Although over 2,000 books and booklets were recorded as being in print in New Zealand in 1961, publishing of books has always been in a relatively few hands. There are at present only seven firms producing books in any number and two of these, Whitcombe's and Reed's, are by far the largest. Paul's Book Arcade (now Blackwood and Janet Paul Ltd.), the Pegasus Press, and Price Milburn have fairly recently come into the field. The period since the war has been notable for an increase in the number of novels and biographies published locally. Such books had been produced in New Zealand up to the turn of the century, but from then till 1950 authors usually turned to English publishers. The practice of publishing jointly with an English publisher, begun in the nineteen thirties, has been extended. The period since the war has also seen the very slow beginnings of local publishing for children. The publication of verse has continued, usually with the assistance of the New Zealand Literary Fund, whose help to publishers has undoubtedly ensured the publication of many books (prose as well as verse) which would not otherwise have found their way to print. It is nevertheless true that the supposedly greater prestige of overseas publication still persuades many good authors to seek a British publisher first.

The following table gives the number of new titles published in recent years in New Zealand, and a comparison is given with Canada, Australia, and South Africa, all countries which depend mainly on imports for their reading.

Any book or pamphlet containing five or more pages complete in itself as a single publication is included in this table. Official publications are not included in the Australian, Canadian, or South African figures, but most New Zealand official publications are included. Even so, the New Zealand production of titles is fairly high considering the population. Though the local publishing trade does not supply as large a proportion of its booksellers' stock as does the Australian publishing trade to its bookshops, the sales of local books have greatly increased recently.

(More recent figures are not available. – Ed.)

Bookselling in New Zealand obviously developed in a considerable way even during the pioneering era. According to the 1861 census there were 10 booksellers in Christchurch which then had a population of 3,205. Moreover, its bookshops had big stocks. J. Hughes of Cashel Street, Christchurch, advertised in the Southern Provinces Almanack for 1865 that he had – “BOOKS. Upwards of 30,000 Volumes in Stock including Standard Works in History, Biography, Travels, Science, Divinity, and Fiction”.

The craving of the New Zealander for the printed word continued. In 1901 Hamilton, with a population of 1,000, had two bookshops (and two daily newspapers). The proportion of booksellers to the population is still high, and the average purchase of books per head compares very favourably with other countries of the British Commonwealth, being considerably in advance of Australia. The average New Zealander probably spends or has spent about 35s. on books.

At various periods since 1940 the book trade has had to contend with import licensing which has been applied, usually with no great severity, to books. Books were exempted from licensing in 1963.

The first New Zealand printers were naturally involved in printing the scriptures and hymns for Maori converts, and for many years after 1840 most of the numerous books about New Zealand were published in England. In fact (apart from pamphlets) there was not much local publishing before the eighties; but in the early forties pamphlets were being produced mainly from newspaper offices (the New Zealander in Auckland and the Spectator in Wellington). The usual subjects were politics and religion, but in 1843 the first volume of poetry appeared entitled New Zealand, a poem in three cantos by R. C. Joplin. Apart from translations from the Scriptures, the first substantial book printed and published in New Zealand was William William's Dictionary of the New Zealand Language which appeared at Paihia in 1844. The first book of any size to be published in Wellington appeared in 1847, the first in Auckland in 1848; in Dunedin in 1849 appeared the first recorded booklet in Otago; 1851 saw the appearance in Lyttelton of the first four Canterbury pamphlets. An early and very important New Zealand publication was Poems Traditions and Chants of the Maoris, set down in Maori by Sir George Grey, and published by Robert Stokes of the New Zealand Spectator in 1853. By 1886 two-thirds of the books and pamphlets being written about New Zealand were being published in the country, but the proportion of books published overseas remained almost as considerable till the First World War.

