PIONEERS IN N.Z.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 208, 3 September 1938, Page 11

PIONEERS IN N.Z.

FOUNDING OF OTAGO.

SCOTTISH CHURCH'S ROLE. I COLONISATION EXPERIMENT. ® (Special.—By Air Mall.) i GLASGOW, August 12. t Almost 100 years ago the colony of New Zealand was established by Royal c Charter. The Scottish Church took an 1 active part in promoting migration this new settlement. | c The minister of Martyrs' Parish, Paisley, the Rev. John Macfarlane, led 1 f the fi'iist band of Presbyterians that 1 landed at Port Nicholson, in the ( southern part of the North Island. He ( was thus the pioneer of Presbyterian- 5 ism in this colony. . There was another migration to New j Zealand shortly aftec the Disruption, j Glasgow had a chief share in it, and visitors to the Empire Exhibition i ro ™ Otago, New Zealand, will shortly be| commemorating the event. " In the Trades House, Glasgow. & meeting was held on August 10, 1847. It was under the auspices of the Lay < Association of the Free Church of Scot- } land "with a view to promote the colony of in New Zealand." The adver- < tisenient calling the meeting promise "that important information would be communicated and measures adopted tor giving immediate effect to the enterprise." The chair was taken by the Rig ll Hon. Fox Maule, and the meeting _^' as ' composed of "members of the * ree Church and others interested for themselves or their friends." Planned Emigration. Addressing the meeting in the Trades House, Mr. Fox Maule, having referred to a Ittrge tract of country W New Zealand which it was proposed to bring under the operation of general colonisation, laid stress on th® neW system which was to be adopted. "The plan which it is proposed to follow in these operations is one different from any which has been adopted]

for at least two centuries. Colonisation of late has been thought to be sufficiently attended to when ships were provided, expenses met, and people set down upon the foreign strand." 1 In place of such random emigration as had hitherto prevailed the people were to be accompanied "with their valued institutions and to present in each case a complete section of the Home Society with its social comforts and economic combinations of capital and labour." In supporting the new experiment Dr. Aldcorn expatiated upon the advantage to be derived from the large tract of prairie land about Otago, where there was plenty of wooding for fuel and for other purposes, and Mr. Campbell of Tulichewan was of the opinion that J Otago possessed great inducements to a mau who wished to apply a small capita] to a good purpose. I In March. 1848, Thomas Burns, j formerly minister of Monkton and jPrestwiek and who joined the Free Church in 1843. arrived at Dunedin (then New Edinburgh) accompanied 236 Free Church emigrants. Dr. Burns was a. nephew of the poet, Hobert Burns. He was born at Mossgiel, Mauchline, April 10, 1796.

Present Need. New Zealand still needs population, as do all our Dominions. A former Governor-General of New Zealand. Viscount Bledisloe, has said that it was difficult to see how New Zealand was going to maintain its economic existence with not more than 1,500,000 inhabitants, and with immense areas of potentially fertile but undeveloped land and mineral resources which the world needs and which so far are almost wholly untapped. There is, however, more than its 1 economic existence. There is also its political existence that is jeopardised through lack of population. The Prime Minister of New Zealand —Mr. Savage —recognises that the first line of defence is population, and that "their only claim to territory is that it is not allowed to remain empty and ■ unused.". The population must be trebled. This • can only be _ done by natural increase . and by immigration. When so much ' time is being given to revise the Imperial policy of migration it would ii be well to keep in mind the enlightened . system adopted by the Scottish Church 1100 years ago.