Chapter I

The family of Wakefield belongs to the North country, and may well be supposed to have originated at the ancient Yorkshire town from which it derives its name. Those of the name who have achieved distinction, with the exception of Gilbert Wakefield, whose ancestors dwelt in Staffordshire, have nevertheless been connected with the branch of the family established near Kendal, in Westmoreland, whose representatives embraced Quakerism soon after its promulgation in the middle of the seventeenth century. The profession and consistent maintenance of unpopular opinions, when not absolutely perverse or fanatical, is usually a token of moral strength, evincing independence of mind in the first instance, and tenacity page 2of conviction in the second. Hence the influence of small nonconforming sects surviving through several generations, a choice remnant sifted by a slow, selective process from age to age, is out of all proportion to their numbers; and much of this power and worth continue even with the families which have eventually relapsed into the general current, as has been the case with the majority of the Westmoreland Wakefields.

Six miles west of Kendal, on the road to Bowness, stands or has stood a hamlet called Quakers' Meeting, whose sequestered situation seems to hint at concealment necessitated by persecution. Six miles south of Kendal is the village of Preston Patrick, the home of Roger Wakefield, descended from another Roger Wakefield living at Challon Hall in 1592, but the earliest member of the family from whom the diligence of Mr Joseph Foster¹ can deduce a regular pedigree. In 1665 he married Hannah Preston of Farleton.

Though inheriting a fortune from his father, this Edward Wakefield failed in business, and his descendants are unanimous in attributing their intellectual distinction and especial bent towards public questions to inheritance from his wife. He is depicted with her and his sister-in-law, Catherine (afterwards Gurney), in a picture by Gainsborough, still in the possession of a descendant, painted in 1775, engraved as the frontispiece to Mr Augustus Hare's Gurneys of Earlham. He appears a handsome man, attired in a costume equally remote from foppishness and Quakerism, and presenting some resemblance to the portrait of Edward Gibbon Wakefield as a young man, engraved in 1826, and reproduced in Mr Edward Wakefield's New Zealand page 4after Fifty Years. The animated features seem to bespeak ardour and resolution; but if these qualities were ever exerted, no record of them remains. It is otherwise with his wife Priscilla, from 1794 to 1817 one of the most popular and useful contemporary writers for the young, but far more celebrated as one of the first to introduce the savings bank into England, under the name of the Frugality Bank. Some uncertainty exists respecting priority in the introduction of this great national boon; certain it is from the Reports of the Society for bettering the Condition of the Poor, vol. i., that her Friendly Society was established on 22d October 1798, though it is not quite clear whether the Savings Bank was a feature of it from the first. Amiable, sensible, industrious, placid, affectionate, she was a model of Quaker virtues, and a consistent Friend in religious practice, although she conformed to Quaker peculiarities neither in dress nor in abstinence from amusements. 'I suppose,' says her son, 'no one can relate having seen her in a passion or out of humour.' During her long widowhood she resided successively at Tottenham and Ipswich, where she died in September 1832.

Her two sons, Edward, born 1774, and Daniel, born 1776, displayed the interest in public questions, and the disposition to occupy themselves with industrial and philanthropic projects, which she appears to have introduced into the family, as well as other traits for which she probably was not responsible. It page 5will abundantly appear in the course of this history that the Wakefield family possessed a fine irregular genius for marriage, and one characteristic of their unions was precocity. The first and second Edward had each married at twenty-one; the third broke the record by espousing Susanna Crash, daughter of a farmer at Felsted, Essex, at seventeen, the marriage taking place on 3d October 1791. Susanna's personal attractions were no doubt the motive. 'The most beautiful woman I have ever known,' says her husband. 'A soft, angelic beauty, but she was a model for a sculptor.' The younger brother made amends for deficiency in impetuosity by excess in imprudence, contracting a union which soon obliged him to seek, though he failed to obtain, a divorce. Edward's wife, on the contrary, appears to have been a simple-minded woman, who gave her husband little trouble except by the wretched state of health into which she fell about 1812. She died in February 1816: 'her death,' says her husband, 'full of charity and love, her last breath lisping blessings on me and on her children.'

