Wakefield model aiming to balance capital, labour and land disliked within Colonial Office
The future Earl Grey, while a Colonial Office under secretary, was critical of Edward Gibbon Wakefield's idea.
The importance of Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s legacy in the founding of South Australia is clouded. With Robert Gouger’s help, Wakefield’s ideas became the centreof debate about colonisation systems. Wakefield’s system was corrupted and lacking support too soon in South Australia to judge whether it could have worked.
The basic feature of Wakefield’s scheme was that colonial land shouldn’t be given away by the British crown in exchange for favours or services. It should be sold at a sufficient price, to enable free passage for labourers to bring uncultivated land into production. He saw concentrating and balancing of capital, labour and land as a successful model.
Wakefield’s model was proposed within a lack of interest by the British government and population who regarded the colonies as dumping grounds for convicts.
But when Whig liberal administrators started to taking constructive action within the lethargic Colonial Office, they didn’t favour Wakefield.
Under secretary James Stephen feared Wakefield’s model would lead to the poor and Indigenous peoples being exploited. Another under secretary Wilmot Horton believed that – unlike Wakefield’s scheme – pauper emigration and settlement should be paid for by the government.
Another under secretary, the future Earl Grey, instigated the Ripon regulations for sale of government waste land in New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land in 1831. But Wakefield was so unimpressed by the minimum price of five shillings an acre that he began planning the systematic colonisation of southern Australia. To elaborate his theories, Wakefield anonymously published England and America. A Comparison of the Social and Political State of Both Nations, in 1833.
Grey was more inclined to side with Colonel Robert Torrens who confirmed during a parliamentary select committee hearing on South Australia that criticism of Grey’s actions “came from the more slavish followers of Wakefield’s doctrines”.
During the hearing, Wakefield agreed some proceeds of land sales might be used for purposes other than emigration.
