Wakefield on Colonial Government and Patronage

Abstract

Edward Gibbon Wakefield, known as a British Colonial Imperialist, was a free constitutionalist in the first half of the nineteenth century. In 1844, in order to promote imperial unity and to encourage prosperity both at home and in the colonies, he argued for constitutional reform in the British North American colonies. In the face of the Canadian political crisis, Wakefield argued for greater freedom for the Provincial government to promote own legislation, thereby increasing the autonomy of the colony. He thought that the surrendering patronage to the Canadian Province would be effective as a remedy to the crisis, so that the provincial cabinet was responsible solely to the colonial legislature. Wakefield intended in part to revise the recommendation in the Durham Report, and to make the British colonies an extension of Great Britain so they would attract enfranchised emigrants from the Isles. The paper concludes that despite Wakefield's argument, the Revolutionary Settlement as a reforming model could not be transplanted to the colonies either in theory and practice.