and responsibility would have been in the hands of the colonisers, from first to last the personal friends and pupils of Mr.Wakefield had the sole control of every arrangement and the selection of every officer, and that every step was taken under the advice of Mr. Gibbon Wakefield, who was a constant attendant at the rooms of the association in the Adelphi.
The commissioners first offered the post of governor to the present distinguished General (then Colonel) Charles James Napier; but on being refused a small body of troops as police, and power to draw on the British government for money in case of need, he declined the dangerous honour, observing, with wise prescience, "While sufficient security exists for the supply of labour in the colony, and even forces that supply, there does not appear to be any security that the supply of capital will be sufficient to employ that labour." Thus South Australia lost an active governor, and India obtained a great general. Of two governors subsequently appointed, one was compelled to overdraw 400,000, and the next obtained a company of soldiers in lieu of an expensive police. The commissioners then selected as governor Captain Hindmarsh, R.N., a distinguished naval-officer, now Sir John Hindmarsh, Governor of Heligoland, and Colonel Light as chief officer of the survey department; Mr. Fisher, as resident commissioner; Mr. Robert Gouger, the editor of the "Letter from Sydney" and secretary of the South Australian Association, as colonial secretary—in all seventeen appointments, including two attorneys, and an unsuccessful merchant, "who had been found useful to the commission in selling land and raising money." The parties selected seem to have been studiously chosen for their innocence of all colonial, official, and agricultural experience.
While the political steps for founding the model colony were progressing, means for agitating the public mind in favour of emigration, on the new principle, to the unknown territory selected by the South Australian Association had not been neglected.
The theory propounded in the "Letter from Sydney" had been repeated and enlarged upon in a work called "England and America," and in a multitude of pamphlets, reviews in newspapers, speeches, and lectures. The active world began to believe that a political philosopher's stone had been discovered.
A newspaper, the South Australian Gazette, was published in London, with the view of being transplanted to the new colony as soon as a hut could be found for its reception; while the most influential daily and weekly organs re-echoed the statements and conclusions which received the admiring assent of all parties. Anything in the shape of opposition, or even doubtful criticism, from persons of colonial
