319 accompanied to Gretna Green. This time the family refused to condone his proceedings ; he was tried with his confederates at Lancaster assizes, March 1827, convicted, and sentenced to three years imprisonment iu Newgate. The marriage, which had not been consummated, was dissolved by a special Act of Parliament, A disgrace which would have blasted the career of most men made Wake- field a practical statesman and a benefactor to his country. Meditating, it is probable, emigration upon his release, he turned his attention while in prison to colonial subjects, and acutely detected the main causes of the slow progress of the Australian colonies in the enormous size of the landed estates, the reckless manner in which land was given away, the absence of all systematic effort at colonization, and the consequent discouragement of immigration and dearth of labour. He proposed to remedy this state of things by the sale of land in small quantities at a sufficient price, and the employment of the proceeds as a fund for promot ing immigration. These views were expressed with extra ordinary vigour and incisiveness in his Letter from Sydney (1829), published while he was still in prison, but composed with such graphic power that it has been continually quoted as if written on the spot. After his release Wakefield seemed disposed for a while to turn his attention to social questions at home, and produced a tract on the Punishment of Death, with a terribly graphic picture of the condemned sermon in Newgate, and another on incendiarism in the rural districts, with an equally powerful exhibition of the degraded condition of the agricultural labourer. He soon, however, became entirely engrossed with colonial affairs, and, having impressed Stuart Mill, Colonel Torrens, and other leading economists with the value of his ideas, became a leading though not a conspicuous manager of the South Australian Company, by which the colony of South Australia was ultimately founded. In 1833 he published anonymously England and America, a work primarily in tended to develop his own colonial theory, which is done in the appendix entitled "The Art of Colonization." The body of the work, however, is fruitful in seminal ideas, though some statements may be rash, and some conclusions extravagant. It contains the distinct proposal that the transport of letters should be wholly gratuitous the pre cursor of subsequent reform and the prophecy that, under given circumstances, " the Americans would raise cheaper corn than has ever been raised." In 1836 Wakefield pub lished the first volume of an edition of Adam Smith, which he did not complete. In 1837 the New Zealand Associa tion was established, and he became its managing director. Scarcely, however, was this great undertaking fairly com menced when he accepted the post of private secretary to Lord Durham on the latter s appointment as special com missioner to Canada. The Durham Report, the charter of constitutional government in the colonies, though drawn up by Charles Bullcr, embodied the ideas of Wakefield, and the latter was the means of its being given prematurely to the public through the Times, to prevent its being tampered with by the Government. He acted in the same spirit a few months later, when (about July, 1839), under standing that the authorities intended to prevent the despatch of emigrants to New Zealand, he hurried them off on his own responsibility, thus compelling the Govern ment to annex the country just in time to anticipate a similar step on the part of France. For several years Wakefield continued to direct the New Zealand Company, fighting its battles with the colonial office and the missionary interest, and secretly inspiring and guiding many parlia mentary committees on colonial subjects, especially on the abolition of transportation. The company was by no means a financial success, and many of its proceedings were wholly unscrupulous and indefensible; its great object, however, was attained, and New Zealand became the Britain of the south. In 1846 Wakefield, exhausted with labour, was struck down by apoplexy, and spent more than a year in complete retirement, writing during his gradual recovery his Art of Colonization. The management of the company had meanwhile passed into the hands of others, whose sole object was to settle accounts with the Government, and wind up the undertaking. Wakefield seceded, and joined Lord Lyttelton and Mr Godley in establishing the Canterbury settlement as a Church of England colony. A portion of his correspondence on this subject has been published by his son, and is perhaps the most adequate memorial extant of the vigour and sagacity of his intellect. As usual with him, however, he failed to retain the confidence of his coadjutors to the end. In 1853, after the grant of a con stitution to New Zealand, he took up his residence in the colony, and immediately began to act a leading part in colonial politics. In 1854 he appeared in the first New Zealand parliament as extra-official adviser of the acting governor, a position which excited great jealousy, and as the mover of a resolution demanding the appointment of a responsible ministry. It was carried unanimously, but difficulties, which will be found detailed in Swainson s New Zealand and its Colonization (ch. 12), prevented its being made effective until after the mover s retirement from political life. In December 1854, after a fatiguing address to a public meeting, followed by prolonged exposure to a south-east gale, his constitution entirely broke down. He spent the rest of his life in retirement, dying at Wellington on 16th May 1862. Wakefield was a man of large views and lofty aims, and in private life displayed the warmth of heart which commonly accompanies these qualities. His main defect was unscrupulousness : he hesitated at nothing necessary to accomplish an object, and the conviction of his untrust- worthiness gradually alienated his associates, and left him politically powerless. Excluded from parliament by the fatal error of his youth, he was compelled to resort to in direct means of working out his plans by influencing public men. But for a tendency to paradox, his intellectual powers were of the highest order, and as a master of nervous idiomatic English he is second to Cobbett alone. After every deduction it remains true that no contem porary showed equal genius as a colonial statesman, or in this department rendered equal service to his country. For an impartial examination of the Wakefield system, see Levoy- Beanlieu, De la Colonisation chez Us Peiqrtcs Moderncs (3d ed., pp. 562-575 and 696-700). (R. G.) WAKEFIELD, GILBERT (1756-1801), classical scholar, theologian, and politician, was born at Nottingham, February 22, 1756, and was the son of the Rev. George Wakefield, rector of St Nicholas. After being educated at various private schools, he proceeded at the age of sixteen to Jesus College, Cambridge, where he cultivated his classical studies diligently, but imbibed a thorough distaste for logic and mathematics. He became, however, fellow of his college in 1776, and in 1778 was ordained by the bishop of Peterborough, in a frame of mind which led him afterwards to declare that he regarded his subscription to the Articles as the most disingenuous action of his life. He held, however, curacies for a short time at Stockport and Liverpool, but in 1779, the year of his marriage, quitted the church, and accepted the post of classical tutor at the Nonconformist academy at Warrington. The institution was already on the decline, and Wakefield s pugnacious temper was not likely to contribute to restore it. "It survived my arrival," he says, "four years." During this short period he published translations of Matthew and the first epistle to the
Thessalonians, and treatises on inspiration and baptism,