when one or two persons accepted offices thus vacated, the indignity they provoked obliged them also to resign. The local government, in fact, was sent to Coventry.' The reasons advanced in support of the convict emigration to the Cape only helped to fan the flame. In tampering with the savage tribes on the border, the government had encouraged those tribes to constant inroads, which ended at last in the Kafir war: one reason alleged by Lord Grey for requiring the Cape to receive the convicts was the debt owing by the Colony to the mother country for that same Kafir war! Again, it was said that England did not know what to do with her criminals. 'Why send us,' cried the Cape, 'the overflowing of your own 'sins? Mend your ways, and leave us to deal with that share of crime that even our better morals cannot prevent.' The Colony had already found a volunteer champion in Mr. Adderley, who had taken the lead in the House of Commons, by strenuously protesting against the convict visitation; and he had foretold the very consequences which ensued. His name is the most popular in the Colony. While we write, the quarrel remains unsettled on both sides: it seems impossible that the London government should persevere in its unjust and dangerous course, but its intentions have not been announced; the latest advices exhibit the colonists acting with unabated concord and resolution.*

In 1836, Sir William Molesworth succeeded in convincing the English parliament that the convictism of Australia entailed upon that country the most shocking state of general crime and sin that can be imagined; and through his exertions the system was arrested in its development, and finally abolished. Some pains were needed to convince the Australians that the welfare of their country was promoted by the abolition, for at first no small number were reluctant to lose that species of

* Public Proceedings at the Cape. Debate in the Legislative Council on the 15th June, relative to the introduction of convicts; the governor's last dispatch to Lord Grey read, in which Sir Henry Smith expresses agreement with colonists; resolutions agreed to by the Cape Town meeting, denouncing the introduction of criminals as injurious and degrading, and to be resisted; July 6-Address of AntiConvict Association to the governor; July 11-Sir Henry Smith's reply, promising to keep the convicts on board pending final instructions from Lord Grey; July 17-Address in rejoinder from Association; the governor's reply on the same day, consenting to withhold tickets of leave; July 24-A third address still more numerously signed; July 25-The governor's answer; see also his dispatch dated 12 June, in reply to Lord Grey's 'separate' military dispatch.-Proceedings in Parliament. March 13-Mr. Hawes answers Mr. Adderley's question by declaring that no dispatches' have been received from the Cape in answer' to the instructions regarding convicts; March 27—Mr. Adderley's resolutions, and speech on transportation to the Cape.

slave labour. It was done, however; the abolition was carried out, and the colonists were taught better. In 1849, the people of New South Wales learn that Lord Grey is going to renew the transportation of convicts; and, like the Cape colonists, the Australians rise up and protest against their country being converted into a penal colony.' Of course the Australians and the Cape colonists will stand by each other. *

Towards those two colonies, therefore, the English Minister stands in the position of a man endeavouring to force upon them an immoral institution which has been publicly denounced by the English parliament, and suppressed against the will of one of the colonies before it was taught morals by the English legislature. Lord Grey says that he means to give the colonies only a little of the institution, and much improved in quality through his own peculiar modifications and adaptations: the colonies answer that they do not believe him; that they have detected him in disingenuous suppression of facts; and that he has openly gone from his pledged word. From the speeches of Lord Grey and his colleagues, it would appear that the English statesman in office cannot understand that the colonies should be in earnest that they should care so much as they profess for this sort of political disgrace—or that they should be prepared to carry their resistance to the last extremities. Ministers talk as if they were incapable of conceiving the ideas present to the minds of the whole public throughout the Cape and Eastern Australia.

Colonial ministers in London have made a little episode for themselves. Early in the session of 1849, Mr. Hawes promised some great colonial measure. Late in the session of 1849 he introduced this promised measuree-a bill to confer a constitution upon the Australian colonies severally and collectively. Some able statesmen had talked of federation as a good thing, and Lord Grey had vamped up a federation for the Australians. The chief essential details of the plan, however, were so ill contrived, as to raise a shout of reprobation from every one who was informed upon the matter; and a mere history of the bill will suffice to show the conscious incapacity of its framers. Mr. Hawes obtained leave to introduce it, and gave notice of doing so on a particular day; but the day came without the bill,

* Proceedings in the Colony, June 1-Mr. Cowper's resolutions in the Legislative Council at Sydney, protesting against the renewal of transportation to New South Wales; June 11-Proceedings at the great public meeting to protest against the admission of the convicts arrived in the 'Hashmeny' on the 10th; the governor promises not to land them until the receipt of Lord Grey's answer.-Proceedings in Parliament. March 8-Lord Mahon's motion for returns of convict transportation.

which skipped backwards from week to week in the notice-paper, and at last disappeared altogether. It was understood to be undergoing a private remodelling; and at last it did appear, remodelled; was mauled in criticism, and withdrawn ; re-introduced, delayed, modified again, and finally deferred till 'next session.' Meanwhile, the Australians hear of it, and in New South Wales they have repudiated it altogether. If it were likely to be carried, all the Australian colonies would probably rebel against it; but inasmuch as the bill, in its altered form, no more represents the ultimate statute than the present bill was represented by the draft-inasmuch, also, as there is no great belief in the official resolve to carry any bill at all-and inasmuch as far larger colonial questions threaten the continuance of the present Ministry, no very anxious solicitude is felt about this great colonial measure.'

