Churches and Sheep
“Churches and Sheep” from New Zealand by William Pember Reeves, 1898.
From: 1848 C.E. To: 1898 C.E.
Location: Otago, New Zealand
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
“Churches and Sheep” from New Zealand by William Pember Reeves, 1898.
The Company's settlements were no longer confined to the shores of Cook's Straits. The South Island less certain reserves had been bought from its handful of Maori owners. In 1848 and 1850 that was done which ought to have been done a decade sooner, and the void spaces of Otago and Canterbury were made the sites of settlements.
The Otago pioneers landed in March, 1848. They were a band of Scotch Presbyterians, appropriately headed by a Captain Cargill, a Peninsular veteran and a descendant of Donald Cargill. As these pages go to press, Otago is celebrating her jubilee, and the mayor of her chief city, Captain Cargill's son, is the first citizen of a town of nearly 50,000 inhabitants which in energy and beauty is worthy of its name Dunedin.
For years, however, the progress of the young settlement was slow. It had no Maori troubles worth speaking of, but the hills near its site, rugged and bush-covered, were troublesome to clear and settle, the winter climate is bleaker than that of northern or central New Zealand, and a good deal of Scottish endurance and toughness was needed before the colonists won their way through to the more fertile and open territory which lay waiting for them, both on their right hand and on their left, in the broad province of Otago. Like General Grant in his last campaign, they had to keep on " pegging away," and they did.
Their leaders felt keenly the difficulty of getting good school teaching for the children, a defect so well repaired later on that the primary schools of Otago are now, perhaps, the best in New Zealand, while Dunedin was the seat of the Colony's first university college. They stood stoutly by their kirk, and gave it a valuable endowment of land. They had a gaol, the prisoners of which in early days were sometimes let out for a half-holiday, with the warning from the gaoler, Johnnie Barr, that if they did not come back by eight o'clock they would be locked out for the night.
The usual dress of the settlers was a blue shirt, moleskin or corduroy trousers, and a slouch hat. Their leader, Captain Cargill, wore always a blue "bonnet" with a crimson knob thereon. They named their harbour Port Chalmers, and a stream, hard by their city Dunedin, the Water of Leith. The industrious, brave, successful, and cantankerous little settlement soon ceased to be altogether Scotch. Indeed, the pioneers, called the "Old Identities," seemed almost swamped by the flood of gold-seekers which poured in in the years after 1861. Nevertheless, Otago is still the headquarters of that large and very active element in the population of the Colony which makes the features and accent of North Britain more familiar to New Zealanders than to most Englishmen.
The next little colony founded in New Zealand dates its birth from 1850. Though it was to be Otago's next-door neighbour, it was neither Presbyterian nor Scottish, but English and Episcopalian. This was the Canterbury settlement. It owed its existence to an association in which the late Lord Lyttelton was prominent. As in the case of Otago, this association worked in conjunction with the New Zealand Company, and proposed to administer its lands on the Wakefield system.
Three pounds an acre was to be the price of land in the Canterbury Block, of which one pound was to go to the church and education, two pounds to be spent on the work of development. The settlers landed in December, 1850, from four vessels, the immigrants in which have ever since had in their new home the exclusive right to the name of Pilgrims. The dream of the founders of Canterbury was to transport to the Antipodes a complete section of English society, or, more exactly, of the English Church.
It was to be a slice of England from top to bottom. At the top were to be an Earl and a Bishop; at the bottom the English labourer, better clothed, better fed, and contented. The dream seems a little pathetic as well as amusing now, but those who dreamed it were very much in earnest in 1850, and they laid the foundation stones of a fine settlement, though not precisely of the kind they contemplated.
Their affairs for some years were managed by John Robert Godley, a name still well remembered in Downing Street. He had been the life and soul of the Canterbury Association, and made a strong administrator. Their Earl and their Bishop soon fled from the hard facts of pioneer life, but the pilgrims as a rule were made of sterner stuff, and sticking to their task, they soon spread over the yellow, grassy plains and wind-swept hillsides of their province. Their territory was better suited than Otago for the first stages of settlement, and for thirty years its progress was remarkable.
Neither in Canterbury nor Otago, however, were the plough and the spade found to be the instruments of speediest advance. They were soon eclipsed by the stockwhip and the shears. Long before the foundation of New Zealand Macarthur had taught the Australians to acclimatize the merino sheep. Squatters and shepherds from New South Wales and Tasmania were quick to discover that the South Island of New Zealand was a well-nigh ideal land for pastoral enterprize.
Coming to Canterbury, Otago and Nelson they taught the new settlers to look to wool and meat rather than to oats and wheat for profit and progress. In a few years the whole of the east and centre of the island, except a few insignificant cultivated patches, was leased in great "runs" of from 10,000 to 100,000 acres to grazing tenants. The Australian term "squatter" was applied to and accepted good-humouredly by these. Socially and politically, however, they were the magnates of the colony, sometimes financially also, but not always. Alas! the price of sheep and wool could go down by leaps and bounds, as well as up, and two or three bad years would deliver over the poor squatter as bond-slave to some bank or mortgage company.