The oldest surviving New Zealand publisher, Whitcombe and Tombs Limited, began in Christchurch in 1882 as a partnership of George Whitcombe, who had been a bookseller, and George Tombs, a printer. Tombs had formerly published a few booklets. The first books published by the firm, according to Hocken, were Recollections by Alfred Cox and a work by Miss Johanne Lohse entitled Mistaken Views on the Education of Girls. It is certain, however, that among its very early publications in the eighties was a series of copy books. Educational publishing has always been the mainstay of Whitcombe and Tombs and several of its school books have run to more than 300,000 copies, and a few primers to more than half a million. Apart from purely educational publishing, Whitcombe's built up a very large general list and for many years had no real competitors as publishers until the rise of A. H. and A. W. Reed in the nineteen thirties.

Reed's published their first pamphlet in 1923 and their first major book The Letters and Journals of Samuel Marsden in 1932. Since then they have published nearly 1,000 books; of these 160 have been written by one or other of the Reed partners (uncle and nephew). Beginning as publishers of religious books, Reed's have expanded into every field, and the firm's big list of books on sports reflects a strong New Zealand interest.

Most New Zealand publishers have been booksellers too. The Caxton Press, founded in 1934 by Denis Glover, are Christchurch publishers who are printers but not booksellers. In the nineteen thirties and forties the Caxton Press made a major contribution to New Zealand publishing by producing – without the subsidies which have attended publication of verse in the 1950s and 60s – a series of small volumes of poetry. These certainly contained some of the best verse which has been written here – notably by Fairburn, Mason, Glover, and Curnow. They also produced conditions under which poets were stimulated to write. Poets wrote knowing that good work would be well printed by Caxton.

Scarcely less important was the fact that Denis Glover at the Caxton Press brought much taste and discrimination into the printing of New Zealand books. An equally high standard marked the typography of the centennial volumes produced in 1940 for the Department of Internal Affairs, which had an influence for the better in this field. The Government Printer had always produced a number of general volumes, particularly books on science, and with the cooperation of the Education Department, has since the last war established a virtual monopoly of publishing for primary schools. Much active local publishing is also done for the secondary schools where perhaps 20 per cent of the text books used are published in New Zealand.

In the early years of settlement in New Zealand, colonists who desired to make provision for their children, or to settle property by will or in any other way, often experienced difficulty in finding friends or relatives willing and qualified to undertake the duties of trustee. As most settlers had left in England the relatives they would normally have selected for trustees, they were thus forced to depend upon persons upon whom they had no special claim. Under prevailing conditions it often happened that a trustee had become insolvent, or had left the colony or moved to another district before his appointment became effective. To overcome these difficulties and to provide a trustee who would be permanent, solvent, and qualified to act, the Hon. E. C. J. Stevens induced Vogel in 1870 to introduce a Bill to provide for a Public Trust Office. The novel proposal for a public official to act as a trustee was approved by the House of Representatives, but rejected by the Legislative Council because some members felt that the Government should not undertake trustee work, that there would be legal problems associated with the work of a trustee who was a Crown employee, and that private trustees would transfer their responsibilities to the Public Trust Office. Two years later, however, Vogel introduced a redrafted Bill which became law on 25 October 1872. Jonas Woodward was appointed Public Trustee. By 1880 his staff consisted of a chief clerk and a cadet; today (31 March 1965), the Public Trustee employs 830 officers, and controls 51 branch offices and 64 part-time offices and agencies.

The first Public Trustee's main task was to administer the estates of deceased persons who had named him as executor of their wills. Under an amending Act of 1873 he was given power to administer the estates of persons who died intestate, to act as trustee of settlements, and also to undertake the management of properties on behalf of living persons. In addition, the Court was empowered to appoint the Public Trustee committee of the estates of mental patients. The Office now has important duties, in certain circumstances, in respect of the estates of, or moneys due, to minors, and the aged and infirm. It administers unclaimed and enemy property, and discharges mortgages when the mortgagee is dead, overseas, or cannot be found.

