Edward Gibbon Wakefield : the colonization of South Australia and New Zealand
Chapter IV
Chapter IV
The Colonization Society—the Swan River Settlement—The Foundation of South Australia—The South Australian Commissioners—Mr G. F. Angas—Nina Wakefield—Her Death—Early Struggles of the Colony—Testimony to the Wakefield System
The
year 1830, memorable as the date of the overthrow of the Tory party, which, with scarcely an interruption, had governed England for forty-six years, of the Revolution of July in France, and of the outbreak of the struggle between creationist and evolutionary theories which Goethe thought so infinitely more important than the last-named event, also witnessed the inauguration of a reform of the colonial system of the British Empire. 1'When,' asked Roebuck with a sneer before the Colonial Lands Committee of 1836, 'when was it that your peculiar doctrines on colonization were first broached? 'In 1830,' Wakefield replied; and he1 It should be superfluous to remark that, whenever 'Britain' is mentioned in these pages, Ireland is included as one of the British Islands, the Britanniæ of the ancients.
'That colony, which was founded with a very general hope in this country that it would prove a most prosperous colony, has all but perished. It has not quite perished, but the population is a great deal less than the number of emigrants; it has been a diminishing population since its foundation. The greater part of the capital which was taken out (and that was very large) has disappeared altogether, and a great portion of the labourers taken out (and they were a very considerable number) have emigrated a second time to Van Diemen's Land and New South Wales. The many disasters which befell this colony appear to me to be accounted for at once by the manner in which land was granted. The first grant consisted of 500,000 acres to an individual—Mr Peel. That grant was marked out upon the map in England—500,000 acres were taken round about the port or landing-place. It was quite impossible for Mr Peel to cultivate 500,000 acres, or a hundredth part of the grant; but others were of course necessitated to go beyond his grant in order to take their land, so that the first operation in that colony was to create a great desert. The Governor took another 100,000 acres; another person took 80,000 acres; and the dispersion was so great that at last the settlers did not know where they were; that is, each settler knew where he was, but he could not tell where anyone else was, and therefore he did not know his own position. That was why some people died of hunger, for although there was an ample supply of food at the Governor's house, the settlers did not know where the Governor was, and the Governor did not know where the settlers were. Then, besides the evils resulting from dispersion, there occurred what I consider almost a greater one, the separation of the people and the want of combinable labour. On finding that land could be obtained with the greatest facility, the labourers, taken out under contracts which assured them of very high wages if they would labour a certain time for wages, laughed at their masters. Mr Peel carried out altogether about 300 persons. In six months after his arrival he was obliged to make his own bed, and fetch water for himself and light his own fire. All his labourers had left him. The capital, therefore, which he took out—implements, seeds and stock—immediately perished; without shepherds to take care of the sheep, the sheep wandered and were lost, eaten by the native dogs and killed by the natives and some of the other colonists, very likely his own workmen; his seeds perished on the beach; his wooden houses were there in frame, in pieces, but could not be put together, and were therefore quite useless, and rotted on the beach. This was the case with the capitalists generally. The labourers, obtaining land very readily, and running about to fix upon locations for themselves, very soon separated themselves into isolated families, like the Irish cottiers, but having, instead of a small piece of land, a large extent of land. Everyone was separated, and very soon fell into the greatest distress. Falling into the greatest distress, they returned to their masters, and insisted upon the fulfilment of the agreements upon which they had gone out; but Mr Peel said, "All my capital is gone, you have ruined me by deserting me, by breaking your engagements; and now you insist upon my observing the engagements when you yourselves have deprived me of the means of doing so." They wanted to hang him, and he ran away to a distance, where he secreted himself for a time till they were carried off to Van Diemen's Land, where they obtained food.'
1 Rintoul annotates with no less magnanimity: 'With the generosity of most high intellects, Mr Wakefield attributes to the aid of others successes commanded by his own great powers; it was these ever that compelled the aid which he acknowledges. The kind of merit which the Spectator seeks not to disclaim, is simply that of not being frightened by the novelty of a scientific proposition; and of having, when examination had assured us of its solidity, held by it until others have become as convinced of its utility and of its practical nature as we are.
