SIR GEORGE GIPPS AND THE "WAKEFIELD SYSTEM " OF COLONIZING.

THE Globe attempts to mystify the question between Sir George Gipps and the ' squatters ' of New South Wales.* In a string of flippant paragraphs it alleges that Sir George has set the colony in a blaze by attempting to enforce the "Wakefield system "; mis- represents that system, in order to give an air of plausibility to the charge; and pretends that the Spectator has recanted its former opinions on the subject. Perhaps the Globe had no other aim in view than to glorify itself and disparage others, in one of its habitual sneers at " systematic colonization " ; but as, in the present instance, its misrepresentations might contribute to introduce still more confusion into an already sufficiently com- plicated controversy, it may be worth while to state, that "the Wakefield system' is not what the Globe represents it to be; and that Sir George Gipps has from first to last acted in opposition to the principles of that system. The Globe adopts as a succinct expression of the Wakefield sys- tem these words—" that concentration was the source of colonial wellbeing, and that a colonial population might be concentrated by an artificial process." It also intimates that the system is " founded on the -self-evident absurdity of monstrous prices for waste ,landk" • Hid our contemporary' wished to state the truth, and" takenth-e--trouble. to --eonsult: Wakefield's own expla-, nations to the Committee of 1836 on t.16 -Disposal of Waste- Lands in the British Colonies, he could scarcely have ventured on so glaring a perversion. He would then have seen, that Mr. Wakefield maintained—first, That the great problem in colo- nization is to make the colonies attractive ; second, That the mode of disposing of waste land is very important with a view to this object ; third, That where waste land may be appropriated to any extent by any individual, it is impossible to develop the colony's resources so as to render it attractive, except by the agency of slavery ; fourth, That by disposing of land for " a sufficient price," a stop can be put to the dangerous practice of unlimited appro- priation ; fifth, That no conditions attached to free grants are an adequate substitute for a sufficient price ; sixth, That the ex- action of too high a price reduces a colony to the distressed con- dition of old and overstocked lands ; seventh, That fixing a minimum price and then disposing of lands to the highest bidder by auction has a tendency to raise prices too high ; eighth, That it is dangerous to allow Government to limit the range within which lands shall be open for purchase. That these have been Mr. Wakefield's views, can easily be shown from his own words.

First.. " What do you mean by a good mode of colonization'?" " That mode which would render the colonies most attractive; which would conduce to the greatest amount of immigration into the colonies."—Report of Waste Lands Committee, 1836. Question 561.

Second. " In an inquiryconcerning the means of emigration, you would consider the disposal of the waste land as the first object that ought to be regarded?" " It is very important: waste land is the chief element of colonization."—" In what way does it appear to you that the disposal of waste land by Government in one way, more than any other, would affect the progress and prosperity of the colony?" " In almost every way. The disposal of waste land appears to be the very bas of the fabric, the foundation upon which all is to be raised; and there- fore that success or failure depends almost entirely upon the manner in which land is to be disposed of by Government."—Report, Q. 562-3. Third. "Can you mention any other evils which appear to you to have arisen from too profuse a system of disposing of land on the part of Government?" " The greatest evil appears to me to have been the destruction of a vast number of co- lonies. * * * Where a colony has not perished, (a colony planted in a coun- try where there was still a great quantity of unappropriated land,) the means of its salvation has been an enormous evil itself, namely, slavery." • * * " How do you connect the existence of slavery with great cheapness of land?" " When- ever land is very cheap, men who are free have a disposition, which I am unable to account for, but they have a disposition, as is borne out by all history, to ob- tain land of their own. Every one is disposed to become a proprietor, an indi- vidual landowner; and when every one does become an individual landowner, and cultivates his own piece of land, every one does the same thing, and there can be no combination of labour among them. For they work in different places, and there can be hardly any exchange amongst them, for they all produce exactly the same thing. Consequently the society is in what may he called a separated state, a barbarous state. It is cut up into as many fractions as there are individuals: and then in order to produce that surplus produce, that capital, and all those advantages which result from the greater productiveness of combined labour, a motive ensues to obtain slaves. Freemen will not, but slaves may be forced to work in combination."—Report, Q. 579-80. Fourth. "Your mode of preventing the injurious dispersion of the settlers is

charging a certain price for land ? " "No, I have not mentioned that as a me- thod at all: I have only been asked questions hitherto as the general principle of restriction. There might be many means of restriction; but I consider the most effectual restriction to be the price charged; the most easy method to be carried into effect; the most fair and just towards all; the most equal."—Report, Q.628.

