presided over by Earl Harrowby, I warned the promoters that the land monopoly was the great bar to the popularity of Australia among the working classes. At that period opposition to the Wakefield system was considered wild and democratic; and the line I took up excluded me from any part in the Colonisation Society of Charing Cross, which, in spite of a great array of noble names, never obtained the confidence of the working classes, but after a brief existence, died of inanition. In the same year my brother and I commenced our "Emigrants' Journal," with the view of affording "plain, practical advice to intending emigrants." In 1848, before the fifth number was published, my brother returned to Australia.
While conducting the "Emigrants' Journal" I acquired a vast mass of information on colonial subjects. I was brought into daily contact with colonists of all classes, as well as with emigrants, and in the course of twelve months I answered more than one thousand practical questions on emigration and colonisation.
It was during the progress of this Journal that my attention was called to the singular coincidence between the views at which I had slowly arrived on colonial matters, and the evidence given by Mrs. Chisholm before a Committee of the House of Lords on Colonisation. On this evidence I wrote an article,[1] which led to my making the acquaintance and acquiring the friendship of Captain and Mrs. Chisholm, to whom I am indebted for a great and rapid advance in what I may call my colonial education. In the second monthly series of my "Emigrants' Journal,'* in the following year, I may be permitted to say I communicated to my countrymen a valuable contribution in placing before them the first published account of the work done by Caroline Chisholm. This Memoir subsequently formed the staple of all the biographies of that lady which have appeared, including one in "Chambers' Journal," and a paper I had the pleasure of contributing to "Household Words," entitled "Better Ties than Red Tape Ties."
In January, 1850, I published "A Letter to the Right Honourable Sidney Herbert," on the need of protection for female emigrants, and the necessity for a more careful selection of surgeons in emigrant ships, illustrating my arguments with evidence from Blue Books. Subsequent events proved the reasonableness of my warnings in a very flagrant manner.
On April 17th of the same year a great meeting took place at St. Martin's Hall to launch the last, the most improved plan for colonising Canterbury, in New Zealand, under the Wakefield system, which had so signally failed in South Australia and three
- ↑ No. 8, Sidney's "Emigrants' Journal."
