eer
nonsense. There are few more odd examples of the irony of fate in
colonial history than that the man who warred against the convict
system, fought the battle of colonial self-government, was ever the
enemy of the land-shark and monopolist, who denounced low wages, and
whose dream it was that the thrifty, well-paid colonial labourer could
and should develop into the prospering farmer, should be railed at in
the Colonies as the enemy of the labourer. The faults of Wakefield's
"sufficient price" theory were indeed grave enough. But compare them
with the lasting mischief wrought in New Zealand by Grey's unguarded
scheme of cheap land for everybody, and they weigh light in the
balance. Later on I shall return to Wakefield's system and its
defects. Here I have but to say that, as a temporary expedient for
overcoming at that time the initial difficulties of a colony, it ought
not to be hastily condemned. It has long ago been abandoned after
working both good and evil, and in the same way the schemes of Church
Settlement Wakefield made use of are now but interesting chapters of
colonial history. But we must not forget that these things were but
some of the dreams of Gibbon Wakefield. At the most he regarded them
as means to an end. His great dream of lifting colonization out of
disrepute, and of founding colonies which should be daughter-states
worthy of their great mother, has been no false or fleeting vision.
That dream, at any rate, came to him through the Gate of Horn and not
through the Ivory Gate.

By Wakefield it was that the Colonial Office was forced to annex New
Zealand. In the face of the causes making for annexation sketched in
the last chapter, the officials hung back to the last. In 1837 a body
of persons appeared on the scene, and opened siege before Downing
Street, whom even permanent officials could not ignore. They were
composed of men of good standing, in some cases of rank and even
personal distinction. They were not traders, but colonizers, and as
such could not be ignored, for their objects were legitimate and their
hands as clean as those of the missionaries. They first formed, in
1837, a body called "The New Zealand Association." At their head was
Mr. Francis Baring. Their more prominent members included John Lambton
Earl of Durham, Lord Petre, Mr. Charles Enderby, Mr. William Hutt, Mr.
Campbell of Islay, Mr. Ferguson of Raith, Sir George Sinclair, and Sir
William Molesworth. The Earl of Durham was