pany, of which he was the leading spirit, he assisted in the foundation of the Canterbury and Otago settlements under separate associations. In 1852 he at last saw the land of promise which he had recommended to so many others. He at first settled in Canterbury, but subsequently lived at Wellington, becoming a member of the local Provincial Council. In 1854 he was elected M.H.R. for the Hutt district, but was obliged to retire through ill-health after one session's experience of parliamentary life. He took a leading part in the struggle which preceded the actual initiation of responsible government, which had been presumably granted, but which was withheld from operation by the acting Governor, largely on the irresponsible, and, as its advocates argued, unconstitutional advice of Gibbon Wakefield himself, Mr. Wakefield, though at first prompting the Lower House to demand it, ultimately adopting a temporising policy. He died at Wellington on May 16th, 1862. Besides Mr. Felix Wakefield (q.v.), Mr. Wakefield had three other brothers who made a home in New Zealand, viz., Arthur, a captain R.N., who founded the Nelson settlement in 1841 as agent of the New Zealand Company, and was killed by the Maoris at the lamentable affair known as the Wairu massacre on June 17th, 1843; William, who, though educated for the diplomatic service, was a colonel in the British auxiliary force in Spain, where he served from 1832 to 1834. He was the real founder of New Zealand on his brother's plans. In 1839 he went out as the principal agent of the New Zealand Company and selected the site of the Port Nicholson (Wellington) settlement, and in the next year the first colonists arrived. At the start of the settlement he was its ruler as chairman of the governing committee. He concluded the celebrated Ngaitapu purchase at Akaroa in 1843, by which the Maoris parted with the South Island to the whites. Colonel Wakefield married in 1826 Emily Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Shelley Sidney, of Penshurst Place, and sister of Philip, first Lord de Lisle and Dudley, by whom he had an only daughter, who married Sir Edward W. Stafford, afterwards Premier of New Zealand. He died at Wellington in 1848; Daniel, who emigrated to the Wellington settlement in 1844, and became a judge of the Supreme Court of New Zealand.
Wakefield, Edward Jerningham, only son of Edward Gibbon Wakefield (q.v.) proceeded to New Zealand with his uncle Colonel William Wakefield, who was the principal agent of the New Zealand Company, and who took the leading part in founding the Wellington settlement in the years 1839-40. Mr. Wakefield remained in New Zealand till 1844, when he returned to England, and in the two following years occupied himself, at his father's instigation, in promoting the Church of England settlement in Canterbury and the Presbyterian settlement in Otago. Returning to New Zealand, Mr. Wakefield represented a Canterbury constituency in the first House of Representatives elected under the new Constitution Act in 1854, and was a member of the Executive Council from August to Sept. during the inchoate period which preceded the initiation of regular responsible government. He was again an M.H.R. in 1876, and died at Christchurch the same year. He was the author of "Adventures in New Zealand," published in 1845; "A Letter to Sir George Grey in reply to his Attacks on the Canterbury Association and Settlement" (Lyttelton, N.Z., 1851); "The Founders of Canterbury, being Letters from the late Edward Gibbon Wakefield to John Robert Godley and to other Well-known Helpers in the Foundation of the Settlement of Canterbury, in New Zealand" (Christchurch, N.Z., 1868).
Wakefield, Felix, was the fifth son of Edward Wakefield, of Burnham Hall, Essex, and younger brother of Edward Gibbon Wakefield. He was born in 1807, and was educated as an engineer. In early life he was Superintendent of Public Works in Tasmania. Returning to England in 1847, he threw himself with energy into his brother's colonising schemes, and took an active part in establishing the Canterbury settlement in the colony of New Zealand, to which he himself emigrated in 1851, the allotment which he took up being No. 2, now the site of the town of Sumner. Being an enthusiastic botanist, he distributed seeds and cuttings, from which many of the plantations in the vicinity of Christchurch had their rise. On his return after a visit to England in
487
