He also had significant interests in British North America, being involved in the drafting of Lord Durham's Report and being a member of the Parliament of the Province of Canada for a short time.

He served as a King's Messenger, carrying diplomatic mail all about Europe during the later stages of the Napoleonic Wars, both before and after the decisive Battle of Waterloo in 1815.

It appears to have been a love match, but the fact that she was a wealthy heiress probably played a part, with Edward receiving a marriage settlement of £70,000[citation needed] (almost US$7m in 2018 dollars[4]), with the prospect of more when Eliza turned 21.

[5] The married couple, accompanied by the bride's mother and various servants, moved to Genoa, Italy, where Wakefield was again employed in a diplomatic capacity.

Through deception he wed another wealthy heiress in 1826 when he abducted 15-year-old Ellen Turner, after luring her from school with a false message about her mother's health.

Wakefield was brought to trial for the case known as the Shrigley abduction in 1826 and, along with his brother William, sentenced to three years in Newgate prison;[7] the marriage, which had not been consummated, was dissolved by a special act of parliament.

He proposed to remedy this state of things by the sale of land in small quantities at a sufficient price, and the employment of the proceeds as a fund for promoting immigration.

[9] The National Colonization Society (also spelt National Colonisation Society[8]) was created in 1830 in order to advocate for the type of "systematic colonisation" set out in Letter from Sydney, based on three principles: careful selection of emigrants; the concentration of settlers; and the sale of land at a fixed, uniform, "sufficient price", to provide funding for new settlers.

[11] After his release Wakefield briefly turned his attention to social questions at home, and produced a tract on the Punishment of Death (1831), with a graphic picture of the condemned sermon in Newgate, and another on the rural districts, with an equally powerful exhibition of the degraded condition of the agricultural labourer.

[3] In 1831, having impressed John Stuart Mill, Robert Torrens and other leading economists with the value of his ideas,[3] Wakefield became involved in various schemes to promote the colonisation of South Australia.

Although initially, Wakefield was a driving force, as it came closer to fruition, he was allowed less and less influence, with ally-turned-rival Robert Gouger eventually controlling execution of the scheme.

In 1833 he published anonymously England and America, a work primarily intended to develop his own colonial theory, which is done in the appendix entitled "The Art of Colonization."

[citation needed] However, they both knew that Wakefield would be completely unacceptable to the British government, so Durham planned to announce the appointment only after he had reached Canada.

He also travelled to Saratoga Springs, New York, in an unsuccessful attempt to meet with the main leader of the Patriote movement, Louis-Joseph Papineau, who had fled to the United States during the Rebellion.

During his conversation with LaFontaine, Wakefield had tried to persuade him to publicly approve Durham's policy concerning the exiles to Bermuda, and the death penalty for Patriotes still in the United States.

Wakefield was not impressed by LaFontaine, writing that he and the other Patriote leaders were "profoundly ignorant of their own position and thoroughly devoid of judgment..."[23][25][28] Durham abruptly resigned his post as Governor General in the fall of 1838.

They had some difficulty finding a suitable captain for the Tory, but then found Edward Main Chaffers who had been sailing master on HMS Beagle during Fitzroy's circumnavigation.

He was a salesman, a propagandist and a politician, secretly inspiring and guiding many parliamentary committees on colonial subjects, especially on the abolition of penal transportation.

At his instigation, the Association had purchased a large estate just outside Montreal, the seigneury of Villechauve, where they wanted to establish another colonial settlement.

Although there was strong opposition in the Assembly to the canal proposal, a major loan guarantee from the British government ensured that funds could be obtained.

[25][37] At the end of the parliamentary session in October 1842, John William Dunscomb, the member of the Legislative Assembly for the Beauharnois district, resigned his seat, since he had taken a new position in Montreal.

He had introduced a bill to make the North American Colonial Association of Ireland a mortgage and trust company, with an accompanying colonisation plan.

LaFontaine, Baldwin, and all but one of the members of the Executive Council resigned, arguing that Metcalfe's actions were inconsistent with the principle of responsible government.

Wakefield defended Metcalfe, relying on a narrow interpretation of the principle of responsible government, and also insinuating that the real reason LaFontaine and Baldwin had resigned was that they feared defeat on a taxation bill they had introduced.

Wakefield found him somewhere to live and farmed out the children among relatives, but it was another year before his health was strong enough to take over the role of surrogate father, Felix being apparently unable to do anything for his family.

In the same year, Wakefield co-founded the Colonial Reform Society with Charles Adderley, a landowner and member of parliament for North Staffordshire.

Sewell went ashore and met with various dignitaries including Daniel Bell Wakefield, another of the brothers who had been in Wellington for some years practising law and was Attorney General of the Province.

[citation needed] Within a month of arriving in Wellington, Wakefield began a campaign in London to have him recalled not knowing he had already applied to leave the colony.

Whatever the vicissitudes of the last few months, it confirmed Wakefield as one of the leading political figures of colony, possibly the only one with stature to take on Governor Grey.

John Howard Wakefield spent most of his life in India, ending his days back in England unlike his two better-known siblings.