CHAPTER XIX.
SOUTH AUSTRALIA.
1835 TO 1851.
LORD ALVANLEY, stopping at a country inn, met Beau Brummel's valet descending the stairs with an armful of crumpled clean cravats. "Pray," he inquired, "what are those?" "These, my lord," replied the valet, "are my master's failures." When the Beau emigrated to Calais, amongst other creditors, he owed an enormous bill to his laundress.
South Australia was the first, as Canterbury, in New Zealand, was the last, of Mr. Edward Gibbon Wakefield's colonising failures—failures which have been tried at the expense of every class of capitalist. But, his credit being now exhausted, it seems as if he would end his days without a good fit, thus, sharing the fate of other unfortunate philosophers and financiers, like Law, Owen, Cabet, and Louis Blanc, with this difference, that those gentlemen all sacrificed something to their theories—they lost fortune, or character, or country; but Mr. Wakefield, while his disciples have suffered in purse and in person, has contrived to patch up a character originally much damaged, and build a living, if not a fortune, out of a series of bubbles.
In 1829 Mr. Wakefield's charming little book, which was analysed in Chapter IX., with its really ingenious theory and really desirable aims—good wages, large profits, and complete civilisation—took the active world by storm; and no sooner was the serious business of carrying the Reform Bill completed, than a society was formed for carrying it into practical effect.
The extraordinary success with which this theory was received at home, although opposed by every intelligent colonist, may be traced to the skilful manner in which it combined the interests and conciliated the prejudices of the legislative and middle as well as the executive class. The capitalist for the first time saw himself painted as an injured victim, and presented with a new field for ample profits; the ratepayer was charmed at the idea of getting rid of an unlimited number of paupers; the educated gentleman hoped to live on his £20,000 with all the state, dignity, and luxury, physical and intellectual, that a landed estate of 100,000 confers in England or Scotland. The adventurous of the
