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Rh in any shape under such circumstances, they must do so at their own risk, and with a full knowledge of their precarious tenure.

The Association is informed that reserves have been formed by the Government officers, for the few natives who inhabit the district in which the Canterbury Settlement will be established. If such is not the case, you will take care to have such reserves as may have been agreed upon defined as soon as possible, and respected in the same way as the property of Europeans.

The Committee have only to add, in conclusion, that a very material part of your duties will consist in sending home, by every opportunity, the most ample information upon everything connected with the country in which their colonizing operations are to be carried on. In doing so, you cannot be too minute or too particular. They wish to receive not only written descriptions of the climate, soil, scenery, natural productions, &c., but also, if possible, drawings and specimens of all kinds. Much of the attractiveness of a colony depends upon the extent to which intending settlers are enabled fully to comprehend and realize its character, condition, and circumstances; too much pains, therefore, cannot be taken by those who are on the spot, to satisfy the curiosity which is so naturally and so uniformly felt.

If you should be compelled by illness, or any other cause, to resign the post which you are about to fill, you will appoint, provisionally, your own successor; such appointment to be, of course, subject to the confirmation of the Association.

In conclusion, in all arrangements which you may find it necessary to make, as well as in all your communications with the colonists, you will remember that the Association is pledged to use its utmost endeavours towards the conversion of the Canterbury Settlement into a separate Province, according to the assurances which they have received from the home and local governments, as well as to procure for the settlement the establishment, within its limits, of local self-government; an object which they conceive most desirable for securing the prosperity of the colony, and which they have good hopes of ultimately obtaining. In the meantime, we need hardly express our confident belief that yourself and the colonists generally will cultivate the most cordial relations with the existing government.

When the North American colonies parted finally from their alliance with Great Britain, the duty which the Anglican Church owed to them—owed but never paid—was in a great measure transferred to the other hemisphere. Since the first settlement of Botany Bay, in 1787, a large cluster of colonies has gradually sprung into existence at the Antipodes. Now ripening into manhood, they ask from the parent state the same amount of self-government which the New England Colonies insisted upon before they resolved on separation; they utter the same loud outcry against the infusion of the pollutions of the metropolis into their chosen home; and they solicit from the Church that tribute of parental affection which the Americans for nearly two centuries sought for, but which the Church for nearly two centuries unnaturally refused to concede to them.

This sphere of duty the Church must accept, or perish. There seems no middle term between these two extremes. If the Church shall fail to reproduce itself—in other words, to beget individuals of a like species with itself—surely