Mills, R – Chapter VI

Excerpt from

The Colonization of Australia (1829-42)

The Wakefield Experiment in Empire Building 

by Richard Mills

with an introduction by Graham Wallas

Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1915

(For further information see also the post Wakefield, Economics, and Colonies)

Chapter VI: The National Colonization Society

[140] Soon after the publication of his theory in the Letter from Sydney, Wakefield began to gather around him a small, but able and influential, body of men who accepted his leadership and found in his plans a means of remedying distress and social evils in Great Britain by colonization on systematic lines. At first his associates came from among the younger members of the Benthamite group, who were favourably disposed to listen to the doctrines of the son of Edward Wakefield; but, as his activities and his prestige alike grew, he counted amongst his adherents men drawn from every side of political life, who often disagreed on all points but systematic colonization. “The history of any definite ’school’ of philosophic or political opinion,” writes Mr Graham Wallas, “will generally show that its foundation was made possible by personal friendship. So few men devote themselves to continuous thought, that if several think on the same lines for many years it is almost always because they have encouraged each other to proceed. And varieties of opinion and temperament are so infinite, that those who accept a new party name, and thereby make themselves [141] responsible for each other’s utterances, are generally bound by personal loyalty as well as by intellectual agreement.” This is essentially true of the systematic colonizers. There was a small inner circle of Wakefield’s intimate friends who constantly supported him in his long fight against the indifference of the public and the opposition of a few antagonists. Of these friends the chief was Charles Buller, Carlyle’s pupil, a man in whom outstanding ability was united with a personal charm which made him beloved by all his contemporaries of whatever political party. Wakefield truly said of him that he had no enemies, and his great gifts of mind and character make him the most attractive figure of this group, not excepting even its leader. Carlyle wrote of him, “a sound penetrating intellect, full of adroit resources, and loyal by nature itself to all that was methodic, manful, true — in brief, a mildly resolute, chivalrous and gallant character, capable of doing much serious service.” He possessed a playful and keen, though never cruel, wit, which often roused in too serious mines the suspicion that he was merely clever and not in earnest. Henry Greville records his impression in this way, “Charles Buller is amusing, but too much of a banterer to please me.” “He had,” said the obituary notice in the Morning Chronicle, “an unfortunate propensity to indulge in a habit of joking for joking’s sake; so that, for many years, the real sterling talents of his Parliamentary displays was obscured by what appeared a triviality of mind not to be corrected or overcome.” from child-[142]hood he suffered ill health, and an impression got abroad that he was indolent and incapable of really hard work, or of taking anything seriously enough. “At last he shook off the occasional flippancy which had detracted from the main vigour of his intellect, and had created a prejudice against his administrative capacity.” In 1847, when he was appointed president of the Poor Law Commission, he hailed the opportunity of showing that he was not a mere trifler. “If I do succeed,” he wrote to Wakefield, “no-one will ever again say I am a mere talker with no qualities for business. I incur responsibility, I know: but sweat and risk are the purchase money of every palm worth wearing.” His best remembered jeu d’esprit was uttered when the Radical party in the House of Commons was gradually dwindling in numbers. “I see what we are coming to, Grote,” he said, “in no very long time from this, only you and I will be left to ‘tell’ Molesworth.”

An able and convincing speaker, he advocated for long in the House of Commons the cause of the colonies, and the Wakefield theory of colonization. In 1830, however, he was a new and young member of the House of Commons, albeit the ablest of the small group of philosophical radicals, as they were later called, whose most prominent members were Hume, Leader, Grote, Roebuck, and Molesworth. Although he had made a reputation by his work on the Public Record Commission, Buller was a comparatively unknown man when, in 1837, his talents brought him under the notice of Lord Durham, who chose him as his chief assistant in his mission to Canada. On his return, he soon became recognised as a coming man in the House of Commons. From his facile pen came, in 1840, a well-reasoned and brilliant statement of the case for responsible government in the colonies, [143] accompanied by amusing, if exaggerated, attacks on the Colonial Office and its bureaucratic system which he stigmatized as the reign of Mr. Mothercountry. His premature death in 1848, when he was but 42 years of age, alone prevented him from rising to a high position as a statesman.

Buller and Wakefield were lifelong friends. Buller not only possessed the ability and public position which made him a spokesman in Parliament of the Wakefield theory, but he was also ready to become Wakefield‘s pupil in colonial subjects. Wakefield, at the time of his release in 1830, was 34 years of age, while Buller was only 24, and, though later, as Wakefield put it, the relation between them as colonizers was that of “each others alter it ego.” yet Buller derived his inspiration and his interest in colonization from Wakefield. His attention, however, was, unlike Wakefield‘s, by no means confined to colonies and colonization, and he was often able to take a juster view both of the reason in the opposition which they encountered, and of the motives of opponents.