The Public Trust Office holds almost 200,000 wills for living testators who have appointed the Public Trustee their executor, prepares more than 10,000 wills annually, and redrafts more than 7,000 wills a year for existing clients. It administers 19,000 estates and funds amounting to more than £80,000,000, with an annual intake of assets in excess of £15,000,000, representing more than 4,500 new estates and funds yearly.

by Raymond Joseph Polaschek, M.COM., B.A., D.P.A., Commissioner of Transport, Wellington.

The following colours are those worn by rugby football teams representing their provinces and districts.

by John Sidney Gully, M.A., DIP.N.Z.L.S., Assistant Chief Librarian, General Assembly Library, Wellington.

The old provincial areas were accorded the legal status of provincial districts. These have never had administrative functions of any sort, but have been used for the publication of some statistical data since they retain unchanged the boundaries of the provinces abolished in 1876. They also correspond broadly to areas of community of interest and have sentimental and historical associations which have deepened rather than diminished through the years. For some time after 1876 provincialism remained a force in colonial politics, although in an obstructionist rather than positive manner. Southland Province had been merged with Otago in 1870 and was not created a provincial district. The Department of Statistics has for many years published data for the “Southland portion” of the Otago provincial district. This area comprises the four counties of Southland, Wallace, Fiord, and Stewart Island, and is considerably larger than the former Southland Province.

In abolishing the provinces the legislators of the 1870s ignored their geographical distinctiveness as possible administrative areas. Had the financial relationships between the provinces and the Central Government been more rationally defined, and had the provinces acquired fewer powers and defended them less stubbornly, there would have been less need to abolish them. A modification of the provincial areas could have provided a more effective basis for local government than did the subsequent proliferation of local bodies, such as counties, power boards, rabbit boards, catchment boards, and education boards with their frequently overlapping boundaries. M.MC.C.

• New Zealand Parliamentary Debates, 1875
• The Provincial System in New Zealand, Morrell, W. P. (1932)
• Government in New Zealand, Webb, L. (1940)
• Crown Colony Government in New Zealand, McLintock, A. H. (1958).

The Abolition of the Provinces Act became operative in November 1876 and the administration of many purely local matters was made the responsibility of elective borough and county councils. The Counties Bill of 1876 sought the merger of the 314 road boards into 39 counties, but parochial interests ensured that there were 63 counties by the time the Bill became law. The old provinces, or subdivisions of them, served as administrative areas for the education boards set up under the Education Act of 1877 and for the decentralised offices of several Government Departments, including that of Lands and Survey. But the progress of settlement made the old provinces unsuitable as units for land administration. The Land District boundaries have been altered from time to time and show several discrepancies from the provincial divisions.

It is not surprising that contrasts developed between the provinces in legislation and administrative practices. There were divergent and voluminous sets of regulations for the sale of Crown lands. Auckland was unique in offering free, 40-acre grants to fare-paying immigrants and in setting aside reserves for “group settlements” of immigrants. While most provinces sold Crown lands at the fixed price of 10s. per acre, it was £2 per acre in Canterbury, a legacy of the “high price” theories of the Canterbury Association founders. In Nelson all lands were sold at periodical auctions to the highest bidder, and in Otago, where land was sold at 10s., £2 worth of cultivation and improvements per acre had to be made within four years of purchase. Otago alone had a system of deferred payment for land purchases. There were varying methods and standards of land survey, and divided administration meant that there was no accurate system of triangulation to which land-title surveys could be adjusted.

Gold miners moving across provincial boundaries had to take out a new miner's right and become familiar with a new set of goldfield regulations. Early railway lines were built to three different gauges (Canterbury 5 ft 3 in., Southland 4 ft 8½ in., Otago 3 ft 6 in.), but in the Public Works Act of 1870 the Central Government fortunately asserted its powers and standardised the gauge for the whole country at 3 ft 6 in. Although the Provincial Councils were charged with the encouragement of education, only the South Island provinces of Nelson, Canterbury, and Otago made adequate provision for public schooling before the 1870s. In general, Canterbury and Otago were financially sound, and Nelson, although poor in resources, managed its finances prudently. Southland, of all the provinces, stood preeminent in financial dissipation, Marlborough in local factionalism.

