the indiscriminate character of the emigrants. Bishop Selwyn asks that the settlement may be organized in this country, and transported ready-made and whole. With this view, he insists on local, not numerical, sections. There are, it seems, to be in the first instance three settlements—viz., at Oxford, Mandeville, and Stratford. The Oxford leader, clergyman, schoolmaster, and principal landed emigrants are to look out for good labourers and artizans, each one in his own sphere. Thus the whole emigrant body will be already tied together by home associations before it leaves England. Consisting of such materials, the Bishop naturally hopes the company will not be the worse for the voyage, and on landing will proceed at once to its prepared quarters. If the proper sort of people can be found in this country, and if men who can afford to buy hundreds of acres at 3l. per acre can be induced to emigrate, there is no insurmountable hitch in the rest of the design. The good Bishop, however, who discerns in some things the force of natural laws, and who sees that the supply of the various trades and professions will follow the demand, must prepare for the growth of ports and towns, perhaps to an abnormal and vicious excess. His theory is, that towns, exchanges, grocers'-shops, and public-houses are, or at least ought to be, developments of rural enterprise; and that when the agriculturist begins to want tea and sugar, spirits, and other luxuries or refinements, cities will spring up to meet his new desires. This sounds rather like the maxim that 'God made the country, and man made the town;' but, in fact, we believe that the town is coeval with the cottage; and that the Oxonians, Stratfordians, and other settlers will stick to Port Cooper rather closer than the Bishop would desire.
The design, however, is not only noble, but also quite practicable in its main features. Any gentleman or clergyman who may wish to escape poverty, where poverty is a disgrace, or seclusion, where seclusion is a perpetual loss of caste, but who is not tempted by the general appearance of our colonies, will find ample room, a fine climate, a fertile soil, a picked body of colonists, and some of the best men of our generation in the Canterbury Settlement of New Zealand. The Bishop does not promise him either luxury or wealth. He speaks slightingly of church dignities, buying and selling, hops, sugar, and Californian gold. He says, we believe, that no bishop ought to have more than 500l. a-year, and his own personal expenses are far below that standard. When the occupant of the antipodean throne of Canterbury arrives. Bishop Selwyn proposes that he shall take charge of the college, with a schoolmaster's income. His reward is not to be of that vulgar sort which a man can put in the bank, lay out at interest, invest in the soil, or pile up in cellars and barns; but the mutual affection of a colonial family. That Selwyn himself and his devoted company have obtained their reward, and are content with it, we cannot doubt; nor do we doubt that the spirit he breathes around him, and which the character of the new settlement is calculated to promote, will render 'Canterbury' a congenial and agreeable home even to more ordinary men.
CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN LORD LYTTELTON AND EARL GREY.
No. 1.
41, Charing Cross, May 10, 1848.
My Lord,—I have the honour of addressing you on behalf a body of gentlemen who have constituted themselves an Association for establishing a settlement composed of members of the Church of England, to be called the Canterbury Settlement in the Colony of New Zealand.
The Association do not venture to trouble your Lordship with any general remarks on the subject of their undertaking, or of the principles which have guided them hitherto in the prosecution of it. They are in intimate relations with the New Zealand Company, with a view to the acquisition of land for the intended settlement, and the advance of funds requisite for their operations; and
