A GREAT SERVICE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 33, 8 February 1930, Page 21

A GREAT SERVICE.

WITHOUT COMMEMORATION.

HEGLECT OF THE WAKEFIELDS

GOVERNOR-GENERAL SPEAKS.

(By S.S.}

"Tn ten years it will be the centenary of the Trying of the early settlers. I wonder if by then there will be a suitable memorial to the Wakefields erected in Wellington. A year or two ago there ■nrna £ movement in that direction, but it seems to have dropped , out of mind. I wonder if this celebration of the ninetieth anniversary of the founding of the capital city will revive that movement, and if, when the centenary comes to be celebrated, a fitting memorial to these far-seeing, courageous pioneers will lave taken shape. I always feel, looking back upon what field and Edward Gibbon Wakefield dared and accomplished in. .the promotion of British settlement in these outposts of the Empire, it is passing strange that among all the memorials raised to prominent figures in this Dominion, none is dedicated to the great menj;o whom New Zealand owes everything. If these eloquent; compelling words, spoken by the Governor-General at the annual gathering of the Early Settlers Association in Wellington the other day move the people of the Dominion at last t(j pay "some adequate tribute to the memoly of Edward Gibbon WakefieM and his brothers, his Excellency vrill have -one far towards repairmg the indifference - and • neglect which havestaod as * reproach- to three generations. When Sir Charles Fergusson T7J% OTam .ad Mward fiold New Zealand owed everything, Be, rfS ™ speaking eapta^lg The countrv, with all it had to offer in the way of soil and climate and. opportraitv, was here in any case. It would be literally true to say, however, that £ OatowfeH aid cooraga af Edward security they enjoy to-day. oalj by a or bv an obscure street sign else, that even their names are kept in remembrance. * •

la the Beginning. The public life of the elder Wakefield already has been briefly mdica*ed m this formation m tte WUafter all, is not so amazing field whi ch, an tlior would have Se pnbflc Mr. William GisKJwfaldi -few Zealand Bulere a*d borne, m , , picture of the Empare Builder sick an d weary what he «t^ e °£ ame > tQ Xew Zealan d in man, 'fifties and secured a seat in the early fiities nt _ B t even the ™it that he aarrt* to the VSard GObon WaMeld," |T«7v», almost grudging it

seem, "was practically the founder of the" colony, and it is, in a great measure, owing to him that New Zealand did not become a French colony, and possibly the receptacle of French convicts and recidivists." My old chief, and sometime colleague the Hon. W. Pember Reeves, was an equally incisive critic but a more discriminating historian. "He saw, and made the commonplace people about him see," he wrote of Wakefield, almost precisely at the time Mr. Gisborne was writing, "that colonisation was , a national work worthy of system, attention and the best energies of England. The empty, territories of the Empire were no longer to be treated only as gaols for convicts, fields for negro slavery or even as asylums for the persecuted or refuges for the bankrupt and social failures of the Mother Country. To Wakefield the word 'colony" conveyed more than a backyard into which slovenly Britain could throw human rubbish, careless of its fate so long as it might be out of sight." In the same strain. Mr. Reeves goes on to show that when Wakefield's conception of colonies came to fruition these outposts did not consist of fortuitous congregations of outcasts seeking to hide themselves from the gaze of- a censorious world, but of earnest men and women with-high ideals and earnest purpose reaching out for conditions in a new world that were denied them in the old. The Critics. Dr. Harrop, writing thirty years after Mr. William Gisborne and the Hon. W. Pember Reeves had committed themselves to definite opinions concerning the Wakefield family, covered the ground more closely, and perhaps more judicially, than did either of his predecessors in this interesting period of research. l ln these circumstances it is fairer to iaccept the exhausive review and sustained judgment of the student than- it would be to rely upon the passing allusions of the erstwhile politicians. '"It is not surprising," Dr. Harrop quotes from -a review in "Blackwood's Magazine" of more than thirty years ago, '•'that Edward" Gibbon Wakefield has been neglected for nearly half a century, for Edward Gibbon Wakefield .was a prophet, and prophets are commonly without honour, not only in their own but in every other country. Moreover, he had, ! so to say, a practical knowledge of the i future. He knew the means whereby his fancies would be turned into facts, and when the event proved the clearness of | his vision, envious ones were not. wanting to resent his accurate judgment. But the old animosities are falling into forgetfulness; the opposition evoked by Wakefield's sincerity perished long ago." p r< Harrop thinks Wakefield made a mistake in entering colonial politics, and doubtless he is right,- but the pioneer was essentially a man of action, and with great issues at stake, he never could play the part of a mere looker-on. Had it been otherwise, he might have fared better. • "If he had been content with writing about the evils of convict colonisation," the doctor tells us, "he ■would have provoked leas irritation $ but part of New Zealand might have become a French penal settlement and a plague spot in the Pacific. It may have been unscrupulous for him to write pamphlets which other people signed, but if it was unscrupulous it was also inevitable, it he had not worked anonymously the canses for which he wrote might have suffered." All his biographers, and all his would-be biographers, describe Wakefield as a difficult man to work with, but all of them are ready enough to admit that" few men of genius are. particularly amiaide colleagues.,

* A Debt' Unpaid. Tie tactful suggestion of the Gover-nor-General, that the people of New Zealand should set about acknowledging the debt of gratitude they and their forefathers owe to Edward Gibbon Wakefield, at least should rekindle the spark of repentance to which his Excellence alluded when addressing the members of the Wellington Early Settlers' Association at their recent annual gathering. It was hoped at the time of that mild agitation that the Parliament of the Dominion would take some steps towards repairing the omission of three generations; but when the House of Representatives" voted £50 —fifty pounds sterling —towards this end the whole country, or at any rate that part of it with a "conscience, was shamed into silence. It remains to be seen if Sir Charles Fergusson's appeal will produce any more creditable result. While we wait let U3 ponder over_ a concluding paragraph in Dr. Harrop's appeal for the recognition of a great man by his own people. "No serious historian," the doctor writes, "would now dream of writing an account of the history of the Empire without assigning a prominent place in it to Wakefield. French, Italian and other foreign writers have agreed with British historians in emphasising the importance of the change whieh he introduced in the spirit of British colonial policy. As the old jealousies anH controversies have died out, it has become more and more clear that Wakefield, who shaped his methods for the age in which he lived,, raised a building which may stand for all time." It was in IS9B, at the time Mr. Gisborne and Mr. Reeves were writing, that Dr. Garnett, in his biography of Wakefield, reminded the colonies of their neglect of their great benefactor. "The Colonial Office," he wrote, "wars no longer with Edward Gibbo-n Wakefield. His bust adorns one of its corridors and his spirit in a great degree, animates its policy. . .. But, while the Department of State which he ' combated had recognised his desert, the colonies which he created have done nothing for his memory, absolutely nothing whatever. It cannot be thought that this will long continue." As a matter of fact the conditions Mr. Garnett deplored have continued for thirty-two years after he wrote, and if Sir Charles Fergusson's appeal fails they may continue for all eternity.