(1881–1951) and (1888–1950).

Pioneer airmen.

A new biography of Walsh, Austin Leonard appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

A new biography of Walsh, Vivian Claude appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

Leo Austin Walsh was born in Bradford, Yorkshire, in 1881, son of Austin Walsh, J.P. The family emigrated to Auckland in 1883 where Vivian Claude was born in 1888. The brothers were educated at King's College, Auckland, where Leo was a foundation pupil.

Leo became an engineer and was an importer of diesel engines. In 1909 the brothers collaborated in building an aeroplane which many claim was the first constructed in New Zealand. This pioneer aircraft made its first flight, in the hands of Vivian Walsh, on 5 February 1910. Vivian had taught himself to fly this aircraft without instruction of any kind. In 1914 the brothers again set to work to construct an aeroplane, this time a seaplane which – with more justification – is likewise claimed to have been the first of its kind in New Zealand, the first flight taking place on 1 January 1915. During this year the brothers established a flying school to train pilots for the Royal Flying Corps, a lead which Henry Wigram was quick to follow. The school was near Auckland and, by the end of 1918, 110 pilots had been trained and posted. After the war the school continued with training for civil purposes; it was sited at Kohimarama with Leo as managing director and Vivian as superintendent.

In 1921 Leo went to Fiji and in July of that year organised and took part in the first flight around the island group. On 4 October 1921 he shared in a record-breaking five-hour flight from Auckland to Wellington. In spite of his continuing close connection with aircraft, Leo himself never qualified as a pilot. Both Leo and Vivian were members of the Royal Aero Club of Great Britain, and Vivian was the first New Zealander to hold a pilot's licence issued by the club.

Neither brother married, Vivian died at Auckland on 3 July 1950 and Leo, in the same house, on 16 July 1951. They were survived by two unmarried sisters.

by Keith Kennedy Campbell, M.A.(N.Z.), Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Melbourne.

• The Kiwi's First Wings, Mulgan, D. K. (1960)
• Evening Post, 4 Jul 1950 and 17 Jul 1951 (Obit).

(1896–1963).

Trade union leader.

A new biography of Walsh, Fintan Patrick appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

Fintan Patrick Tuohy was born at Patutahi, near Gisborne, on 11 August 1896, the son of Michael Tuohy. After primary education at the Te Arai school and work on his father's farm, he went to sea in 1916. His early work was apparently in British ships, for he became a member of the British National Seamen's Union, but by the end of the First World War he was employed on the “Gulf oilers” working out of San Francisco. Here he came under the influence of the doctrines of the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.), a syndicalist industrial organisation which was strong on the west coast of the United States. In 1920 he returned to New Zealand, joined the New Zealand Seamen's Union, and changed his name to Walsh. Shortly afterwards he became a member of the newly formed New Zealand Communist Party but resigned in 1924. The experience left him with a lasting antagonism towards communism, both domestic and international.

Walsh's influential career in the industrial labour movement may really be dated from 1927, when he was elected president of the New Zealand Seamen's Union, a post which he retained until his death. At a series of conferences from 1928 into the early 1930s, in which the flabby industrial movement painfully adjusted itself to the realities of economic bargaining power on the falling market of the Great Depression, Walsh and the president of the miners' union, Angus McLagan, consistently led a more aggressive and uncompromising minority. Walsh later became the leader of the more militant wing of the Alliance of Labour, the national trade union organisation which was split into two factions in the mid-1930s. When the present Federation of Labour was formed in 1937 he was elected to its executive. He was its vice-president from 1946 to 1953 and president from 1953 until his death in Wellington on 16 May 1963.

From 1937, with the formation of the new national union organisation and with the accession to power of the first Labour Government, Walsh's influence broadened beyond the confines of trade union politics. He was one of the powerful union leaders whose backing helped the parliamentary leadership of the Labour Government to resist the challenge of a younger left-wing group. Peter Fraser's accession to the Prime Ministership in 1940 reinforced this trend. Walsh, now an intimate of the Prime Minister, was appointed a member of the commission which agreed upon the policy of stabilisation of wages and prices for the duration of the war; subsequently, he was appointed to the Economic Stabilisation Commission, the body established to administer this policy, from its formation in 1942 until its abolition in 1950. His work on the Commission not only permitted him considerable influence in national decision-making but also assisted him to gain a grasp of the fundamentals of New Zealand's economy, which was equalled by few men in public life.

