SPECIAL GENERAL MEETING OF THE SOCIETY OF LAND-PURCHASERS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume I, Issue 30, 2 August 1851, Page 3

SPECIAL GENERAL MEETING OF THE SOCIETY OF LAND-PURCHASERS.

A meeting of the above body was held on Monday last, at the Land Office, Christehureh, specially called together for the election of a new council, and for other business, of which due notice had been given.

It was carried by acclamation "that Mr Templau do take the chair."

The Clehk having read the minutes of the last meeting,

Mr.-Bridge said he rose, in accordance with the notice he had previously given, to move

" That no Land-purchaser in the receipt of a yearly salary from the Association, be eligible to sit in the Council of Land-purchasers."

Mr. Brittan said,—l wish to claim the indulgence of the meeting for a few minutes, and I am the more induced to ask such indulgence thus early in the proceedings, because the resolution that has been proposed, though guarded in general terms, bears a personal reference to myself and to my friend Mr. Fitzgerald, with whom I have had the honour to be associated in much business of a public nature, connected with the prosperity of this Settlement. Mr. Bridge has, in putting forward his motion, made no remarks and given no reasons for so doing;; we are therefore left to conjecture the train of reasoning in his own mind that has led him to move a resolution which evidently implies one thing, viz., that the Canterbury Association has interests separate and diverse from those of the colonists, and if so, then that those in the service of the Association must be unfaithful to yourinterests. I wish to say one or two words upon this question; and, in the first place, as to separate interests being held by the Canterbury Association, whatever may be your decision this day, I beg of you to dismiss from your minds every idea of this kind. I ask on what evidence it rests that that can be the case, which is as absurd as if I were to say that my head and the heart in my body were at variance with each other. Possibly you will not take my word for this, but I leave it for your own common sens? to decide. For what is the Canterbury Association, but a body of noblemen and gentlemen banded together to carry out the same objects for which you yourselves are striving? and I challenge any one to say in this meeting or elsewhere whether those thus banded together are not distinguished for their earnest zeal, devotion, and disinterestedness. I

TO THE SOCIETY OF LAND PURCHASERS. Gentlemen, —You are already aware of the reasons by which I was actuated in declining to vacate my seat in the Council of this Society under the circumstances which led to the* resignation of other members, a result I couM not but regret, knowing it to have arisen from misrepresentation of facts, and -i false interpte--tation of motives, equally unjustifiable and uncalled for on the part of the movers of the strife/ The vacancies having been supplied by the election which took place on Monday last, I am still, I apprehend, a member of your Council. But as I find amongst the names returned, those, of Mr. Brittan and Mr. Fitzgerald, with whom "•" at present I must decline all personal communication, and as the performance of my duty towards you as a member of the Council, would necessarily bring me continually in contact with those two gentlemen, I now beg permission to resign my seat into your hands, making to you at the same time my most sincere acknowledgments for the honour you so unexpectedly conferred upon me, by placing me in the Council wholly unasked and unsolicited. Trusting that the interests of the Society have in no way suffered by the part which I have at any time taken in its affairs, either as a member of the Council or of the committees in which I have been called upon to take part, I have the honour to be, Gentlemen, Your most obedient Servant, Christopher Edwd. Dampiek, Waicliffe, Port Lyttelton, 30th July, 1851.