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The Founders of Canterbury

Reigate, 7th September, 1850

Reigate, 7th September, 1850.

My Dear Sewell,

—I was wholly unconscious of having left out the "My": but, in my turn, let me ask, why do you put in the "Mr."?

You were sadly pressed to-day, and worried, but never mind; for your being there saves the Association and the colony. Now that it has come to realities, all must have gone to—pot, without you, saving your presence.

page 324

I disagree about Lord Lyttelton. For lie tells you to act for yourself, and only to call on him in case of need. If you can't get your own way, and then he won't come to help you, it will be time to say he deserts you.

I wish you would put a cypher of your own and a Canterbury (mad) man on to the Committee, so as to make unattached cyphers of Hutt and Halswell. If you fix one day a week for getting through the forms of business at an early hour, Wynter will always attend: and with such an arrangement, the substance of business may be done by yourself individually every day.

Either Alston must be removed or somebody got to do his work whilst he makes holiday. He murders the affair. I saw him doing so over and over again to-day; and Halswell is nearly as bad because Alston is ass enough to let him: Hutt worse than both, also because the Secretary is any body's cypher. This is paying too dear for the whistle of tenderness for poor old Alston. Pay him in hard money: he would be delighted with a tenth of what he wastes.

The more I reflect, the more alarmed am I at the proposed substitute for the single responsibility which Godley will have appointed to succeed his own in case of need: but I comfort myself by supposing that you have called it a merely pro. tem. arrangement: let the tem. be very short—till the sailing of the Castle Eden, I pray.

I shall go to Town on Monday, hoping to bring you back for discussion in quiet of points that need to be disposed of and done with. Let us beware of a stagnation. We should die of finance.