Page:The founding of South Australia.djvu/24

 be something essentially wrong in the Poor Law system when this was the case; he was convinced that the poor laboured under unjust disadvantages in not having among themselves men who would tell in high places the story of their sufferings, and plead for redress of their wrongs. Wherever he went—and he travelled much, both in his own country and on the Continent—he made investigations, and noted in his diary the condition of the people, their habits, their wants, the insanitary state of their dwellings, their modes of living, their need of reformation, their lack of education, and the lethargy of the clergy in all practical matters relating to the general condition of the poor. He was an intimate friend of Robert Owen, the great "Social theorist," and was deeply interested in his views on the cooperative system, and in the many important reforms he introduced, having for their object the improvement of the status of the labourers in his employ.

It was his sympathy for the oppressed working classes, and the hopeless state into which they were drifting through want of employment, that first called out his zeal for colonisation—the great work of his life—and it was that also which inspired him, in an hour of great political excitement, to espouse the cause of "the oppressed twelve millions of Spaniards" to which further reference will shortly be made.

The impression left on the mind of the present writer, after a careful study of all his private papers known to be in existence, is, that from