Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 65, No. 403, May, 1849

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 65, No. 403, May, 1849
Various

Various

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 65, No. 403, May, 1849

COLONISATION – MR WAKEFIELD'S THEORY.[1 - A View of the Art of Colonisation, with present reference to the British Empire; in Letters between a Statesman and a Colonist. Edited by (one of the writers) Edward Gibbon Wakefield.]

We agree with those, and they are the majority of reflective minds, who, taking a survey of our half-peopled globe, and considering the peculiar position which England occupies on it – her great maritime power, her great commercial wants, her overflowing numbers, her overflowing wealth – have concluded that colonisation is a work to which she is especially called. She is called to it by her marked aptitude and capability for the task, as well as by an enlightened view of her own interests. Without too much national partiality, without overlooking our own faults, and that canker of a too money-loving, too money-making morality, which has eaten into our character, (though perhaps not more so than it has corroded the character of other European nations, who have quite as strong a passion for gold, without the same industry in obtaining it,) we may boldly say that the best seed-plot of the human race that now exists (let the best be estimated as it may by the moralist and the divine) is to be found in this island of Great Britain. To plant the unoccupied regions of the earth, or regions merely wandered over by scattered tribes of savages, who cannot be said to possess a soil which they do not use, by off-sets from this island, is itself a good work. It is laying no ill foundation for the future nations that shall thus arise, to secure to them the same language, the same literature, the same form of religion, the same polity, or, at all events, the same political temper (the love and obedience to a constitution) that we possess; to make native to them that literature in which the great Christian epic has been written, in which philosophy has spoken most temperately, and poetry most profusely, diversely, and vigorously. Nor will England fail to reap her own reward from this enterprise. In every part of the world an Englishman will find a home. It will be as if his own native soil had been extended, as if duplicates of his own native land had risen from the ocean. A commercial intercourse of the most advantageous character will spring up; the population and the wealth of the old country will find fresh fields of employment in the new; the old country will itself grow young again, and start in the race with her own children for competitors. Neither will the present age pass by without participating in the benefit, since its overcrowded population will be relieved by the departure of many who will exchange want for plenty, and despondency for hope. Whatever opinion may be held of the remedial efficacy against future pauperism of a system of emigration, it must be allowed that this present relief arrives most opportunely, as a balance to that extraordinary pressure produced by the distress in Ireland, and the influx of its famine-stricken peasantry into other parts of the kingdom.

On this subject – the measure of permanent relief which colonisation will afford to this country by carrying off its surplus population – the degree in which emigration may be calculated upon as the future antagonist of pauperism – we would speak with caution. We are so far hopeful that we see here a great resource against the national evil of an unemployed population, but it is a resource which must be rightly understood and wisely taken advantage of; it is a great resource for an intelligent people; it comes in aid of that fundamental remedy, a good sound education for the people, moral and religious, but is no substitute for that most necessary of all measures. Misunderstood, and vaguely relied on by those who know not how properly to avail themselves of it, the prospect of emigration may even prove mischievous, by rendering the thoughtless and improvident still more reckless, still more improvident.

Granted, it may be said, that emigration supplies an outlet annually for a certain excess of population, it supplies, by that very reason, an additional and constant impulse to an increase of population. The old country may overflow, but it is always kept full, and to the brim. The restraint of prudence is relaxed. "We can feed ourselves; and, as to our children, are there not the colonies?" may be said by many an improvident pair. People even of the better sort, who would shrink from the idea of their children sinking into a lower grade of society than they themselves occupied, would find in emigration a vague provision for the future family – a provision which would often disappoint them, and which they would often fail in resolution to embrace.

