The Dictionary of Australasian Biography/Rees, William Lee

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1444298The Dictionary of Australasian Biography — Rees, William LeePhilip Mennell

Rees, William Lee, M.H.R., was born at Bristol on Dec. 16th, 1836, and went to Australia in 1851. He studied for the Congregational ministry, and was ordained in 1861. In 1865 he left the Congregational ministry, and was called to the Bar in Victoria, The following year he went to New Zealand, living first upon the West Coast, and subsequently in Auckland, where he was a member of the Provincial Council and acted as Provincial Solicitor under Sir George Grey as Superintendent. Mr. Rees became a member of the General Assembly of New Zealand in 1876, and was subsequently for some years out of Parliament. On his return in 1890 as M.H.R. for Auckland he was appointed Chairman of Committees in the House of Representatives. For many years a well-known cricketer in the different colonies, and devoted to all athletic and field sports, he comes from an athletic family, being a cousin of the Graces, the celebrated cricketers. He is the author of a political sketch of New Zealand in 1874 called "The Coming Crisis," the predictions of which have since been singularly fulfilled. In 1878 he published a historical novel: "Sir Gilbert Leigh." In 1888 he visited England and announced a system of co-operative colonisation. In the same year he published in London "From Poverty to Plenty," which contains a short history and analysis of the past and present systems of political economy, and lays down a new system of associative economics entirely opposed to the individualistic and ultra-competitive system of Adam Smith and his successors, also a pamphlet, "The Science of Wealth in the light of the Scriptures," a Christian system of economics. Mr. Rees is an ardent believer in co-operation, and for many years has supported it both in the press and from the platform. In 1892 he was elected Chairman of Committees of the House of Representatives. He has published, in conjunction with his daughter, "The Life and Times of Sir George Grey."