In the end, maybe, his mortgagee stepped in; he and his children saw their homestead, with its garden and clumps of planted eucalypts, willows and poplars an oasis in the grassy wilderness no more. Sometimes a new squatter reigned in his stead, sometimes for years the mortgagee left the place in charge of a shepherd a new and dreary form of absentee ownership. The peasant cultivator, or "cockatoo" (another Australian word), followed slowly in the sheep farmer's wake.
As late as 1857 there were not fifty thousand acres of land under tillage in the South Island. The chief export was wool. The wool-growers looked upon their industry as the backbone of the country. So, at any rate, for many years it was. But then the system of huge pastoral leases meant the exclusion of population from the soil. A dozen shepherds and labourers were enough for the largest run during most of the year. Only when the sheep had to be mustered and shorn were a band of wandering workmen called in. The work done, they tramped off to undertake the next station, or to drink their wages at the nearest public-house.
The endowed churches, the great pastoral leases, high-priced land, and the absence of Maori troubles, were the peculiar features of the southern settlement of New Zealand. Naturally these new communities, while adding greatly to the strength and value of the Colony as a whole, brought their own special difficulties to its rulers.
With rare exceptions the settlers came from England and Scotland, not from Australia, and were therefore quite unused to despotic government. Having no Maori tribes in overwhelming force at their doors, they saw no reason why they should not at once be endowed with self-government. They therefore threw themselves heartily into the agitation for a free constitution, which by this time was in full swing in Wellington amongst the old settlers of the New Zealand Company.
Moreover, in this, for the first time in the history of the Colony, the settlers were in accord with the Colonial Office. As early as 1846, Earl Grey had sent out the draft of a constitution the details of which need not detain us, inasmuch as it never came to the birth. Sir George Grey refused to proclaim it, and succeeded in postponing the coming-in of free institutions for six years.
For many reasons he was probably right, if only because the Maoris were still in a large majority; yet under Earl Grey's proposed constitution they would have been entirely governed by the white minority. War-like and intelligent, and with a full share of self-esteem, they were not a race likely to put up with such an indignity. But Governor Grey's action, though justifiable, brought him into collision with the southern settlers. God ley, with questionable discretion, flung himself into the constitutional controversy.
Grey was successful in inducing the Maoris to sell a fair amount of their surplus land. During the last years of his rule and the four or five years after he went, some millions of acres were bought in the North Island. This, following on the purchase of the whole of the South Island, had opened the way for real progress. The huge estate thus gained by the Crown brought to the front new phases of the eternal land question. The question had to be faced as to what were to be the terms under which this land was to be sold and leased to the settlers.
Up to 1852 the settlers everywhere, except in the north, had to deal, not with the Crown, but with the New Zealand Company. But in 1852 the Company and its species of overlordship were finally extinguished. A quarter of a million was paid to it in satisfaction of its claims. Thereafter, the Company, with its high aims, its blunders, its grievances, and its achievements, vanishes from the story of New Zealand.
In the Church settlements of the South the Wakefield system was in full operation. Three pounds an acre was being charged for land. One pound went to the churches and their schools. This system of endowment Grey set himself to stop, and he did so at the cost of embittering his relations with the Southerners, which already were none too pleasant.
For the rest, the southern settlements continued within their original special areas to sell land at from; 1 to 2 an acre, and on the whole, at any rate up to the year 1870, their system could not be called a failure. A great deal of good settlement went on under it, and ample funds were provided for the construction of roads, bridges, and other public works. Meantime, Grey was called upon to devise some general system of land laws for the Colony at large.
The result was the famous land regulations of 1853, a code destined to have lasting and mischievous effects upon the future of the country. Its main feature was the reduction of the price of land to ten shillings an acre. Had this been accompanied by stringent limitations as to the amount to be purchased by any one man, the result might have been good enough. But it was not; nor did those who ruled after Grey think fit to impose any such check until immense areas of the country had been bought up by pastoral tenants and thus permanently locked up against close settlement.
Grey's friends vehemently maintain that it was not he but those who afterwards administered his regulations who were responsible for this evil. They point out that it was not until after his departure that the great purchases began. No doubt Sir George Grey never dreamt that his regulations would bring about the bad results they did. More than that one can hardly say. His own defence on the point, as printed in his life by Rees, is virtually no defence at all. It is likely enough that had he retained the control of affairs after 1853 he would have imposed safeguards. He is not the only statesman whose laws have effects not calculated by their maker.
Reeves, William Pember. New Zealand. Horace Marshall & Son, 1898.
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