Let it be borne in mind that, when we speak of the duty of restraining from improvident marriage, we are not inculcating any new morality founded upon the recent science of political economy. It is a duty as old as the love of a parent to his child, and needs only for its enforcement an anticipation of this parental affection. No man who has married, and become a father, ever doubted of the existence of such a duty, or spoke slightingly of it. Ask the Scotch peasant, ask the simplest Switzer, who knows nothing of reading-clubs or mechanics' institutes – who has perhaps never quitted his native valley, and all whose knowledge is the growth of his own roof-tree – what he thinks of the morality of him who becomes the father of a family he cannot rear, or must rear like wild beasts more than men – he will give you an answer that would satisfy the strictest Malthusian. The prudence that would avoid famine, the just and righteous fear of having hungry children about our knees – this is no new wisdom in the world, though, like all our old wisdom, it continually cries in vain in our streets. Now the operation of this, in every respect, moral restraint would be materially interfered with, if the notion should prevail, that in the colonies there existed (without any distinct knowledge how it was to be secured) an inexhaustible provision for human life. Numbers would marry, trusting to this resource, yet the offspring of such marriages might never reach their destined refuge, or reach it only after much suffering, and in the degraded condition of uneducated paupers. And men who have calculated that, at all events, without seeking aid from Government or the parish, they shall be able to send their child abroad, when the child has grown up, will hesitate to part with it. They had calculated what they would do, when parents, before they became such. They had not been able to anticipate that bond of parental affection which, we may observe in passing, is by no means weakest in the humblest ranks, but, on the contrary, until we reach the very lowest, seems to increase in strength as we descend in the social scale.

The fact is, that it is not as a distant provision for their children that the youthful pair should be taught to look on emigration. If it comes at all into their calculation, they should embrace it as a provision for themselves, and, through them, for their future offspring. They should carry their hopes at once to the climate which is to realise them. Marriage should be the period of emigration. At this period a man can readily leave his country, for he can leave his home. The newly married couple, as it is commonly said, and with no undue exaggeration, are all the world to each other. It is at this period that men have double the strength, for they have twice the hope, and exhilaration, and enterprise, that they have at any other epoch of their lives. That slender hoard, too, which will so soon be wasted in this country, which a few pleasures will drain, would carry them creditably into another, and lay the foundation for the utmost prosperity their birth and condition has led them to wish for. To the distant colony let them not devote their ill-fed and ill-taught children; but, going thither themselves, rear a healthy race for whom they will have no cares. If at this period of life it should become the fashion of the humbler classes to emigrate, it would be difficult to say how far our colonies might become a real, and effectual, and permanent resource against overpopulation. At all events, the mischievous influence we have been describing could never arise. We see not why England, if she learns rightly to use them, may not reap from her colonies all those advantages which the United States have been so frequently felicitated upon in their territories in the Far West. Much will depend on the current which public opinion takes. Presuming that Government discontinues entirely the old system of transportation, which must always render emigration extremely unpalatable; presuming that a steady, equitable rule is adopted in dealing with the unappropriated land, so that a moderate price, a speedy possession, and a secure title may be depended upon – we think it highly probable that colonisation will become very popular amongst us. The more that is learnt about the colonies, the more the imagination is familiarised with them by accounts of their climate, products, and the mode of life pursued in them, the less apparent, and the less fearful will their distance become, and the more frequently will men find themselves carrying their hopes and enterprises in that direction. If, therefore, an intelligent and practicable view is taken of colonisation, we may re-echo, without scruple, the words of our thoughtful poet —

"Avaunt the fear
Of numbers crowded in their native soil,
To the prevention of all healthful growth
Through mutual injury! Rather in the law
Of increase, and the mandate from above,
Rejoice! – and ye have special cause for joy.
For, as the element of air affords
An easy passage to the industrious bees,
Fraught with their burdens, and a way as smooth,
For those ordained to take their sounding flight
From the thronged hive, and settle where they list,
In fresh abodes – their labour to renew;
So the wide waters open to the power,
The will, the instincts, and the appointed needs
Of Britain; do invite her to cast off
Her swarms, and in succession send them forth
Bound to establish new communities
On every shore whose aspect favours hope
Or bold adventure; promising to skill
And perseverance their deserved reward."

    Excursion, book 9.
How best to colonise; how far Government should undertake the regulation and control of the enterprise; how far leave it to the spirit and intelligence of private individuals, separate or banded together in groups, or companies; and especially under what terms it shall permit the occupation of the unappropriated soil – all these have become highly interesting topics of discussion.

