confine himself to theory, but was
tireless in organising practical experiments. They were carried out, in
a curious revival of the methods of the seventeenth century, by means
of a series of colonising companies which Wakefield promoted. The
settlement of South Australia, the first considerable settlement in the
North Island of New Zealand, and the two admirably designed and
executed settlements of Canterbury and Otago in the South Island of New
Zealand, were all examples of his methods: with the exception of the
North Island settlement, they were all very successful. Nor were these
the only instances of organised and assisted emigration. In 1820 a
substantial settlement, financed by government, was made in the eastern
part of Cape Colony, in the region of Grahamstown and Port Elizabeth,
and this brought the first considerable body of British inhabitants
into South Africa, hitherto almost exclusively Dutch. An unsuccessful
plantation at Swan River in West Australia may also be noted.
Systematic and scientific colonisation was thus being studied in
Britain during this period as never before. In the view of its
advocates Britain was the trustee of civilisation for the
administration of the most valuable unpeopled regions of the earth, and
it was her duty to see that they were skilfully utilised. So high a
degree of success attended some of their efforts that it is impossible
not to regret that they were not carried further. But they depended
upon Crown control of undeveloped lands. With the growth of full
self-government in the colonies the exercise of these Crown functions
was transferred from the ministry and parliament of Britain to the
ministries and parliaments of the colonies; and this transference put
an end to the possibility of a centralised organisation and direction
of emigration.

A second constructive factor very potently at work during this age was
the humanitarian spirit, which had become a powerful factor in British
life during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It had
received perhaps its most practical expression in the abolition of the
slave-trade in 1806, and the campaign against the slave-trade in the
rest of the world became an important object of British policy from
that time onwards. Having abolished the slave-trade, the humanitarians
proceeded to advocate the complete abolition of negro slavery
throughout the British Empire. They won their victory in 1833, when the
British parl