n; but, as one of them
put it, they were an "association of amateurs," and they made mistakes
more through ignorance than through design. Wakefield taunted his former
ally with the "delirious inconsistency" of his behaviour, but Godley
himself felt (like Browning's Rabbi) that

This rage was right i' the main--

though he regretted the vehemence of his language: "That I protested
abruptly, rudely, unfeelingly, and in such a way as justly to annoy
those whom I ought to have cut my right hand off sooner than give pain
to, I shall never cease to deplore; but of the protest itself I cannot
repent. And if (as I believe) it had the effect of determining the
Association to resign its functions immediately and entirely, I shall
always hold that I have by _that_ step conferred a greater benefit on
the colony than by any other step that I have ever taken in its
concerns."

Though helping thus to break up the government of the new colony, Bishop
Selwyn fairly captured the affections of the colonists themselves. He
arrived at Lyttelton within a few days of their landing, and held a
meeting with the four clergy who had then arrived. He was with them
again in February, and again in the following November, when he laid
down directions for the management of their ecclesiastical concerns. In
the bitter disappointment caused by the repeated failure to secure a
bishop of their own, the clergy and laity of Canterbury were all the
more ready to welcome the help and advice of one who, like Melchizedek,
met them with the bread and wine of human kindness and of divine
ministration. They were jealously sensitive of their independence, and
of their reputation as being the Church Settlement _par excellence_, but
Selwyn treated them with wise consideration. He removed one inefficient
priest to the North Island; he urged the Christchurch clergy to interest
themselves in the few Maori villages of Banks Peninsula; he gave his
warm approval to the establishment of daily services at Lyttelton; but
for the most part he left the direction of affairs (after the departure
of Mr. Godley) in the hands of his commissary, Archdeacon Mathias. So
charmed were the colonists with the bishop's personality that it became
a constant saying among them that "the fractional part we are actually
enjoying of Bishop Selwyn is better than a whole new bishop to
ourselves."

The limits of this book permit of little beyond a bare mention of the
Melanesian Mission, which