The earliest notice of Edward Wakefield's vocation represents him as farming near Romford, in Essex, and afterwards at Burnham; he was subsequently employed under the Naval Arsenal. In 1808, when placing Edward Gibbon Wakefield at Westminster, he is described as of Ipswich; and his letters to Francis Place in 1813 and 1814 are dated from Bury St page 6Edmunds. In 1814 he established himself as a land agent at 42 Pall Mall. Ere this his agricultural employment seems to have mainly given place to land agency and surveying,¹ in which he acquired the experience which qualified him to produce the work on the economical condition of Ireland which has chiefly preserved his name. The clearest view of him, apart from his own private letters, is afforded by the MSS., preserved in the British Museum, of his coadjutor Francis Place, the radical, philanthropic, Malthusian, utilitarian tailor of Charing Cross, a man utterly devoid of imagination, sour, querulous, acrimonious, but who possessed the rare and valuable endowment of a genuine anxiety, founded upon a sense of justice, to bring the good qualities even of his adversaries to light.

'Mr Wakefield's parents were Quakers, and he was well acquainted with a large portion of the most respectable persons of that sect, amongst the rest with William Allen, whom he almost reverenced. He was also acquainted with Joseph Lancaster and Joseph Fox, and was a strong advocate for the Joseph Lancaster method of teaching, and very desirous to see it extended.¹

'Soon after we became intimately acquainted, Mr Wakefield introduced Mr James Mill to me.'

Although, however, the ostensible cause of the estrangement of Place and Wakefield remains unknown, the germs of it are easily discoverable while their friendship was yet warm and active. Wakefield clearly had many failings, but of an amiable kind; Place comparatively few, but those unamiable. Wakefield was unquestionably extravagant and lax in money matters, and the influence of the example he thus set his sons was pernicious in many ways. He aroused his friend's scorn by a deference to rank and title certainly reprehensible even in an ex-Quaker, and even more so by what Place thought his culpable weakness in the concerns of his own family— his reluctance to place his invalid wife under guardianship, his indulgence to his sons' wildness, and what seemed to Place his great over-estimate of their abilities. These errors, for such no doubt they were, page 9sprang from a sensitiveness and tenderness incomprehensible to Place, a worthy man, but arid as the 'dry places' of the parable, and who eventually deals so faithfully with his friend as to write him down an ass. Even the austere James Mill judged him more favourably. As a practical philanthropist he had done excellent work. So early as September 1801, his mother records: 'Edward dined with us; he is warm in a new chase. Prisons and workhouses are his game. May he be inspired to enlarge the sphere of human happiness and virtue!' He says in a letter from Leicester, 1823: 'There seems a fine county gaol. There has been a day when I should have gone and examined it, and conversed with the prisoners, but so many have taken up the cause that I recede.' His report on the educational and social condition of the Drury Lane district (1813) was printed in 1816 by Brougham's Committee. 'He had the idea,' says Place's biographer, Mr Graham Wallas, 'of which Mr Charles Booth has made such brilliant use, that if permanent educational visitors were appointed for all London, a thorough collection of social statistics might be made.' He also gave much thought to the improvement of lunatic asylums.

Edward Wakefield is still remembered by some as a beautiful old man of lofty stature, and energetic to a very late period of his life. He retained to the last his interest in public affairs and in his two principal pursuits, agriculture and education, and strove page 10to make his experience of both available for the colony created by his son. The articles on New Zealand affairs in the Colonial Magazine, signed W., are in all probability by him. He was indefatigable in making communications to the press respecting natural products which could be derived from New Zealand or introduced there. These were usually addressed from Blois, where he and his second wife occupied a chateau, and where he endeavoured to establish an industry in silk. His latter years were principally spent near Macclesfield and in London, where he died in May 1854. As an educator, he lived again in some of his posterity, and especially in Edward Gibbon, whom we shall find always educating somebody; equally ready to admonish a minister when to change a policy, or a little girl when to lay aside a doll.

