HISTORICAL TABLET.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume I, Issue 48, 7 February 1911, Page 11

HISTORICAL TABLET.

INTERESTING DISCOVERY. [PER PRESS ASSOCIATION, j Wellington, Feb. 6. During his recent visit to Sydney Mr. A. Hamilton, director of the Dominion Museum, made a very interesting discovery in the shape of an engraved copper tablet that had been made to commemorate the laying of the foundation stone of Parliament Houses, Wellington Mr. Hamilton found the tablet in z box with some old broken china, and he arranged to get it for the Dominion Museum. The inscrip tion on it reads as follows-’This foundation stone of a building eon taining a Council Chamber anil the other offices of the Provincial Gov eminent of Wellington, and also 1 chamber for the Legislative Coun cil and House of Representative! of the Colony of New Zealand erected at the cost of the Provinci of Wellington, was laid this 9th dai of March. A.D., 1857, by Isaac Earh Featherston. Esq., M.D., the firs Superintendent of the Provinci elected under the Constitution Ac of the Colony, 15 and 16 Vic. C. 72 (i. Single, architect : C. R. Carter

builder; engraved by J. H. Marriott.” The names attached to this tablet j were well known in the early days ;of New Zealand. Marriott, the en- ■ graver, was the author of a little book of verses published in 1858. | entitled “The Constitutional Bud’get.” a series of songs intended to I be sung by lovers of constitutional I principles on all public occasions. ; This little book is dedicated "To ; all true patriots.’’ It was publishI ed about the same time as the copper plate was engraved and contains 1 many satirical jingles about “Teddy ! Wake” (Edward Ciibbon Wakefield). and local affairs of the day. The author was apparently a keen Featherstonite, and very much anti-Wakefield. The book of verses, which is in private hands, is apparently very rare ; it is not even mentioned in Hocken’s Bibliography. and I have never seen another copy of it. Mr. C. R. Carter, the builder, i who was known as “The Lucky ConI tractor,” came over to New Zealand from Australia. He also was an I author, having written one or two 1 books of travel, and, I believe, he I was for a time a member of the Wellington Provincial Council. He made a valuable bequest of books to the Colonial Huseum. and the town of Carterton. in the Waira- : rapa district, is named after him.

Ther • is a son. now an old man. of the engraver Marriott, still living in Wellington to-day. I saw a small brass plate that Marriott engraved in 1858. This bears the fol-

lowing curious and interesting inscription : “To commemorate the names of John Varnham and William Bowler, who assailed the liberty of the press at »V eliington. but which attempt was happily' frustrated by a Canterbury jury. November 18, 1858.” Marriott was, I believe, the man who engraved for some of the early traders the promissory' notes for small amounts from one to about in e shillings that were in those days ironically' known as “Shin plasters.”