Sir William Molesworth, another important member of the group, was a man of a different type. A “faithful utilitarian,” he was distinguished more by the courage and consistency with which he advocated his opinions, fearless alike of friend and foe, than by popularity or any charm of manner. In the eyes of his opponents he appeared an “able but wayward politician” given to the advocacy of foolish crazes of which colonization was one. He was not an original member of the Colonization Society, but, by 1833, his first session in Parliament, he had become a supporter of the Wakefield theory. He was a great personal friend both of Buller and of Wakefield, and his biographer, Mrs. Fawcett, and admits that he looked on them as master-minds in the sphere of colonization. The chief part [144] which he played in the work of colonial reform under the tutelage of Wakefield, was to advocate strenuously the policy of self-government for colonies, and to maintain that this was quite consistent with a close relation between mother-country and colony. “It is Molesworth’s supreme title to distinction,” writes Mrs Fawcett, “that he adopted this view, and made it the chief object of his parliamentary and public life to educate the country to share it and see its importance.” Besides this, Molesworth had rendered great services to Wakefield by supporting him in connection with the associations which he created for the purpose of founding South Australia and New Zealand. “Molesworth’s assistance to these at associations in and out of Parliament was invaluable; he spared neither time, labour, nor his purse in promoting them.”

His name, too, deserves always to be remembered for the share he took, as chairman of the Transportation Committee of 1837, in the attempt to abolish the evils of transportation to Australia. Great things were hoped by the colonial reformers from his appointment as Secretary of State for the Colonies in July, 1855, but he died within a few months of taking office.

Other members of the circle of friends were John Stuart Mill, George Grote, and R. S. Rintuol. Mill’s interests were very much wider than colonization, but he was always a supporter of the Wakefield system, and gave considerable assistance by his advocacy of the policy of self-government for colonies. Although, up to 1858, his official position prevented him from taking an active part in colonization reform, yet he lent to the Wakefield group the great weight of his private authority.

Grote was probably a member of the Colonization [145] Society, and certainly aided in the formation of the South Australian Association, but his absorption in his task as historian of Greece caused him very soon to withdraw from any public connection with colonization.

R. S. Rintoul, a Scotch radical, and editor of the Spectator, which had just been started in 1828, was a firm friend of Wakefield, and a whole-hearted supporter of his doctrines. The Spectator became the organ by which the systematic colonizers brought their doctrines before the public, and urged on the government the necessity of change both in the land systems and in the government of the colonies. Indeed, this paper was, as Dr Garnett puts it, a fortress in which the colonial reformers entrenched themselves. Wakefield, who wrote articles and letters innumerable for the Spectator, was fully sensible of his debt to Rintoul. “I take the opportunity,” he wrote in a letter to Rintoul in 1841, “of publicly expressing my gratitude to you, as the person to whom I am especially indebted for having been able to propose with effect recent improvements in the art of colonization. As editor of the Spectator, you patiently examined my proposals, and manfully upheld them when they were treated with disdain or ridiculed by nearly all others who thought it worthwhile to consider them. It was your support that encouraged me, not only to maintain a theory offensive from its novelty and generally disregarded or disapproved, but also to engage in a variety of labours of which the object was to submit that theory to the test of practice. Only 11 years have passed since I began this uphill work, with no helping public hand but yours; and I think we may say now, that public opinion has gone a long way towards embracing the main principles of my scheme…. Whilst I know that a large proportion of the labours by which this system has been set on foot has been performed without my participation — whilst I acknowledge great obligations to many who have afforded to my obscure exertions a generous and [146] powerful aid — I am bound to declare, that for much of that assistance, for having been able to avail myself of it, for whatever share of credit may be due to me in the whole matter, I am chiefly indebted to you. I should have done nothing at all, if you had not constantly helped me during the years when the pursuit of systematic colonization was a continual struggle with difficulties.”

Besides these followers they were many others, too numerous to mention, whom Wakefield attracted to himself, and used in various ways in furthering his projects. Some put their names to pamphlets written by Wakefield, others, prompted by him, made speeches in Parliament or outside, others again advanced money for his schemes of colonization, waited upon the government to urge the acceptance of his plans, and formed themselves into committees and associations whose aim was the realization in practice of parts or the whole of the Wakefield theory. In all the doings of the systematic colonizers, Wakefield was first and foremost in activity. “It would be affectation to pretend,” he wrote in 1849, “that in the labours of the theorists of 1830, I have had any but the principal share.” But he kept himself in the background and was content to see others move when he pulled the strings. “It is my habitual and most useful function,” he wrote in 1849, “to work like the mole, in out-of-sight obscurity.”