The Colonization Society in its first phase appears to have never been influential or numerous; it approached Ministers unsuccessfully and circulated pamphlets not now easy to trace. A controversy with Mr Wilmot Horton and Colonel Torrens, Wakefield says, put an end to it, but it revived in 1837, when it had three hundred members, and traces of its activity are found down to 1844. Long ere this period, Wakefield's principles had passed from the domain of theory into that of practice. The first step had been taken in 1831, when, at the instance of the Society, Government determined to abolish the system of free grants of land in New South Wales, and to exact the price of five shillings per acre, a measure which, although in Wakefield's view very inadequate, nevertheless conceded his principle. The employment of the purchase money as a fund for defraying the cost of transporting emigrants was also recognised. But the promoters could neither be satisfied with the hesitating application here nor with any application of their ideas to a community where transportation was still maintained. They determined to found a new colony.
1 The New British Province of South Australia. Charles Knight, 1835. The author's name nowhere occurs in this handbook, but there are frequent quotations from his writings.
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South Australia in 1837.
1 The French explorers of Kangaroo Island mention a curious source of profit, the silk of the mussel, or pinna marina, which, Wakefield says, is highly valued in Italy for its convertibility into a fine and durable stuff. We do not know whether it has been utilised in Australia.
1 Robert Gouger, probably under Wakefield's inspiration, had initiated a colonizing movement in 1829, but the scheme quickly fell to the ground, and Gouger's efforts to revive it proved fruitless until it was taken up by the Colonization Society.
When this handbook was published, the infant colony, though aground for want of money, had surmounted parliamentary and official impediments. The history of its difficulties with the Colonial Office and in the House of Commons has been often told. No one who has had any experience of official ways will wonder at the obstacles raised by the Colonial Office; and it must in fairness be owned that the repression of crude schemes and the probation of sound ones really are important official functions, the efficient discharge of which has saved the British tax-payer many a good penny. To rise to the height of a great occasion, to put aside plausible objections and even overlook serious irregularities, to feel warmly towards an individual or an association which seeks to promote great national objects, and to judge him or it by a higher standard than that of the code or the ledger, require quite a different order of gifts, which, though not absent from the Colonial Office of our own day, would have been vainly sought there in 1831, when the South Australian projectors approached the authorities with what officialism deemed an unseemly buoyancy. They consisted of two classes. The one comprised the theorists of the Colonization Society, including their new and illustrious convert, Colonel Torrens, who looked at the matter partly from a patriotic point of view, as a relief to a struggling country swamped with pauperism, partly from a scientific standpoint, as a beautiful experiment in economics.
The other was composed of capitalists and men of business, partly actuated by the hope of profit, but to a very great extent, and especially in the case of Mr George Fife Angas, the most prominent among them, by philanthropic motives, including antipathy to convictism and State churches. The first division had already approached the then Colonial Secretary (probably Sir George Murray) on the subject of systematic emigration. 'He told us that the Government rather wished to discourage emigration. When requested to observe that the scheme was not one of emigration, but of colonization, which itself would deal with the emigration, his reply showed that he had not conceived the distinction, nor ever paid any attention to any part of the subject.' But the hopes thus dashed had been revived by the action of Sir George Murray's successor, Viscount Goderich, who, at the instigation, as was thought, of the Under Secretary, Lord Howick, had given partial effect to Wakefield's ideas by stopping gratuitous grants of land in New South Wales, a step highly to the honour of these statesmen, and a remarkable instance of a reform accomplished without popular pressure. 'The colonies,' says Wakefield, 'if they had been consulted, would have earnestly objected to this resolution, as they afterwards protested against it; the colonial governments, and the members of the Colonial Office as a body, greatly disliked it, because it went to deprive them of patronage and power; the very few persons who at the time desired this change were obscure and feeble, and yet all of a sudden, without inquiry by Parliament or the Executive government, without a word of notice to those most concerned, and without observation from anybody, out came an Imperial decree, by which, in the principal colonies of England, the plan of selling waste lands was completely substituted for that of free grants.' The second great principle of the Wakefield system, the employment of the proceeds of the land sales in bringing out emigrants, was also adopted, and the promoters of the South Australian project felt sanguine; but soon discovered that though their ideas might find favour, they themselves were objects of jealousy and suspicion. This was in some measure their own fault. Colonel Torrens and Wakefield, the authors of the draft of the charter for which, after an abortive attempt to start colonization in 1831 on the strength of a supposed verbal sanction, promptly disavowed by Lord Howick, application was made in 1832, wanted to regulate everything, from the boundaries of the colony to the prospective enrolment of a militia. This latitude of plan gave scope for innumerable objections on the part of the Colonial Secretary, the general drift of which may be condensed into one, 'that it was proposed to erect within the British monarchy a government purely republican.' When the plan was modified in deference to these objections, the unpropitiated Secretary retorted that, 'As the Committee were so ready to abandon essential portions of their scheme, he had serious misgivings as to the maturity of their knowledge and counsel.' 