Fifth. "Do you not conceive that some conditions might be annexed to grants of land which would secure a due cultivation of those grants ?" " I cannot imagine any. I have tried to devise some condition that should compel the settler to culti- vate his land, to use his land properly; and I find that all such conditions, how- ever strictly the cultivation might be defined, would be conditions to be performed after the grant had been obtained: that, I think, has always been the case. All the conditions hitherto imposed have been conditions to be performed after the grant had been obtained: consequently, there was nothing to prevent the settler from obtaining more laud than he could use; at worst, he could but forfeit the land afterwards in case he did not fulfil the condition: he therefore took so much as made it absolutely impossible for him to fulfil the condition whether the con- dition were the cultivation of a certain part or the payment of a quit-rent. Not fulfilling the condition, he ought, according to law, to have forfeited his land: but then, all his neighbours were in exactly the same predicament; and the persona who had to administer the law, the Governor and members of the Council, were in the same predicament, for they all had appropriated land subject to these condi- tions; and they conspired to defeat the law whenever there was a law of for- feiture."—Report, Q. 655.

Sixth. " Do you think that you may raise the price so high, in search of a suf- ficient price, as to create a great deal of discontent among the inhabitants of the colony * * *? " " The question comprises so many subjects that I have great difficulty in answering it. The first part of the question, or rather the first question of several, appears to be, whether very injurious effects might not be pro- duced by requiring an excessive price. I said yesterday, in answer to that ques- tion, Yes, the worst possible effects, all the evil effects that attend on over-populous old countries."—Report, Q. 787. Seventh. " On what grounds do you object to the plan of selling by auction to the highest bidder above the minimum price?" " Having very clearly defined the object with which I would require some price, namely, to obtain combinable labour in the colony; having found out a price which I could consider sufficient for that object, I should consider auction, by which I might obtain in many cases a higher price, to be more a mode to tax settlers. Having got a price which was sufficient, I should say, why any further restriction, or any further exaction of money from the settlers? I have but one object; having secured it, I wish to avoid all further interference with the liberty of action in the colony."—Report, Q. 748.

Eighth. "What evils do you consider would result from allowing the Colonial an thorities to determine the situation of the land which should be open to purchase?" "Whatever evils might result from the unnecessary interference of Government with the concerns of individuals. Individuals would be the best judges of the situation in which they should like to obtain land. They would consider their own interests, and be sure to select the most favourable spots." • • • "How do you conceive that the liberty of appropriation, which is your object, both as to quantity of land and as to situation, might be thoroughly secured? " It appears to me, that this complete liberty of appropriation, both as to quantity and situa- tion, might be thoroughly secured by very extensive previous surveys; by survey- ing so large an extent of land in advance of settlement as to give every person ample room for choice."—Report, Q. 699-3. "You have stated that both in ancient and in modern colonies, you observe a coincidence of prosperity. with slavery and concentration of the population, and a failure of those colonies in which there were no slavery and no concentration?" "I have not used the word 'concentra- tion; and T do not believe that it is of advantage to a colony to be pressed into a very small space. I did not use the word dispersion,' and I did not mean what is usually expressed by the word dispersion. I used the words 'separa- tion of labour. There may be a complete separation of labour without any dis-

persion at all." * * "If prosperity appears to have accompanied slavery and comparative concentration of population and the reverse the opposite cir- cumstances, may not the prosperity be owing to the fact of slavery being estab- lished in these colonies, and not to the population being concentrated or dispersed ? " "I do not think that the population was concentrated in those parts where slavery was established. On the contrary, slavery gave them the opportunity of beneficially dispersing, because each batch of per- sons spread out to a great distance; each batch of them carried with it a mass of compulsory labourers; so that slavery rather encouraged dispersion, looking to the question of the extent of land."—Report, Q. 588-9.

