GIBBON WAKEFIELD

Evening Star, Issue 14413, 8 July 1910, Page 1

GIBBON WAKEFIELD

NATIONAL MEMORIAL SUGGESTED,

[Special to the Sxae.]

CHRISTCHURCH, July 8. A joint committee of the Canterbury College Board of Governors and the Canterbury Early Colonists’ Association yesterday launched a .scheme for the erection of a national memorial to Edward Gibbon Wakefield, the founder of New Zealand. It is proposed to raise funds by private subscription, and to ask Parliament for a subsidy. If the Government consider favorably the proposal to approach Parliament, it is hoped that committees will bo set up in the largest centres to act in co-operation with a central committee (probably Jocated in Wellington) in making some form of active canvass. , The mover of the motion in favor <d a memorial was Dr James Eight, and he delivered a most scholarly address on the early history of the Dominion. ’ “It was because Captain Cook discovered Now; Zealand,” raid Dr Eight, “not because the people and Government of England in the thirties were anxious to extend their dominions in these waters, but simply because Wakefield in the first place stimulated the British Government to acquire the sovereignty of the country; and, Secondly, drew the attention of the Government, particularly by the communications of the Land Company, -to the imminent danger that then existed of French annexation—that is the great and distinguishing service which Wakefield has rendered to New Zealand. That- service is sometimes lost sight of in the services he later performed in the foundation of Wellington, Taranaki, and Nelson, and indirectly of Canterbury and Otago. He introduced a new system of colonisation, the chief ideas of which have colored all colonisation of the British Dominions since that time, and of Now Zealand in particular. Edward Gibbon Wakefield could be said: to be the founder in two senses. But for* him it would not have been British. He was the guiding and controlling power of the Land Company from 1839 to 1849, during the foundation of the various settlements? He could be described as the founder of Canterbury, inasmuch as it was be who gust turned Bcdley’s thoughts towards the establishment of a Church colony in New Zealand.