The work by which Edward Wakefield will be remembered is his Account of Ireland, Statistical and Political, 2 vols., 1812. It originated in the author's examination before a Parliamentary Committee in 1808, which produced a proposal from the Right Hon. John Foster, who had been Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer before the Union, that he should undertake a regular survey of the country, with a view to the ascertainment of its condition and resources. Provided with introductions to the chief landowners and leading personages on both sides of politics, he devoted nearly two years to the perlustra-page 11tion of Ireland, and two years more to carrying his book through the press, thus producing a work of great practical value in his own day and of great historical interest in this. 'This very able work,' says Arthur Young. 'Lively, dogmatical, disorderly,' pronounces Sir James Mackintosh. Not confining himself to his ostensible object, Wakefield added chapters on the political and religious condition of the country, distinguished by strong good sense and a genuine zeal for humanity and improvement. Had these been published separately, they would have been regarded as a highly entertaining book, but even the economical portion of the two bulky volumes is continually irradiated by humour, not so much from the author's own powers in this direction as from the nature of the circumstances which he describes. What a picture of the condition of a population is here presented by a single fact!

'Notwithstanding the population of Castle Pollard, which amounts to three thousand, a butcher will not run the risk of killing a bullock until the neighbouring gentlemen have bespoken the whole of it, which they generally do in quarters.'

Why the poor cannot keep pigeons. 'Because their habitations are so low that the pigeons would soon fall a sacrifice to the cats.'

Edward Gibbon Wakefield, the eldest son and second child of a family of nine, was born in London on 20th March 1796. Of his early life little is known, but, as his grandmother speaks of sending him to school on her own responsibility, his education probably owed more to her than to either his father or mother. Some surviving fragments from her diary illustrate her anxious tenderness.

'May 1802. Walked to see my sweet Edward, who gives me great pleasure by the sweetness of his temper and behaviour.

'Feb. 4, 1807. An early summons to Haigh's on account of a great delinquency of dear Edward's almost rendered me incapable of application.

'Feb. 5. My mind most painfully engaged in the perverseness of my dear little Edward—his obstinacy if he inclines to evil terrifies me; turned to good, it would be a noble firmness.

'Feb. 7. My thoughts much engaged with dear little page 14Edward, whom I tenderly love, but whose inflexible pertinacious temper makes me fear for his own happiness, and that of those connected with him.

'Feb. 13. My dear little Edward still in disgrace; my heart yearns to forgive him; he has some fine qualities, but he is a character that requires delicate handling.'

Wakefield's father can scarcely have designed him for his own profession when, in January 1808, he placed him at Westminster School, where he remained until 1810. The step was apparently quite inoperative in so far as it may have aimed at imbuing his mind with classical culture; his sinewy Saxon owes nothing to Greek or Roman models; although late in life he betrays an intelligent study of Gibbon. One observation, made at Westminster, evinces his shrewdness of perception. He says (Punishment of Death, p. 14.6) that the Newgate boys who are to be formally let off from sentences of capital punishment, 'have just the same air of agreeable excitement and self-importance, for days before the scene takes place, as marks a Westminster boy when he is about to be distinguished by acting in public.' The traditions yet linger of a series of fights by which, though always beaten, he eventually wore out the bully of his class; and of a Homeric battle, result unrecorded, between him and Erskine, Earl of Mar, who afterwards fought Napoleon. Westminster, however, did not suit the boy, who, in September 1810, positively page 15refused to return to it. His good grandmother at first mourns over his perversity, but when at length the lad has gained his point, acknowledges her satisfaction at his removal to Edinburgh High School, 'where I trust he will be instructed in religion and morality as well as in Greek and Latin.' There are traces of considerable disturbances even at this excellent school, which Wakefield finally left in January 1812. Spoiled for business and unqualified for a profession, his destination in life gave his father much anxiety. 'Edward Gibbon,' observes his grandmother, 'is at home without sufficient employment to occupy the talents and activity of his mind; consequently his present situation is disadvantageous to himself, and troublesome to others.' He seems to have found no regular occupation until 1814, when he appears in the employment of the Hon. William Hill, afterwards Lord Berwick, at that time envoy to the court of Turin, but apparently much in England. Perhaps his specific duty was that of King's messenger, for the elder Wakefield writes to Place in October: 'Edward's letter is very short, and amounts to nothing except the probability of his going to Vienna. It was dated the 15th of September, by this time no doubt he has left Paris, and is either at Genoa or on his way to Vienna. His fate in life depends upon his conduct during the next six months. Should he settle down to business as he ought, he will make a man, but he is very likely to page 16go off at a tangent, and then I cannot tell what may happen to him.'

