The working class in nelson : under the New Zealand company, 1841-1851

Abstract

The Wakefield Theory was essentially a method by which labourers would be attracted to the colonies, compelled to stay there once they had arrived and, above all, restrained from immediately occupying land on their own account and thus depleting the labour supply. To ensure the latter condition, the doctrine of the "sufficient price" was formulated: by selling the waste lands at a relatively high price, it was hoped to prevent the working emigrants from taking land, at least for some years, but not to place too big an obstacle in the way of those able and willing to use it. For all former experience showed that when land was cheap and plentiful very few persons were willing to labour for hire. Thus capital would not be productively employed. Herein lay the origin of the system adopted by the New Zealand Company, in accordance with the precepts of which it set out to colonize New Zealand. It was the problem of the supply of labour which caused most thought and it came to be regarded as an extremely valuable commodity. Edward Gibbon Wakefield emphatically stated: "No pains should be spared to teach the labouring classes to regard the colonies as the land or promise, which it should be their highest ambition to be able to reach." Wakefield, A Letter from Sydney (Everyman ed.), p.4.