In 1834 an Act was passed for founding the colony of South Australia. Under this Act it was specially provided that the proceeds of the land should be devoted to immigration. This, however, was no necessary part of Mr. Gibbon Wakefield’s plan. In his evidence given subsequently before a committee of the House of Commons in 1836, he thus speaks of his own scheme: “The object of the price is not to create an immigration fund. You may employ the fund in that way if you please, but the object of the price is to create circumstances in the colony which would render it, instead of a barbarous country, an extension of the old country, with all the good, but without the evils, of the old society. There is no relation,--it is easy to see one which is of no consequence, but I can see no proper relation,--between the price required for land and immigration.” He repeats the same opinion in his book, called “A View of the Art of Colonization.” This is written in the form of letters, and in Letter 55 he says: “So completely is the production of revenue a mere incident of the price of the land, that the price ought to be imposed, if it ought to be imposed under any circumstances, even though the purchase-money were thrown away.” Again in the same letter he continues, speaking of the money which would arise from the sale of land: “It is an unappropriated fund which the state or government may dispose of as it pleases without injustice to anybody. If the fund were applied to paying off the public debt of the empire nobody could complain of injustice, because every colony as a whole, and the buyers of land in particular, would still enjoy all the intended and expected benefits of sufficient price upon new land. If the fund were thrown into the sea as it arrived, there would still be no injustice, and no reason against producing the fund in that way.” This is a very strong way of putting it; but Mr. Wakefield meant to assert that the consideration of the use to which the fund arising from the sale of land might be applied, was no part of his plan. Let others decide as to that. He had seen that the grants of vast areas of land to men who had taken themselves out with a certain amount of capital and a certain number of fellow emigrants, had not produced colonial success. There was the terrible example of Western Australia before him. The land was not occupied, and was not tilled. Each new-comer thought that he should have a share of the land, rather than that he should perform a share of the labour. I would not, however, have it supposed that I am an admirer generally either of Mr. Wakefield’s system of colonization, as given in his book, or of his practice as carried out in New Zealand. He was right in maintaining that all land should be sold for a price so high as to prevent, at any rate for a time, the formation of large private estates in the hands of individuals, who would be powerless to use such estates when possessed. In almost all beyond that,--as in