“I know you will be angry with my talking in this way of Canterbury. But if your Lordship were to land, I fear that, while you admired the material progress if the Settlement, you would share the heart-sickness of those who remember the aspirations of Mr [John Robert] Godley’s time and who have learned that a colony MUST go through all the phases of a new country in modern times”.
Written by Sir Charles Bowen (the 13th Speaker of the Legislative Council and the former secretary of John Robert Godley, founder of Canterbury)to Lord George William Lyttelton (Chairman of the Canterbury Association and remembered in the naming of Port Lyttelton) ~ @1861
Image of Sir Charles Christopher Bowen courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library – (http://mp.natlib.govt.nz/detail/?id=20433)*