For ourselves, we will at once frankly confess that we have no faith in any model colonies, in ideals of any description, or in any "Art of colonisation." What has been done, may be done again; what America is doing every day on the banks of the Mississippi, England may do in her Australian continent. With regard more particularly to the last and most important matter that can affect a new settlement, the mode of dealing with the land, it appears to us that the duties of Government are few, simple, and imperative – as simple in their character as they are indispensable. A previous survey, a moderate price, lots large and small to suit all purchasers – these are what we should require. The land-jobber, who interposes between Government and the emigrant, to make a cruel profit of the latter, must be kept out, either by laying a tax (as they do in America, under the denomination of the "Wild-land Tax,") on all land not reclaimed within a certain time, or by declaring the purchase forfeited, if, within that time, the soil is not cultivated. Government also must restrain its own hands from large grants to favoured individuals, who are no better than another species of land-jobbers. This, though a merely negative duty, will probably be the last performed, and the most imperfectly. Few readers are perhaps aware of the criminal ease with which the Government has been persuaded into lavish grants of land to persons who had, and could have, no immediate prospect of making use of it; enormous grants unjust to other settlers, and ruinous to the young colony, by dispersing the emigrants, interposing between them wide tracts of barren property. We ourselves read with no little surprise the following statement, which we extract from the work before us, Mr Wakefield's Art of Colonisation: —

"There are plenty of cases in which mischievous dispersion has taken place, but not one, to my knowledge, in which the great bulk of settlers had a choice between dispersion and concentration. In the founding of West Australia there was no choice. In disposing of the waste land, the Government began by granting 500,000 acres (nearly half as much as the great county of Norfolk) to one person. Then came the governor and a few other persons, with grants of immense extent. The first grantee took his principality at the landing-place; and the second, of course, could only choose his outside of this vast property. Then the property of the second grantee compelled the third to go further off for land; and the fourth again was driven still further into the wilderness. At length, though by a very brief process, an immense territory was appropriated by a few settlers, who were so effectually dispersed, that, as there were no roads or maps, scarcely one of them knew where he was. Each of them knew, indeed, that he was where he was positively; but his relative position – not to his neighbours, for he was alone in the wilderness, but to other settlers, to the seat of government, and even to the landing-place of the colony – was totally concealed from him. This is, I believe, the most extreme case of dispersion on record. In the founding of South Africa by the Dutch, the dispersion of the first settlers, though superficially or acreably less, was as mischievous as at Swan River. The mischief shows itself in the fact, that two of the finest countries in the world are still poor and stagnant colonies. But in all colonies, without exception, there has been impoverishing dispersion, arising from one and the same cause." – (P. 433.)

Two very different ideals of colonisation have often haunted the imaginations of speculative men, and coloured very diversely their views and projects on this subject. Both have their favourable aspects; neither is practicable. As is usual, the rough reality rides zig-zag between your ideals, touching at both in turns, but running parallel with neither.

With one party of reasoners, the ideal of a colony would be a miniature England, a little model of the old country, framed here, at home, and sent out (like certain ingeniously-constructed houses) to be erected forthwith upon the virgin soil. A portion of all classes would sally forth for their New Jerusalem. The church, with tower and steeple, the manor-house, the public library, the town-hall, the museum, and the hospital, would all simultaneously be reproduced. Science would have its representatives. Literature with its light luggage, thoughts and paper, would be sure to hover about the train. Nobility would import its antique honours into the new city, and, with escutcheon and coat of arms, traditionally connect it with knighthood and chivalry, Agincourt, and the Round Table. There would be physicians and divines, lawyers, and country gentlemen "who live at ease," as well as the artisan and ploughman, and all who work in wood and in iron. Dr Hind, the present Dean of Carlisle, in an elegantly written essay, incorporated in Mr Wakefield's book, proposes and advocates this mode of colonisation. After remarking on the greater success which apparently accompanied the schemes of the Greeks and Romans to found new communities, Dr Hind thus proceeds. – The italics, it may be as well to say, are his, not ours.