Whether Edward Gibbon Wakefield proceeded to Vienna is uncertain, but this appears to have been the winter he mainly spent at Turin, as stated in a passage of his Letter from Sydney, to be afterwards quoted. On 20th July 1815, Place writes to James Mill: 'Wakefield's son returned from Turin soon after you left London, much improved in appearance, and somewhat softened, though not much, in manners;¹ this has been produced by the contrasts his journeys have presented him; and the visible superiority of the English over all the nations of the continent has made him like them better than he did; his conduct has, however, been very ambiguous, and his tales have contradicted one another, so that his father, who has more of feeling than of solid judgment in his composition, has been distressed beyond anything you will be able to imagine. I have not allowed him to trifle, but have plainly and fully told him of his follies, and, as I think, with some effect. He has left Mr Hill, but not with disgrace.'

Place's opinion that the Foreign Office under Castlereagh offered a career highly suitable to young Wakefield was by no means designed as a compliment to the latter, who, probably by the interest of Mr Hill, his connection with whom was resumed, actually obtained some minor appointment which took him page 18to Paris. From thence, 29th August, he wrote a spirited letter describing the popular resentment and indignation produced by the execution of General Labedoyère. There is nothing to show that it was addressed to Place, though it is now among his papers in the British Museum, but it fell in some manner into his hands, and through him became the first composition of Wakefield's to attain the distinction of print, appearing in the Statesman newspaper. Not only was the letter printed without Place's authority, but the authorship was divulged in conversation, and on gth September, Place writes a dismayed remonstrance. 'I would have paid £100 rather than that that letter should have been printed. Should it ever be known at the Foreign Office, all his prospects in the line of life he has chosen, and the only one he is fit for, would be blasted in an instant, and all the shame and reproach would fall upon me.' Nothing can have come of the indiscretion, for on 9th December Place writes to Mill: 'Edward is with Mr Hill in London. Wakefield is in raptures with him, ridiculously so. Edward is, however, provided for, and that too in the line in which he is most likely to continue; and Wakefield, who expected him home without a shilling and without employment, has much to rejoice at. It is a rascally employment, but the world does not treat it as disreputable, and Edward cannot be spoiled by it. Edward's manners are far more agreeable than they were; his knowledge of diplomacy has page 19shown him the necessity of this.' The 'rascally employment,' then, was not devoid of redeeming features, and Edward's employer must have found him serviceable, for Place continues: 'Mr Hill will not allow him to be away from him for an hour even, and endeavours to detach him from his family, telling him his father has eight other children, and can spare him; he laughs at him for writing to any of them, and hints that he will be good for little until he divests himself of all affection and feeling for any of them. Mr Hill is right; to become an accomplished man in his employment, one must stifle humanity and destroy all the kinder emotions of the heart.' Curious that the art of negotiating with men, in which Place himself was no mean proficient, should be innocent and respectable as long as it stays at home, but becomes fit only for such good-for-nothing young men as Place thought Wakefield so soon as it goes abroad and calls itself diplomacy! In truth Mr Hill's exhortations were wasted upon Wakefield, who, after the first extravagances of youth had subsided, made an excellent son, and was beyond most men notus in fratres animi paterni.

Several months now elapse without any mention of Wakefield in Place's correspondence until on 9th August 1816 comes the startling announcement, 'He is to be married to-morrow!' From other sources of information it appears that the bride's name was Eliza Susan Pattle, that she was the orphan daughter page 20of a merchant in the East Indies, living under her mother's care, and that it was a runaway match. Tradition, now getting dim, alleges that Wakefield, deeply enamoured of the beautiful girl, and naturally regarded by her family as a 'detrimental,' followed her down to Tun bridge Wells, where she stayed with her mother and two elderly uncles addicted to cockfighting. Love is depicted on ancient gems enjoying a combat between quails; and so mighty was his power on this occasion that Wakefield, who in a private letter calls cruelty to animals 'disgusting,' became to all appearance devoted to the sport, and the uncles began to deem him quite an exemplary young man. He profited by his opportunities, and one July day two carriages simultaneously left Tunbridge Wells, driving in opposite directions, one containing Edward Gibbon Wakefield and Eliza Pattle, the other, two persons dressed to represent them. The uncles followed the wrong one. Shortly afterwards cousin Head at Ipswich was awakened by Edward Gibbon entering his room at dead of night with the observation, 'I want your boat.' They descended into the garden. Eliza came forth from under the bushes, and the pair entered the boat, and rowed up the Orwell to a place of safety, news of their movements interrupting the good grandmother in the perusal of Bishop Watson's Sermons.

