British Expansion to Australia
and New Zealand

Tertius Chandler

[A typewritten draft of a chapter -- with the working title "The British Empire: The Age of Owen" -- from a larger work described by the author as "my Durant-continuation project" in 1982. This manuscript was found in the archives of the Henry George birthplace, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, March 2009]

9. Australia and New Zealand

The story of Australia and New Zealand in this period is largely that of a man who until past 1850 wasn't even there. Edward Gibbon Wakefield was born in London in 1796. He used the full name, but to distinguish him from his father and son, also Edwards, he is known to history as Gibbon Wakefield. An ancestor had founded Barclay's bank, but Gibbon's father, a friend of Francis Place, failed in business.

Young Wakefield at 14 refused further schooling and got a job as a royal messenger to Paris. At 18 he eloped with an heiress. The marriage was happy, but she died in 1820, leaving him with two small children. When he was 30 his stepmother thought of a way to further advance his fortunes: she suggested he turn on his considerable charm to marry another heiress, this time one he hadn't even seen. He called at her school with a faked note calling her away to her father. He then took the 16-year-old girl, who joined merrily into the spirit of the lark, up to Gretna Green and married her. He had overlooked one thing: her parents. When finally notified by mail, they were furious. They found Wakefield at Calais and took his bride away. The marriage was still unconsummated. There followed a celebrated trial, with the whole country condemning Wakefield. He begged Parliament to let him keep his wife, but it passed a special act annulling his marriage. He never married again. He served 3 years in Newgate prison, 1827-30.

While in jail he had no labor to do and was allowed good facilities for writing. He found out from other convicts that they were not at all deterred from crime by the public hangings of the time and learned moreover that the severe penalty often caused judges to let clearly guilty men go free. He therefore wrote a book, published 1831, against capital punishment. It led to a sharp reduction in the number of crimes -- mainly theft -- for which a man could be put to death. The "Times" declared that after this book, his past mid-deed should be excused and forgotten.

Another thing Wakefield learned about in prison was the "transportation" -- deporting -- of convicts to remote colonies. They were just plunked in the new location. So, while still in jail Wakefield published his so-called "Letters from Sydney... together with an Outline of a System of Colonization." This was published anonymously. The ideas in it were derived from a man quite as spectacular as himself.

This was Robert Gourlay. He was born in Fife shire, Scotland, in 1778, the scion of a Norman line that had held the same estate near Craigrothie since 1175. His strong pride had long roots. He had also the stern ethical standards of a Presbyterian. He was not quite a snob however. Indeed after seeing the plight of farm tenants he took to wearing shabby clothes and riding an inferior horse, to the shock of his fellow aristocrats. Observing his unbending integrity, his father commented, "Robert will hurt himself but do good to others."

At 21 Gourlay walked with a friend through rural England. For Arthur Young, the agricultural expert, he made a survey of conditions in Lincoln and Rutland, showing that where peasants on average owned 1-1/2 cows, the tax for poor relief was only 17 pence, as contrasted with 111 pence where the peasants owned no cows at all. He requested the government to set aside a field in each village so peasants could each graze a cow - in vain.

In 1800, taking a week off, he drew up an ideal plan. Each village could have about 100 families. Each family should have its own vegetable garden and sheep-run, and there would be a common field for grazing. Taxation would be simply paying "rents into a common fund." This plan, published in 1809, must have influenced Owen's cooperative village plan of 1813. The Quaker Bellers had written up a similar plan around 1700. Thomas Spence had been lecturing and writing about such an idea since 1775. The idea of taxing land rather than buildings goes back to Gung Yu of China who died in 43 B.C. and passed to the West where it was picked up by Quesnay of France Taxing land is very beneficial, as it forces inefficient users or mere speculators to sell off to those who will make good use of the land. By contrast, taxing anything else drives it off the market. This is the great paradox of economics.

An original feature of Gourlay's plan was for the people to elect their own parliament, with equal districts and all cities represented; he hoped the king would accept this body in place of the existing defective Parliament. This sensational idea was picked up by Attwood in Birmingham and by Cobbett in his newspaper and played a huge role in winning the Reform Act of 1832. Gourlay hoped too that the voting age would be lowered from 21 to 19.

A thoroughgoing freelance, Gourlay never joined either party and never stood for Parliament. It was his nature to carve his own way. His handwriting shows an open nature -- too open for his own good -- otherwise resolute, clear, friendly, and a good organizer.

