III. EDWARD GIBBON WAKEFIELD

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 17, 27 April 1907, Page 24

III. EDWARD GIBBON WAKEFIELD

The name of Edward Gibbon Wakefield is connected with the history of three of England's great self-governing colonies, and in each case his influence on their future was important. His name is still remem he red in Canada as that of the man who was the first to foresee for the Dominion the great future on which it has now definitely entered, and to indicate the system by which it might be realised, in a way to arouse attention, and communicate some of his enthusiasm to others. Up till the time of Wakefield's residence in Canada—that is to say early in the second quarter of the last century it was almost a joke to bpoak of what is now the Dominion as a British colony. It was really a huge unexplored territory, settled, in the neighbourhood of its great eastward flowing river, by a French population, aliens to England in language, sympathies. and political ideals, and still resentful of the fate that had made them at least nominally British subjects. The English colonies, so called, consisted of a few little settlements scattered along the Atlantic coast, though dignified by the names of the colonies of Nova Scotia New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, occupied mainly by the Loyalist refugees from the United States, to whom had been added some settlers from the Islands of Scotland, mainly settled in Prince Edward’s Island. The British settlements, or colonies, were poor little nnprogressive communities; the French colony containing a much larger population was more successful, indeed, but was also distinctly hostile in sentiment. It was to Wakefield's appreciation of the possible future that lay before this great unappreciated and unused country, and to his proposals for its systematic occupation by self-governing colonies, assisted by private enterprise, that were owing England’s gradual awakening to the value of Canada, and the earliest developments of the idea of self-government among the people already in the country. The reputation which his work in and for Canada brought him in England gave Wakelield a sympathetic hearing from a good many people of influence and position in Britain when he suggested Australia as a field almost unoccupied for trying the experiment of building up an ideal colony, untrammelled by such difficulties as must be met with in Canada. The times were, propitious for such an experiment, and in some respect* Australia seemed a suitable place for it. England had, rightly or wrongly, taken possession of the great island, not only as the governing power, hut as the owner of all the land, ignoring any claim on the part of its native inhabitants, so that the great question underlying all *uccessful settlement might there be looked on as settled. What remained was to build up a colony on British lines to secure success. The. South Australian (barter was granted by Parliament on the application of a Dumber of influential people very much as that of Khodesia was in comparatively recent times —but the idea, and the plans on which it was intended to work it out. were entirely due to Wakefield originally.

The weak as well as the strong point of (Üblxm Wakefield’s mind lay in mi cess of idealism. An enthusistic believer in the capability and destiny of British people, aa the founders of

new nations that might still remain part of the old one. he was probably the first of the Imperialists of England. His plan for the new colony was that it shouW as far as possible reproduce English conditions, and tlic peculiarities of. English social life, under the impression, apparently that only in some such way as this could the new colony remain British in sentiment. To carry out this plan it was proposed to encourage men of wealth to buy large estates, and to lease the land on favourable terms to yeoman tenants for long periods. He and those who acted on his suggestions had not taken into account the faet that the conditions, the very amosphere of a young colony renders impossible the transplantation to its soil of the cut and dried conditions that have grown up in an old country ilke England. In practice the scheme proved a failure. The men—young men of the farming class in England—had scarcely come to Australia before they asked themselves the question why they should be condemned to work on other men's land in a country where all the land belonged to the nation, ami where there "’as land enough for half a dozen nations tn choose from. All the accessible land had already been allotted to the little group of capitalists, according to the programme, but that only made the complaint the worse, and, as might have been expected, the scheme, which had been largely assisted by a guaranteed loan on the credit of the British nation, broke down. Gibbon Wakefield, while he had formulated the scheme taken up by the Chartered Company of South Australia, had, it is only just to say, taken no share in carrying it out, and might claim that his plans were not carried out in the broad-minded way he would have advocated. At any rate, it is evident, from his connection with New Zealand settlement—his third and last colonising experiment—that experience had modified his views, if not as to what was desirable, at least as to what was possible in the extension of English conditions to new and distant colonies.