Although he did not become president of the Federation of Labour until 1953, he was in reality its dominating personality from the time of the war. The direction of the post-war leadership of the Federation, which channelled through Walsh and McLagan (now in the Cabinet) to Fraser in support of the declining Labour Government, caused mounting dissatisfaction among the more militant trade unions and contributed, in 1950, to the formation of a breakaway organisation, the Trade Union Congress. There followed the great 1951 waterfront strike in which the militant group of unions was smashed by the National Government in a manner reminiscent of 1912–13. The Government's success was aided by the attitude of Walsh, who held the rump of the industrial movement in the Federation in a position of hostility towards the strikers. Their defeat left Walsh's group in undisputed control of the industrial movement.

The abandonment of the policy of economic stabilisation in 1950 involved a return to direct bargaining between trade unions and employers. But negotiations for individual awards in the fifties became completely overshadowed by applications for general wage orders, inspired by the Federation as the central organisation and presented to the Arbitration Court by Walsh. It was these occasions which made Walsh's name a household word as he held sway in the Court in widely publicised exchanges, hectoring opposing or unhelpful witnesses and marshalling formidable and often successful arguments. More and more, the Federation took on the appearance of a one-man band. In the process, however, some unions began to drift away. As he aged and as his empire began to erode, Walsh's temperament too often got the better of his judgment. But even towards the end, when he had to turn occasionally to unexpected quarters for support, he remained unchallenged.

What of the man? Even to his closest colleagues, “Jack” Walsh remained something of a mystery. To his enemies, and they were many, the “Black Prince” was a malevolent figure. Of his ability there can be no doubt. Walsh possessed an intellectual capacity and a sheer force of personality sufficient to command a much larger and more unruly crew than that afforded him by New Zealand trade unionism. He combined an ability for adept manoeuvring with a splendid sense of timing in public statements. In his earlier career he may have preferred to work much behind the scenes, for that was his habit, but one suspects that in later years the taste of nation-wide publicity proved more and more to his liking. Although he came to possess both the appearance and the reality of power, although, too, he attained a considerable degree of private affluence – he owned a large and prosperous dairy farm which was his favourite retreat – Walsh remained in his personal relations and attitudes an “outsider”. He had no patience with the conventional trappings of social and political success. While quite capable of tactical opportunism, he remained fiercely loyal to basic beliefs formed during early years of struggle, not so much in the sense of intellectual convictions as of social attitudes. He made no attempt to conceal his dislike or contempt for particular persons, practices, or institutions; likewise he was quick to recognise merit and loyalty in those with whom he worked and to accord them a lasting respect. Combative, dominating, sometimes menacing in the course of a dispute, capable of violent likes and dislikes, Walsh was yet a sensitive and essentially a lonely man.

by Bruce Macdonald Brown, M.A., New York Office, Department of External Affairs.

• The Rise of New Zealand Labour, Brown, B. M. (1962)
• Dominion, 17 May, 18 May 1963 (Obits)
• Press (Christchurch), 17 May 1963 (Obit).

(1859–1916).

Artist.

Alfred Wilson Walsh was born at Kyneton, Victoria, Australia, in 1859, the son of William Walsh, a Captain in the Army, and Catherine, née Wilson. He came to New Zealand as a child and was educated at Dunedin, where his parents had settled. On leaving school he became a draughtsman with the Public Works Department and studied drawing and painting in his spare time with David Hutton, Principal of the School of Art, Dunedin. So marked was his progress that he achieved a considerable reputation as an artist by the time he was 27 years of age. In 1886 he joined the teaching staff of the Christchurch School of Art as second master and was a member of the Council of the Canterbury Art Society for 10 years. He left Christchurch in 1912 and settled at Parnell, Auckland, and then latterly at Tauranga, where he died on 10 September 1916, aged 57.

On 4 March 1914, at St. Mark's Church, Remuera, Auckland, Walsh married Emily Conolly, daughter of Edmond Tennyson Conolly, Judge of the Supreme Court. There was no issue.

Walsh received practically no formal training in art. He worked mainly in North Canterbury and Westland and, on resigning from teaching after 20 years' service, devoted his whole time to painting. He never travelled abroad. He avoided the romantic and popular aspects of the New Zealand scene, his output was limited, and he worked almost entirely in watercolour. Yet he stands out as an artist of very rare quality whose lasting worth becomes more and more recognised. He succeeded in capturing the spirit of New Zealand without resorting to any of the obvious devices, and his watercolours are rich in feeling but never sentimental.

