974 



REPORT — 1898. 



Tahle II. — Expenditure on different Articles of Dress by (1) a Journalist i 

 (2) and (7) Clerks ; and (3) a High School Mistress. 



(a) Included in ' petty cash,' and not separable from other items. 



(&) Number 7, who lived with her parents, has not included anything in her dress 

 account which does not come under the preceding head. Sponges, toilet soaps, 

 brushes. Sec, should be included. 



5. The Wakefield Land System, and the Developments from, it in the 

 Colonies. By W. P. Reeves. 



Wakefield's services to the Empire have scarcely been fully recognised. He 

 took an important share in — (1) the successful arrangement of Canada ; (2) the 

 abolition of the transportation of con victs ; (3) the granting of self-government to 

 the White Colonies. He saved New Zealand from falling to France, and was the 

 virtual founder both of that Colony and South Australia. His main work, 

 however, was the revival of the spirit of colonisation within the Empire. He 

 endeavoured to elevate colonising into an art. He found it a by-word ; he left it a 

 branch of statesmanship. He believed that the occupation of desert countries 

 should be imdertaken, not haphazard by roving pioneers and squatters, but by 

 organised communities comprising all classes of English society. He opposed the 

 shovelling of paupers and convicts into the empty corners of the Empire. He 

 believed that an ample supply of wage-labourers ought to be provided for his 

 young colonies, as only on that assurance would capitalists be induced to emigrate 

 thither. 



The first condition of his colonising system was to be a fixed ' sufficient ' price 

 for the waste lands of his settlements. These were no longer to be given away in 

 large land-grants to squatters or the favoured friends of officials, but to be sold 

 openly in the simplest, fairest way to applicants in order of priority. The revenue thus 

 provided was used to form an immigration fund to provide the settlement with 

 labour ; the second, to find money for the development of the country by roads 

 and bridges. Until the lands were sold, pastoral tenants were to have grazing 

 rights over them, which were, however, never to interfere with free selection by 

 purchasers at the sufficient price. Wakefield set himself to stop free land grants, 

 and in the main succeeded. By doing so he has effected the disposition of about 

 120,000,000 acres of land already alienated and 650,000,000 acres leased in Aus- 

 tralasia alone. The revenue obtained from land sales during the last sixty years 

 has been in the main well spent, and it has been of the greatest value to colonisation. 

 The settlement of South Australia and New Zealand by Wakefield's Associations 

 was marked by mistakes at the outset which had no necessary connection with 

 Wakefield's land theory, though they helped to discredit it. They were blunders 