His task consisted in controlling the enterprises which he set on foot, and in persuading others to carry out his plans. “I have not time to attend to details,” he wrote to his father in 1841, when busy with the founding of New Zealand, “almost every hour of my day, to say nothing of nights, from year’s end to year’s end, being engaged [147] in taking care of the principles and main clients of our New Zealand enterprise, and in what Arthur calls ‘the management of people,’ which means the persuading of all sorts of dispositions to pull together for a common object.”

In this work of management and control he was unequalled. A strong opponent has well described his activities and their success, “energetic, tenacious, indefatigable, unscrupulous, he had a wonderful talent for literary agitation, for simultaneously feeding a hundred journalists with the same idea and the same illustrations in varying language, for filling eloquent but indolent, orators with telling speeches; at one time he had rallied round him nearly every rising man of political aspirations, and secured the support of nearly every economical writer of any celebrity.”

Wakefield‘s first step on his release in May, 1830, was, with the aid of his immediate fellows to establish a society to promote systematic colonization. “A few people in London in 1830,” wrote Wakefield in 1849, “formed an association which they called the Colonization Society. The object they had in view was, in general terms, to substitute systematic colonization for mere emigration, and on a scale sufficient to produce important effects on the mother-country.”

Wakefield believed that it was vain to expect to further his colonizing projects and to create interest in colonization without some kind of association, and his experience proved him right. In 1852, writing to the Spectator, he said, “mere writing on behalf of colonies, without organized association for action, is like beating the wind.”

There are some traces of an earlier body, called the “Emigration Society,” which was merged in the National Colonization Society, as Wakefield’s asso-[148]ciation was called. The secretary of both bodies was Robert Gouger, who had edited the Letter from Sydney. He had intended emigrating to the Swan River Colony, but had been deterred from that course by becoming a convert to Wakefield’s views. He afterwards became one the founders of South Australia, where he was the first Colonial Secretary, and the records of his journals show him as an energetic and hard-working member of the Society under the inspiration and guidance of Wakefield.

Originally the Colonization Society was small in numbers, its founders were not more than a dozen, and it is not possible to discover who the original members were. Wakefield says of them, “they were an unknown and feeble body, composed chiefly of very young men, some of whose names, however, have long ceased to be obscure, whilst others are amongst the most celebrated of our day.” A list of fort-two members of the Society is given by Wakefield in England and America, excluding Grote and himslef, but containing the names of John and William Hutt, Charles Buller, Sir J.C. Hobhouse, Sir Francis Burdett, John Stuart Mill, and Colonel Torrens.