'The error,' Mr Hodder justly observes, 'was in asking too much and then too little, the result being that they got nothing.' Yet the idea which lay at the root of their error was sound. 'We attached,' says Wakefield, 'the highest importance to the subject of government, believing that the best economical arrangements could not work well without provisions for a good political government for the colonists.' Here is the germ of the famous Durham Report, and of the struggle for responsible government which occupied Wakefield's last active years. 'As,' he continues, 'we could not move an inch without the sanction of the Office, we now resolved to abandon the political part of our scheme, in the hope of being able to realise the economical part.' So baseless is the assertion of late gravely made, that ' naturally enough, the scheme was hailed with rapture by Government'!
In 1833, England and America was published, with an appendix containing some of the correspondence which had passed between the projectors and the Government. 'The publication,' says Wakefield, 'enabled us to get together another body of colonists, most of those who had previously wished to emigrate to Australia having gone to America.' The siege of the Colonial Office was resumed, but with little effect until 1834, when a powerful company was formed under the title of the South Australian Association, with Mr Whitmore, M.P., for chairman, and including among the directorate such names as Buller, Grote, Molesworth, Torrens, Warburton and H. G. Ward. Wakefield pulled every string, but his connection with the company was not ostensible. His name was never mentioned—and at the period it would have been inexpedient to have mentioned it—at the large and influential meeting held at Exeter Hall on 30th June (reported in the appendix to his book on South Australia), though all the speakers, except Robert Owen and other dubious allies, merely reiterated the ideas he had instilled into them. By this time a change had taken place at the Colonial Office, and the new Minister, Mr Spring Rice, afterwards Lord Monteagle, a former schoolfellow of Wakefield's at Westminster, was not unfriendly. On condition of the promoters giving up their ambition to be a chartered company, and consenting that their settlement should be established as a Crown Colony, he promised neutrality, though not active support. Not more than fifty members could be induced to vote upon the bill of the Association when, on 25th July 1834, the second reading was carried by thirty-three to seventeen. Four days afterwards a formidable opponent appeared in the representative of the great house of Baring, who thought that the promoters might have sixty or a hundred square miles to operate upon 'somewhere,' but objected to trust them any further. Spring Rice, stung into animation, answered warmly, and the bill triumphed by seventy-two to seven. It is marvellous how so novel and important a measure could have escaped further discussion in the Committee stage, which must have wrecked it at so late a period of the session. It was, in fact, read a third time on 2d August. Probably its opponents had calculated upon dealing it a fatal blow in the Lords, where its prospects were indeed most gloomy. 'Opposition,' says Wakefield, 'threatened to prove fatal, because, though it was confined to a few peers, not a single one except the proposer of the bill' [the Marquis of Normanby] 'had any active good will towards our measure. The Ministers, however bound by their colleague's promise of neutrality, would give no assistance in either House, and for a time the loss of the bill in the House of Lords seemed inevitable. In this extremity one of us' [Wakefield himself, with assistance from Mr R. D. Hanson and Matthew Davenport Hill] 'thought of endeavouring to interest the Duke of Wellington in our favour. He assiduously examined our plan, came to the opinion that "the experiment ought to be tried," and then, with a straightforward earnestness that belongs to his nature, and with a prompt facility for which his great personal influence accounts, lifted our poor measure over all obstacles. In order to mark our gratitude to him, we intended, and told him so, that the metropolis of the new colony should bear his name, but this intention was shabbily frustrated by some whom I abstain from mentioning.' 1
Thus the famous soldier, who won no territories for his country by his sword except in the East Indies, added to her by his parliamentary influence a domain then of 300,000 square miles, now of 900,000. Nothing was then certainly known of its capabilities, except that the banks of a great river seemed promising for settlement. Now, although vast tracts in the interior must remain for ever barren, and the northern portion is only fit for Coolie labour, the mere fringe along the southern coast has two millions and a half acres under cultivation; there are six millions and a half of sheep, exporting forty-seven millions of pounds of wool; and nearly fifty million pounds worth of gold, silver and copper have been raised since the settlement of the colony. There are 350,000 inhabitants, raising two millions and a half of revenue, and annually exporting products to the value of eight millions. There are nearly 2000 miles of railway, and half a million has been spent in bridging the whole Australian continent with a telegraph wire. When the railway shall have followed the telegraph, its northern and southern termini (the latter possibly Port Lincoln, on account of its splendid harbour) will become the two great entrepôts of the Australian waters.
