—the Canterbury Association Formed: its plan of settlement—Funds raised by personal guarantee—Captain Thomas sent out to select site—Port Cooper chosen, and why.
The time had now come for the realisation of the second proposal outlined in the Company’s report of 1843, the establishment of a Church of England Settlement. Although the idea of this settlement had emanated from the brain of Mr. Wakefield, it took definite shape as the result of the labours and energy of John Robert Godley, who is rightly regarded as the founder of Canterbury. Mr. Godley was the eldest son of Mr. John Godley, Killegar, Co. Leitrim, and was ​born in 1814. If he had been specially destined for the leadership of the Canterbury settlement it would have been difficult to find for him a better preparation than that which he actually underwent. The son of an Irish landed proprietor, he must have had early opportunities of gaining knowledge of land and its employment. After receiving a liberal education at Harrow and Christ Church (Oxford), he read for the Irish Bar, and was called in 1839. Three years later, he visited Canada, and became extremely interested in colonial matters, contributing articles to various papers, from which it would be interesting to quote if space permitted. From his letters to C. B. Adderley, printed by Savill Edwards, London, 1863, can be traced the course of events by which his subsequent career was inspired. These letters cover the period of his life’s work between 1839 and 1861, and are written quite unreservedly, with evidently no thought of their publication. They are the letters of one intimate friend to another, frank and outspoken at times to a singular degree. They give a lurid picture of Ireland in 1843, with famine threatened, anarchy rampant, and Godley and his father under protection against assassination. By 1846 matters were even worse, and practically the whole labouring population was employed on relief works. Next year, Mr. Godley stood for Parliament for his native county, Leitrim, and was defeated. Writing on September 24 of that year (1847), he anticipated frightful mortality amongst the poor, and the disorganisation of society in the attempt to collect rales. This letter contains a passage which shows whither his thoughts were already trending. “A gigantic immigration scheme,” we read, “would have been the only alternative.” It was at this time that his meeting with Edward Gibbon Wakefield took place.
The New Zealand Company was then in a bad way, fast drifting indeed towards insolvency. Mr. ​Wakefield had now fully accepted the idea of invoking the aid of the churches in promoting settlement. The new Edinburgh Settlement was already in train, but he needed a leader for the proposed Church of England Settlement. The difficulty and delicacy involved in the choice is shown by Mr. Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s letters, published under the title of “The Founders of Canterbury,” by his son, Mr. Edward Jerningham Wakefield. The assistance of the evangelical section of the Church of England could not be obtained because of the jealousy between the New Zealand Company and the Church Missionary Society, which were both practically colonising institutions. On the other hand, the danger of extreme Puseyism had to be avoided. Mr. Wakefield’s choice fell on Mr. Godley, as a sound Churchman, not leaning to either extreme. In a letter dated Great Malvern, November 27, 1847, he wrote:—
“My Dear Godley,
Mr. Godley did come. The meeting took place, and the results are recorded in Mr. Wakefield’s letter of November 30, 1847, to Mr. John Abel Smith, M.P. This letter is of peculiar interest, as in it is set down clearly, and with much detail, the scheme of the Canterbury Association as afterwards carried out:—
“I find that my notion of a distinct settlement in New Zealand under the patronage of a powerful body in this country, desirous of spreading the Church of England, stands a good chance of being realised sooner than we expected. The subject has been fully considered, and at length something like practical ​conclusions have been arrived at. Mr. Godley left me this morning for Ireland, and I have undertaken to ascertain how far the Company is disposed to act in the matter.
“We adhere to the old plan of settlement, to consist of 300,000 acres (with right of pasturage attached), to be purchased from the Company for 10/- per acre, or £150,000. The place is to be, if possible, Ruamahunga, near Wellington, which is delineated in the illustrations of my son’s book. The purchasers, whether colonists or absentees, to pay to the Company as a trustee for them, £2 10s. per acre, in addition to the price of 10/-, and the amount, being in all £750,000, to be laid out by the Company on behalf of the purchasers in public objects, such as emigration, roads, and church and school endowments. The plan of the colony with respect to such objects to be framed and (except in so far as the Company would act as a trustee) be carried out by a society outside of the Company, consisting of bishops and clergymen, peers, members of Parliament and intending colonists of the higher class.
“In all this there is nothing new to many of the Directors. But now comes the all-important practical question: By whose exertion in particular is the whole scheme to be realised?”
The rest of the letter supplied the answer, and warmly recommended that the carrying out of the plan should be entrusted to Mr. Godley.
