alone, that it is better than the Government. If we had a Government able and willing to make its waste territory available for British immigration, and to give facilities to intending colonists for managing their own affairs, and colonising on their own principles from the first, 1 should be prepared to admit that an amateur association like ours was an Intruder. But, as it is, I have no hesitation in asserting that our mission is perfectly legitimate and exceedingly beneficial. It must have been really rather difficult for Sir George Grey’s audience to keep their countenance while he denounced the Canterbury Association as an obstacle to the legitimate colonisation of this district by the subjects of Her Majesty —in other words, as keeping people out of Canterbury. If anyone else but the Governor had used such language, I should really have supposed that it had been used in irony. Why, what is the fact? Most of those whom I address know, and all of them ought to know, that for seven years, that is, from 1839 to 1846, the Government of which Sir George Grey is the representative, possessed almost unlimited powers and opportunities for colonising these Islands. . . They have had every conceivable advantage and facility at their command: funds, troops, steamers, civil administration, surveyors. They have spent more money in one year than we are likely to have at our disposal in five—and what have they done? I will tell you. By means of an extravagant expenditure they have founded one settlement, or rather they have founded one seaport and garrison town, which is not a settlement, to which I do not believe five hundred actual settlers have ever gone. That is all, literally all, that the Government of New Zealand has done for colonisation. And yet Sir George Grey gravely complains that the Canterbury Association are keeping Her Majesty’s subjects from colonising this district under the auspices of the Government; he taunts us, m fact, with being an obstacle to colonisation.