1 'They' (the Commissioners) 'sought profit by pleasing the King rather than honour by paying an honest debt.'— New Zealand Gazette, 28th November 1840. Hence the courtly appellation, Adelaide.
The great problems now before the colony seem to be to effect this junction, and to fill the northern regions with permanent Chinese or Indian settlers who will not seek to return to their own land. Much prejudice will have to be surmounted first, but prejudice cannot for ever obstruct the development of the colony, any more than it could its foundation.
The act under which South Australia was constituted will be found in the appendix to Wakefield's handbook to the colony. It embodied his two chief articles of faith—the sale of land at a fixed price, which in this instance was not to be less than twelve shillings an acre, and might be more (Wakefield thought it ought to be a good deal more), and the application of the proceeds to an immigration fund. The introduction of convicts was entirely forbidden, and self-government was secured for the colony as soon as the population should amount to 50,000. It was a great blot in Wakefield's eyes that no provision was made for popular control over local expenditure in the interim; and in other respects the act as originally proposed was grievously mutilated, while Wakefield was still less satisfied with the machinery appointed to carry it out. 'The South Australian Act confided the business of colonization apart from Government to a commission, the members of which were to be appointed by the Crown—that is, by the Colonial Office. The commissioners were not to be paid. It was a grand point, therefore, to find three or four persons, masters of the theory, willing to undertake the task, and likely from their personal character to perform it under a strong sense of honourable responsibility. Such persons were found, but were not appointed.' It may be plausibly and not quite untruthfully suggested that Wakefield would have liked the commission to have been composed of his friends and disciples, whom he could guide at his will, instead of the new set that excluded him, and hinc illæ lacrimæ. The innuendo of Mr Angas's biographer that Wakefield turned his attention to New Zealand from having failed in his efforts to obtain a foremost place in colonizing South Australia, is supported by a remark of Wakefield's own. But on the other hand, the ten commissioners, with the exception of Torrens, Angas and Hutt, with their able secretary, Rowland Hill, seem to have been what Wakefield called them—amateurs; and Mr Angas was driven, by his impatience at their slowness in procuring the requisite funds, to establish a supplementary company to buy land at the temporarily reduced price of twelve shillings an acre, with the prospect of reselling it for twenty. The introduction of a speculative element was much to be deplored, but it at all events floated the commissioners into deep— into very deep—waters. It necessitated Angas's resignation of his seat on the commission. At this time (September 1835) Wakefield had been effectually ostracised, an experience destined to be repeated in the case of the New Zealand Company twelve years afterwards. The remarkable letter he wrote to the commissioners of 2d June 1835, from which a long extract has been made, reveals wide divergences of opinion, especially on the question of a sufficient price for land. Meanwhile, the colony had at least been set going, and, under Angas's direction, a ship, admitted by Wakefield himself to have served as a model for all subsequent enterprises of the kind, sailed in February 1836. A landing was effected in July, and the colony was formally constituted in December of the same year.
Not only was the colony of South Australia the visible incarnation of Wakefield's idea, but its establishment had cost him an enormous amount of literary and other labour.
1 Besides the one already mentioned, two of the most important were, Plan of a Company to be established for the purpose of founding a Colony in South Australia, 1831. South Australia. Outline of the Plan of a Proposed Colony, 1834.
1 History of South Australia, vol. 1, p. 46. The date of Mr Hodder's biography of Angas is 1891, that of his History 1893.
