ABSTRACT
The Wakefield doctrine of immigration and the Wakefield land policy stood or fell together. The leaky, ill-built ships of the North American timber trade continued to carry emigrants to the North American Colonies in the old haphazard way. The Imperial Government confined itself to measures like those recommended by Sydenhamassistance in the prevention of existing abuses, in the provision of relief and medical attendance for the destitute and sick, and the conveyance of the able-bodied to the places where their labour was required.3 A capitation tax, payable by all immigrants, was established in Canada, a.nd Parliament voted £s,ooo--an amount estimated to be sufficient to relieve able-bodied immigrants from the payment-for the relief of the destitute among the immigrants.4 However much emigration might relieve the Mother Country, increase the resources of the colonies, and keep up an attachment to British connexion-however strong might be the feeling in the Mother Country that Canada was not doing all she might to encourage immigration-it was gradually being recognized that she must determine these matters for herself. The French Canadians, not unnaturally, had no desire to be swamped by British immigrants, and quite apart from this, the Canadian angle of view was different. T. F. Elliot, the Chairman of the Colonial Land and Emigration Commis-
sioners, had been in Canada, and realized that colonization was not such a simple matter:
Yet systematic colonizers of the Wakefield school, ready as they now were to admit that nothing could be done without colonial co-operation, were reluctant to acquiesce in the conclusion that their ideas had no future in North America. On 6 April 1843, in a speech which produced a great impression but had little practical effect, Buller asked whether the Australian system might not be extended to South Africa and, with the co-operation of the Colonial Legislatures, to North America; and on 15 August of the same year he urged that the Colonial Government should take into its own hands the whole of the wild lands of Canada, compensating the proprietors by debentures on which a dividend should be paid as the land was sold, until the whole stock was paid off. Immigration he proposed to leave for the present'independent of Government, but the fund derived from the sale of this land should be expended on opening up the country by public works.2 It was generally agreed that the immense unimproved tracts of private land were one of the main obstacles to Canadian development; but Buller's plan was too ambitious and too much out of harmony with the economic ideas of the time to find much favour either in Downing Street or in Canada.3 Still Buller did not give up hope; and with the advent of the Whigs to power, not only was he himself in a position to influence events, but the Secretary of State was likewise a devotee of the principles of systematic colonization.