These are the terms in which " the Wakefield system" was propounded to a Committee of the House of Commons nine years ago,—long before the squabbles between Governor Gipps and his colonists, or even the Gipps government of New South Wales itself, began. The system they develop seemed to us sound then, as it seems now. No " palinodia" has been sung by us. But that is a minor consideration : this is not the system that has been pursued in New South Wales, with such mischievous consequences. The system pursued has been, in almost ever particular, diame- trically opposed to that of Wakefield. For this, Sir George Gipps has not been exclusively to blame : part of the mischief was done to his hands. The attempt to " concentrate" population, by ex- cluding certain lands from sale, was begun by Lord Ripon. The licence system, to which Sir George's predecessor had recourse to obviate or neutralize the evils of forced concentration, has put the squatters, a wealthy and energetic body, in possession, and has been virtually tantamount to the practice of granting lands on conditions to be afterwards fulfilled. Sir Georges contribution to the systematic counteraction of the Wakefield principles in New South Wales, consists in his use of sales by auction, to force up prices to a height objected to by Mr. Wakefield as calculated to entail on a colony many of the evils of an overpeopled country. Sir George's mismanagement in regard to the land-tenure arises partly from a false theory of his own respecting prices, not only acted upon, but elaborately explained and advocated in his de- spatches, and partly from his perseverance in the concentration policy of Lord Ripon. But Sir George's errors, are not confined to the land-tenure question : his rash yet vacillating policy in re- gard to immigration, his systematic opposition to all attempts to develop the resources of the colony by opening roads and im- proving harbours, and his uniformly scornful and contumelious deportment towards the colonists, would of themselves have made him a calamity to the province placed under his rule, even though his land policy had been as sound as it has been the reverse.

In its eagerness to make it appear that the " Wakefield system " has been given up as impracticable, the Globe presses Captain Fitzroy and New Zealand into the service as well as Sir George

Gipps and New South Wales. Poor Captain Fitzroy is assumed to have carried out the Wakefield principles of colonization (in the Globe idiom, "quack nostrums ") with him • whereas it is apparent from despatches printed by order of the House of Com- mons more than a year ago, that he carried out, in addition to Lord Stanley's instructions open or secret, nothing but a head stuffed with missionary notions, and an overweening estimate of his own capacities for governing. And upon these unfounded assumptions—that Sir George Gipps acted upon "the Wake- field system," and that Captain Fitzroy first believed in and When better advised abjured it—the Globe sings io pawn over the euthanasia of " systematic colonization." The Globe has so often positively announced the extinction of " the Wakefield system," that the tale is now listened to with incredulity, like the boy's too often repeated cry of " wolf." But perhaps the time for making the assertion was never more infelicitously chosen than at present. The doctrine of a sufficient price for waste lands has been admitted, among other leading colonists, by Mr. Went- worth, who, so far from blaming the Wakefield doctrines as having caused excessive price, approves of a fixed price higher than has yet been asked by Government in New South Wales. Earl Grey, who once upheld the method of sales by auction, has renounced his opinion, and declared in favour of a uniform fixed price considerably higher than has yet been proposed in any colony. The " Wakefield system " was recognized as sound by the verdict of the New Zealand Committee of 1844—a jury as fairly selected as can well be imagined. And the recent resump- tion of active operations by the colonists of " New Edinburgh" proves that practical men, staking deeply on its truth, have not

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only remained unshaken in their faith, but have been, under the most discouraging obstruction, unostentatiously but with persevering. industry, maturing their plans for carrying its principles into act. So far from being discarded, " the Wake- field system " has been steadily gaining new converts, and is on the eve of being put in practice more energetically and on a larger scale than ever.

