HISTORIC ASSOCIATIONS

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 35, 10 August 1936, Page 8

HISTORIC ASSOCIATIONS

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —In your issue of last Saturday night you show a picture of the famous Adelphi Terrace, in London, in process of demolition. I wonder how many New Zealanders realise that in the very building shown in the picture colonisation in New Zealand had its birth? 1 believe lam right in identifying this building as No. 1 Adam Street. Here, oh May 20, 1839, a society called "The First Colony of New Zealand" was formed, the qualification for membership being the purchase of one hundred acres or more of land in New Zealand from the New Zealand Company, which had its offices in this building. Only a few hundred yards away, across the Strand and behind the present New Zealand House, the New Zealand Company itself was formed, on August 29, 1838. This was at 6 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden. Those interested in the history of early New Zealand place names might be interested in the names of those present at that historic meeting. . Lord Petre (Petre was the first name given to what is now Wanganui) was in the chair. Others present were Dr. Evans, Messrs. Riddiford, Halswell, Motte, Wright, Ramsay, Eyre, Hibbert, Enderby. Somes, Rintoul, McDonnell, and Captain Daniell. Soon afterwards, the headquarters of the company were established in the house, now gone for ever, shown in the picture. That building saw the coming and going of many other men intimately connected with the founding of New Zealand, such men as the Earl of Durham (John George Lambton), W. S. Baring, Sir William Molesworth, Dr. Samuel Hinds, W. F. Campbell, B. Hawes, P. Howard, W. Hutt, C. Lyall, H. G. Ward, and, of course, the genius of tha whole project, Edward Gibbon Wakefleld.

There are other associations of New Zealand in London. Deep in the murky stackrooms. of the Public Records Office in Chancery Lane lie literally tons of documents relating to the New Zealand Company settlements, unclassified, unbound, uncatalogued, both a mine and a morass to the research student. Not far away is University College, "the gutter-snipe university" as its bitterest opponents dubbed it when, an undenominational university, it was founded amidst the turmoil of sectarianism in 1827. In one of its rooms, lonely in a glass case, sits, preserved and dowdy in his oldfashioned clothes, Jeremy Bentham, tho great Utilitarianist. I wonder how many New Zealanders have ever seen him, and I wonder how many know that there in his glass case sitting with rather comical dignity is the real father of New Zealand. Amid the many thousands of Bentham Papers in the University College Library lies a note in Jeremy's hand suggesting to Wakefield that New Zealand would be a good field for colonisation. It would appear that Wakefield took the suggestion, and hence Wellington, the "Evening Post," and yours, etc.,

C. L. BAILEY.