Mr. Gadley’s letters to Mr. Adderley, about this time, constantly refer to colonisation, and on December 7, 1847 (doubtless the result of his meeting with Wakefield), he wrote:—“I have a grand colonisation scheme in petto, which is too complicated to be explained in a letter, but which, I feel sure, will enlist your sympathy and co-operation.” A few days later (December 15), he said :— “Did I tell you that the New Zealand Company are flirting with me to get me into their direction, so as to work the labouring oar in the business of colonisation ​there? If I take up this affair, I have a scheme for the formation of a Church of England colony. I bespeak you, as a member of the Committee which must carry out my plan. While writing to you there came a definite offer from the New Zealand Company, which shall accept, so you will see me in full work there next month.”
Mr. Godley was as good as his word, and on January 16, 1848, we find him in London, a director of the New Zealand Company (the former letters were written from Killegar), engaged in collecting a Committee of Management, in which he had already secured the co-operation of several gentlemen, whose names were afterwards well known in Canterbury. The following extract from a letter, written by Mr. T. C. Harrington, the Secretary of the New Zealand Company, dated New Zealand House, London, February 29, 1848, and addressed to the Company’s agent, Colonel William Wakefield, in Wellington, gives some idea of the enthusiasm with which Mr. Godley was already entering on his new work:—“Mr. Godley, with whose exertions for the organisation of a systematic emigration from Ireland you are doubtless acquainted, has lately been elected a member of the Direction. Through the intervention chiefly of that gentleman, the Archbishop of Dublin, the Bishops of London and Exeter, Lord Harrowby, Lord Lincoln, and other gentlemen of great weight and influence. have been induced to take a lively interest in the undertaking.”
At the time this letter was written it was intended to locate the new settlement in the Wairarapa or Ruamahunga district, and in enclosing a copy of it to Earl Grey, Mr. Harrington, in a covering letter, requested that Governor Grey should be induced to take steps to extinguish the native rights in these districts.
In March, 1848 (the following month), the first document appeared. “The Plan of the Association for Forming the Settlement of Canterbury in New ​Zealand,” published by J. W. Parker, West Strand, London. On the first page appeared the names of the members of the Association, His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury as President, and fifty-two others, consisting of Bishops, Peers, Members of Parliament, Clergy, etc., of whom twenty were members of the General Committee, under the Chairmanship of the Right Hon. Lord Lyttelton. They were an eminently respectable and influential body, all staunch supporters of the Church of England, but not, perhaps, precisely fitted for the work of organising and carrying out a large colonising scheme in the South Pacific. The pamphlet itself was a quaintly optimistic document, beginning with a selection of quotations from various writers, praising the fertility and climate of New Zealand, from which was deduced the rosy anticipation that “land thus treated” (cleared, cultivated and laid down in pasture) “instead of one sheep to four or five acres, which is the common power of unimproved natural pasture in Australia, will maintain about four sheep per acre throughout the year.” Again, in the financial prospects, the hopeful tone was imparted; it was estimated that there would be available from the land sales during the first year or two the sum of £200,000 for the religious and educational endowment fund. The “Plan” even went so far as to dispose of this sum (prospectively) by spending £41,000 in churches and other buildings, and investing the balance, £159,000, as an endowment fund, from which to pay stipends.
The investments even were specified—the sum of £80,000 was to be invested in British Funds at 3½ per cent., and £79,000 in “Colonial Securities,” at 6 per cent., yielding a revenue of £7,540. It cannot, in fact, be denied that the “Plan” was open to a great deal of criticism, much of which it subsequently received. In justice, however, to the founders, certain facts have to he remembered. The scheme of the ​Association was unusual. It was a colonising project, but not for private gain; in this it radically differed from its parent institution, the New Zealand Company. There were to be no shares, no dividends, and most surprising of all, no capital. The New Zealand Company had granted the Association an option of purchase of 1,000,000 acres of land in New Zealand at 10/- per acre. It was proposed to sell this land at six times its cost to selected emigrants, members of the Church of England, and of good character. But—and this was the crucial feature of the scheme—the profit so made was not to go into any private pockets, but to be administered by the Association as trustees for the spiritual and temporal advancement of the settlement. The following are some of the details of the plan:—
The option over the million acres was for two years, but conditional on £300,000 worth of land being sold within six months, and of further annual sales at a fixed ratio being afterwards made.
The Association was to sell rural lands at £3 per acre, and town and suburban lands at prices mentioned below.
