a resolution, the next one, tendering thanks to His Excellency the Governor “for the gracious and constitutional manner in which he has referred the decision of this question to those whom it mainly or alone concerns,” shows that in those days differences of opinion on public questions did not prevent the disputants observing the amenities of polite society.
But all this tone, while Mr. Godley, as agent of the Canterbury Association, was administering the Province’s affairs with almost despotic power, building up the settlement, and moulding its public opinion, he was becoming more and more intolerant of the control by a London Council, arbitrary in its decisions, and sometimes ludicrously ignorant of local conditions. Those frank and outspoken letters of his to his friend, Mr. Adderley, afford a clue to the change which was rapidly taking place in his mental attitude. See for instance, his letter of May 21, 1851: “I often think what fun we should have taken in old times out of the didactic despatches which are written to me, if they had emanated from Downing Street. Do you read them? To one reading them out here, there is something inexpressibly comic about those (especially) on the conduct to be pursued towards the natives, and in the ecclesiastical arrangements. It is very fortunate, it sounds a ‘cocky’ thing to say, that you have an agent who feels himself strong enough and independent enough to act upon his own view of what is right and politic.”
In another letter, dated August 29, in which he enclosed the newspaper account of the meeting mentioned above, he not only advocated self-government for the colonists, but went so far as to claim for them the right to decide whether the scheme of the Canterbury Association should be retained. By December 15, Mr. Godley’s sentiments had grown stronger still, and, after referring to the last despatch of the Association as “a thorough Downing Street document,” he went on to