How Wakefield's circle looked upon South Australian affairs is vividly shown by the most lovable and after him the most interesting of its members. His affection and tender care for his child had not been unrequited. It was his brief and frail happiness to possess one of the greatest blessings granted to man, a charming, gifted and devoted daughter who saw everything through his eyes, entered with enthusiasm into his every project, and to whom her father's colony was at the time incomparably the most interesting spot on the face of the earth. She was in her seventeenth year, ardent, animated, impressionable, and endowed with the elevation of sentiment and precocity of intelligence which at so early an age often indicate that the root of life has not struck deep. In August 1834 Nina Wakefield writes to her aunt, Catherine Torlesse, wife of the Vicar of Stoke-by-Nayland, Suffolk, Wakefield's favourite sister, a striking beauty and a woman of most solid worth:— 1
'In common with papa and Dodo' [Daniel], 'my mind has been so completely engrossed for the last six months with the old subject of a new colony that I have never been able to think of anything besides. You remember how hot we were about it when we last enjoyed the pleasure of seeing you (which is now two years and a half ago), and you must have heard how, shortly afterwards, our sanguine hopes of success were upset by His Majesty's Government, to the great damage of our loyalty. Well, then, you can easily imagine our joy, mingled with eagerness and anxiety, when, after another trial and another failure, the plan has at last met with the approbation of the new Colonial Minister, has been made law by the Parliament, and is certain of being carried into effect immediately. In the spring of 1832 I wrote you aletter telling you that the colonists were soon coming to the practical part of their scheme, and expressing the warmest wish of us all emigrating to Spencer's Gulph. I was wrong in thinking the termination of our toil was at hand; we had to go through two more years of tedious expectation, harassing procrastination, uphill labours and chilling disappointments, the very thoughts of which make me feel sick; but at length we have triumphed over all our open and hidden foes, we are within an ace of the goal, nothing but a miracle can wrest the prize from us, and again, I hope more truly, I say the colonists are at the practical part of their work. In the meantime I have not changed my mind as to emigration; I still wish very much to go out, especially if you were going, and even more than when I saw you. I have to tell you, as I suppose you have no means of knowing it before, that Dodo expects to obtain the appointment of judge-in-chief in South Australia, 1 in which case he turns colonist immediately. William also, who, now peace is restored in Portugal, has got nothing to do, and finds it a hard matter indeed to get paid for his former services, talks of leaving the Queen's [Donna Maria's] service; in which case, as Felix is already there, and Howard is sure to join them from1 I shall hardly find anybody whose example I should so much wish her to follow as yours,' he had written in 1822.
India presently, there will be a nice party of our family at our antipodes. The more I think of it, the more I wish that Uncle Charles would give up his poor living and turn South Australian with you and all yours, including dear Priscilla; for then I think papa might be persuaded to go too, and then what a nice party we should make!—flying from straitened means and anxiety for your children in future, to plenty, large profits for yourself, and easy, happy prospects for all your family! Have you read papa's England and America, the third chapter especially? If not, get it, read that part carefully, and then reflect on the happy opening formed by a new colony for a man of small fortune and large family. Then get a little book called South Australia, compiled and edited by papa. In it you will find full information on every point connected with the colony, and all I pray is that it may make some impression upon you. Tell Uncle Charles from me to read the chapter in the little book called "Inducements to Emigration." I wish I were at Stoke, for I am sure I could persuade him, and then if I succeeded we should have nearly the whole family of us joined together in South Australia; for I take it for granted that if you went papa would go too, with both his chickens.'1 Daniel did not come to judgment until twenty years afterwards, when he was appointed a judge in New Zealand. He had previously been Attorney-General of Wellington and the Middle Island under Sir George Grey, but resigned in consequence of his brother's opposition to the Governor's policy.
Girlish as this epistle is, it expresses the feelings then rife in many an English middle-class circle for which the mother country's bosom had become too dry, and her arms too narrow. Writing a month afterwards under less restraint, Nina thus pours out her feelings to her friend Rosabel Attwood, 1 in a strain that proves her indeed her father's daughter. In truth, there is nothing in the Letter from Sydney to rival this vivid realisation of scenes beheld only by the gaze of imagination through the glass of description.