Back home in Fife, he married happily and did well on his farm, a part of his father's estate. Yet he angered his fellow landowners by asking that tenant farmers be allowed into the former's meetings to present complaints. Still more unpopular was his pamphlet denouncing by name every corrupt local aristocrat he knew of. Tact was not his strong point. Local bigwigs set the sheriff after him, but he had already planned to move to England where he hoped to make the duke of Somerset's estate into a model farm. He did so, even though the duke put absurd obstacles in his way.

And he kept writing. In a pamphlet of 1815 Gourlay urged free trade. In it too he urged that industry be free of all taxes, as it was young and developing. He hoped a land tax would supply the bulk of the nation's revenue. Here he was getting very close to the concept of a Single Tax on land, that Henry George would later make famous. With dismay Gourlay observed Britain's land tax had actually declined by £500,000 in the past century though the population grew by 13 millions.

In another pamphlet he wrote against tenant farmers having to pay a church tithe.

Gourlay was appalled at seeing 8-year-old boys out plowing in winter -- in Fife no one worked under 12. So he did a pamphlet on child labor, 1815, which sold out, and he sent a copy to every member of Parliament. Owen had written against child labor two years before.

To help out tenant farmers, Gourlay advertized for meetings to elect 17 of them to go to London with a petition against special taxes that fell on them. In his public notices he rather hurt his case by flaying the landowners for their lack of feeling for the poor. This got him expelled from the Agricultural Societies and temporarily disowned by his own father. Meanwhile the duke of Somerset was horn-swoggling him out of his money (a court later made him disgorge some of it). It was time once more for Gourlay to move, and again opportunity beckoned.

His wife having inherited some property in Upper Canada, Gourlay, borrowing money from a friend for passage, went there to see it. Being Gourlay, he saw it thoroughly, walking most of the way through the whole province, 1,000 miles. Inquiring of the people he met, he found bitterness over several things, especially the patchy nature of land settlement and the fact that owners of undeveloped land paid no tax. A bill earlier that year, 1817, to tax "wild land" had passed in the provincial Assembly but been rejected in the appointive Legislative Council. Gourlay visited the United States and found It much more progressive than Canada in both politics and land use. He was soon distributing a questionnaire on "What ... retards the improvement of your township?" That the Assembly had just been dismissed for attempting to move along that line did not deter Gourlay. If something needed doing, he would do it. He advertized his questionnaire in newspapers, and meetings about it were held in many places. He issued too repeated "Addresses to the Land Owners of Upper Canada." In one of them he urged impeaching the Lt. governor in charge of Upper Canada for dismissing the Assembly and went on: "We cannot prefer a land of lice to a land of liberty." Such sarcasm, however alliterative, tended to hot matters up considerably.

To break the impasse between the Lt. governor and the Assembly, Gourlay suggested the people elect their own delegates in each district to pick representatives to meet at Toronto, where they would compose a petition of grievances to send to the prince regent George. Except for the indirect method of representation, this was his old idea of 1809 back in England. He was producing an alternative Assembly. This project was financed by $1 contributions. Bishop Strahan, the most influential man in the province, whom Gourlay had denounced as greedy, did what he could to stop it, and so did some others. Gourlay was once beaten up and twice arrested but released on bail. Despite all this, his meeting was held as scheduled, June 7, 1818, with Gourlay present. As a new Lt. governor was arriving, it was decided to send the petition to him. Too late, Gourlay learned he was a hopeless conservative. Right afterward, Gourlay's court trials began. Making his own defense without a lawyer, he each time easily defeated the flimsy charges against him. After the second case the courthouse rang with shouts of "Gourlay and liberty." Both trial records were "borrowed" by the prosecuting attorney and not returned. Gourlay was then arrested a third time, not told the charge against him, and held in jail through the unusually hot summer of 1819 until his health broke. At his trial he was delirious and unable to make a defense. He was convicted of refusing to leave Canada when ordered to do so as a "seditious alien." It was true he had refused the order, but he was not seditious. Obstreperous though he might be, Gourlay always abhored violence and was totally loyal to the crown. Nor was he an alien, for he had been the required length of time in Canada, and anyway the word had never before been used against a British citizen.

Back in London, Gourlay strove to have his banishment rescinded. While he did so, his wife, whom he hadn't seen in 3 years, died. She had been ever helpful and loyal.

