propounded, there were no adverse critics except mere colonists, and they were silenced with a jest, or a sneer at their selfish jealousy. And it is not extraordinary, for seldom has a chapter of political economy been clothed in language of such eloquence as adorned and enlivened the pages of the "Letter" from Sydney. It contains passages—(the picture of the Italian girl—the journey from Alexandria to Genoa)—so beautiful, so warm, so real, that one cannot help regretting, for the sake of his own happiness and reputation, as well as of his numerous colonising victims, that Gibbon Wakefield had not devoted himself to writing novels and travels, instead of puffs, paragraphs, articles, pamphlets, and books in praise of joint stock and lottery colonisation.
But Mr. Wakefield had to assist him in propagating his tenets not only the charm of "style," but of personal fascination, with a more than Protean adaptativeness, which rendered him the friend and bosom adviser of Republicans and Radicals, Whig and Conservative Peers, Low Church and High Church Bishops. Five secretaries of state for the colonies—Lords Glenelg and Stanley, Monteagle, Aberdeen, and Grey—have been more or less his pupils; the influence of his writings—even quotations from them—are to be found in their despatches; while so late as 1850, he led, or rather sent captive, to Canterbury, New Zealand, a crowd of educated victims. Energetic, tenacious, indefatigable, unscrupulous, with a wonderful talent for literary agitation, for simultaneously feeding a hundred journalists with the same idea and the same illustrations in varying language, for filling eloquent, but indolent, orators with telling speeches; at one time he had rallied round him nearly every rising man of political aspirations, and secured the support of nearly every economical writer of any celebrity. He has shaken a ministry, founded and distributed the patronage of at least two colonies, and left the seeds, after nearly exciting open rebellion in a third.
But one hard unvarying undercurrent of fact destroyed the edifice of fame and fortune which seemed rising under the influence of Gibbon Wakefield, with his troops of friends, his fiery orators, his city bankers, his well-descended nobles, his bishops of all hues—Whig, Tory, and Trimmer—Hinde, Exeter, and Oxford. The results of his theory, his best arranged plans, were, invariably disastrous. His disciples only continued his disciples as long as they sat at the desk critical, speculated within reach of Threadneedle-street, or reclined on the soft benches of the Houses of Parliament. No sooner did the colonisers become colonists than they renounced him and all his works.