…When we took leave of you ten days ago, I was afraid that we should not meet again for many months, but I hear there is a possibility of your family all turning South Australians at once, in which I am trying hard to persuade my father to the same thing, and feel pretty sure of success, we may calculate on the chance of meeting again very soon, and probably of going all in one party. If so (of which, as I am naturally sanguine, I feel certain already), we shall have a second set of happy days on shipboard and in South Australia. If "Victoria" is built on the shores of Port Lincoln, we can have regattas in the large harbour and donkey excursions to Sleaford Mere on the Louth Hills, and if Lake Alexandrina be fixed upon as the site of the new1 Daughter of Thomas Attwood, M.P., founder of the Birmingham Political Union, whose daughter Angela married Edward Gibbon Wakefield's brother Daniel. His life has been written in a privately printed volume by his grandson, Charles Marcus Wakefield.
city, the large lake itself and the beautiful glens and valleys of the promontory of Cape Jones seem made on purpose for our parties of pleasure. But that which above all would please you, who are of an imaginative turn of mind, is an exploring expedition into the interior of the country. I have heard you talk of the pleasure of stepping on a shore on which no one had been before yourself, but unfortunately for that idea, there have been so many navigators, sealers, runaway convicts, etc., on that coast that you cannot feel sure of treading an unbeaten track, and the only way of standing where white man never stood before is to be one of the exploring party which will be sent, immediately after the landing of the people, up the country to discover and survey it. The explorers travel through forests, across rivers, and over vast plains, which have never been seen before; making maps and taking sketches as they go along; amused at every mile with some new feature in the country they pass through, and every now and then enlivened by petty accidents or the jokes of the excited young people of the party. An exploring expedition is like a donkey excursion on a large scale, but you have the extra satisfaction of knowing that you run the risk of some little danger, and that you are enjoying a pleasure which cannot be enjoyed by anybody in England. Think of standing on a high hill and looking for leagues in every direction without seeing a human being, or any animal except a few quiet kangaroos and emus, and hearing no noise but the rustling of the trees and the bubbling water of the little cascade at the foot of the hill, or the bustle of your party pitching their tents for the night on the hillside, and preparing for supper a fat Wallabee kangaroo which one of the sportsmen of the party shot that morning as they were traversing some beautiful grass plains. To pursue this picture. Having looked on till the sun has set, and the moon (aided by a set of stars totally different to those to which you have been accustomed in this hemisphere) has risen to light you to bed, you hear a voice from the tent, "Supper is ready." You run back, having had your appetite sharpened by a long ride on a rough-haired pony, or perhaps a gallop after a long-legged emu, and the whole party sit down on the grass under the tent, and, making their laps serve as tables, make an excellent supper on the haunch of poor Wallabee. After supper someone asks you for a song; you give one in your best style, making your shrill voice echo through the adjoining forests, and frightening the poor variegated parrots who have gone to roost in the trees there. In token of the gratitude of the party for your condescension, the captain of the expedition proposes that the hill on which you are going to pass the night be called after you; all present instantly assent; a glass of wine is poured on the grass at the entrance of the tent, the party rise and give three hearty cheers, and the captain proclaims that henceforth the hill shall be called Mount Rosabel. We mark it so on the map; a short speech of thanks from you succeeds, and then all go to rest, undisturbed by the howling of the native dogs, who are kept off by the fear of your firearms, and sleep till you hear the captain's bugle next morning, when you jump up, breakfast, strike your tents and set off again, and so on till after a few weeks' absence you return to headquarters with all your zoological, botanical, geological and topographical discoveries. How do you like this idea of an exploring party?1 Near Reading, the seat of Edward Gibbon's uncle Daniel, who was engaged at the time on Mr Attwood's side in the celebrated case of Small v. Attwood, which he gained.
