NATIONAL BIRTHDAY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVIII, Issue 17691, 28 January 1921, Page 6

NATIONAL BIRTHDAY.

HOBSON'S PROCLAMATION.

WROXG DATE CELEBRATED.

The anniversary of the foundation of the colony of New Zealand will be celehrated in Auckland to-morrow, January 29. in accordance with custom. In this connection it is interesting to note, however, that from the outset the wrong date has been observed, January 30, 1840, having been the actual day upon which British sovereignty over New Zealand was officially proclaimed. As far back as 1890 Mr. H. Dunbar Johnson wrote to the Heeald urging the desirability of observing January 30 asAnniversary Day, pointing out that that was the true date, and not January 29. He sated that the error had originated in the "forties" through a civil servanfs blunder in copying the notification published in the New Zealand Gazette in 1842, in which year January 30 fell on a Sunday. In 1890, 1692. and again in 1894 the late Hon. Dr. D. Pollen ventilated the matter in the Legislative Council, seeking to have January 30 established as the date for the anniversary celebrations. On the first' occasion a resolution was adopted that it was desirable that the date should be altered, but the resolution was rot submitted in the proper course to have it carried into effect, and so nothing was done. In 1894 Dr. Pollen moved for the setting up of a Joint Committee of both Houses of the Legislature to inquire into and determine the matter. Dr. Pollen, in moving his resolution, remarked that the official proclamation of the sovereignty of Great Britain over the islands of New Zealand was made at Kororareka, Bay of Islands, on Jahuary 30, 1940. On that Occasion the LieutGovernor, Captain Hobson, who had arrived from Sydney in H.M.S. Herald on the previous day, read tbe proclamation by the Governor of .New South Wales extending the boundaries of that colony so as to include New Zealand, which did not become a separate colony until May, 1841. The first anniversary of Captain Hobson's proclamation was not officially celebrated, there being at that date practically no population at Auckland. Moreseat of Government was then in process of being removed from Kororareka, now known as Russell, to Auckland, or, as it was then called, Waitemata. Captain Hobson had landed at the Waitemata and hoisted his flag on September 18, 1840. When the second anniversary of his arrival at the Bay of Islands came Tounu, in 1842, a notice was issued from the Colonial Secretary's office directing that January 29 be a general holiday to celebrate the occasion. January 50, 1840, fell upon a Thursday, and that year being, leap year the second anniversary necessarily fell upon a Sunday, and the notifiaction of a holiday on the day preceding was made by the Colonial Secretary. No expjanation was given that the 29th was to be observed, because the proper day fell on a Sunday. There was no public holiday until 1847, when one was notified and, reference being made to the first notification of the anniversary holiday on January 29, it was copied verbatim, as giving the proper date. This, as Dr. Pollen pointed out in 1894, was done without anyone thinking it worth while to rectify the original error. The Parliamentary joint Committee was duly appointed, but no alteration was ever effected as the result of its deliberations or of the renresentations made locally in Auckland. The fact that the two dates in question fell this year on a Saturday and Sunday, as in 1842, lends additional interest to" the story of the official error of nearly 80 years "ago.