The objects of the Society, as set out in their first published pamphlet, were “to establish a general system of Colonization, founded on the main principles of [149] Selection, Concentration, and the sale of Waste Land, for the purposes of Emigration.” They made use of the term “systematic colonization” as a convenient way of describing colonization on the lines of the Wakefield theory. Their first efforts were occupied with attacking Wilmot Horton and his plans, and calling attention to the failure of the Swan River colony, with a view to showing the superiority of their own plan. They urged on the Government the necessity of requiring a price on all lands granted in Canada, South Africa and Australasia. The money obtained from the sales of such land was, they proposed, to be used in conveying young couples to those colonies. One function which the Society hoped to perform was to manage this emigration. Until the fund was available they were prepared to send out as apprentices to settlers, any orphan and destitute children whose passage was paid by the parish in England, or by any benevolent society or individual in Great Britain or Ireland. They were, however, not successful in this latter aim, and became, while they lasted, really a society for propagating the Wakefield theory, for creating interest in colonization, and for putting pressure on the Government to reduce systematic colonization to practice in Australasia. The Society stated and developed Wakefield’s views in a series of pamphlets, some anonymous, others signed by various members, but almost all composed by Wakefield himself. The Colonization Society claimed that [150] their plan had a twofold object, to remedy by emigration distress and pauperism in Britain, and to remove by systematic colonization existing social and economic evils in the colonies. But neither object seemed to attract much attention in 1830, when the movement for parliamentary reform was agitating men’s minds. In 1831, Wakefield complained that this difficulty stood in the way of arousing any interest in colonization or colonial projects. The systematic colonizers had an uphill struggle in trying to force a new theory upon an indifferent public and an unwilling government. Their proposals were received with “disdain or ridicule” by those few who considered them, and with “derision and scorn” by those who had it in their power to carry them into effect. “It is the common fate of nearly all new inventions,” they observed philosophically, “to be called, for a time, wild and visionary. The quantity of ridicule and abuse bestowed on such inventions, is generally in proportion to the greatness of the objects, and the simplicity of the means by which it is proposed that those objects should be obtained. The suggestion of the National Colonization Society has not escaped the ordinary fate of new proposals having in view the great objects; nor was it to be expected that anything so entirely novel, and proposing to to accomplish objects of such vast importance by means so very easy of application, should be received, at first, otherwise than with derision, contempt, or indifference.” Wakefield himself, looking back in 1849 on their want of success in attracting public notice at this time, wrote, “The public at large cared nothing about the matter, and could not be brought to take the slightest interest in it, if opponents had been many and much in earnest, converts [151] would not have been wanting: the general inattention was too complete for an opposition that might have proved useful.” Indeed the only real opposition they met with at first came from Wilmot Horton, who, from his first acquaintance with the Wakefield theory, was a strong opponent of the principle of land-sales. In his zeal for emigration he even became a member of the Society, but incidentally he led to its disruption. Out of compliment to his interest in the subject he was asked in 1830 to take the chair at a public meeting of the Society, and from that position made a speech attacking its principles, the result of which was that the Society disbanded. He also persuaded Colonel Torrens to join him in a controversy with the members on the question of selling colonial lands. The chief objection which they took was that a high price on land in the colonies would compel settlers to cultivate land of inferior fertility, while superior land remained uncultivated. The use of the term “concentration” by the systematic colonizers gave opportunity for misunderstanding their plan. Colonel Torrens, however, when it was made clear to him that the concentration intended was merely combination of labour, admitted that his objection was overcome, became a convert to the theory, and indeed one of its warmest supporters. “This system of colonization,” Torrens told the 1836 Committee on Waste Lands, “was first proposed to my consideration by Sir Robert Wilmot Horton, and he stated to me that it was calculated to produce congestion upon particular spots of land, to compel the settlers to cultivate inferior soil, to render their labour and capital less productive, to reduce wages and profits, which are mainly determined by the last quality of land under [152] cultivation, and to occasion rent to be paid upon superior lands as in an old country. To the principle of colonization, as thus understood, I certainly had very decided objection. But when, upon investigation, I found that this system of colonization, rightly understood, did not involve the necessity of cultivating inferior land, but, on the contrary, it offered to the settler the most perfect freedom of cultivating the most fertile land in a very extensive district, then all the objections which had occurred to Sir Robert Wilmot Horton and myself when we first looked at the subject, were to my mind entirely removed, and I became a decided approver and advocate for the system.” Mr. Wilmot Horton, on the other hand, remained sceptical, though he is credited with the curious suggestion that the Society should have Australia and South Africa in which to try their theories, while he preserved Canada as a field of experiment for his own ideas.

A more notable convert was Jeremy Bentham. In 1793 he had urged the French to emancipate their colonies. In 1825 he had declared that the possession of colonies was not necessary in order to carry on trade with them, and that the capital used in colonial trade might be applied as productively to other undertakings. Colonization, considered as a means of increasing the general wealth of the mother-country was, he thought, “an agreeable folly.” On seeing the proposals for colonizing the Swan River in 1829, he had, however, changed his opinion as to the value of colonies, and in the summer of 1831, about a year before his death, he was led to consider the Wakefield theory and the proposals of the Colonization Society. After raising several objections he declared his unqualified approbation of the theory, and wrote in its support. These writings were never published but exist in about fifty pages of manuscript, all difficult to read, and some almost indecipherable. He accepts the principle of restriction underlying the Wakefield theory, calling it the “vicinity-mazimization or dispersion-preventing principle,” and discusses at length and with considerable attention to detail the proposed plan of founding a new colony on Spencer’s Gulf, South Australia. Since these writings were never published and Bentham died soon afterwards, it in not likely that his influence counted for much in attracting adherents to systematic colonization, except in so far as men like Grote and Molesworth would be induced to look favourably upon a theory which Bentham approved. Wakefield did not receive the unanimous support of the Benthamite group, and he was all the more pleased to acknowledge Bentham’s own approval. He declared later that the form of England and America was suggested by Bentham.

After the controversy with Wilmot Horton and his action in attacking its principles, the Society seems to have broken up. But its chief members continued to act together and to carry on their attempt to educate Parliament and the country to their views on colonization.

End of chapter.

Footnotes in original are not included. This was dictated into a voice-to-text program, so errors may have crept in.