"The main cause of this difference may be stated in few words. We send out colonies of the limbs, without the belly and the head; of needy persons, many of them mere paupers, or even criminals; colonies made up of a single class of persons in the community, and that the most helpless, and the most unfit to perpetuate our national character, and to become the fathers of a race whose habits of thinking and feeling shall correspond to those which, in the mean time, we are cherishing at home. The ancients, on the contrary, sent out a representation of the parent state – colonists from all ranks." And further on, after insisting on the propriety of appointing to the colony educated and accomplished clergymen, he says – "The same may be urged in respect of men of other professions and pursuits. The desirable consummation of the plan would be, that a specimen, or sample, as it were, of all that goes to make up society in the parent country, should at once be transferred to its colony. Instead of sending out bad seedlings, and watching their uncertain growth, let us try whether a perfect tree will not bear transplanting."

We apprehend that this project of "transplanting a perfect tree" is none of the most feasible. However the Greeks managed matters, we moderns find it absolutely necessary to begin "at the beginning," and with somewhat rude beginnings. If the Greeks had the art in the colony, as in the epic poem, of rushing in medias res– of starting with and from maturity – then indeed must colonisation be reckoned, as Dr Hind seems half to suspect, amongst the artes perditæ. Anything more lamentable than a number of cultivated men – "samples" of all kinds, physicians, and divines, and lawyers, with, of course, their several ladies – set down upon the uncultivated soil, on the long green grass, we cannot imagine. It seems to us quite right and unavoidable to send out "a single class," first – good stout "limbs," without much of "the belly" – which must mean, we presume, the idle folks, or much of "the head," which must mean the thinkers. That class, or those classes which cultivate the soil, and render the place somewhat habitable, had better surely precede, and act as pioneers, before the gentry disembark from their ships. Other classes must follow as they are wanted, and find room and scope. What would the physician do with his elaborate skill and courtesy, without that congregation of idlers on whose ailments he rides and dines? What need yet of eloquent barrister, or are his fees forthcoming, when a new estate could be purchased with less money than would serve to defend the old one by his pleading? Who would attend to the man of science, and his latest experiments on magnetic currents, when every one is trying over again the very first experiment – how to live? – where corn will grow, and what the potato will yield? Even your clergy must be of a somewhat different stamp from the polished ecclesiastic, the bland potentate of our drawing-rooms. He must have something more natural – "some rough-cast and a little loam" about him, be serviceable, accessible. And the fair "sample" partners of all these classes, what is to become of them? As yet, pin-money is not. There is nothing refined and civilised; men talk of marriage as if for prayer-book purposes. Very gross ideas!

The ancients, says Dr Hind, "began by nominating to the honourable office of captain, or leader of the colony, one of the chief men, if not the chief man of the state – like the queen bee leading the workers. Monarchies provided a prince of the blood royal; an aristocracy its choicest nobleman; a democracy its most influential citizen." In order to entice some one of our gentry – some one of wealth, station, and cultivated mind, to act as "queen bee" of the colony – seeing that a prince of the blood royal, or a Duke of Northumberland, would be hard to catch – the Doctor proposes to bestow upon him a patent of nobility. Wealth he has already, and wealth would not bribe him, but honour might. We see nothing ridiculous whatever in the suggestion. A patent of nobility might be much worse bestowed; but, unless we err greatly in our notion of what colonisation really is, the bribe would be lamentably insufficient. The English gentleman of fortune and of taste, who should leave his park and mansion in the county of Middlesex, to share the squabbles and discomforts of a crowd of emigrants – too often turbulent, anxious, and avaricious – would have well earned his earldom. He would be a sort of hero. Men of such a temper you may decorate with the strawberry leaf, but it is not the coronet, nor any possible bribe – nothing short of a certain thirst for noble enterprise can prompt them.