Walsh's work is distinguished from that of his contemporaries by his purity and clarity of colour, the directness of his touch, and an unique ability to translate each passage of his composition into a personal and vital idiom. To try to analyse his technique would be like pinning down a butterfly, for Walsh was, as Constable would have put it, a natural painter.

Many of his finest watercolours are in private collections, and they rarely appear on the market. The most important in the National Gallery collection, Wellington, are his “Alpine Stream, Otira” (22 in. × 16 in.) and “Kaikoura Coast” (8 in. × 13 in.). There is also “Mountain Stream, Kaikoura” (11½ in. 15 in.), “Wellington Harbour” (9 in. × 12 in.), “Coastal Scene” (11 in. × 15 in.), and “Landscape” (9½ 13 in.). The Robert McDougall Gallery, Christchurch, has “Low Tide”, “In the Otira”, and “Greymouth Harbour”.

The New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts staged an exhibition of his work in 1926.

by Stewart Bell Maclennan, A.R.C.A.(LOND.), Director, National Art Gallery, Wellington.

(1878– ).

Rugby footballer.

William Joseph Wallace was born at Wellington on 2 August 1878. In his early years he played rugby for the Poneke Football Club in Wellington. He represented Wellington Province in 1897, 1899, 1901, 1902, 1903, and 1904, and Otago in 1900. For four seasons between 1902 and 1908 he played in the North Island team and represented New Zealand, both at home and overseas, in 1903, 1904, 1905–06, 1907, 1908. Generally, Wallace played in the fullback position, but on the 1907 Australian tour he played as three-quarter. On the 1905 tour of Great Britain with Dave Gallaher's All Blacks, Wallace scored 230 points – a rugby record which has never been surpassed. During his career as an active player Wallace made 51 appearances for New Zealand and scored 379 points. In recent years this record has been bettered by D. B. Clarke. Besides this, Wallace has also held the following records: most points in all matches for New Zealand overseas (367); most conversions in all matches for New Zealand in New Zealand and overseas (114); and most conversions for New Zealand overseas (111). In 1935 Wallace was co-manager of George Nepia's Maori team which toured New South Wales. The Encyclopaedia of Rugby Football describes Wallace as a “versatile and spectacular player” and lists him among the world-famous fullbacks.

(1869– ).

Professor emeritus.

A new biography of Wall, Arnold appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

Arnold Wall was born in England on 15 November 1869 and educated at London and Cambridge, graduating with the degree of B.A. He was teaching in England from 1886, till he became, in 1898, professor of English language and literature at Canterbury University College. Besides winning a reputation for scholarship, he developed interests in botany and mountaineering. He has written and broadcast for many years on popular language study, and his publications include At the Cross Roads (1894), Blank Verse Lyrics (1900), The Century of New Zealand's Praise (1912), Handbook to the Maude Roll (1919), The Flora of Mount Cook (1925), The Mother Tongue in New Zealand (1936), New Zealand English (1938), Theme and Variations (1938), and The Pioneers and Other Poems (1938). He was made a C.B.E. in 1956.

(1803–48).

Known as Colonel Wakefield, Principal Agent for the New Zealand Company in New Zealand.

William Hayward Wakefield was born in 1803 at Burnham Wick, Essex, the fourth son of Edward Wakefield and Susanna, née Crash (d. 1817). Brought up for the most part by his paternal grandmother, Priscilla Wakefield, William was educated at Haigh's School, Tottenham, and was later attached to the British Embassy at Turin where his brother Edward Gibbon was also employed. For assisting his brother in the abduction of Ellen Turner (1826) he was sentenced to three years' imprisonment in Lancaster Castle.

On his release Wakefield travelled widely in Austria, Russia, and Lapland and, in 1832, entered the Portuguese service where he distinguished himself and was made a Knight of the Order of the Tower and Sword. He then served with the British Legion in Spain where he rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel and commanded the First Lancers under Sir de Lacy Evans. After 1837 he commanded the Third Legion and so distinguished himself in the campaign against the Carlists that Queen Isabella created him Knight in the Order of San Fernando.

At the close of the Spanish War Wakefield became interested in the New Zealand Company and, when his brother Arthur declined the principal agency, he sailed for New Zealand in the Tory, arriving at Queen Charlotte Sound on 16 August 1839. Dicky Barrett piloted them to Port Nicholson (Wellington Harbour) where they anchored off Petone foreshore. Wakefield negotiated with the Ngati Awa Chief Epuni for the 1,100 acres of town land and 110,000 acres required for the settlement. In November Wakefield visited Te Rauparaha at Kapiti where he purchased large tracts of land on both sides of Cook Strait. He then sailed for Hokianga (via Taranaki) where he arranged to take possession of the lands bought by the 1825 New Zealand Company. The first immigrant ships, Aurora, Oriental, and Duke of Roxburgh arrived in January and February 1840 at Petone where Mein Smith and his surveyors had laid out the town.