Of the money received from the land sales, one-sixth (in the ease of rural land 10/- per acre) was to be paid to the New Zealand Company for the land; another sixth was to be used for general expenses, which would include survey, roading, bridging and other colonial expenses, as well as the comparatively small London expenses. Two-sixths were to go to form an emigrant fund, to charter boats and take out labour to the new settlement; and the remaining two-sixths were for religious and educational endowments in connection with the Church of England faith.
A general survey was to be made, and 1,000 acres selected and reserved for the capital city, with not exceeding 1,000 acres of “suburban” land adjoining. The lines of the principal streets and squares of the capital city were to be marked out due reserves made ​for public purposes, and the balance of the city divided into quarter-acre sections. The suburban land was to be divided into ten-acre blocks. Prices were fixed, quarter-acre sections £25, of which one-sixth, or £4 3s. 4d., was to be paid to the New Zealand Company; suburban ten-acre blocks at £150, the New Zealand Company again getting a sixth share. These prices applied to town and suburban land in the capital; the prices in subordinate towns was lower. Rural land was to be sold to settlers at £3 per acre, and no order to be issued for less than fifty acres. All applications received within the first six months were to rank equally, after that priority was to be given in order of application.
There were also some regulations giving exclusive rights of pasturage over unoccupied lands to “land purchasers,” which, as will be seen, were the cause of some trouble later on, and the pamphlet concluded with a reprint of a very cordial correspondence between Lord Lyttelton and Earl Grey regarding the proposed settlement.
In the meantime money was required in London for preliminary expenses, obtaining the charter (the Association was not yet incorporated), and other things, and in the colony for surveying the land and preparing for the arrival of the first settlers. This money could be obtained only from the New Zealand Company, and on the personal guarantee of individual members of the Association. By this method, in May, 1848, an advance of £25,000 was arranged, of which £5,000 was retained for preliminary expenses in London, and £20,000 sent out for starting the necessary work in New Zealand. No doubt, the influence of the members of the committee was of great value to the Association, both with the Home Government and with the New Zealand Company on the one hand, and with intending settlers on the other; but for the practical conduct of its business, the large and unweildy committee must have been a serious ​handicap, and, as a matter of fact, Mr. H. S. Selfe, in his pamphlet defending the Association from the inevitable criticism, says that the attendance at committee meetings was scanty and irregular. The bulk of the work fell on a few, the Chairman (Lord Lyttelton), Mr. Henry Sewell, and later Mr. H. S. Selfe, all of whom were inspired by the enthusiasm of Mr. Godley.
The attitude of the Home Government towards the new Association may be gathered from Earl Grey’s despatch, No. 27, to Governor Grey, dated Downing Street, June 29, 1848. “From the character of those who have formed the Association, and from the advantage which their undertaking, if it prosper, might be expected to confer both upon New Zealand and this country, I take a great interest in the success of their enterprise. The Association has now adopted a course which seems to me perfectly prudent and reasonable, namely, that of despatching a confidential agent to ascertain what lands are available, and select a site for the projected settlement. Captain Thomas, who was acquainted with the colony before” (he had gone as a settler to Wellington in the “Adelaide” in 1840, and had done some surveying work for the Otago settlement) “has been chosen for that purpose.”
Earl Grey went on to bespeak from the authorities every assistance for the agent of the Association. Enclosed in his despatch were copies of letters exchanged between Lord Lyttelton and Earl Grey, between the New Zealand Company and the Association. The despatch and the correspondence are too lengthy to reproduce here, but there are some points in the correspondence which must be mentioned in order to preserve the continuity of the story.
The suggestions that the Association should be granted a charter of incorporation, and that Canterbury should be constituted a separate province, subject to the approval of the Governor, were sympathetically received ​by Earl Grey, and subsequently given effect to. The correspondence also repeated the land proposals of the Association as already set out in its Plan for forming the Settlement of Canterbury.
The financial questions were given considerable prominence, both as between the Government and the New Zealand Company, and as between the Company and the Association. The estimates for the Colonial expenditure had been prepared by Captain Thomas for the Association, and form somewhat curious reading by the light of after events. They made provision for instruments, lithographic press and stationery, offices, salaries for one year of Chief Surveyor, two assistants, one geologist and botanist, storekeeper and clerk, wages of twelve labourers with rations, also survey expenses and road construction, the expenditure amounting in all to £15,000. In a subsequent letter, written by Mr. Godley as acting-secretary of the Association (May 9, 1848), this expenditure was summarised as follows:—Expenses of surveying department £7,120; for roads and bridges, £7,880. Mr. Godley added that the latter amount was “apparently rather an approximate conjecture of the minimum sum required for those purposes than from any detailed calculation.” He proceeded to add “at least two churches” to the list of requirements, and increased the demand to £20,000.