The other ideal of what colonisation might be is quite the reverse, presents a picture every way opposite to this of our classical dean. Many energetic and not uncultured spirits, wearied with the endless anxieties, cares, hypocrisies, and thousand artificialities of life, are delighted with the idea of breaking loose from the old trammels and conventionalities of civilisation. Their romance is to begin life afresh. Far from desiring to form a part of the little model-England, they would take from the Old World, if possible, nothing more than knowledge, seeds, and tools. To a fresh nature they would take a fresh heart, and a vigorous arm. Fields rescued by themselves from the waste should ripen under their own eyes. Thus, with a rude plenty, care and luxury alike cut off, no heartburnings, no vanity, a cultivated temper and coarse raiment – they and their families, and some neighbours of kindred dispositions, would really enjoy the earth, and the being God had given them. Not theirs the wish to see a matured society spring from the new soil. They regret to think that their own rustic community must inevitably advance, or decline, into some one of the old forms of civilisation; but they and their children, and perhaps their grandchildren, would be partakers of a peculiar and envied state of social existence, where the knowledge and amenity brought from the old country would be combined with the healthy toil and simple abundance of the new; where life would be unanxious, laborious, free; where there would be no talk of wars, nor politics, nor eternal remediless distress; but a disciplined humanity, in face of a kindly nature whose bounty had not yet been too severely taxed.

A charming ideal! which here and there is faintly and transiently realised. Here and there we catch a description of this simple, exhilarating, innocuously enterprising life, either in some Canadian settlement, or in the forests of America, or even in the Bush of Australia. There is rude health in all the family; housekeeping is a sort of perpetual pic-nic, full of amusing make-shifts; there is rudeness, but not barbarism; little upholstery, but wife and child are caressed with as much amenity and gentle fondness as in carpeted and curtained drawing-rooms. If the tin can should substitute the china cup, the tea is drunk with not the less urbanity. Such scenes we have caught a glimpse of in this or that writer. But alas! that which generally characterises the young settlement, let it be young as it may – that which would so wofully disappoint our pastoral and romantic emigrant, is precisely this: that, instead of leaving care behind them, the care to get rich, to get on, as it is disgustingly called – our colonists take a double portion of this commodity with them. Comparatively few seem to emigrate simply to live then and there more happily. They take land, as they would take a shop, to get a profit and be rich. And then, as for the little community and its public or common interests, it is the universal remark that, if politics in England are acrid enough, colonial politics are bitterness itself. The war is carried on with a personal hatred, and attended by personal injuries, unknown in the old country.

One would indeed think that people, fatigued with this anxious passion which plays so large a part in English life – this desire to advance, or secure, their social position – would seize the opportunity to escape from it, and rejoice in their ability to live in some degree of freedom and tranquillity. But no. The man commerce bred cares not to enjoy life and the day. He must make a profit out of himself; he must squeeze a profit out of others; he toils only for this purpose. If he has succeeded, in the new colony, in raising about him the requisite comforts of life – if he has been even rescued from threatened famine in England, and is now living and well housed, he and his family – you find him full of discontent because of the "exorbitant wages" he has to pay to the fellow emigrants who assist him in gathering in his corn – full of discontent because he cannot make the same profit of another man's labour there that he could have done in the old country – in that old country where he could not for his life have got so much land as the miserable rag upon his back would have covered. Such men carry out a heart to work, none to enjoy: they have not been cultivated for that. The first thing the colonist looks for is something to export. It was in vain that Adelaide boasted its charming climate and fruitful fields; it was on the point of being abandoned – so we hear – by many of its inhabitants, when some mines were discovered. There was then something that would sell in England, something to get rich with; so they that would have left the soil, stayed to work in the bowels of the earth. In the Bush you hear of the shepherds and small owners of sheep living, the year round, on "salt beef, tea, and damper," which last is an extemporised bread, an unleavened dough baked in such oven as the usual fire-place supplies. But fresh mutton, you exclaim, is plentiful enough; what need to diet themselves as if they were still in the hold of that vessel which brought them over? True, plentiful enough – it sells in Sydney at some three-halfpence a pound; but while the sheep lives it grows wool upon its back. For this wool it is bred. Sometimes it is boiled down bodily for its tallow, which also can be exported. Mutton-chops would be a waste; it would be a sin to think of them.

