CAPTAIN ROBERT FITZROY was a tall, thin, melancholy,
religious man of aristocratic descent. He was impulsive by
nature, and eccentric in manner. His appointment as Governor of
New Zealand in 1843 was widely applauded in England. Aged thirty-
seven, he was renowned as a cartographer, and his command of
HMS Beagle on its famous expedition with Charles Darwin had
earned him the Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society. In
later life he became a distinguished meteorologist.

The New Zealand Company in Britain, still buoyed by the
favours granted them by Lord John Russell in 1840, but as yet
unaware of the Wairau disaster, announced plans on 1 July 1843 for
another settlement. This was to be 'New Edinburgh', proposed by
the liberal Scottish politician and sculptor George Rennie. He, like
other colonial reformers, argued that the colonisation of New Zea-
land would relieve poverty and avert revolution in Britain. ¹

New Edinburgh was to be a Wakefield scheme colony with a
Scottish character: the rural sections were to be only fifty acres, suit-
able for a community of ploughmen tilling the soil on small farms.
The settlement was to comprise 120,550 fertile acres, providing
two thousand properties -- each with a quarter-acre town section, a
ten-acre suburban section, and a fifty-acre rural section. One-tenth
of the properties would be set aside as Company reserves, and the
sale of the others to settlers at £120 each (about £2 per acre) would
bring in £216,000 -- a quarter of which was for the Company, while
the rest would pay for emigration, surveying, public works, and
support for churches and schooling. Two hundred town sections
were to be allocated to the municipality. The Company, as agents
for the scheme, would obtain the required land, while the New
Zealand Government would be responsible for allocating reserves

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