This scarce book tells how, without Edward Gibbon Wakefield, there would probably have been no British Commonwealth. If he had not organized aided emigration to distant Australia and New Zealand at a critical moment, nearly all emigrants from Britain would then and later have gone to the United States and to a Canada which -- but for him -- might have become a foreign country. Mr Bloomfield has been able to use material unavailable to earlier biographers, and his vivid book should at least rouse public interest in one of England's greatest men.