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 an aristocratic Radical of irregular temper, who played a great part in another colonial theatre—­Canada.  Sir William Molesworth did much to aid the agitation which put an end to the transportation of convicts to Australia.  For the rest, the Association thought the thoughts, spoke the words, and made the moves of Gibbon Wakefield.  Yet though he pervaded it sleeplessly, its life was but an episode in his career.  He fought against the convict system with Molesworth and Rentoul of the Spectator.  He went to Canada as Lord Durham’s secretary and adviser.  He was actively concerned in the foundation of South Australia, where his system of high prices for land helped to bring about one of the maddest little land “booms” in colonial history.  And as these things were not enough to occupy that daring, original, and indefatigable spirit, he threw himself into the colonization of New Zealand.  He and his brother, Colonel Wakefield, became the brain and hand of the New Zealand colonizers.