Colonel Wakefield held two difficult and, to a certain extent, conflicting roles in the new settlement. As the Company's Principal Agent in the colony, he was charged with implementing the objects and policies decided upon by the court of directors in London. He was responsible to the directors for arranging the purchase of land, the allocation of this among settlers, the reception and settling of new arrivals, for appointing, discharging, and controlling Company staff in New Zealand and, in fact, for all the myriad duties attributing to a chief administrator in any large commercial venture.

Because there were doubts about the British Government's intentions towards New Zealand, the Company made interim arrangements for the governance of its settlement. Before they left England the colonists contracted to submit all things according to the laws of England, to be ruled by a committee elected from among their number, and to settle disputes by appeal to a magisterial umpire. Colonel Wakefield was ex-officio president of this committee and thus political head of the settlement. The arrangement functioned temporarily pending British annexation, but until this was done the committee remained the de-facto government in Wellington. The Treaty of Waitangi legally superseded the committee; however, it discharged its functions until it dissolved automatically upon the Colonial Secretary's, Willoughby Shortland's, arrival in Wellington on 7 June 1840. After this Wakefield lost much of his political status in the settlement but, as the Company's senior officer, he remained the main channel of communication between the Wellington settlers and the Governor.

Following upon the treaty, Hobson proclaimed that no European land purchases could be recognised until these had been inquired into by Government commissioners. This caused the Company great embarrassment and Wakefield found himself in an unenviable position between the Government, which was slow to investigate the Company's land claims, and the settlers, who demanded that the Company fulfil its contract to them. The land problem coloured Wellington's political life for some years and led, among other things, to the celebrated Wakefield-Featherston duel in March 1847. Colonel Wakefield led the long drawn-out negotiations with the Government over the land question and his last act as Principal Agent was to reach final agreement on the settlers' claims.

As Principal Agent, Wakefield supervised the Company's settlements in Nelson and at Wanganui (Petre) and, when the Plymouth Company merged with the New Zealand Company, his authority extended to the Taranaki settlement also. He also initiated the preliminary steps which led to the acquisition of land for the New Edinburgh settlement at Otago. Colonel Wakefield died, of apoplexy, at Wellington on 19 September 1848.

A cultured and competent administrator and an astute political negotiator, Colonel Wakefield had charge of the New Zealand Company's settlement at a particularly difficult time. As executive and political head of the Wellington settlement, and as titular head of other Company settlements, he held an authority rivalling that of the Queen's Governor. When his political power moved to other hands, Wakefield found himself in the unenviable position of being responsible to an overseas authority for a situation not of his making. Be that as it may, he must share some responsibility for the moves leading to the tragic Wairau Affray, for he was aware that his claim to have purchased the district had been challenged.

In 1826, Wakefield eloped with Emily Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Sidney, Bt., of Penshurst Place, and sister of Philip Sidney, afterwards Baron de Lisle and Dudley. By her (she died in 1827) he had one daughter, Emily Charlotte who, on 24 September 1846, married E. W. Stafford, later Premier of New Zealand.

by Bernard John Foster, M.A., Research Officer, Department of Internal Affairs, Wellington.

• N.Z.C. 1/8; 3/9; 102/1 (MSS), National Archives;
• Early Victorian New Zealand, Miller, J. (1958)
• Crown Colony Government in New Zealand, McLintock, A. H. (1958).

(1844–84).

Under-Secretary for the Goldfields.

Oliver Wakefield was born in 1844 at Launceston, Tasmania, the son of Felix Wakefield. He was educated in London and came to New Zealand in 1863. He joined the Public Service in the Mines Department, and rose by sheer ability to become its Under-Secretary. In 1884 he left Wellington to spend some leave in Melbourne, but was accidentally killed by a tram in Princes Street, Dunedin, on 20 March 1884. Wakefield played an active part in Wellington sports life, being secretary of the Star Boating Club for some years. He owned considerable property, was a bachelor and, in later life, a strict teetotaller.

by Bernard John Foster, M.A., Research Officer, Department of Internal Affairs, Wellington.

• New Zealand Times, 21 Mar 1884.

(1807–75).

Engineer, and Canterbury colonist.