Captain Joseph Thomas played such an important and valuable part in the early history of Canterbury and Christchurch that it is perhaps as well to define the terms of his engagement. Mr. Harrington, Secretary of the New Zealand Company, in a letter to Earl Grey, dated June 30, 1848, wrote:—
“The gentleman above-named (Captain Thomas) was selected by the Association, and was originally intended to have been sent out as the agent of that body. But the members, being unwilling to incur the risk of individual pecuniary liability, have, with a view to ​preventing this, requested that he may be appointed the agent of the New Zealand Company for the intended settlement, till such time as the Association shall receive a charter of incorporation. With this request the Court has complied, and Captain Thomas proceeds accordingly to New Zealand to carry out the views of the Association, but in the capacity of the agent of the Company.”
Captain Thomas sailed in July, 1848, for New Zealand to select in concert with the Governor and Bishop of New Zealand, a suitable site for the proposed settlement. From a letter dated Wellington, December 6, 1848, written by Governor Sir George Grey to Earl Grey, it appears that Captain Thomas was already disposed to favour Port Cooper as the most suitable site, while His Excellency considered that a very advantageous site might be obtained in the neighbourhood of the Rangitiki and Manawatu. In a subsequent despatch dated Auckland, February 9, 1849, the Wairarapa site was again mentioned by His Excellency with approval.
Captain Thomas’s preference for Port Cooper was doubtless strengthened by a very valuable report made by Messrs. W. and J. Deans, of Riccarton, on the suitability of the district for the purposes of settlement. A few months after the date of this report, on April 9, 1849, Mr. William Fox, afterwards Sir William, acting principal agent for the New Zealand Company, reported to the Governor that, subject to the consent of His Excellency and the Bishop of New Zealand, Captain Thomas had selected Port Cooper (Lyttelton), and the adjacent country, for the settlement. The Governor’s consent was given on May 14. In a letter written on June 22, to Mr. WH. W. Durnand, of London, Mr. H. J. Cridland, surveyor and land agent at Wellington, gave some of the reasons that led to the selection :—
“There is every probability that the site of the Canterbury Settlement will be at Port Cooper. Captain ​Thomas’s report only waits the approval of the Bishop and Governor of New Zealand, who seem rather disposed for the Wairarapa, for the surveys to he proceeded with immediately.” (Mr. Cridland was evidently unaware that the approval had already been obtained.) “I think it will prove more satisfactory to have it there than in any other part of New Zealand I have seen or heard of, from a variety of causes that combine, in a peculiar manner, every essential for such an established under-taking. There are no natives to disturb their occupation or interrupt their progress a single day. There is a splendid port, free from the slightest danger, perfectly secure, easier of access and better adapted for commercial purposes than even Port Nicholson, on nearly its opposite shore of Cook’s Straits. There is deep water in every part of the harbour, available for wharves, quays, etc., To crown all, there is an immense tract of level country available, well covered with grass, and watered with abundant, beautiful streams, embracing an area of forty miles wide, and three or four times as long, within six miles of the port, easy of access by several routes. The soil is equal in average with the Hutt as regards quality, free from inundation or danger, and ready for the plough. There may be considered an insufficiency of timber, which in New Zealand has been felt rather a drawback in the shape of expense and clearing. There will be no struggle here to conquer the dense forest, which has so often terminated in disappointment, and which compels the labourer to wait years before he can obtain a sufficient return to remunerate his incessant toil. The Putarikamut“ (Putaringa motu, see Riccarton later) “or Serpentine River, runs through the entire district, is navigable for boats of eight tons to the end of the plains, and empties itself into the open sea at Port Rigamont, clear of any bar or shingle. The price of the land may appear high to purchasers, but in reality will be cheaper by one-half ​than that near Port Nicholson. The landlord will be able to lease his land with the certainty that a moderately industrious tenant will be able from the first year to pay him rent. The tenant has at once the means at hand of forwarding his crops to the nearest market, and from Port Cooper to any part of the world. The plains are beautiful to look upon. The Deans Brothers purchased a farm at Otakao (O-Takaro?) near the Putarikamut, in 1843, from Dods and Davis. It is a little colony of itself.”
This letter, though somewhat too optimistic, is valuable as giving in a concise form the reasons which doubtless influenced Captain Thomas in his selection. In passing, it may be mentioned that Mr. Cridland was later engaged in the survey and laying out of the district, and several sketches made by him in 1840 are still extant. He died June 1, 1867, aged 44.