In 1822 Gourlay brought out his "Statistical Account of Upper Canada compiled with a view to a grand system of emigration in connection with a reform of the poor laws." No mean title. He gave this work a 352-page introduction -- likely a record. The text runs 1,329 pages, and an appendix 129 more. Perhaps too lengthy and personal, but an important book. He wanted poor children educated in England, as they had long been in Scotland. He wanted the income tax, in existence since 1799, to be graduated so the rich would pay at a higher rate. Here too are his ideas on land taxation. A modern writer sums up:

He proposed a general land-tax on all land, waste or cultivated, public or private, whether owned by residents or by absentees, so that speculative holding of land in an uncultivated state would be unprofitable.

Gourlay realized his land tax was especially useful in forcing land into use. As he put it:

Even if the proceeds were thrown into Lake Ontario, it would tend to do good.

Better still, he realized, would be to use the proceeds to bring in immigrants, thus at the same time relieving population pressure in England and providing needed labor in Canada. The immigrants should not be convicts. Instead,

Bring society complete, with all the strength and order and refinement which it has now attained in Britain.

In addition there should be democratic self-rule, under the British crown.

Such was the book that Wakefield read in prison. It framed all his main ideas.

Drawing on Gourlay, Wakefield set out his program in his "Letters from Sydney." Colonial land was to be disposed of by sale, never given away. The price should be £2 per acre, so no one would buy excess land and leave it without access roads to the land beyond. He later modified £2 to a "sufficient price," to fit varied circumstances. Marx devoted a chapter to Wakefield, criticizing his price of 2 an acre, as it would be to high that laborers could not soon buy their own land. But that was just Wakefield's point: hired labor would be kept long enough to get needed work done, especially in the towns, and meanwhile the laborers could be learning local conditions. He had no intention of keeping thrifty men in lasting servitude .

All privately owned land, used or unused, should be taxed, as in the United States.

Wakefield like Gourlay wanted the revenue from land sales to be used mainly for an Emigration Fund -- "building a bridge, as it were, toll-free, for the passage of poor laborers from the old country to the colony." Emigrants would not be convicts but those needed and in the right numbers for each job. Thus all would find work on arrival. This was Gourlay's idea of "bringing in society complete" but spelled out in detail. Pitting in-coming personnel to colonial needs was a brilliant concept, avoiding not only unemployment but also the reckless hassle for quick advancement that too often occurs in new settlements. Emigration would become orderly and purposeful. No longer would it be, in Buller's words, just "a shoveling out of paupers." Males and females should be brought in equal numbers, to avoid the gross preponderance of males that existed in all the penal colonies.

While Wakefield was still in prison, the National Colonization Society was formed in 1830 to promote his plans. Duller, James Mill, and two men in Parliament, Burdett and Hobhouse , were among the members. Wakefield was not. Even after leaving prison he preferred to guide "in out-of-sight obscurity."

The Whigs won the election of 1830 and became the first liberal British government. At first they turned a deaf ear to Wakefield' s spokesman Gouger. But Wakefield ingratiated himself with the duke of Wellington -- whom in private he always called "Old Wooden Head" -- and made an ally of him. With this formidable support he got his land-sale policy applied in 1831 for New South Wales, the only part of Australia then colonized; it had in 1828 a population of 16,000 convicts and 21,000 others.

His followers applied in 1832 to settle the region now known as South Australia. The government at first refused, then insisted on appointing the governor and allowed the settlement, which was made at Adelaide in 1836. During the delays, Wakefield' s only daughter Nina, who was eager to go out, sickened with lung trouble, and even by taking her to the better air of Lisbon he was not able to save her, as she died, aged 17. The grief-stricken father consoled himself by adopting and raising a Portuguese waif, who later settled happily in New Zealand.

The South Australian colony hit hard going. Selling land even at l Pound per acre didn't raise enough revenue to pay for the settlers' travel. Fortunately the banker George Angas, who had put up £35,000 surety for the venture, supplied the needed cash. He also overcame Wakefield' s objections and got the sales price lowered to 12 shillings, and the colony began to prosper. Meanwhile Torrens, the government-appointed man in charge, did a conscientious job of screening the emigrants.

In 1836 a governmental committee caused Wakefield' s small-lot land- sale policy to be adopted too in Western Australia, where large land grants had worked very badly. These had dispersed the people to where they could not function properly. Population had fallen from 4,000 to 1,500 in three years; some actually died of starvation. The change saved the colony.