Following the abolition of the provinces in 1876, several major consolidating Acts assimilated the mass of provincial legislation into the law of the colony. The most important were the Education Act of 1877, providing for “free, secular and compulsory” schooling, the Municipal Corporations Act and the Counties Act, both of 1876, providing for local government ment, and the Land Act of 1877, which brought the survey and disposal of land under control of the one Government Department.

By the later 1860s it was clear that the provincial system was a clumsy method of governing a small country. Steamships, telegraphs, and the removal of the national capital to Wellington in 1865 had reduced problems of communication. Most immigrants who had arrived after 1860 had little sympathy for the colonising theories of the founder groups of settlers of the forties and early fifties, and the mobility of population between the provinces had been given a great fillip by the gold rushes. Financially, most provinces had failed and, although Otago and Canterbury managed fairly well from their land-sale revenues, others could not maintain the normal machinery of government without grants from the Central Government. In 1867 the provinces lost the power to raise loans overseas, and the Central Government steadily absorbed many provincial government functions relating to the development of resources, notably railway construction and immigration. The inauguration of Vogel's public works policy in the 1870s brought “centralist” and “provincialist” interests into sharp conflict. When the provinces rejected Vogel's proposal to guarantee overseas loans by creating a Crown endowment of reserved lands adjacent to the new railway lines, it was clear that provincial powers were a handicap to national development. The Abolition Bill, introduced to the General Assembly by Atkinson in 1875, was carried on the third reading by 40 votes to 21, nearly all the opposition being provided by Auckland and Otago members.

Provincialism was a product of the colonisation of New Zealand by widely dispersed British communities. Separatist feeling was rationalised by pointing to the diverse schemes of colonisation or the independent interests and varied origins of the settlements. The “off-centre” location of Auckland as the national capital and the lack of easy communication between the settlements would have made centralised administration difficult in the 1850s. Although influential settlers opposed the establishment of six “vestry parliaments” for a white population of some 30,000, the prevailing political sentiment in New Zealand was provincial, at least during the 1850s. The introduction of regular steamer services between the provinces by 1860 and the advent of the electric telegraph in 1862 weakened the case for provincial government. Had the settlement of New Zealand been delayed until the 1860s it is questionable whether a provincial structure of government would have been thought necessary.

The strength of provincial sentiment tended to diminish outwards from the early settled heart of each province. Settlers in outlying districts complained that they received little share of provincial expenditure and, in some provinces, outlying runholders were concerned at the growing influence of small-farmer and urban radicalism on the provincial councils. In 1858 the General Assembly secured passage of the New Provinces Act, which made it remarkably easy for a disaffected outlying district to be erected into a new province simply by Order in Council and without reference to the General Assembly or the provincial council concerned. The qualifications for candidature as a new province were trivial – a European population of not less than 1,000 in a district of more than half a million but less than 3 million acres, and a petition signed by at least 150 registered electors. An amended New Provinces Act of 1865 increased the minimum population of any new province and required a special Act of the Legislature. The disaffected district would thus have to put its case to the General Assembly. Whatever the intention, the effect of these Acts was to discredit the provincial system of government by the proliferation of small and financially weak provinces.

Three sparsely settled pastoral districts achieved provincial status under the 1858 Act – Hawke's Bay in 1858, Marlborough in 1859, and Southland in 1861. That proportion of Canterbury to the west of the main divide was separated to form the County of Westland in 1868. As an experiment in a less cumbersome form of local government, the County was given only the administrative function of a province and legislative powers resided in the General Assembly. In 1870 Southland was reincorporated in the Province of Otago and, in 1873, Westland was accorded full provincial status. At various times the General Assembly received petitions seeking the creation of new provinces or counties from areas in North Auckland, Gisborne, North Otago, Wanganui, the Buller district, South Canterbury, and parts of Marlborough, while several petitions sought revision of the boundary between Nelson and Westland.

