"A FORGOTTEN STATESMAN.”

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 4307, 16 March 1901, Page 3

"A FORGOTTEN STATESMAN.”

Air P. J. O’Regan writes ;—Under this heading a lady has, I notice, been attempting too revive the memory of Air Edward Gibbon Wakefield, and at the •same time she has been severely rating Ne!w Zealanders for their gratitude. Of Air Wakefield personally, 1, of course, know nothing, but he has certainly left a history. Whether it would

be wise, however, to resuscitate it is an open question. Here is one anecdote about him, concerning which your readers can form their own opinion;—Air Wakefield, in

his early days, it seems, was in America, ' and the thing that most impressed him’ there was the comparative “.scarcity of labour,” which made, it difficult for real English gentlemen to get men

to black their hoots, unless they paid such wages as no gentleman could possibly be expected to do. This, of course, was before the sources of American wealth were collared by the Eoekfellers, the Asters, and the rest of the millionaire gang, and Air Wakefield .saw that the real cause of the. vulgarity of American society was “cheap land/’ in cons( qneiice of which labourers were too free to accept the wages offered by ‘•their betters.” Air Edward Gibbon Wakefield, therefore, would have noth-

ing to do with America, but he propounded a .scheme for founding a landlords’ paradise in South Australia. His

prospectus was circulated in England in 1830, under the title of “A Letter from Sydney." First he drew a splendid penpicture of the promised land, and bis delightfully philanthropic scheme for settling it was this ; The land was to be sold at a fixed price, the minimum being so high that no common clodhopper could hope to get a section.- Thus the polite people could have the land to themselves, and the “lower ordsrir’ would -find themselves com'pel.led to work for such wages as they could get. In defence of this callous piece cf cupidity Mr Wakefield said' that the poverty of England was due to the existence of an excess supply of labourers, and las scheme would thin • them, out, and ofier a.hotter lot in life to those who emigrated. The proposal “caught on” gloriously in England. Some twenty members of Parliament joined the association, so also did Henry. Bulwer and Gj'ote, the historian. A Bill was hurried through Parliament granting the necessary concessions to Mr Wakefield's company, and in. due course a. goodly contingent of “hotter class” people, accompanied with the necessary retinue of human working machines, reached South Australia It is interesting to note that a. newspaper man and a clergyman were specially imported also. Whether anv lawyers accompanied the select com tmgent I have never bepn able to ascertain, bid, it is gratifying to relate, the 1 *'■ miserably. The common folk refused to knuckle down, and the gentlemen wrangled among themselves. hr na y finance the idlers* Utopia were dishonoured by tho Imperial Treasury. Pater on the Governor was recalled and the settlement broke up, Mr Wakefield may have been an estimable man personally ; but if the foregoing is of a piece with the rest of his career as a statesman and a coloniser, his friends had better he silent. I think, you would scvnch history in vain for a more glaring attempt to enslave human heiims -n'LA*'' TVakefield's scheme to “‘colonise South Australia.