And So The Country Weeps For The Sins Of Its Rulers

The Father of Wellington's Lament

John Plimmer is arguably one of the greatest poets and writers of patriotic content in New Zealand’s history. Having arrived in Wellington in 1841, he established himself as one of the first businessmen of Wellington which then led to his election to various local political positions. Passing away in 1905, he was the ‘Father of Wellington’, and the statue of him and his dog Fritz is a much-photographed part of Lambton Quay.

Plimmer was an avid and talented writer, ever loyal to New Zealand, the Queen and the Empire. Much of his writing was directed towards the editor of various newspapers and journals, where he would give his take to an audience interested in the opinion of one of Wellington’s founders. It is honestly surprising that Plimmer’s statue has not yet been defaced, as many of his takes would have him cancelled as a ‘coloniser’ and slandered as a ‘white supremacist’.

Today, however, the Zealandia Heritage Foundation offers a very topical excerpt from one of his letters to the editor, detailing his lament over the emigration of New Zealanders elsewhere and his damning of New Zealand’s political class. Although a date for the original source is not provided, it would have likely been from the late 1800s:

To the Editor:

Sir, —New Zealand! art thou not beautiful in the midst of the waters of the Pacific? Hast thou not the means within thyself to make of thee a glorious nation—a young giant of British lineage—wherefore then art thou cast down? Why dost thou hang down thy head?

Why hast thou lost heart and become weak and feeble, despairing in the midst of the blessings of Providence? Why are people leaving thee to seek elsewhere what thou hast in abundance? Is the hand of Providence less bountiful, is thy climate become pestiferous? 

Are thy waters become stagnant, or is thy land become barren? Are thy goldfields exhausted or have thy coalfields ceased to yield their black diamonds? Do thy people sow thy fields and get no return for their labour, or do thy flocks die of murrain? If none of these things have failed thee, what dire misfortune has come upon thee? No foreign enemy has assailed thy shores, and yet thy people are leaving thee in despair!

Oh, my dear interrogator, do not blame New Zealand; she is all that she ever was, and no land beneath the blue dome of Heaven is more blessed than she is, or more ready to yield up her abundance for the benefit of the human race. But her rulers are not the sons of princes, and their principles of ruling are not honest. They strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. They add field to field and rear sheep until their eyes can see no good in anything but wool. They give the land and the interest to the rich, and regard not the rights of the poor. And so the country weeps for the sins of its rulers. 

Solomon says: ‘When the righteous are in authority the people rejoice, but when the wicked beareth rule the people mourn; as a roaring lion or a raging bear, so is a wicked ruler over the people.’ The men who legislate only to make the rich richer, who by their legislation break up the homes of the poor, and drive them from the country, as they have been driven during the time the present Ministry have been in power, who have driven out of the land the two most essential things to our progress—to wit, men and money. 

These are the wicked rulers that cause New Zealand to mourn. She is weeping for her children because they are not, for her household goods that are daily knocked down by the auctioneer's hammer; she is weeping for the pleasant homes that were built by the labour of the poor and are now in the hands of the rich; she is weeping and mourning for her children who are scattered like sheep having no shepherd, and for those who are left to be worried by wolves in sheep's clothing.

Well may New Zealand mourn; within the last five years she has lost 10,000 of her best settlers, worth to the country £1,000,000 sterling; paying £4000 per year to the revenue, while those who are left are tortured with taxation to make good the deficiency; and still nothing is done to replace them that have left, no immigration scheme, no work for those that remain.

Our cities are becoming desolate, our homes empty dens, and one legislator talks of disfranchising the Empire City. And these are the men whom the people have delighted to honour. I go about the city and I see the places that were the homes of the industrious poor. The gardens that were their delight in their hours of leisure are returning to their original state. It is true that offences must come, but woe unto them by whom they come.

Now, sir, it is plain to me that men and money are the two essential requisites to ensure prosperity to the country, and these essential things Parliament has thought proper to ignore. And why do they give no adequate reason for their neglect of what is the real life of the colony? It is not because money is dear and scarce, or because men cannot be obtained. Money is cheaper than ever it was known to be before and the best immigrants are more easily obtained than ever before—men who could bring wealth into the colony, if they could get land upon easy terms. I can see no other reason for this criminal neglect than the desire to retain all the land for sheep farms, and to guard the interests of those who have already made fortunes out of the people's inheritance.

- John Plimmer