Felix Wakefield was born in 1807 in Norfolk, the fifth and youngest son of Edward Wakefield (1774–1854) and of Susanna, née Crash (d. 1817). He was educated as an engineer but joined his father who was engaged in the silk trade at Blois, France. There, in 1831, he married Marie Felice Elizabeth Baillie, by whom he had six sons and three daughters. In the early 1830s he became Superintendent of Public Works in Tasmania and later farmed, with indifferent success, near Launceston. He returned to England in 1847 where he assisted his brother, Edward Gibbon, in his colonising schemes. His notes on the disposal of wastelands in colonies were edited by his brother Daniel in 1849 and issued as instructions to the New Zealand Company surveyors. He joined the Canterbury Settlement in 1851 and for the next three years he farmed near Christchurch. In 1854 Felix returned to England, where he was made Principal Superintendent of the Army Works Corps in the Crimea with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. There he built the military railway from Balaclava to Sebastopol.

He returned to New Zealand in 1863, and from 1867 to 1870 acted as secretary to James Bradshaw, the Government agent on the Otago goldfields. In the latter year he published a treatise on horticulture, The Gardener's Chronicle for New Zealand. He died at Sumner, Christchurch, on 23 December 1875. Two of his sons, Edward (1845–74) and Oliver (1844–84), attained distinction in New Zealand.

by Bernard John Foster, M.A., Research Officer, Department of Internal Affairs, Wellington.

• Lyttelton Times, 27 Dec 1875.

(1820–79).

Pioneer, explorer, politician, and writer.

A new biography of Wakefield, Edward Jerningham appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

E. J. Wakefield was the only son and second child (born London, 25 June 1820) of Edward Gibbon Wakefield with whose interests he closely identified himself. Educated at Bruce Castle School and King's College, London, he later travelled abroad, acquiring a knowledge of French, which he put to good use when at the age of 18 he went to Canada as secretary to his father, who was a member of Lord Durham's famous mission.

Jerningham Wakefield sailed in the New Zealand Company's advance ship Tory, which left England in May 1839, and reached New Zealand in August. He acted as secretary to his uncle, Colonel William Wakefield, the leader of the Wellington settlement. Jerningham made a number of independent journeys throughout the colony, and was the Company's agent in the purchase of land at Wanganui. He also engaged in trading with the Maori. In the forties he played a considerable part in the affairs of the Company in Wellington, entering into controversy with successive Governors to uphold the settlers' viewpoint, and earning a harsh rebuke from Governor FitzRoy. His graphic description of these and other episodes helped to make his Adventure in New Zealand, published by John Murray soon after his return to England, via Valparaiso, in 1845, a very effective piece of Company propaganda. In England he busied himself with Company affairs and acted as his father's liaison with the Otago Association in Edinburgh. In 1850 he returned to New Zealand in the Lady Nugent with J. R. Godley and his party going out to found Canterbury. Charlotte Godley puzzlingly describes him as “half a foreigner”, perhaps on account of his swarthy appearance and his having lived abroad; she found him serviceable to herself and her husband, although “he has so little tact that he does sometimes offend people”.

Jerningham Wakefield settled in Canterbury. He paid a visit to Dunedin in 1851 where he and Macandrew upheld the case for representative government at a public meeting. In 1855 he was called to Wellington where his father lay stricken with the illness which removed him from public life. He was elected to the Wellington Provincial Council in 1857, retaining membership until 1861. As a member of the Council he engaged in vigorous controversy with the Superintendent, Dr Featherston, over constitutional matters. He was elected to the first Parliament in 1853 and in the following year was a member of Forsaith's short-lived “ministry”. He lost his seat in 1855 and again failed to secure election in 1860. He did not re-enter Parliament until 1871, representing Christchurch East until 1875, when he was again defeated at the polls. By this time he was, as Stout puts it, “a wreck of his former self”. None the less his speeches during his last membership were interesting because of his historical reminiscences from the forties.

Jerningham Wakefield married Ellen Roe in 1863. He died in Ashburton on 3 March 1879 “in obscurity and adversity”.

