Colonial Land and Emigration Commission

The Colonial Land and Emigration Commission (CLEC), also known as the Colonial Land and Emigration Board, was a British government authority under the supervision of the Secretary of State for the Colonies that facilitated emigration within the British Empire. Established by a formal commission from Queen Victoria on 14 January 1840, the commission took over the responsibilities of two existing government offices, the South Australian Colonization Commission, and the Agent-General for Emigration.[1]

In 1837 Thomas Frederick Elliot (1808–1880) had been appointed to the latter post, and he became a member of the new body.[2] Most immigrants it assisted settled in the settler colonies of New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia, with smaller numbers settling in British colonies in New Zealand, the Falkland Islands, in parts of Australia, and South Africa[1][3] (the Cape of Good Hope). The commission issued reports showing total numbers of immigrants to various colonies, which were published in newspapers,[4] and also published the Colonization Circular from at least 1843 to 1870.[5]

In 1852, shortly after qualifying, Irish surgeon Andrew Sexton Gray was appointed as a surgeon-superintendent for the commission, which involved accompanying migrants on assisted passage schemes as the ship's chief medical officer, as well as maintaining their welfare and discipline.[6]

From 1856 the commission was known generally known as the "Emigration Commission", after the British Government granted Australian colonies control of land sales within their territories. However, technically the full name remained in force until its abolition.[7][8] It was formally abolished on 31 March 1878, when its staff and remaining functions were transferred to the Colonial Office.[3]

  1. ^ a b Hitchens, Fred Harvey (1931). The Colonial Land and Emigration Commission. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 321.
  2. ^ Hayden, Albert A. (1966). "Elliot, Thomas Frederick (1808–1880)". Australian Dictionary of Biography. Vol. 1. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. Retrieved 28 October 2020. This article was first published in hardcopy in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 1, (MUP), 1966.
  3. ^ a b "The Colonial Land and Emigration Commissioners". New South Wales Archives and Records Authority.
  4. ^ "The Colonial Land and Emigration Commission". The Perth Gazette and Independent Journal of Politics and News. Vol. 2, no. 98. Western Australia. 16 November 1849. p. 3. Retrieved 8 July 2022 – via National Library of Australia.
  5. ^ Great Britain. Colonial Land and Emigration Commission (1843), Colonization Circular, Charles Knight and Co., (London : Printed by Order of the Colonial Land and Emigration Commissioners by W. Clowes and Sons), ISSN 1461-4278
  6. ^ Lowe, Ronald F. (November 1985). "Andrew Sexton Gray (1826– 1907). A Founder of Australian Ophthalmology: His Life and Times". Australian and New Zealand Journal of Ophthalmology. 13 (4): 421–431. doi:10.1111/j.1442-9071.1985.tb00458.x. PMID 3914312.
  7. ^ "Colonial Office: Land and Emigration Commission, etc". The National Archives. Retrieved 5 December 2020. Text may have been copied from this source, which is published under an Open Government Licence [1] "compatible with the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0".
  8. ^ Hitchens, Fred Harvey (1931). The Colonial Land and Emigration Commission. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 310. By 1856, however, the imperial government had been forced to grant to the Australian colonies the right already granted to the Canadas - control of the waste lands. After that date, indeed, the Board is referred to simply as the "Emigration Commission," although technically the full title remained.