THE LATE E. J. WAKEFIELD

Waikato Times, Volume XIII, Issue 1049, 15 March 1879, Page 2

THE LATE E. J. WAKEFIELD

The ' Ashburton Mail ' has a notice of the late E. J. Wakefield, from which we extract the following: — "Deceased, who must have been over fifty years of age, was a son of the celebrated Edward Gibbon Wakefield, whose name is so intimately associated with the early colonization of New South Wales and New Zoaland. His career has been a chequered one. Born, if not to affluence, at least to abundance and an enviable position m society, he has died m an asylum for the aged and indigent m this little colonial town. One of his schoolfellows and associates m early life was Sir Henry Bulwer, afterwards Lord Dalling, and amongst other early friends .he numbered the famous Counties of Blessington. Mr Wakefield came to New Zealand when quite a young man, and so long ago, we think, as thirty years he published a book on the state of the islands m those and preceding times. He certainly, next perhaps to Sir George Grey, had a more intelligent and extensive knowledge of the early history of NewZealand than any other man now living. He was beyond doubt most intimately acquainted with the particulars of the early settlement of Canterbury, inasmuch as he came out to the district as private secretary to John Robert Godley. He was at one time a man of much worldly means, and had he taken a wise care of his property m and about Christchurch, he would have been one of the wealthiest men m Canterbury. His genius resembled that of Lord William Bentinck, and there was not m the colony a man more thoroughly at home than he amongst the labyrinths of statistics and national finance, and had his behaviour not involved sooial declensions, he would have been of our public men facile princejH m political economy. As a speaker and writer, he was discursively argumentative, but he also possessed the faculty which enabled him to lighten up his discourse or disquisition with gleams of not ungraceful humour. Even m his best days he was more brilliant as a speaker than a writer. It cannot be said that Mr Wakefield ever attained his proper position as a politician, for just as his undoubted, we might almost say unbounded, capacity for the management of public affairs began clearly to manifest itself, it became evident that he was losing regard for that "prudent, cautious self-control," which has been well described as the root of wisdom- His last direct connection with public affairs was as member for the City of Uhristchurch, m what is some-, times not inaptly described as Sir Julius Vogel's Parliament. He wooed the voices of his old csnstituents, at the general election of 1876, but he was rejected, and William Sefton Moorhouse was elected m his stead. However, he nes*er, till within ten days of his death, ceased to take an active interest m current political events, and he was a most thorough believer m the policy of Sir George Grey, of whom he was, besides, never tired of speaking m terms of the strongest personal respect and attachment. Mr Wakefield was a thorough Liberal m politics, a persistent enunciator of the principles expressed m the phrase of the land for the people and the people for the land. Large estates were his particular aversion, as he looked upon the acquisition or increase of such as inimical to proper natioaal development. His latest considerable contribution to the causa of the people was a handbook of taxatioa reform entitled ' ' The Taxes m New Zealand : Who Pays? Who Doesn't Pay? Who Ought to Pay? Hia last literary projact was writing a New Zealand. Handbook, and any work of this kind, written by him, would have proved valuable as a work of reference to future historians. There was certainly no probability of its proving such aB abortion as the handbook published some years ago under tin auspices of Sir Julius Vogal, It is not more than a fortnight since he received a letter from the Colonel Secretary iv reference to tho work on whose composition he had set his heart as a means to enable him to recover hi-j rightful nosifclon m society —a consummatio to which he kept continually looking forward. Mr Wakefield leaves a family, consisting of a wif j and two young daughters..