As a writer Jerningham has an assured place in the literature of this country. His high-spirited narrative of the events surrounding the early Company settlements of Wellington, New Plymouth, Wanganui, and Nelson in Adventure in New Zealand is valuable for its colour and vigour despite its transparent prejudice. In it he caricatures nearly everyone connected with the colonial government or missionary interests and, although he knew the Maori intimately, he shows little respect for their finer qualities. McCormick remarks on his “Victorian novelist's habit of grouping his characters into blacks and whites, villains and heroes”, and again on his “novelist's disregard for fact”. Indeed, this narrative has many of the qualities of fiction, but its value as social history should not be underestimated, especially for its authentic detail of life in the most picturesque phase of early settlement. The book was based on the diary-letters Jerningham sent home, and it is fair to view it as written for the peculiar delectation of Edward Gibbon Wakefield; it is shaped to fit his point of view and almost exaggerates Edward Gibbon's own characteristics. It also reflects the character of its author, impetuous, partisan, talented – above all, enjoying life to the full. Adventure in New Zealand (which does not respond well to abridgment) was a remarkable production for a young man in his early twenties.

Although father and son shared many qualities, Edward Gibbon regarding Jerningham as his “faithful and diligent lieutenant”, he none the less fully realised Jerningham's weaknesses and commented in 1853 on “his habits of desultory application under inordinate excitement only, and of localism with respect to thought, as well as somewhat of a turn for wrangling”. Jerningham also suffered, as his father put it, from “colonial habits”, the worst of them being intemperance as a result of which, as Richard Garnett wrote, “what might have been a very brilliant career terminated in disappointment”. But even if he failed to fulfil the precocious promise of his youth, Jerningham Wakefield has established a considerable claim on the esteem of posterity, by his journeys and explorations, by his whole-hearted support of Company enterprises and, above all, by the liveliness and colour of his book.

by David Oswald William Hall, M.A., Director, Adult Education, University of Otago (retired).

• Adventure in New Zealand from 1839 to 1844, Wakefield, E. J., 1908 ed. (with introduction by Robert Stout)
• Edward Gibbon Wakefield, Garnett, Richard (1898)
• New Zealand Literature, McCormick, E. H. (1958).

(1796–1862).

Theorist on colonisation and a principal founder of New Zealand.

A new biography of Wakefield, Edward Gibbon appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

Edward Gibbon Wakefield was born in London on 20 March 1796, the eldest son of Edward Wakefield, a London land agent and surveyor, and his wife Susanna, née Crash, an Essex farmer's daughter. The Wakefields came of Quaker stock, and Edward Wakefield, though not a practising Quaker, was an active philanthropic reformer, best known for his Account of Ireland, Statistical and Political. Edward Gibbon Wakefield was sent to Westminster School in 1808, but in 1810 refused to return. He was then sent to Edinburgh High School, but left in January 1812. After a period of uncertainty he obtained a minor diplomatic appointment and on 9 August 1816 made a runaway marriage with a wealthy young woman, Eliza Susan Pattle, who, however, died on 5 July 1820, leaving a son, Edward Jerningham Wakefield, afterwards a New Zealand colonist, and a daughter. Wakefield, who for some years was an attaché at the British Embassy in Paris, was ambitious to enter Parliament, and hoped to promote his ambitions by a second marriage with an heiress. In 1826, by abduction, he made a Gretna Green marriage with Ellen Turner, the schoolgirl daughter of a Cheshire manufacturer. Her family, however, pursued the couple to Calais; Ellen rejoined them, and Wakefield returned to England to join his brother and accomplice William, who was already in custody. The Wakefields were tried at Lancaster Assizes in 1827 and were sentenced to three years' imprisonment.

The case had excited great public interest and ruined Wakefield's hopes of entering Parliament; but his three years in Newgate gave him the material for writing two books, The Punishment of Death and A Letter from Sydney. The latter, believed at the time to be a genuine letter, appeared in 1829 “edited” by Robert Gouger. Its main contention was that the undeveloped state of New South Wales was due to lack of labour arising from indiscriminate land grants. It suggested that in future land be sold, not granted, at a price sufficient to prevent labourers from becoming landowners too soon and that the proceeds, with a tax on rent, be used to finance the emigration of labourers, preference being given to young persons of both sexes in equal numbers. The book soon became well known and made important converts. On his release Wakefield soon returned to London and founded the Colonisation Society to spread his ideas, which appeared to be borne out by the disappointing results of the Swan River colony, founded with Government support in Western Australia in 1829. Wakefield's influence on Lord Howick, Under-Secretary for the Colonies, was largely responsible for the introduction of sale as the sole method of disposing of land in New South Wales in 1831. He wished, however, to try out his ideas by founding a new colony in South Australia. Negotiations with the Colonial Office in 1831 and 1832 broke down, but the publication in 1833 of England and America, in which Wakefield further developed his ideas, and the explorations of Sturt, revived interest. By the end of 1833 a South Australia Association had been formed and in 1834 Parliament passed an Act providing for the foundation of a colony and the management of its colonisation by specially appointed commissioners. Wakefield played an important part behind the scenes, but the illness of his daughter, who died in Portugal in February 1835, distracted his attention from South Australian affairs. The decision of the commissioners in May to fix the price of land at 12s. an acre, which Wakefield thought too low, caused him to break with them.