'As for our occupations and amusements on board ship, they will be manifold, and as neither you nor I mean to be sea-sick, we shall make ourselves very comfortable. But I hope that you will make up your minds quickly to going out, for remember it is not safe or pleasant to leave England between the 20th of October and the beginning of January, so that, as I am almost sure of going with papa in October, we shall not have the pleasure of forming one party on the voyage unless you make very great haste in your preparations, which, by-the-bye, are different in their magnitude when you are going to the other side of the world to when you are taking a trip to a watering-place. But I hope and trust that you will be ready by the 20th of October, and we will all sail together, singing merrily, "The deep, deep sea!" I have been thinking that, as your eldest brother is a poet and you are a musician, you ought to consult with him on writing a national song for us South Australians, and setting it to some popular and spirited tune. Let the first verse be the invocation of "the future sons of Australia" to their mother to raise a future empire on the shores whither the blue waves of the Southern Ocean are bearing them along; then go on to describe, in the following verses, the landing of the colonists, the occupations to which they betake themselves, and the gradual rising of the city on the waste and barren coast, bringing in descriptions of the excitement and ambition of the settlers, and ending each verse with a spirited chorus on the model of "The Parisienne." Let the tune be grand, but simple and marked, so that every South Australian may easily learn it and sing it both on the voyage and on shore; for we must practise a great deal of music, as it keeps the people in good humour; so we will have concerts and private theatricals on board ship, balls and musical festivals on land, but no raffles or wheels of fortune.
'I have written you a long rambling letter, for which I should apologise, but that I know that the soberest spirits are apt to run wild on the exciting subject of the new colony, and moreover, that you also are much interested in the same subject. I have not written you any directions concerning Beau, as I had at first intended, in consequence of the length of this epistle, but I hope that you will not allow him to neglect his exercise, as he is a lazy fellow, and will take every advantage of your indulgence. Pray give my best love to your mother and sister, remember me kindly to your father and brother; give Beau two pats on the back and a kiss on the nose from me; present my best respects to Dash and the parrot; and give my kind regards to Miss Cecilia Clock.'
Alas! poor Nina was to take a longer journey. This letter, so full of brilliant youthful spirits, is dated 4th September. On 18th October, two days before the day on which she had pictured herself as embarking, her distracted father writes to Mrs Attwood:—
'Though I do not like to leave Rosabel's letter unanswered, I cannot write to her. She is too young to be told of my wretched feelings, and I cannot hide them. Besides, my dear Nina talks of her very often with a strong affection, which you will see is natural when I tell you that she was never intimate with any other girl at all near her own age; and thus I am unmanned only by thinking of her.
'My dear child is declared to have a mortal complaint of the lungs. Two or three months is all the time that I can expect to keep her in England; but a vague hope is held out to me that a warm climate may save her. Of course I am on the point of removing her; but of giving her even that poor chance I am not sure, so great is her weakness, and rapid the sinking of all her bodily powers. She is reduced to a skeleton, but is patient, cheerful, rational and fearless. Heartbroken myself, I am obliged to laugh and play with her as when she was quite well. You will see why I cannot write to Rosabel, and will excuse me for indulging, while writing to you, in these expressions of grief. It is a sort of comfort to me to imagine that you will feel with as well as for me. Yet what right have I to give you the pain of sympathising with me? None, nor can I tell why I inform you of my misery, unless it be that my only present consolation is the number of people who have shed tears at the thought of never seeing my darling again.
'I have but just left her at the seaside, and am hurrying to make arrangements for our departure— to what distance must depend on her state. If Mr Attwood be with you, pray give my kind regards to him, as well as to your children. Accept yourself my grateful thanks for your kind attentions to my poor child, believing me to remain very truly and faithfully yours,
E. G. Wakefield.'
They went to Lisbon. The following letter, which must have been written from that city, bears the London postmark of 3d February:—
'
My dear Mrs Attwood,—Yesterday my dear child, becoming aware of her danger, wished to write to several friends by dictating to me. A letter to her brother so much exhausted her that she could proceed no further, but she desired me to write in her name to those whom she could not but neglect, and amongst them to Rosabel. It is only to keep my promise to her that I send this scrawl, so that I may tell her when she wakes that I have done what she desired. She is sinking fast. All hope has been at an end for some weeks.'
