Barzillai Quaife (29 December 1798 – 3 March 1873) was an English-born editor, Congregational and Presbyterian minister, bookseller and teacher active in both Australia and New Zealand.
[2] He entered the Hoxton Academy in London in 1824; later he served as a teacher and minister in Collompton, Devon, and St Leonards-on-Sea, Sussex,[3] among other locations.
[3] He did finally reach Adelaide in September 1839, with the assistance of George Fife Angas; here he established a Bible and tract depot and spent six months writing for Archibald Macdougall's Southern Australian.
[3] before being persuaded to establish his own paper in New Zealand[2] Quaife and his family arrived at Kororareka (today Russell) on the Agenoria in May 1840.
He has been called "New Zealand's first public anti-racist";[2] among his harshest statements on the issue was one that "when…the Governor…lays it down as an axiom…that the natives have no independent right over their own property…we see no end - looking at the Cape as an example - of the catalogue of miseries which may be entailed on this inoffensive people".
[2] It has been suggested that Quaife's personality, combined with a liberal education and experience with both a free colony and an unencumbered, openly critical press, meant that he was destined for problems with authority.
Shortland was fresh from New South Wales, where the press was controlled, and in December 1840, recalling an old ordinance from that colony, he ordered Quaife to post several hundred pounds' surety and pay a fine.
[2] He left for Sydney, intending to spend a short time there, and began preaching in Parramatta, where he stayed to form a Congregational church and build a chapel.
[4] Quaife ministered to this group until 1850, in which year Dr. Lang reopened the Australian College and appointed him to the faculty as a professor of mental philosophy and divinity.