Various - Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 65, No. 403, May, 1849

Although this theory of a "sufficient price" is the chief topic of Mr Wakefield's book, yet there are many other subjects of interest discussed, and many valuable suggestions thrown out in it; and if we have felt ourselves compelled to enter our protest against his main theory, we are by no means unwilling to confess our share of obligation to one who has made colonisation the subject of so much study, and who has called to it the attention of so many others. It was he who, struck with the gross error that had been committed of stocking certain of our colonies with too large a proportion of the male sex, first pointed out that the period of marriage was the most appropriate period for emigration. Do not wait till want drives out the half-famished children, but let the young married couple start whilst yet healthy and vigorous, and not broken down by poverty. Some might be disposed to object that these will do well enough in England. They might, but their children might not. It is wise to take the stream of population a little higher up, where it yet runs clear; not to wait till the waters have become sluggish and polluted.

In a literary point of view, Mr Wakefield's book is an extremely entertaining one. It is difficult to believe what we are told in the preface, and hear with regret, that it was written in ill health, so elastic a spirit is observable throughout. The work assumes the form of letters passing between a statesman, who is in search of information and theory on the subject of colonisation, and a colonist who has both to give. One would naturally conclude, from the letters themselves, that both sets were written by the same author, and that the correspondence was but one of those well-understood literary artifices by which the exposition of certain truths or opinions is rendered more clear or interesting. The letters of the statesman have that constrained fictitious aspect which responses framed merely for the carrying on of the discussion are almost sure to acquire. At all events, it was hardly necessary for Mr Wakefield to describe himself in the title-page as " one of the writers;" since the part of the statesman, in the correspondence, is merely to ask questions at the proper time, to put an objection just where it ought to be answered, and give other the like promptings to the colonist.

With many readers it will add not a little to the piquancy of the work, that a considerable part is occupied in a sharp controversy with the Colonial Office and its present chief. Mr Wakefield does not spare his adversaries; he seems rather to rejoice in the wind and stir of controversy. What provocation he has received we do not know: the justice of his quarrel, therefore, we cannot pretend to decide upon; but the manner in which he conducts it, is certainly not to our taste. For instance, at p. 35 and p. 302, there is a littleness of motive, a petty jealousy of him (Mr Wakefield) attributed to Lord Grey as the grounds of his public conduct – a sort of imputation which does not increase our respect for the person who makes it. But into this controversy with the Colonial Office we have no wish to enter. So far as it is of a personal character, we can have no motive to meddle with it; and so far as the system itself is attacked, of governing our colonies through this office, as at present constituted, there appears to be no longer any controversy whatever. It seems admitted, on all hands, that our colonies have outgrown the machinery of government here provided for them.

In the extract we lately made from Mr Wakefield's book, some of our readers were perhaps startled at meeting so strange an appellation as Mr Mothercountry . It is a generic name, which our writer gives to that gentleman of the Colonial Office (though it would seem more appropriate to one of the female sex) who for the time being really governs the colony, and is thus, in fact, the representative of the mother country. The soubriquet was adopted from a pamphlet of the late Mr Charles Buller, in which he very vividly describes the sort of government to which – owing to the frequent change of ministry, and the parliamentary duties of the Secretary of State – a colony is practically consigned. We wish we had space to quote enough from this pamphlet, to show in what a graphic manner Mr Buller gradually narrows and limits the ideas which the distant colonist entertains of the ruling mother country. "That mother country," he finally says, "which has been narrowed from the British isles into the Parliament, from the Parliament into the Executive Government, from the Executive Government into the Colonial Office, is not to be sought in the apartments of the Secretary of State, or his Parliamentary under-secretary. Where are we to look for it?" He finds it eventually in some back-room in the large house in Downing Street, where some unknown gentleman, punctual, industrious, irresponsible, sits at his desk with his tape and his pigeon-holes about him. This is the original of Mr Mother-country.

That which immediately suggests itself as a substitute and a remedy for the inefficient government of Downing Street, is some form of local or municipal government. As Mr Wakefield justly observes, a local government, having jurisdiction over quite local or special matters, by no means implies any relinquishment by the imperial government of its requisite control over the colony. Neither does a municipal government imply a republican or democratic government. Mr Wakefield suggests that the constitution of a colony should be framed, as nearly as possible, on the model of our own – that there should be two chambers, and one of them hereditary. The extreme distance of many, of most of our colonies, absolutely precludes the possibility of their being efficiently governed by the English Colonial Office, or by functionaries (whether well or ill appointed) who have to receive all their instructions from that office. Throughout our colonies, the French system of centralisation is adopted, and that with a very inadequate machinery. And the evil extends with our increasing settlements; for where there is a "seat of government" established in a colony, with due legislative and executive powers, every part of that colony, however extensive it may be, has to look to that central power for the administration of its affairs.

