REMEMBERING WAKEFIELD

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 416, 26 July 1928, Page 10

REMEMBERING WAKEFIELD

5X the Colonial Office in London stands a bust of Edward Gibbon Wakefield to commemorate his statesman-like qualities and disinterested efforts in the interests of the British Empire as a whole. This despite the fact that Wakefield very vigorously heckled the Colonial Office for its opposition to his expansion schemes. The memorial was placed in position as long ago as 1875. But the countries that Wakefield founded have done nothing to perpetuate the memory of the man to whom so much is due.

As Dr. Harrop, a Xew Zealander, has pointed out in a recent biography, no serious historian to-day would deem any review of the Empire complete without an appreciative tribute to Edward Gibbon Wakefield, and his Xew Zealand Company, which prevented this country from becoming a French penal settlement. From time to time abortive movements have been made to honour the name of Wakefield in the Dominion. Xow, sixty-six years after his death, another attempt is to he made. Sir John Sinclair moved in the Legislative Council yesterday that the Government take into consideration the erection of a suitable memorial to the memory of Edward Gibbon Wakefield and William Hayward Wakefield. The Elder Statesmen unanimously agreed. It remains for the Government to act. It is hut fitting that a memorial should be provided for a dauntless fighter whose efforts, without doubt, placed Xew Zealand on the map of the British Empire.