In 1836 Wakefield gave evidence before a committee of the House of Commons on the disposal of lands in the British colonies. It recommended that his principles should be embodied in an Act of Parliament and applied to the whole Empire. He was now turning his attention to New Zealand and by May 1837 was forming a New Zealand Association for the systematic colonisation of the country. Its first approach to the Colonial Office was unsuccessful, but by the end of the year the Government was willing to consent to the incorporation of a company by royal charter. The Association, however, rejected the terms.

On the invitation of Lord Durham, High Commissioner for British North America, Wakefield joined him in June 1838. The Colonial Office refused to agree to his appointment as Commissioner of Crown Lands, but he remained as unofficial adviser, and the report on Crown Lands, signed by Buller, was really his. Wakefield also interviewed the French-Canadian leader Lafontaine, but the negotiation was unsuccessful. The view that the whole of Durham's great report owes its inspiration to Wakefield is no longer accepted. It may have been Wakefield who, fearing that the report might be pigeonholed, communicated it in February 1839 to The Times; but this is not certain.

In Wakefield's absence the New Zealand Association had introduced a Bill into Parliament, but it had been rejected. Before his return from Canada it had decided to reconstitute itself as a joint-stock company. Though he did not become a director until April 1840, Wakefield took up his residence at the Company's headquarters and devoted his energies to organising the preliminary expedition, under his brother William, which sailed in May 1839. There appears to be no reliable evidence for the tradition that he travelled by post-chaise to Plymouth to hasten its departure.

Though the affairs of New Zealand no doubt absorbed most of Wakefield's energies in 1839–40, he retained his interest in Canada. In 1839 he and his friends gained control of the North American Colonial Association of Ireland, which acquired the Canadian seigneury of Beauharnois and proposed to invest capital in public works, banking, and emigration and sell land on Wakefield principles. In 1841 Wakefield visited Canada and won over Lord Sydenham, the Governor-General, who had been hostile. Parliament, in 1842, passed a Bill empowering the association to carry through a modification of its scheme, and in July the Beauharnois Canal was begun. At this time Wakefield, who had returned to England, was back in Canada. He saw the trend of events, but Sir Charles Bagot, Sydenham's successor, expressly contradicted the report, circulated at the time and accepted by biographers since, that his decision to admit Baldwin and Lafontaine to office as the first responsible Ministry was due to Wakefield's influence. In November 1842 Wakefield was elected to the Canadian Assembly for the county of Beauharnois. Possibly disappointed by the failure of a scheme for the compulsory repurchase of unimproved lands, he fell out with the Ministry and supported the Governor-General, Sir Charles Metcalfe, in the quarrel over patronage, which ended in the resignation of Baldwin and Lafontaine in November 1843. He seems to have been Metcalfe's secret adviser and wrote strongly in his support after his return to England, which followed the news of the death of his brother Arthur Wakefield in the Wairau Affray of June 1843.

Wakefield was active in 1844 in preparing evidence for the Select Committee on New Zealand which was appointed by the House of Commons, at the instance of the New Zealand Company, to review policy after the Wairau massacre. The majority report of the chairman, Lord Howick, was favourable to the Company and critical of Government policy; but the Colonial Secretary, Lord Stanley, held it would be dangerous to act on this report. A fierce controversy, in which Wakefield undoubtedly had a hand, followed between the Colonial Secretary and the Company, and the issue was brought back to the House of Commons in a three-day debate in 1845. In January 1846 Wakefield suggested to Gladstone, who had succeeded Stanley, that the Companys' settlements should be granted local self-government and that the Company itself should be entrusted with the entire business of colonising New Zealand and the right of the Crown in its soil. In July 1846 Earl Grey (the former Lord Howick) became Colonial Secretary. Early in August he and Wakefield had an interview which clearly disappointed Wakefield, though according to Grey it was “very amicable”. On 18 August Wakefield, overstrained and ill, suffered a paralytic stroke.