* We subjoin the article entire. Our readers, who do not read the Globe, will thus see at once whether we have done it any injustice, and whether it has done any justice to what it professes to expound. It is not for us to charge the writer with ignorance, but he certainly does not show much accuracy of know- ledge in what follows.

The reported recall of Sir George Gipps from the Governorship of New South Wales is another curious instance of the way Colonial Governors get used-up. Our theory of the matter is this, and it has at least the advantage of being more generous to the used- up individuals In question than the solutions offered in and out of Parliament. We con- ceive that the representatives of British sovereignty in our several dependencies have of late years generally gone out to carry into effect some egregious quackery, which happened for the moment to have possession of the Parliamentary and public mind at home. On arriving at their destination, they have either found themselves absolutely powerless to enforce their prescription of the quack nostrums they took out with them —absolutely compelled instantly to abandon them and shape theircoraid stances—and this, with whatever errors of detail, we consider was the case of Captain Fitzroy in New Zealand—or else they do strenuously devote themselves to give to the airy nothings of London quackery a local habitation and a name at the vexed Anti- podes. And then they succeed, as Sir George Gipps has succeeded, in setting their co- lony in a blaze ; and receive for their conscientious exertions a recall--probably soli- cited even by themselves.

Non nosier laic sermo. This is not a prejudiced gloss put by us on these incidents. This is no effusion of supposed unreasoning enmity to systematic colonization.' Ene- mies we indeed showed ourselves, years back, more open and decided than then seemed prudent, against a system whose persevering pretensions had enlisted the whole active power of Parliament, and forced itself by sheer' pressure from without' on the succes- sive adoption of Governments—a system, the implicit faith of whose subscribers sur- passed everything that had been seen since the aro of Law's Mississippi scheme, and was even described by a writer of deserved distinction on public economy—whose name (because we respect it) we shall not mention in the connexion—as the greate,stpolitical discovery that had been made in the present age 1 " This was the so-called • Wakefield system' of colonization ; and though this inven- tion is now pretty well pulled down from its high and palmy state, and will never again, we should think, raise the wind in the London money-market, its sequelte are sun everywhere encountered in the shape of endless colonial embarrassments. It had a large part in the administrative blunders of land-disposal in New Zealand ; it has dictated the precise policy for which Sir George Gipps is recalled from New South Wales. Again we say, Non nosier hie sermo. Sir George Gipps's failure is traced, as follows, to its origin by the Spectator.

" Our weekly contemporary begins by stating, that Lord Ripon, while at the head of the Colonial Office, adopted the notion that concentration ' was the source of colonial wellbeing, and that a colonial population might be concentrated by an artificial process.

" It would be difficult to describe more succinctly the exact faith as it was in Wake- field ; the faith onr weekly contemporary defended so stoutly against our bumble selves. "Let no man take an administrative faith on trust from the best possible public in- structors. Otherwise he may find himself turned round upon by them as follows, when his faith will not work, with the plain language of common sense—which, all along, we have a right to say, was opposed by us to the sounding brass and tinkling cymbals which drew forth, a few years back, metals more precious from many dupes.

" But common sense has recovered its sway ; and, Instead of the Eldorado strain of the inventors of a new system of colonizing, we have the following sober lesson, as old as the world—or, at least, as the separation between Lot and Abraham. (A quotation Prom last Spectator, explaining the controversy between Sir George Gipps and the New South Wales colonists.] It would be difficult to Imagine a palinotlia more complete. The only people who never were deceived by spick and span new systems of colonizing, founded on the self- evident absurdity of monstrous prices for waste lands, are the inhabitants of our colonies themselves, who are in contact with realities. Those realities have, it seems, been too atoms for Sir George Gipps, as for every other functionary, who finds himself set to shave with razors which were not made to shave, but to sell."—Globe, Wednesday, Nov. 12.