Discontent is lulled in the other Australian colonies; and even in New Zealand, where the Government had abetted the natives, and the squatting land-sharks, against the colonial settlers (one worthy archdeacon has established his claim, officially, to 11,000 acres)-where the Government had suffered the process of colonization to be arrested by squabbles between the Colonial Office and the New Zealand Company, some slight favourable reaction, and immense hopes founded thereon, have served for the time to tranquillize the public mind. But this happy spirit, resting upon doubtful grounds, is precarious in its tenure.

Ceylon is an Indian province; but, as if for the purpose of facilitating despotic and tyrannical government, it is placed under the Colonial Office. Of course it is in an uneasy state. The white inhabitants complain of ruin: an insurrection of the native inhabitants has recently been suppressed with sanguinary severity by the governor, Lord Torrington,-a relation of Lord John Russell, and a quondam railway director.*

It is in this universal ferment of the colonial empire that the great master of colonial polity compresses into the manual for a statesman a complete development of his matured views. It is now full twenty years since Mr. Edward Gibbon Wakefield came before the public as a colonial reformer, though for a long time he laboured anonymously. His first work having a distinct colonial bearing was the Letters from Sydney,' in which, under the guise of epistles from a resident, he gave the result of information collected from extensive sources. It is interesting to trace the career of a statesman-writer, whose intellectual

vigour has not only triumphed over the most serious obstacles, but has had more manifest influence on the progress of public affairs than that of most men directly engaged in them. The graphic and forcible style of the Letters from Sydney' drew a lively and fixed attention on the subject-on the depraved state of society produced by convict colonization in a region that has proved peculiarly fitted to develop the physical and intellectual faculties of the English race. The book appeared, we think, in 1828; in 1836, Sir William Molesworth, who had become a disciple of the author, obtained that select committee of the Commons which gave the coup de grâce to the system of transportation; it was put down in New South Wales within a few years after that committee; and in spite of the official vacillation, the system, as it was attacked by Mr. Wakefield, can never be revived. Meanwhile, however, the subject which engaged the author's attention had expanded from convictism to colonization. In examining the reasons why compulsory labour had been sought either in the form of convictism or slavery, he had been forced to investigate the nature and necessities of colonial society; and from that inquiry he had deduced the first clear and complete theory of the colonizing process. The result was a work published in 1833, under a name given to it by the publisher in the author's absence"England and America.' It expounded what has since been named 'the Wakefield system; and on an imperfect version of that system the colony of South Australia was founded, in December, 1836. The experiment was in great part frustrated by official jealousies, but not altogether. Not only has the system had considerable influence in giving that compactness and vigour which have enabled the colony to go through its financial difficulties, but the interest excited by the plan contributed to attract to the settlement men both of reflective and active minds; and the consequence is, that few communities can show a rate of understanding so high, or a general feeling so refined.

Some desire was felt for a more complete experiment; and among those who gave their adhesion to the reformer of colonization, were several leading men in and out of parliament. Attention had been already called to the suitableness of New Zealand as a site when it became known that the French intended an expedition for the purpose of seizing that group of islands, and converting the Britain of the south' into a French penal settlement. The report stimulated the activity of the theoretical colonizers in London, and the New Zealand Association' gave birth to the New Zealand Company.' A body of

colonists was hastily formed; New Zealand was occupied; and in spite of many official hindrances, it is now fairly added to the list of English colonies. In the meanwhile, there had been a rebellion in Canada: Lord Durham was sent out to govern and investigate, and he caused Mr. Wakefield to go out at the same time. Mr. Charles Buller has since avowed that the report which bears Lord Durham's name, and of which the authorship was ascribed to Mr. Buller, was principally the work of Mr. Wakefield. The subsequent measures of the government in London, in their leading essentials-the union of the two provinces, and the adoption of 'responsible government' are borrowed from that volume; though not without the customary official adulteration, which has impaired, if not perverted, the effect of the measures. Reluctantly granted, the concessions of the Colonial Office have chiefly served to show the necessity of far more searching and sweeping reforms. Every accession to the public knowledge of colonial affairs enforces the same conviction; and the critical state of all the principal colonies has helped to stimulate the growth of opinion, and so to create what may be called a party, considerable for its numbers, and still more for its intelligence, in favour of 'systematic colonization.' At the head of this party Mr. Wakefield has remained; its distinguished members, Charles Buller, Sir William Molesworth, and others, have avowed themselves his disciples; successive occupants of the colonial secretaryship have been obliged, more or less, to accept measures dictated by him.

One man, who might have been a disciple, has chosen to be an adversary. It is nearly twenty years since Lord Howick, then a young statesman, showed no small intelligence in comprehending the drift of the Wakefield theory, at that time anonymous. He obtained credit for his liberality and statesmanship, and he was regarded by the upholders of the theory as a promising colleague. Complacency at this useful aid helped to make men seriously overrate the young statesman's abilities; for although Lord Howick displayed the receptive faculties so often found in the young, his growth has not developed a corresponding faculty for action. The author and the statesman should have changed places. Well suited to criticise, and still more to cavil, Lord Howick might have served as a newspaper commentator on a policy which he has been unable to put in action. It is evident that he not only lacks that faculty of invention which is required for applying even the inventions of other people-the invention of supplementary details, impossible to comprise in an original scheme-but that he also