During this illness Earl Grey and Wakefield's close friend and associate, Charles Buller, came to terms with the New Zealand Company, but Wakefield, even after his recovery, took no further responsibility for the management of the Company's affairs, resigning his directorship in 1849. He retained a sense of grievance against Lord Grey. He made a new friend, however, in J. R. Godley, whom he met while taking a cure at Malvern in the autumn of 1847. Together they elaborated the plan for a Church of England colony in New Zealand, which took shape as the Canterbury settlement. Wakefield's other main interest after his recovery was the preparation of the book published early in 1849 as A View of the Art of Colonization. The book restated Wakefield's principles and bitterly but unfairly attacked Lord Grey's policy.

Towards the end of 1849 Wakefield organised the Society for the Reform of Colonial Government to agitate in Parliament and the press for colonial self-government, accompanied by self-defence and a delimitation of imperial and colonial powers. The Liberal colonial policy announced by the Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, early in the session of 1850 took some of the wind out of the colonial reformers' sails; and their attempt to secure a statutory demarcation of Imperial and colonial powers in the Australian Colonies Government Bill was unsuccessful; but the society probably helped to convince British opinion of the need for colonial self-government. When the Canterbury settlement had been founded in 1850, Wakefield turned to agitation for self-government for New Zealand. The claim that he was the chief author of the Constitution Bill of 1852 cannot be accepted; but he and his associates may have persuaded Sir John Pakington, Colonial Secretary in the new Derby Ministry, to press on with the Bill instead of delaying it for a session.

As soon as the Constitution Act became law Wakefield, who had been living at Reigate in Surrey, prepared to leave England for New Zealand. He arrived at Lyttelton on 2 February 1853. A month later he proceeded to Wellington and offered Sir George Grey his help in bringing the constitution into operation on the ground that “my experience in this sort of work … is greater than any other man's”. Sir George Grey declined the offer. The “cheap land” regulations issued by Grey in March were denounced by Wakefield. But when he became a candidate for the Hutt, a constituency of struggling farmers, he declared that “exceptional circumstances demanded exceptional remedies – viz. free grants of land to workers”. He was elected in August both to the House of Representatives and to the Wellington Provincial Council. At the first General Assembly in Auckland, on 2 June 1854, Wakefield moved “that amongst the objects which the House desires to see accomplished without delay, the most important is the establishment of ministerial responsibility in the conduct of legislative and executive proceedings by the Governor”. The motion was carried with one dissentient, but Wakefield was unacceptable as leader and was not one of those called upon by Colonel Wynyard, the officer administering the Government, to join his Executive Council as a transitional measure. When the experiment broke down and Wynyard turned to Wakefield as unofficial adviser, the House protested against this by resolution. Wakefield retained the confidence of his constituents, but exposure to a cold wind after a densely crowded meeting in December brought on an attack of rheumatic fever and he never recovered his health. He retired from the House of Representatives at the general election of 1855 and from the Provincial Council later in the year. He took some part in the provincial elections of 1857, but afterwards lived quietly at his home in Wellington, where he died on 18 May 1862.

Wakefield was a stoutish man about 5 ft 6 in. in height, with a massive head, a fair complexion, longish hair, and brilliant blue eyes. Many witnesses testify to his personal fascination. He undoubtedly possessed a touch of genius as a thinker and propagandist. His theories of colonisation fitted neatly into the structure of contemporary economic thought. J. S. Mill treated him with respect and Karl Marx took note of him. He is maligned when accused by Marx and others of wishing to reproduce the aristocratic society of England in the colonies. He wanted his labourers to become landowners in due course. He was politically a radical and sympathetic to the United States, the most democratic and progressive society of the day. His theory, though it made too little allowance for colonial circumstances and, in particular, for the place of pastoral farming in the Australian and New Zealand economy, was by no means entirely inapplicable. Canterbury, the settlement which adhered most closely to his principles, made the most rapid economic advance, though there were no doubt other contributing causes. Wakefield did not care for detail and was not strong in administration; but he had marked political ability, though he was more effective in committee work and personal contacts than he could ever have been in public office. His love of power was almost pathological; more than once he sacrificed principle for power's sake. He was jealous of those who held the positions he could not gain. But, despite his many faults, by the impetus he gave to the colonisation of New Zealand he left a deeper mark on its history than any other man.

by William Parker Morrell, M.A.(N.Z.), D.PHIL.(OXON.), Professorial Fellow, History and Political Science Department, University of Otago.

• Edward Gibbon Wakefield, Garnett, R. (1898)
• The Amazing Career of E. G. Wakefield, Harrop, A. J. (1928)
• The Colonization of Australia, 1829–42, Mills, R. C. (1915).