AUCKLAND'S BIRTHDAY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LII, Issue 16026, 18 September 1915, Page 6

AUCKLAND'S BIRTHDAY

It is happily coincident that the issue of the Herald which reports the departure from our city of the second contingent of Maori soldiers who go to do battle for the Empire should appear on the birthday of Auckland. Exactly three-quarters of a century ago—on September 18, 1840 —the second capital of New Zealand, the sit-© of which was selected by Governor Hobson, was formally invested with its gubernatorial dignity by the hoisting of the British flag for the first time. The flag was flown from a staff erected on the promontory afterwards crowned with Fort Britomart, and the occasion, as befitted the founding of a great commercial city of the future, was duly celebrated, not only by the thunder of guns, but also by the holding of the first regatta ever held on the Waitemata. From the day on which Captain Hobson first raised the flag over the new settlement Auckland has grown and flourished, although it was thought by many to be condemned to relative obscurity. In 1865, as a result of complaints that it was too far north to suit the convenience of the Southern provinces, the seat of government was removed to Wellington. Had there been railway connection between Auckland and Wellington in those days there would have been no occasion to raise the question of a change- We may find consolation, however, in the fact that although it ceased to be the home of Parliament, Auckland outdistanced all other centres in population and importance, and retains supremacy as the commercial capital of New Zealand. The city and province, despite drawbacks associated with the Maori wars between 1860 and 1870, and the longmaintained " Taihoa" policy in railways and native lands, have steadily advanced from great to greater things. To-day we have a Greater Auckland, with a population of 110,000, and a province comprising three times that number, equal to the whole population of New Zealand in 1874- These past 75 years has been full of progress; the coming 75 years is as full of promise for the fertile and imperfectly-developed province of which cur flourishing city is the centre. The history of Auckland completely justifies Captain Hobson's selection of a site, a selection to which he was prompted by Sir John Logan Campbell, the " Father of Auckland." As Dr. Thomson predicted a few years later in his " Story of Xew Zealand," the City of Auckland better perpetuates to-day the memory of New Zealand's first Governor than would a pillar of stone or a statue of braes.