The New Zealand Constitution Act of 1852 established a quasi-federal system of government and provided for the division of the country into six provinces – Auckland, New Plymouth, Wellington, Nelson, Canterbury, and Otago. Elective Superintendents and Provincial Councils were made responsible for local government of their areas, but provincial legislation could be repealed by the General Assembly which also had power to create new provinces or alter the boundaries of existing ones. In 1858 the province of New Plymouth was renamed Taranaki, and between 1858 and 1873 four new provinces were created – Hawke's Bay, Marlborough, Southland, and Westland. Provincial organisation disappeared under the Abolition of the Provinces Act of 1875.

The boundaries of the original six provinces, defined by Governor Sir George Grey early in 1853, were drawn as far away as possible from existing areas of European settlement. They followed rivers or were straight lines across unmapped or unexplored country, as in the case of the southern boundary of Auckland Province which followed the thirty-ninth parallel of latitude. Despite their often arbitrary nature these boundaries caused little inconvenience, as close settlement rarely occurred along them prior to the abolition of the provinces. Only in the lower Grey River, on the South Island West Coast, did a provincial boundary separate closely settled areas and divide the hinterland of a substantial town.

The Constitution Act conferred on the Provincial Councils full legislative powers, apart from certain defined fields including justice, customs, postal services, and the disposal of Crown lands. Although the then Secretary of State for Colonies, Sir John Pakington, held that the Provincial Councils would have the role of mere municipalities, the provinces vigorously asserted their powers and, in 1856, through the strength of provincial representation in the General Assembly, they acquired the right to dispose of Crown lands. The provinces thus became the effective agents of development within their areas, being responsible for surveys, land legislation, immigration, public works and harbours, education and hospitals. Small-scale local works were progressively delegated to boroughs and road boards, which came to form a “third tier” of governmental units within the provincial and national structure.

When the islands of New Zealand were separated politically from the colony of New South Wales in 1840 and erected into a separate colony, the Royal Charter effecting this provided that “the principal Islands, heretofore known as, or commonly called, the ‘Northern Island’, the ‘Middle Island’, and ‘Stewart's Island’, shall henceforward be designated and known respectively as ‘New Ulster’, ‘New Munster’, and ‘New Leinster’”. These provincial divisions were at first of geographical significance only, and were not used as a basis for the government of the colony, then centralised in Auckland.

The situation was altered in 1846, however, when a further Royal Charter divided the colony into two provinces and provided each with its own political institutions in addition to the central government at Auckland. The two provinces were called New Ulster and New Munster, New Leinster being merged with the South Island and the southern portion of the North Island up to the mouth of the Patea River, to form the new New Munster. Each province was provided with a Governor and Legislative and Executive Council, in addition to the Governor-in-Chief and Legislative and Executive Council for the whole colony. In 1851 the Provincial Legislative Councils were permitted to be partially elective.

Before the elections were completed, however, the United Kingdom Parliament, by the New Zealand Constitution Act of 1852, abandoned both the nomenclature and the boundaries of these provincial divisions, and divided the colony into six provinces bearing names of local significance. From that date onwards New Munster and New Ulster, like New Leinster, disappeared from the New Zealand scene and became of historical significance only.

by Donald Edgar Paterson, B.A., LL.M.(N.Z.), LL.M., J.S.D.(YALE), Lecturer in Jurisprudence and Constitutional Law, Victoria University of Wellington.

• Constitutional Development of New Zealand in the First Decade (1839–1849), Foden, N. A. (1938)
• Constitutional History and Law of New Zealand, Hight, J., and Bamford, H. D. (1914)
• Crown Colony Government in New Zealand, McLintock, A. H. (1958).