other New Zealand colonies. Having during the three preceding years been engaged almost alone in dissecting and exposing this antipodean form of protection and monopoly, I travelled all night from Lincoln, in order to meet the colonising protectionists face to face. I found a platform crowded with Bishops and dignitaries of the Church, Peers, Members of Parliament; in the body of the room some two thousand Clergymen, many Members of the two Universities, and elegantly-dressed ladies. Except a small group at the end of the room, all seemed firm believers in Gibbon Wakefield and model High Church colonisation. I had not had time to obtain the company of a single friend; but when the Bishop of Norwich, Dr. Hinde, ventured to point to Adelaide, Wellington, and Nelson as instances of colonies where "the Wakefield system" had been tried with eminent success, and when Lord Lyttleton, before putting the resolution, invited "the questions or observations of any gentleman," I found courage to rise, and to tell intending colonists that ruin had fallen on all who colonised on the principles embodied in the bishop's resolution, to bid them refer to parliamentary documents for details of the sufferings of South Australian and New Zealand land purchasers, and to say—"I wish you intending colonists to understand that this Canterbury Colony is founded on the principle of creating artificial advantages for those who work with their head and not with their hand—that there is no instance of a colonist in any country employing his capital in agriculture as proposed at Canterbury, and obtaining either low-priced labour, or fair profit on his investment—while in pastoral pursuits the purchase of land is unnecessary, and concentration impossible;" and I concluded by observing—"If the colonisers wanted to have the best bone and sinew of the country, they must not adopt an exclusive system, under which no man with less than £500 could become the purchaser of fifty acres, for that, according to my experience, the best emigrants were men with large families and very moderate means, who could till land with their own hands to a profit, but were not willing to emigrate to become mere hewers of wood and drawers of water."
It would be difficult to give any idea of the effect produced by the incontrovertible facts and figures of my unexpected opposition. The Bishop of Oxford made a most brilliant and amusing reply, in which rhetoric supplied the place of facts and arguments; Mr. Adderley, an amiable enthusiast—pretended to believe that I was recommending the wild, free grants of Swan River, or the churchless, school-less colonisation of New South Wales. But not one of the whole array of model colonisers was able to answer my simple question, "How are Canterbury
