590 (UBBON WAKEFIELD'S THEORY. pelled belief. Society, oflScials, settlers, labourers, politics were woven into his work " The Opposition,*' he said,
- consists of emancipated convicts who have obtained wealth and import-
ance ; of the children of convicts, and of certain free immigrants — men of fiery, and in many cases of generous, tempers ; of whom some cannot tamely brook subjection in their own persons ; some hate oppression in the abstract, and some are filled with a high ambition, like that which urged the robber-shepherd to found Rome. These are the leaders of four- fifths of the population. They are bent upon procuring for the colony a government of colonial origin. They want trial by jury and a Legislative Assembly. They talk even of perfect independence. They are rebels, every one of them, at heart ; and nothing but a sense of weakness deters them from drawing the sword." He underrated the prospects of wool-growing. Produc- tion, he thought, must soon outpace demand. The latter was then supposed in England to be limited to thirty million pounds, and Wakefield foresaw that Australia would soon produce far more. He proclaimed the evils of the convict system, and the curse it entailed. He depicted a possible " extension of Britain." The crime and misery produced in Britain by excess of people in propor- tion to territory, might be reduced if not annihilated by a system which would place within reach of British popula- tion the territory in the colonies. In one place people hungered for land, in the other land panted for people. He would not make the colonies "new societies, but extensions of an old society." If "this plan be too magni- ficent for execution may we not construct a smaller edifice on this model ? In plain English — if the principles here suggested be correct, why should they not be reduced to practice upon whatever scale ?'* In an Appendix he supplied terse articles — 1. That a payment in money of per acre be required for all future grants of land without exception. 2. That all land now granted, and to be granted, throughout the colony be declared liable to a tax of per cent, upon the actual rent. 3. That the proceeds of the tax upon rent and of sales form an Emigration Fund, to be employed in the conveyance of British labourers to the colony free of cost. 4. That those to whom the administration of the fund shaU be entrusted be empowered to raise money on that security, as money is raised on the security of parish and county rates in England. 5. That the supply of labourers be as nearly as possible proportioned to the demand for labour at each settlement, so that capitalists shall never suffer from an urgent want of labourers, and that labour shall never want weU-paid employment.
