Henry Samuel Chapman
| Henry Samuel Chapman | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
21 July 1803 Kennington, London |
| Died | 27 December 1881 (aged 78) Dunedin, New Zealand |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | judge, colonial secretary |
| Relatives |
Martin Chapman (son) Frederick Chapman (son) |
Henry Samuel Chapman (21 July 1803 – 27 December 1881) was an Australian and New Zealand judge, colonial secretary, attorney-general, journalist and politician.
Chapman was born at Kennington, London, the son of Henry Chapman, English civil servant, and his wife Ann, daughter of Rev. Thomas Hart Davies. Chapman was educated privately at Bromley, Kent. In 1818, he entered a bank, then in 1823 emigrated to Quebec, Canada where he went into business as a commission merchant. In 1833 he started the first Canadian daily newspapers, the radical Montreal Daily Advertiser, in association with Samuel Revans.
In 1835, Chapman returned to England as a salaried intermediary between the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada and its friends in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. Chapman remained in England for some time and took up the study of law, being admitted to the bar of the Middle Temple in 1840. Five years earlier he had published The Act for the Regulation of Municipal Corporations . . . with a complete index and notes. He was also involved in journalism and various Liberal reform movements e.g. the anti-corn law agitations. He served on several Royal Commissions on industry, e.g. on the Yorkshire wool industry, and contributed to reviews and to the seventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.
Chapman founded the New Zealand Journal, which he edited and published in London from 1840 to 1843; he also published the New Zealand Portfolio. He supported the colonising ideas of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, and had a passion for colonial self-government, on which he published several treatises. In 1843 he published the New Zealand Portfolio, Papers on Subjects of Importance to the Colonists, and was appointed a judge of the Supreme Court of New Zealand. He was stationed at Wellington, residing at Karori. The size of the district meant covering such distances as Kawhia to New Plymouth (150 miles or 240 kilometres) and New Plymouth to Wellington (200 miles or 320 kilometres) on foot. But he was under the Chief Justice William Martin and, according to Charlotte Godley, always "considered himself too good for his present position". During this time Chapman gave what has become an influential judgment on native title in R v Symonds (1847). So in 1852 he accepted a position in Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania).
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