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reduced to seven, and in the end the whole arrangement as to apprenticeship broke down. The property compulsorily taken away was worth at least from £40,000,000 to £50,000,000. In other words, amidst loud self-laudations and congratulations, the nation paid up conscience money to the extent of something less than ten shillings in the pound.

BOOK III

THE PERIOD OF SYSTEMATIC COLONIZATION AND OF THE GRANTING OF RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT

1831-1860

"Planting of Countries is like planting of woods"

"New Majesties of mighty States"

CHAPTER I

Coloniza

THE year 1831 may well be considered a landmark in the Revival of history of Colonial policy. We have seen that the distress interest in which followed upon the exhaustion of the years after the tion. Peace caused men's minds to consider once more emigration and colonization as possible cures for social ills. A Committee of the House of Commons, which considered the subject in 1826-7, strongly recommended emigration by local authorities. In the order of nature, they affirm,1 food must precede population, and colonization-that is, an emigration where the labourers are aided by capital-provides that food. In an unrestricted and disproportioned emigration of labourers, no such provision being made, population, con⚫trary to the order of nature, precedes food. .

been

It had been the intention of Huskisson,2 when Colonial Secretary, to establish a Land Board in London for the management of the Colonial Crown lands. It has incidentally been noted how lamentably this source of Imperial wealth had 3 wasted by improvident Governors and greedy Councils. Rules restricting the amount of grants had been ignored or ingeniously evaded. In 1831, however, Instructions with reference to the Colonial lands were issued by the Colonial Secretary, Lord Goderich, which opened out a new policy with regard to the question. The credit of this new policy belongs undoubtedly to Gibbon Wakefield. The Colonization Society had been founded in 1830, the object of which was to substitute systematic colonization for mere emigration. Hitherto there had been practice without theory. The aim of the reformers of 1830 was to insist that practice should be carried out in accordance with definite theory.

1 Parl. Fap., 1827.

2 Col. Torrens, Ev. before H. of C. Com. of 1836. 3 The whole of Prince Edward's Island was alienated in one day.

Wakefield

An immense amount of literature and controversy has theory. centred round what is known as the Wakefield system.1 But although his theory as a whole had never a fair trial, certain of its attendant features have borne abundant fruit. That Colonial lands should be sold and not given away, and that the proceeds of such sales should be applied, at least in part, as an Emigration fund, are propositions, which, at the present day, may seem simple enough, but which, at the time, effected a complete revolution in both practice and theory. The three necessities of every community are, of course, land, capital, and labour. New Colonies are amply dowered with the first, but the capital, through which alone land becomes valuable, is frightened away by the scarcity of labour. No scheme of assisted emigration can insure to the capitalist labourers so long as, in the neighbourhood, land can be obtained for a nominalprice. The land, then, according to Wakefield, must not only be sold, but sold at a "sufficient" price. The amount of such sufficient price varies in time and place, but can be. roughly defined as that price which will ensure that labourers shall remain workmen for hire for a reasonable time. Wakefield was always very careful to avoid defining the price actually sufficient in any particular case; but it could be arrived at by noting the rate of wages, and the time during which it was necessary, with such a rate of wages, for labourers Its in- to work for hire before becoming land-owners. The regulafluence. tions of 1831 owe their origin to the influence exercised by

Wakefield upon the mind of Lord Howick, the Under Secretary for the Colonies. They required that all lands should be disposed of by auction at a minimum upset price, and

1 The best statement of Wakefield's views is in his View of the Art of Colonization, 1849. See also his evidence before the H. of C. Committees of 1826, 1836, 1840 and 1841. Canterbury and Otago in N. Zealand were the settlements in which the system received the fairest trials, and in these the result obtained is thus stated by Mr Rusden, Hist. of N. Zealand, Vol. III. p. 124: "Out of 11,915,393 acres sold from the foundation of the Colony till 31st Oct. 1876 for £8,101,859, the enormous proportion of £5,395,000 had been received by Canterbury and Otago for less than 4,500,000 acres. as that sold by Auckland, Canterbury had received money."

For about the same land thirteen times as much 2 Afterwards Lord Grey,

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