The young lady being a ward in Chancery, the Lord Chancellor was invoked against Wakefield, but his ad-page 21dress prevailed not only to persuade the Chancellor of the propriety of the marriage, but even to conciliate the mother, with whom he kept house for a time, and who remained his friend until her daughter's premature death and her own marriage to a second husband. 'Edward,' writes Place to Mill on 30th August, 'his wife, and her mother will soon depart the land. I have not given and will not give your "congratulations to the young Benedict;" he does not deserve them.' Here again Place was to be confuted by events. Wakefield's private letters, as well as family recollections, attest that he was affectionately devoted to his wife, and that the too brief union was a very happy one. 'Mr Hill,'the elder Wakefield writes in 1823, 'has been delighting me by talking in the highest terms of Edward's wife. She lived with him for four years as a daughter, and he thinks of her just as I do, describes her excellent acute sense, and yet the kind, reserved way; she never forced it on you, but left it to you to find it out; he talks of her gentleness, relates the impression which she made upon all his friends, and how they speak of her now; he says that he could relate the most amiable stories that he heard of her at Genoa since she left.'¹

'Thou can love thy lass and her money too:
Making them go together as they've good right to do.'

The immediate result or the marriage was an improvement in his official, no less than in his pecuniary, position. He returned to Turin as Secretary to the Under Secretary of the Legation, the Hon. Algernon Percy, who became an intimate friend. It would seem from Mr Hill's statement that he chiefly lived at Genoa, where his daughter Susan Priscilla, known by her mother's pet name of Nina, was born on 4th December 1817. On 25th June 1820, his son, Edward Jerningham, was born in London, an event followed on 5th July by the death of the mother. This tragic event not merely occasioned him the deepest agony, but raised up a barrier he could never quite displace between him and his infant son, and prepared his estrangement from his wife's family. It seemed an unmitigated page 23disaster; without it, nevertheless, the world might never have heard of him. He appears to have been for some years following connected with the Paris Embassy as 'secretary general and attache ad libitum.' At Paris, in 1822, the elder Wakefield, who continued to carry on his business in Pall Mall, and whose private address was in Charles Street, St James's Square, contracted, at the British Embassy, an eventful marriage, long kept secret, with Frances, daughter of the Rev. David Davies, headmaster of Macclesfield Grammar School; and at Paris also, in September 1823, Edward Gibbon acted as second in a duel. We must think of him at this time as a young man of fashion, a buck in his attire, of wild and almost insolent spirits, ready for any frolic, and not discriminating too nicely between frolic and mischief.