Thus by 1836 Wakefield's policies were in use in all the British colonies in Australia. In 1838 Australia had 130,000 settlers, with ordinary citizens far outnumbering convicts among the new arrivals. Wakefield's ideas, though directed by the government rather than by his company as he had hoped, were getting a good try-out.

Captain Cook saw New Zealand in 1769 and declared it annexed to England, but his government renounced the claim. By 1800 whalers were stopping there, mainly French. The missionary Samuel Marsden became the first European settler in 1814. He had befriended a Maori he met aboard ship. Wesleyan missionaries followed in 1822. Lambton, the later lord Durham, sent a few settlers in 1825 but almost none stayed. The missionaries wouldn't sell guns, but Hongi, a Maori who was taken to England and received valuable gifts from George IV, on his return sold them in Australia and bought 300 muskets. He resolved, "There is only one king in England; there shall be only one among the Maoris." He spread destruction over most of New Zealand's north island. It was the same story as was going on in some other Polynesian islands: Pinow on Tonga, Kamehameha on Hawaii. In Hongi's case it didn't quite work out, as his opponents got muskets too, and he died of a battle wound.

Wakefield in his England and America, which he published at Bentham's suggestion in 1833, observed in passing that New Zealand is "admirably fit for colonization."

In 1835, baron de Thierry, a Frenchman who had learned about New Zealand while a student at Cambridge, bought 200 acres there for 30 axes. After negotiating with some chiefs he claimed to be king. It would be to him that Wakefield referred when describing in 1836

... the most beautiful country with the finest climate, and the most productive soil; I mean New Zealand....

Adventurers go there ... and make a treaty with a native chief ... the poor chief not understanding a word of it.

In 1837, the year he formed the New Zealand Association for colonization purposes, he wrote:

I have set on foot a new measure of colonization on principles which have worked so well in South Australia. The country is New Zealand, one of the finest countries in the world, if not the finest, for British settlement. ...The colony (i.e. his group ready to go out) is already considerable and comprises persons qualified for every occupation but one. We have no clergyman ... for operating on the heart of the natives.

Clergymen were indeed against him and only in part because of his erring past. The Church Missionary Society, under the influence of John Philip, caused the government to turn 'down Wakefield's request to settle New Zealand, on the ground that colonization "would infallibly issue in the conquest and extermination of the present inhabitants."

Wakefield by then had gone to Canada, helping Durham with his famous Report.

A bill for his project was ably presented in Parliament by 27-year-old William Molesworth, but it lost on the first reading, 92-32.

The London "Times" commented on Wakefield's plan: ...The enchanting vision of) a moral and political paradise. ...In short, we are to have a radical Utopia in the Great Pacific, wherein ... in pure spite of home institutions, the doctrines of Jeremy Bentham and Robert Owen are to realize such unheard-of triumphs as shall utterly shame and outstrip the laggard progress of more antiquated nations.

Perhaps intended as satire, this was in fact a good prediction. Right on.

In 1838 a French bishop joined Thierry on New Zealand, and late in the year the French government considered making Thierry the French consul there. This looked like annexation, and the British government grew alarmed at this move by an ancient rival. Wakefield, having returned from Canada -- and after leaking the best parts of Durham's Report so the government couldn't suppress them -- seized the opportunity. There was no longer any time to waste. Again refused permission, he sent off his colonizing ship, the "Tory," from London anyway, May 5, 1839. Hearing it might be stopped when it put in at Plymouth, he went by carriage all night to meet it there and tell its captain to hasten on his way. With such melodrama was New Zealand founded!

The sea trip to New Zealand was easy. Colonel William Wakefield, Gibbon's brother, was soon busy founding the town which, in fulfilment of a promise, was named Wellington, and in buying up native land titles.

The Colonial Office of the British government decided to do likewise. In August it sent captain Hobson, who arrived early in 1840, founded Auckland as capital, and signed the Treaty of Waitangi, by which chiefs of the southern island recognized Victoria as their queen.

There followed a race with the French to see who would get the north island, as Hobson and a French captain each asked for a war-ship. The goal was Akaroa, located between the two big islands. The British war vessel got there and raised the flag Aug. 11, 1840; the French frigate arrived later the same day. It was that close. But for Wakefield's spurring the British government into action, it wouldn't have been a race at all.

Guizot, a man of peace, was in power in France. He let New Zealand go, rather than risk a war. He had France acquire the Marquesas instead. There the Polynesians resisted and were nearly wiped out in a 30-year war.

