A journalist in early New Zealand

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33425, 5 January 1974, Page 8

A journalist in early New Zealand

History And Politics. Containing the Political Recollections and Leaves from the writings of a New Zealand Journalist, 1851 1861-1862-1877. By Richard Wakelin. Lyon and Blair; George W. Dutton, 1877. 100 pp. (Reviewed by A.R.) The Hocken Library of the University of Otago is to be congratulated on its initiative in reprinting rare and out-of-print pamphlets and short works on nineteenth century New Zealand. After publishing a series of opposed viewpoints on the Maori Wars, it has turned its atention to more general if little known works. Its latest facsimile reprint is a set of recollections and “Leaves from My Writings,” by Richard Wakelin, a capable if partisan journalist who, after some experience with a Chartist paper in England and in both Canada and the United States, tried his luck in New Zealand. As a writer for the “Wellington hide-

pendent” and later editor of the “Wairarapa Standard,” he showed himself well acquainted with the politics and politicians of his day. Wakelin’s book is of no great importance, but it has its interest, and some passages will be read with pleasure and profit by students and general readers alike. While some allowance has to be made for his contemporary bias in favour of Sir George Grey and against “the Auckland and Sydney land sharks” as well as the “missionary land cormorants,” Wakelin’s writings do bring out some of the bitterness roused by dealings in land in the period of Grey’s first governorship. His denunciation of the “Financial Compact” of 1856, which was concerned with paying off the New Zealand Company’s loan and transferring both the responsibility for the administration of “Waste Lands” and the land revenues (subject to certain charges) to the Provincial Councils, as “one of the most gigantic swindles in modern

history” appears to have been inspired by his antipathy to Canterbury and the South Island generally and his concern for the interests of Wellington and the Wairarapa. In one of his editorials he took "The Press” to task for its over-romantic and over-generous attitude to the Southern or Confederate cruiser Alabama during the American Civil War, and other articles reproduced in this little book show Wakelin’s interests to have been broad and varied. Nevertheless, the two main themes of this book remain, first land, land sales, and the dispersal of the funds raised from these sales, and. secondly, the career and policies of Sir George Grey, for whom Wakelin had unbounded admiration. Wakelin’s writings, some of which are simply his own newspaper articles, present authentic if prejudiced views of their own day. His comments on Edward Gibbon Wakefield, Dr Featherston, and other notables are eminently readable today. In addition, he gives some pen portraits and stories which are just not available anywhere else. For instance, there was Judge Stephen who was transferred from Otago to Wellington to succeed Mr Justice Chapman. Wakelin says, “Before leaving Port Chalmers for Wellington Judge Stephen committed an assault on a settler there, and excused himself for having done so on the ground that he could not wait to obtain redress by ‘the slow and tardy process of the law’.” Even more entertaining is his account of the altercation between Colonel McCleverty and William Fitzherbert, the Wellington Provincial Secretary, during which the colonel, mounted on his black charger, flourished his whip in a most threatening manner.