That Wakefield, nevertheless, was not entirely devoted to fashionable society, appears not only from his father's statement, 'Parliament and office are his first objects; he will go in to support Mr Canning with the full expectation of holding a considerable official situation:' but from two highly interesting documents not until now connected with his name. His authorship is proved by copies in his handwriting, with marginal directions showing that they were to be printed in some journal which apparently had not existed very long, and doubtless contained other examples of his composition. The longer and more elaborate of the two may be described page 24as a general review of the state of public feeling, in the form of a letter to the Marquis of Titchfield, heir-apparent to the Dukedom of Portland. This young nobleman died in March 1824. The letter, therefore, is prior to that date, and internal evidence shows it to have been written after Canning had become Foreign Secretary in August 1822. It is remarkable not so much for any extraordinary force of diction, as from the affinity and the contrast it simultaneously presents to the ideal of another youthful genius then equally eager to open the oyster or the world. Although the stuff of Disraeli's Vivian Grey is neither more nor less than the negotiation for the establishment of the Representative newspaper, transferred with sublime audacity to the world of statesmanship, the novel undoubtedly expresses Disraeli's intimate conviction; and this is precisely the same as that of Wakefield's essay—the great opportunity for a new departure in politics afforded by the exhaustion of both the old parties. Each proposes to effect this object under the ægis of a man of rank, the Marquis of Titchfield, Wakefield's selection, being probably recommended by the character he had acquired as a steady and at the same time independent member since his entrance into the House of Commons in 1818, and still more by his relationship to Canning. Both Disraeli and Wakefield lived to make their dreams realities, Durham being to the one what Bentinck and Derby were to the other. But the future page 25Colonial statesman approves himself as superior to the future Prime Minister in penetration as he is inferior in brilliancy and humour. In Vivian Grey there is not a word about the people. The only forces recognised as operative are a few noble families and conspicuous politicians whose ability to dispose of the country at their pleasure is taken for granted. With Wakefield, on the contrary, the third estate is everything. The one test of the possibility of the new political party is, Can such a party obtain the confidence of the nation? and, even though the Reform Bill was not yet, the passage of political power from the few to the many is assumed throughout as selfevident. The second and much briefer essay, Political Creed, is chiefly remarkable for an outbreak of the ardent patriotism and sanguine optimism which made Wakefield a vital force in politics, a man whose bent was ever to create, not merely to preserve or to destroy.

'But we are enthusiasts. To be sure we are! We commenced writing on politics because we are political enthusiasts; because we are sick of the dull, calculating, measured trash of one set of newspapers and the prejudiced, senseless, savage violence of others; because we would give to such hearts as our own the pleasure of reading, whilst we have the pleasure of writing, warm and enthusiastic praise of all that tends to the good of our country, and censure, bold, unqualified and uncompromising, of every word and page 26deed that appears inimical to the honour, the interests and the glory of dear old England. Enthusiasts indeed! And is it not high time that enthusiasts should appear in the only cause that is worthy of enthusiasm? We spurn the mawkish affectation which supposes that England has seen her brightest day of civilisation, prosperity and glory. We defy history to show us a country like England where all classes of people have been advancing together in knowledge, prosperity, virtue and happiness. If it be true that our nobles are luxurious, is it not also true that our peasants and mechanics have learned to read? If it be true that we take more pains than formerly about what is ornamental, is it not also true that every day produces some new useful invention? Have not our merchants, manufacturers, farmers and tradesmen made as great a progress in knowledge and virtue as any other class of people in the arts of luxury? Is there not more sterling sense and virtue amongst the people at large than at any period of our history? The attainment of knowledge, virtue and happiness are so many arts, and they have been practised in England, for the first time in the history of the world, by all classes of the people with equal success. History can furnish us with no materials for the discovery of what may happen to the English people. They may (and, if those who conduct their public affairs do but assist them, they will) reach that point of perfection which shall enable a good patriot to page 27say without extravagance, "See England and die." Perish then the miserable despondency of those who contend that the decline and fall of England have commenced, and that her bright day of prosperity, virtue, happiness and glory has passed away for ever!'

This passage reveals half the secret of Wakefield's strength. Though his faculty of interesting himself in public questions came from his grandmother, he had inherited from the paternal side an adventurous spirit which did not belong to the house of Bell. He was eager, impetuous, enthusiastic. When he had an object before him he made as light of obstacles as though to overlook them had been to overleap them. This is the temperament for a successful projector. But obstacles cannot be 'wished away' like the wassailers in the Eve of St Agnes, and his undertakings, both public and private, suffered from his refusal to recognise difficulties patent to any ordinary man. Yet, as his view of the greatness of his country, and the general progress of the age, extravagantly roseate as it was, was still very much nearer the truth than the contrary notion, so his schemes were in general essentially reasonable. Their defects could frequently be remedied or mitigated by the fertility of resource so commonly an attribute of the genial prolific temperament. When united with selfreliance, ambition and shrewdness, such qualities should carry a man far; in Wakefield's case this page 28constellation of remarkable endowments nearly bewitched him to his ruin. The success of his first hymeneal adventure was a snare to him; he should have rested his reputation upon that.