Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/617

 tractors, surveyors, and others were to receive payment in the same barren element of exclmnge. Many immigrants had property of some kind, but few carried with them the means of building houses, or commanding labour. Land in proporiiaii to attracted capital was the loadstone ; hut the attracted capital in vain sought congenial employment. There was no hope of profit from it. Some settlers tied from a colony ^Ybose hardships were intolerable. The few sheep and cattle seemed likely to fall a prey to the teeth of the few colonists, and starvation would ensue. Some who fled retained their grants nominally. Mr. Peel, after taldng 4:50,000 and 300 servants to the colony, was left without a servant, while his property was abandoned hiTu returned, starving, to demand employment had so largely contributed, was as helpless as the men who had abandoned liim. The inexorable laws of co-relation between capital and labour had never been more notabry violated, or more notably avenged themselves. Governor Stirling W'as driven to seek assistance from England in an eiuergency which neither he nor his employers comprehended. The root of the failure was to be explained l>y a man then rising into notoriety— Edward Gibbon Wakefield. Com- mencing Ins career by being convicted of abduction in 1826 (unattended, however, by the coarser constraints sometimes resorted to), tliis remarkable man became the life of a Colonization Society, whose labours w*ere to influence, though not control, the Colonial Office, the Parhament, and colonists. They furnished ideas; and in a world of red tape and routine, to furnish an idea is ta create* Wakefield's first trumpet-sound in the arena of colonization was an anonymous letter,'"^ published in London ill 18!^9. Grasping the subject with a master hand, emhellishhig his brochure with touches of power and the raciijess of reality, he arrested attention and partly com- ' A Letter from Sydney, the principal town of Anairiilaaia. Edited by Robwt Gougei', together with the Outline of a Systemof Coloum^tion." ■-ondon: Joseph Cross, 18 Holborn, 182D.
 * Wasted ; and when it had been wasted, the servants w ho had
 * and food. He, the victim of an experiment to which he