ABSTRACT
But the stars in their courses fought for Wakefield and against Lord Grey. His prestige as a Colonial Reformer-'the destined purifier of the Augean stable in Downing Street'I-steadily waned. His efforts to satisfy the demand for more effective colonization by his Halifax-Quebec railway scheme were unsuccessful. Nor could it be said that the colonies were in a contented frame of mind. The great colonial grievance of I 848 had been the West Indian grievance, and the West Indies were still in denunciatory mood: the Assembly of Jamaica and the Combined Court of Guiana were both in process of stopping supplies. But, however much Molesworth and the Morning Chronicle might insist that the West Indian colonies like the rest were suffering from misgovernment by Downing Street, it was difficult to bring home to Lord Grey in person the consequences of a policy approved of, and indeed clamoured for, by the most powerful body of opinion in England. What Colonial Reformers were looking for was a grievance which could, with some hope of success, be used as a weapon against the Colonial Minister. The check that circumstances had administered to Grey's
reforming plans soon provided them with many. The Australian colonies were clamouring for labour, and New South Wales, at least, indignantly rejected Grey's constitutional proposals: pacified for the moment by the 'golden dispatch' of 31 July 1848, they were soon excited to a still higher pitch by the ill-advised renewal of transportation. 1849 was to be a year of almost continuous anti-convict agitation at the Cape. Canada was in the trough of economic depression, and the agitation against the Rebellion Losses Bill was used by many of the Colonial Reformers to point the moral that Canada was to be regarded as a warning rather than an example. As if this was not enough, there had been in July 1848 a rebellion in Ceylon-promptly suppressed by the Governor, Lord Torrington, but suppressed, it began to be rumoured, with an unjustifiable severity. I Here, surely, were instances enough to prove the proposition that the colonies were as much misgoverned under Lord Grey's regime as they had previously been.
