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