The South Australian Company had barely had time to show itself a failure before Wakefield was engaged on plans for repeating the experiment, with a difference, in the more hopeful climate of New Zealand. The New Zealand Company undoubtedly owed its existence to Gibbon Wakefield, and it may be said that, warned by what had taken place in South Australia, he had determined that he and members of his family should take a leading part in the active administration of the new colony. In the case of South Australia the colonising company had owed its position to a Royal Charter, and most of its capital to money borrowed on the faith of a Government guarantee of its bonds, and, of course, to the Crown lands handed over to it under the charter; in the new Britain

beyond the seas, it was intended to be entirely independent of Government assistance, and, as was supposed of Government control. In 1838 the English Cabinet had fully decided not to undertake the burden of any more colonies, and in spite of many representations made by, or on behalt of the missionaries in the country, it seemed absolutely certain that England would refuse to take possession of the islands where its missionaries had been preparing the way for more than twenty years. It was

under these circumstances, and in this apparently alien country, that Wakefield proposed to found by means of the New Zealand Company, an ideal English colony. Negotiations were entered into with some of the native tribes, particularly those settled at the southern end of the north, and the northern end of the south island for the purchase of large tracts of land for the purposes of the young colony, and in September, 1839, the first body of emigrants actually sailed for New Zealand, arriving at Port Lyttelton—now Welington—in January of the following year. This was the beginning of New Zealand colonisation, and it undoubtedly had more to do with the formal annexation of the islands to the British Empire than anything else. The earliest years of the New Zealand Company's settlements were even more troubled by native difficulties than those of the north, where the Maori population was more numerous, and although Gibbon Wakefield made his home at Wellington, it was not until the Constitution had been granted that he took any very active part, in the public affairs of the colony, which he, more than any other man, had been the means of founding. As a matter of course, he was elected a member of the first Parliament, which met in Auckland in May, 1854. Most of the members were really representative men—representative, indeed, of the very best elements that had been attracted to the enterprise of founding a new nation. Of parties, indeed, in the sense in which we understand the term now, there were none in the first Parliament; but there was a large proportion of men who under other conditions, or in a more advanced community, might well have been the leaders of parties. Amongst them all by far the most impressive personality was that of Edward Gibbon Wakefield. Dignified, and rather portly, with a calm, thoughtful face and dome-like head that would have attracted attention and respect in the world’s greatest Assembly, anybody could see at a glance when he rose to speak that he was in all respects the man of largest experience and of the widset outlook among New Zealand’s first legislators. The speeches he made were but few, and only on ths one or two leading questions that went far to the making of the colony. On two questions he left his mark, and it is right they should be connected with his memory in this country. The first was his insistence on the necessity for an executive Government responsible to the Parliament, instead of one responsible to the Cabinet in London: the other was his demand that of all lands purcliased by the Government from thq native owners at least one-third part should be set apart for small holdings, and should be preserved from Incoming part of the estates of capitalists. His speech sounds even now — fifty-three years after it was made—to one who can remember it, like a far-away echo of that part of the present Government Land Bill, which aims at curtailing great landed estates in New Zealand.

These two were the first and the last contributions made by Edward Gibbon Wakefield to the legislation of the colony he had in a very special sense made his own. Neither of them could be given effect to at once, and before the assent of the Home Government could be obtai nd he had passed, finally out of the ranks of active service.

It is interesting to remember, and there would seem to be some risk of forgetting, that in the early loss of Gibbon Wakefield New Zealand was deprived of the man who was individually ]>erhaps more its founder than any other man, and also that we have in him the earliest link that joins Canada and Australia with this colony. He was also a great man, as well as a great idealist. Full of the enthusiastic faith of our Empire builders in the capabilities and destinies of the race, he was large-minded enough to correct his ideas by experience so as to avoid in his plans for New Zealand the ideas of landlordism which lie had found failures in South Australia. Had he lived to take the leading part in the active polities of this colony, which he must have taken had he survived, there can be little doubt he might have assisted in preventing many errors made in our first half-century of experiment.