1
Nina died at Lisbon on 12th February 1835. On 14th April, Wakefield wrote to his sister:—
'More than once of late I have tried in vain to write to you, and I should not have got courage to do so now if I had not promised to convey to you the kindest expressions of regard which were uttered by dear Nina on the very last day of her life. It was only then that she became entirely conscious of her situation. She desired me to give you a lock of her hair, and to tell you that in her last moments she thought of you with the tenderest affection. Indeed, the prospect of dying seemed to strengthen the strong love which she bore to all whom she loved at all. She forgot nobody of those for whom she had ever felt a regard. Of you she spoke frequently, and made for
1 'I love her so much that I am sure almost that I shall be deprived of her,' he had written in Nina's infancy.
you with her poor starved hands a little packet of her hair, which I shall send to you when I am able to open the box that contains it. I have nothing more to say. As you did not know her when she was no longer a child, when she had become my friend and partner in every thought and object of interest, you cannot sympathise with me, you cannot estimate my loss. The vulgar notion of death has no terrors for me; but I feel half dead myself, having lost her for whom alone of late years I have lived. The world seems a blank. But probably, as usually happens in such cases, I shall find other objects of interest. To make a beginning, I intend that henceforth Edward shall live with me.'
A living memorial of his daughter accompanied Wakefield from Lisbon, a little Portuguese girl, whose playfulness had cheered the sufferer's last days, and whom he begged from her parents. He educated her and sent her out to New Zealand, where she married well.
This domestic tragedy, and the absence from England which it necessitated, doubtless weakened Wakefield's hold upon South Australian affairs, and perhaps accounts in some measure for the suppression of his friends and himself in their management. At the time he must have felt the slight bitterly, but it proved a most fortunate circumstance, allowing him to devote his attention to a new enterprise in New Zealand, where, as will be seen, his interposition was urgently necessary, not merely to introduce improved methods of colonization, but to preserve this Southern Britain for the English race. It was also most fortunate that he thus escaped responsibility for the initial difficulties and failures of South Australian colonization, which would have been attributed to him if he had taken any active part in it. Indeed, those were not wanting who charged them upon the Wakefield system, but the groundlessness of the accusation is apparent, not only from the unanimous testimony of South Australian historians, one personal adversary excepted, but from the proceedings of the Parliamentary Committee which sifted the matter in 1841. It is sufficiently plain that, on the other hand, the disasters arose from neglect of Wakefield's principles. The land surveys proceeded so slowly that the colonists could not get upon the soil; concentrated about Adelaide, they consumed without producing all the necessaries of life, sold at fabulous prices; and famine might have supervened but for the unexpected and welcome discovery that cattle could be driven a thousand miles through the bush from New South Wales. When the colonists got to work, South Australia immediately became a wheat exporting colony; and a further impulse was given by the public works undertaken by the new Governor, Colonel Gawler. Unfortunately Gawler's zeal far outran his means; the bills he drew on London were dishonoured, and general bankruptcy seemed to impend. The temporary revival, moreover, had generated a reckless land speculation, the character of which may be appreciated from the single circumstance that Mr Angas's agent drew upon him for £28,000, expended in buying an estate without any authority. 1 The very magnitude of the trouble saved the colony by compelling the Home Government to come to its assistance by advancing funds, and abolishing the unsatisfactory system of government by commissioners. Captain (afterwards Sir George) Grey, already renowned as an Australian explorer, was sent out to govern, and by harsh but salutary retrenchments, including a nobly self-sacrificing reduction of his own salary, kept the colony afloat until the discovery of the Kapunda and Burra Burra copper mines brought it the capital needed for a career of prosperity.
1 Mr Angas was nearly ruined, but rode out the storm. The estate ultimately justified the anticipations of the sanguine purchaser, and Angas died upon it at an advanced age in wealth and honour.
2 The proceedings of this Committee were reviewed in the Edinburgh Review for April 1842 by James Spedding, and, he being called away to the United States as private secretary to Lord Ashburton, the article was revised by Henry Taylor. Jeffrey says, in writing upon it to Napier the editor: 'To one who looks, as I do, to those regions as the destined seat of another and a greater Britain, from which the whole Eastern world is hereafter to be ruled in freedom and happiness, no subject can possibly be more interesting and important.' It is interesting to meet this anticipation of the title of Sir Charles Dilke's famous book twenty-six years before the publication of the latter. Sir Charles, however, did not derive it from Jeffrey, whose letter was not published until 1879.
1 South Australia, its Progress and Prosperity. By Anthony Foster, 1866, pp. 12, 13,
1 South Australia, a Wakefield colony which has escaped inundation by rushes of adventurers, 'was,' says Mr Walker ( Australasian Democracy, p. 33), 'fortunate in her original settlers, and has always attracted a good class of emigrants.' Cause and effect. Yet she has the most democratic constitution of any colony.