There were troubled dealings with the Maori Polynesians too. Maori land rights were so complex, frequently overlapping, that the wonder is there weren't more disputes. There was just one serious one in this period. Wakefield's brother Arthur, who had just founded Nelson in the South Island, tried to negotiate with a chief in 1843. In the confusion the chief's wife was killed. Arthur had his people lay down there arms, hoping to arbitrate. Instead the distraught chief attacked, and 21 whites including Arthur Wakefield were slain. It speaks well for both sides that this dreadful incident was not followed by general fighting.

Back in England the government remained uncooperative. It made Wakefield send orders to his people not to rule themselves as he had planned. He stayed on in England, to do what he could. At least the government recognized his work, in Feb. 1841, to the extent of giving his New Zealand Company a 40-year charter. He was in business, if not in government. Canada must have fascinated him, for he returned there, was elected in an all-French district and served an undistinguished term in Lower Canada's Assembly 1841-3. Then back to England and more efforts to get an elective government for New Zealand. The frustrations broke his health for over a year, 1846-7, and two doctors despaired of his life. The New Zealand Company once ran short of money, and Buller saved it by getting a loan from Parliament. The same year, Buller died, but right afterward Wakefield met John Godley, who was to be just as loyal and helpful.

In 1849 in his book "The Art of Colonization" Wakefield at last dropped his anonymity and took credit for his earlier, unsigned books and pamphlets.

As early as 1842 he considered letting different religious sects found settlements. Accordingly, in 1848 he had the Rev. Cargill of the Free Church of Scotland found Otago province with its capital at Dunedin. In 1850 he sent Godley to plant Anglicans at Christchurch. The idea of an Anglican colony appealed strongly to the English clergy, who hitherto had been Wakefield's bitterest opponents; 2000 clergymen came to hear him lecture on this plan.

By the end of 1850 his company had sent out nearly 12,000 people to New Zealand.

The British government finally granted the right of electing the legislatures by the Australian Colonies Bill in 1850 and the New Zealand Bill in 1852. Deporting of convicts was ended to Australia in 1851 and to Tasmania in 1853. With his work completed, Wakefield was free to go out. He reached New Zealand at Wellington early in 1853. He happily noticed the success of his well-laid plans:

The upper classes are very hospitable and very deficient in the pride of purse and station, and the common people are remarkably honest. Their great prosperity places them out of the way of temptation. Their entire independence is not disagreeable to me who am accustomed to America and like it. There is absolutely no servility.

Nor was there over-work. The 8-hour day was established at Dunedin by a mass meeting in 1849, barely after the town was founded. Other New Zealand towns seem also to have had it from the start. Owen's pamphlets for it had circulated widely in England and must have been well discussed on shipboard. New Zealand was the first part of the world to enjoy this great boon to labor - and Australia, led by Melbourne in 1856, the second.

New Zealand pioneered too in taxation. Both Gourlay and Wakefield laid stress on taxing land. Neither seems to have mentioned buildings -- for the simple reason that there weren't any on the land they wanted to open up. So, by accident rather than theory, they hit on the idea of letting the property tax fall solely on land. That's what Wakefield's followers did. The first known reference is for Wellington city in 1849, but the tax can have been used from the start. With its effects in good land use and full employment, it had been a big factor in New Zealand's prosperity.

In 1853 New Zealand had its first election, Wakefield being among those elected. He allowed his joy to show in a letter:

By the newspapers which I send with this you will see that New Zealand has undergone neither more nor less than a revolution. Do not be alarmed; the change, though enormous, has been peaceful, and will be very conservative in its results.

After trouble and annoyance and disappointment and suffering without end, I am as happy as anyone can be in this world, having a full realization of what I have hoped and longed and striven for during so many years. ...My health and strength are wonderful. The greater the danger, the louder the raging of the storm, the more impossible the crisis, and the larger my own share of responsibility and labor, the more I have been capable of doing whatever I wished to do. Neither effort nor the highest excitement have disturbed no fatigued me. ...I write in haste ... and my hands are full of work.

Alas, it was not to last. Somewhat unnecessarily involved in parliamentary turmoil, he spoke 5 hours one night till 2 a.m. before returning home in a gale. Two days later his health broke. He recovered enough to ride a little and lived thenceforth in quiet retreat, greatly enjoying the frequent company of a little niece who adored him. He died in 1862i the greatest colonizer who ever lived. A year later, Robert Gourlay died in Scotland.