“NEW EDINBURGH.”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20832, 26 September 1929, Page 5

“NEW EDINBURGH.”

A NOTE FROM THE PAST. Written for the Otago Daily Time*. By Dr A. J. Habbop. EDINBURGH, August 15. On my way to Edinburgh I stayed for a few days at Malvern with Mrs Freeman, a niece of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, who possesses a very valuable collection of books and documents relating to New Zealand. Glancing through early newspapers in the collection, I was reminded of the fact that the first intention of the founders of the Scottish colony in New Zealand was that it should occupy the land now called 1 , Canterbury. Christchurch, I reflected, ■might now he. called Dunedin and Dunedin be called Christchurch if this intention had been carried out. Reading further, I found ..that the capital of the Scottish colony was to be called New Edinburgh, rind I also found a copy qf the letter which eventually resulted in the change to Dunedin. It was in 1843 that Mr George. Rennie set in train the project of a special colony for Scots in New Zealand. “.Hitherto,” he wrote to the New. Zealand Company on May 23 of that year, “ It has so fallen out that the great bulk of the colonists, as well capitalists as labourers, who ■ have emigrated iu connection with the New Zealand Company, have proceeded from England. We are desirous, therefore, that the proposed colony should be made peculiarly eligible for Scottish emigrants of all the various classes ■which constitute society, that it should be a New Zealand settlement for Scotland. This object wa think could be accomplished, by an easy and unobjectionable process: we propose that the plan of the colony shall comprise a provision for religious and educational purposes, in accordance with the principles of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, that that the whole of the emigration fund, arising from the sale of the company’s .land in the settlement, shall be employed In promoting the emigration of persons of the labouring class from Scotland only. ■ If this suggestion were attributed ’ to a narrow spirit of nationality, we should find our apology for it in the conclusive arguinents by which the plan of a colony in New Zealand for members of the Church of England in particular has been recommended to the company. It is not an exclusive colony that we propose, but only a special one.”' - • . ; On Slay 25 the. New. Zealand Company signified its general approval of the proposal, and on June 24 Mr Rennie wrote again: “Having- just returned from Scotland with Mr Cargill, I am enabled to report that tho plan of a New Zealand settlement for Scotland is very favourably received. . . , We are of opinion that New. Edinburgh would be an appropriate name for the Scottish settlement." The company’s office was at 21 South St. Andrew street, Edinburgh, a few doors from where'l write. From here Mr Rennie .wrote an “ Address to Scotch Earners,” “It is not our, hills' and glens alone," he said, that make Scotland. . It is our kirk-, our schools, the hamely Scotch tongue, the bonspiel, the market, in short, all our Scotch ways. In any climate nearly approaching our own a knot of us can make at any time a Scotland for ourselves. _ , , . Such is the. confidence reposed in a Scotch colony that already many English capitalists,. who do not intend to go out, are applying for land. They know that Scotchmen' will make the land valuable. ... We propose to sail in a body at the end of next October. ... . The site will be the best in New Zealand (probably Port Cooper), all restriction in this 'respect having been removed by the Home Government."* "A favourable report on Port Cooper by Captain Edward Daniel! arid George Duppa was appended. On October 30, 1843, W. Chambers, one of the editors of Chambers’s Edinburgh'Journal, wrote to the editor of the New Zealand Journal; • “If not finally. resolved upon, I should' strongly recommend a reconsideration of the name New Edinburgh, and the adoption of another infinitely superior, and yet equally allied to old Edinburgh. I mean the assumption of the name Dunedin, which is the ancient Celtici appellation of Edinburgh, and is now occasionally applied in poetic composition and otherwise to the northern metropolis. I would at all events hope that the names of places with the prefix ‘New.’ should be_ sparingly had recourse to. The ‘ News ’ in North America are an utter abomination, which.it has lately been proposed to sweep out of. the country. It will be matter for regret if the New Zealand Company, help to oam the nuisance to the territories with v which it is concerned.” ■

This timely letter had its effect, and when, | after much trouble, the Scottish colony was actually established, and the site moved to the south, it was Dunedin which • recalled to the colonists the city of the north. J