Why, if it were not for the Canterbury Association, this district would be a wilderness still, as it was for so many years before we came. We discovered it, we surveyed it, we made it available for settlement, we made known its existence and capabilities in England and Australia; we organised and administered the system of operations by which this desert has been peopled, and after having done all this, at vast labour, and with no small outlay, it is rather too bad to be told by those who have been doing nothing all the time that we are keeping for our own purposes a great and fertile district out of the hands of Her Majesty’s subjects. ... We may colonise badly, but they (the Government) do not colonise at all, We have done more for colonisation in a month than they have done in twelve years.”
Resolutions were passed at both meetings (1) in favour of constituting Canterbury as a separate Province; (2) asking for economy of administration; (3) and declaring that “it is no part of the business of this meeting to point out the boundaries of the proposed Province, but that it distinctly disclaims any desire to encroach on territory to which other settlements may have a fair claim.”
In seconding the last resolution, Mr. Templer contended that the natural and impassable boundaries of the great Southern Plain enclosed an area “evidently intended by nature to form a whole,” and should not arbitrarily be subdivided. One more resolution passed at the meetings should be quoted: “That this meeting, while urging this claim to a local government for Canterbury, desires to guard itself carefully against being supposed to imply assent to, or approval of, the measure fer establishing Provincial Councils which has lately been enacted, inasmuch as that measure does not give to the people of this country any real or efficient control aver the management of their own affairs, and the expenditure of their own revenues.” After passing such
