Trouble in the Canterbury Settlement - 1852

Copy of a letter by William Guise Brittan to [E G?] Wakefield from the Canterbury Settlement, 11 August 1852.
From the outward letter book of Canterbury Association Land Agent and Commissioner of Crown Lands : W. G. Brittan -(The correspondence until 1853 is from his position as agent for the Association.)1850 - 1857. Archives reference: Accession CH290. Item 8/1a.

William Guise BRITTAN (1807–76) was a founder of the Canterbury Settlement and Commissioner of Crown Lands.
He showed an interest in the Canterbury Settlement in 1850 and caught the attention of E G Wakefield, who wrote to J R Godley suggesting he should receive a responsible position in the Canterbury Association’s new settlement. He sailed in the Sir George Seymour with his wife and four children. In Canterbury, Godley appointed him in charge of the Association’s Land Office. With the demise of the Association he was appointed Commissioner of Waste lands.
This letter to Wakefield in England was written at a time when Brittan was still acting as the Association’s agent for land matters in the settlement. He had obviously fallen out with Godley by this time and the affairs of the Association were in disarray.

This copy of a private letter is presumably in Brittan’s own hand. There were few alternatives at this time to laboriously copying out correspondence by hand if a copy was to be kept. The 1860s saw the general introduction into New Zealand of a press-copy process which allowed a small number of copies of a letter to be made, usually in a bound book of special paper.