"In our colonies," says Mr Wakefield, "government resides at what is called its seat; every colony has its Paris, or 'seat of government.' At this spot there is government; elsewhere little or none. Montreal, for example, is the Paris of Canada. Here, of course, as in the Paris of France, or in London, representatives of the people assemble to make laws, and the executive departments, with the cabinet of ministers, are established. But now mark the difference between England on the one hand, and France or Canada on the other. The laws of England being full of delegation of authority for local purposes, and for special purposes whether local or not, spread government all over the country; those of Canada or France in a great measure confine government to the capital and its immediate neighbourhood. If people want to do something of a public nature in Caithness or Cornwall, there is an authority on the spot which will enable them to accomplish this object, without going or writing to a distant place. At Marseilles or Dunkerque you cannot alter a high road, or add a gens-d'arme to the police force, without correspondence with Paris; at Gaspé and Niagara you could not, until lately, get anything of a public nature done, without authority from the seat of government. But what is the meaning, in this case, of a correspondence with Paris or Montreal? It is doubt, hesitation, and ignorant objection on the part of the distant authority; references backwards and forwards; putting off of decisions; delay without end; and for the applicants a great deal of trouble, alternate hope and fear, much vexation of spirit, and finally either a rough defeat of their object or evaporation by lapse of time. In France, accordingly, whatever may be the form of the general government, improvement, except at Paris, is imperceptibly slow; whilst in Old, and still more in New England, you can hardly shut your eyes anywhere without opening them on something new and good, produced by the operation of delegated government specially charged with making the improvement. In the colonies it is much worse than in France. The difficulty there is even to open a correspondence with the seat of government; to find somebody with whom to correspond. In France, at any rate, there is at the centre a very elaborate bureaucratic machinery, instituted with the design of supplying the whole country with government – the failure arises from the practical inadequacy of a central machinery for the purpose in view: but in our colonies, there is but little machinery at the seat of government for even pretending to operate at a distance. The occupants of the public offices at Montreal scarcely take more heed of Gaspé, which is five hundred miles off and very difficult of access, than if that part of Canada were in Newfoundland or Europe. Gaspé, therefore, until lately, when, on Lord Durham's recommendation, some machinery of local government was established in Canada, was almost without government, and one of the most barbarous places on the face of the earth. Every part of Canada not close to the seat of government was more or less like Gaspé. Every colony has numerous Gaspés. South Africa, save at Cape Town, is a Gaspé all over. All Australia Felix, being from five hundred to seven hundred miles distant from its seat of government at Sidney, and without a made road between them, is a great Gaspé. In New Zealand, a country eight or nine hundred miles long, without roads, and colonised, as Sicily was of old, in many distinct settlements, all the settlements, except the one at which the government is seated, are miserable Gaspés as respects paucity of government. In each settlement, indeed, there is a meagre official establishment, and in one of the settlements there is a sort of lieutenant-governor; but these officers have no legislative functions, no authority to determine anything, no originating or constructive powers: they are mere executive organs of the general government at the capital, for administering general laws, and for carrying into effect such arbitrary instructions, which are not laws, as they may receive from the seat of government. The settlers, therefore, are always calling out for something which government alone could furnish. Take one example out of thousands. The settlers at Wellington in New Zealand, the principal settlement of the colony, wanted a light-house at the entrance of this harbour. To get a light-house was an object of the utmost importance to them. The company in England, which had founded the settlement, offered to advance the requisite funds on loan. But the settlement had no constituted authority that could accept the loan and guarantee its repayment. The company therefore asked the colonial office, whose authority over New Zealand is supreme, to undertake that the money should be properly laid out and ultimately repaid. But the colonial office, charged as it is with the general government of some forty distinct and distant communities, was utterly incapable of deciding whether or not the infant settlement ought to incur such a debt for such a purpose; it therefore proposed to refer the question to the general government of the colony at Auckland. But Auckland is several hundred miles distant from Wellington, and between these distant places there is no road at all – the only way of communication is by sea; and as there is no commercial intercourse between the places, communication by sea is either so costly, when, as has happened, a ship is engaged for the purpose of sending a message, or so rare, that the settlers at Wellington frequently receive later news from England than from the seat of their government: and moreover the attention of their government was known to be, at the time, absorbed with matters relating exclusively to the settlement in which the government resided. Nothing, therefore, was done; some ships have been lost for want of a lighthouse; and the most frequented harbour of New Zealand is still without one." – (P. 212.)