THE MAKERS OF OTAGO.

Otago Witness, Issue 3957, 14 January 1930, Page 6

THE MAKERS OF OTAGO.

PIONEERS OF THE PROVINCE.

By

Condor.

I.—CAPTAIN CARGILL, 1784-1860. Some call him the founder of Otago; others the leader. Let us leave that dispute for others to settle. The fact that concerns us is that William Walter Cargill came to Otago as the leader of the first organised band of settlers, and continued to be their leader, accepted and elected, almost to the day of his death. Born in Edinburgh on August 28, 1784. Cargill was, fittingly enough, descended from a good stout Scottish Covenanter, in the person of that Donald Cargill who was beheaded in Edinburgh in 1681. Wiliam Walter Cargill himself was the son of James Cargill, a Writer to the Signet. As a child he enjoyed, with his brother Robert, th-e instruction of a Scots tutor, Thomas Chalmers, who was later a very famous divine. They also attended the Edinburgh High School. At the age of 18 young Cargill was appointed to an ensigney in the 84th Foo(, and went out to Calcutta to join his regiment. The bloody battle of Assaye was fought shortly after his arrival (September, 1803), and the casualties suffered by the 74th Highland-ers provided promotion for the young ensign, who soon found himself a lieutenant in the Highland regiment. Altogether he spent years in India, and then returned to England with his regiment. In 1810 he wejit to the Peninsula, where for the next four years he saw much of Wellington’s struggle against Napoleon for the mastery of Spain and Portugal. Severely wounded at Busaco, Cargill was invalided to England, but shortly returned to his regiment as a captain and fought through to the concluding victories at Toulouse. While still serving in the Peninsula, he married, at Oporto, in 1813, Mary Ann, daughter of Lieutenant Yates. R.N. After the peace of 1814 the regiment returned to Ireland and afterwards to Scotland, and in 1820 Cargill retired, with the Peninsula medal and seven clasps.

Even as early as this Cargill thought of going abroad, but his family was strongly against the idea, and instead he went into business in Edinburgh as a wine merchant. This kept him until 1834. when he went into the service of the Yorkshire District Bank in charge of one of its branches. In 1836 he became general manager of the bank for the East of England with headquarters at Norwich. In 1841 he resigned from the service of this bank and went to London, where presently we find him on the board of the Oriental Banking Corporation. While in this position his attention was attracted to the correspondence of George Rennie in the Colonial Gazette in 1842 regarding the proposed Scots settlement in New Zealand. He got into touch with Rennie and for the next year or two worked in close conjunction with him to further the scheme of a Free Church colony. The New Zealand Company favoured the project, and the Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland adopted it. Evidently Cargill had not quite abandoned his old idea of living in India, for when he paid for two sections in the New Zealand settlement, in July, 1843, he gave as his address “ Bombay, India.” Troubles arose at both ends—the massacre at Wairau in New Zealand; the dispute between the New Zealand Company and the British Government in London—and as a result the Otago scheme was suspended for about four years. When eventually the first pioneers sailed in the John Wickliffe, with Cargill as their leader, he was by no means a young man. He was already 64 years of age, with a military career of 17 years completed fully a generation earlier. But he had the ripe, shrewd sagacity which a body of Scots wanted in their leader “ I almost believe,” said Sir George Grey, some time later. “ that a more wise and sagacious man than Captain Cargil] never existed.” And so it proved in the history of Otago. In spite of his Nonconformist tradition and upbringing, Cargill was not more narrow than a man of nearly three score and ten years must necessarily be. He led t e settlers with the utmost success, not merely opposing innovations that were liberal but resisting some which were too liberal for the good of posterity (e.g., the land regulations) When the Constitution of 1852 came into force at the end of 1853 Cargill waited cautiously for weeks and months after the other provinces lest his council should take any step in the appropriation of moneys that was not fully justified by the law. He was elected superintendent without opposition; he was re-elected without opposition in 1855, and held office until the end of that term in January. 1860. For part of the time he was also a member of Parliament, where he represented the Dunedin Country District from December, 1855, to July, 1860.

Tried by the opposition of a small but able party within the province, Cargill offered a stubborn resistance to proposals which he conceived would sacrifice tho future interests of his followers. That tiouble overcome, he showed a, tendency to obduracy with his council which was obviously the result of advancing years. Yet the veteran steadfastly contended for nis dignity and his prerogative and chafed sorely in the harness of responsible government, under which his very utterances to the council had to be composed or approved by his executive before ho delivered them. Accused of nepotism in circumstances which left him little option but to promote some of his own influential and brainy sons-in-law, he said (October 28 1857): “ This I say because of the untruthful ribaldries that are on this occasion being circulated. Nepotism and family clique are words that must indeed be a farce, in the face of the Otago public, whose superintendent and sons-in-law have been so openly opposed to each other in polities, and that with perfect independence on either side. Truly there never has been, and on my part never shall be, a vestige of favour or affection in any such matters. But neither am I to be scared from public duty by any such missiles as I have referred to; and I would say it for the instruction of Mr Cutten also. I would have Mr Cutten and all others to know that I am in no degree to be swayed from doing what I have a right to do—to put the right man -into the right place—whether that man might happen to be my son-in-law or anyone else.” (The man he proposed to appoint was Cutten, his son-in-law.) A greater insult to the old man. though was the suggestion that he was old. “ This at least is the truth,” he admitted in a message to the council, “ and to the curious in such matters I shall give a gauge not easily forgotten. Your superintendent is just 50 days older than Lord Palmerston, and can look back upon half a century when, as a humble sub, he had occasion to correspond with his lordship, then Secretary at War. Subsequent experience must have taught him something of public matters, but he will only notice that the last 14 years have been extremely devoted to the planting and progression of this colony, in whose advancing prosperity he greatly rejoices, and I should therefore lament its passing under the slashing regime of a young assistant—young, at least. in experience—and whose first vaunted steps would be a breach of tho law.” Cargill held office for two years longer. He handed over the superintendency to his successor, Macandrew, on January 3 1860, and several months later resigned his seat in Parliament. When he died on August 6. 1860, aged 76, Otago felt that it was indeed breaking with the past. Its patriarch was gone. Mrs Cargill died 10 years later. Of their large family of 17, Christina married W. H. Cutten, Anne married John Hyde Harris, and Marion married John R. Johnstone. One of the sons, John, came to New Zealand after his father, was in partnership with John Jones, and married his daughter. He was in the Provincial Council and in Parliament, and’ died in 1898. Spencer, of the Royal Artillery and later of the Bengal Artillery, retired as a lieutenantcolonel and in Bengal. Edward Bowes came to New Zealand and was a prominent public figure in this province. William Walter an eminent banker who died in 1894. Francis Albert was in the service of the Oriental Bank in Melbourne, and Thomas Augustus was a banker in the West Indies and in Sydney. He died in Melbourne in 1855.