Episcopalian Church; while the Canterbury settlers
drink their ale at the Mitre tavern, live in streets
named in honour of English prelates, and Puseyism is
seen in " a feeble attempt at intoning, and the glimmer-
ing of a pair of candles at noonday in a wooden church." *
In 1858 this last characteristic of the original scheme
of the colony had disappeared.
Had the New Zealand Company not broken up, there
would have been formed, like Maryland in the United
States, a Roman Catholic colony in New Zealand, for
the directors were as fertile in colonial expedients as
the Ahh6 Sieyes was in constitutions. But they gave
their charter of incorporation back to the Crown in
July 1850, and the causes which led to this result may
be briefly related. In 1843 the directors of the com-
pany, finding the old plan of getting money by forming
new settlements blasted by the Wairau massacre and
the war, obtained a supplemental charter, empowering
them to borrow 500,000/. upon the security of their
subscribed capital. Being unable to raise this sum in
the money-market, they reported to the Government in
February 1844, that their funds were exhausted; and,
as they had expensive establishments to support, the
British Parliament passed two acts; one in 1846, grant-
ing to the Company a loan of 100,000/., and another in
1847, giving them an additional loan of 136,000/., with
this proviso, that if they could not repay the money in
1850, they were to wipe it out by surrendering their
charter and property to the Crown. The day of reckon-
ing came, the money was gone, and the directors were
obliged to give up their charter, after an existence of

* The Hey. Mr. Tajlcr*s New Zealand and its Inhabitants, p. 264.
