Transcriber’s Notes:
The Table of Contents was created by the transcriber and placedin the public domain.
Additional Transcriber’s Notes are at theend.
CONTENTS
Reasons for Emigrating.
Reasons for Preferring New Zealand to Every Other Emigration Field, and for Forming a Scots New Zealand Company.
Fundamental Rules Respecting Shares.
Further Regulations Respecting the Management of the Company’s Affairs.
Importance of Colonization to the British People.
Land Property Right.
Utility of Emigration and Colonies.
Especial Reasons for Colonizing New Zealand.
To the British Fair.
Slavery.
Postscript.
PROSPECTUS, &c.
The object of the Scots New Zealand Land Company, isto lay out the Capital of the Shareholders to the greatestadvantage, in transporting them, their families, and friends,to New Zealand, and in purchasing Land and other Property,and to obtain Protection and other Social Advantages.
At a Meeting of intending Shareholders, held at Perth, on the24th of August 1839, Patrick Matthew in the Chair, the followingProspectus of the Scots New Zealand Land Company,moved by William Gorrie, and seconded by William Taylor,was unanimously agreed to, and ordered to be published, theprincipal portion of the same having previously been examinedand approved of by intending Shareholders in various parts ofScotland.
REASONS FOR EMIGRATING.
1st, Because a new country, free of debt and ancient encumbrances,with a plentiful supply of virgin soil at a low price, underall the advantages of modern science and art, affords a superiorfield for human industry, higher wages for labour, and greater returnsupon capital, and also more healthful occupation, than anold densely-peopled country, where all the land is already appropriated,cultivated, and high-priced,—where capital is renderedcomparatively unproductive, science in a great degree unavailing,and industry is crushed to the earth by a load of public debt, and[2]where a great portion of the population follow unwholesome occupations,shut up from the fresh air of heaven.
2d, Because, in a new country, free of slavery, almost everyman is a holder of property,—deriving an income at the same timefrom property and from labour, a state of