Set sail from England in whichever direction you will, East or West, over whichever ocean, the first thing you hear of, in respect to colonial society, is its proverbial "smartness" – an expression which signifies a determination to cheat you in every possible manner. The Old World, and the worst of it, is already there to welcome you. Nay, it has taken possession of the very soil before the spade of the emigrant can touch it. There lies the fresh land, fresh – so geologists say of Australia – as it came up at its last emergence from the ocean. You are first? No. The land-jobber is there before you. This foulest harpy from the stock exchange has set its foot upon the greensward, and screeches at you its cry for cent per cent!

There is yet a third and later ideal of colonisation – the ideal of the political economist. With him colonisation presents itself under the especial aspect of a great exploitation of the earth. He is desirous that capital and labour should resort to those spots where they will be most productive. Thus the greatest possible amount of production will be generated between man and his terraqueous globe; capital and labour are with him the first elements of human prosperity; and to transfer these in due proportions, and as quickly as possible, to the new land, when they may be most profitably employed, is the main object of his legislation. Hitherto, it may be observed, the political economist has limited his efforts to the undoing what he conceives has been very unskilfully done by previous legislators. In this matter of emigration he steps forward as legislator himself. It is no longer for mere liberty and laissez-faire that he contends; he assumes a new character, and out of the theory of his science produces his system of rule and regulation. He knows how a small village becomes a great city; he will apply his knowledge, and by positive laws expedite the process. Let us see with what success he performs in this new character.

Mr Wakefield's system – for it is he who has the honour of originating this politico-economical scheme – consists in putting a price upon unoccupied land, and with the proceeds of the sale raising a fund for the transmission of emigrant labourers. This is, however, but a subordinate part of his project, which we mention thus separately, because, for a purpose of our own, we wish to distinguish it from the rest. This price must, moreover, (and here is the gist of the matter,) be that "sufficient price" which will debar the labourer from becoming too soon a proprietor of land, and thus deserting the service of the capitalist.

The object of Mr Wakefield, it will be seen at once, is to procure the speedy transmission in due proportion of capital and labour. The capitalist would afford the means of transferring the labourer to the scene of action; the labourer would be retained in that condition in order to invite and render profitable the wealth of the capitalist. The twofold object is good, and there is an apparent simplicity in the means devised, which, at first, is very captivating. There is nothing from which the colonial capitalist suffers so much as from the want of hired labour. He purchases land and finds no one to cultivate it; the few he can engage he cannot depend upon; the project of agricultural improvement which, if it be not completed, is utterly null and useless, is arrested in mid progress by the desertion of his workmen; or his capital is exhausted by the high wages he has paid before the necessary works can be brought to a termination. The capitalist has gone out, and left behind him that class of hired labourers without which his capital is useless. Meanwhile, in England, this very class is super-abundant; but it is not the class which spontaneously leaves the country, or can leave it. Mr Wakefield's scheme supplies the capitalist with the labour so essential to him, and relieves our parishes of their unemployed poor. But these emigrant labourers would soon extend themselves over the new country, as small proprietors, – Mr Wakefield checks this natural tendency by raising the price of land.

There is, we say, an apparent and captivating simplicity in the scheme; but we are persuaded that, the more closely it is examined, the more impracticable and perplexing it will reveal itself to be. As Mr Wakefield's system has made considerable progress in public opinion, and obtained the approval, not only of eager speculative minds, but of cool and calculating economists – as it has already exerted some influence, and may exert still more, upon our colonial legislation – and as we believe that the attempt to carry it out will give rise to nothing better than confusion and discontent, we think we shall be doing no ill service to the cause of colonisation by entering into some investigation of it.

We are compelled to make a division, or what to Mr Wakefield will appear a most unscientific fracture, of the two parts of his scheme. We acquiesce in fixing a price upon unappropriated land, and with the proceeds of the sale forming a fund for the transmission and outfit of the poor emigrant. We do not say that these proceeds must necessarily supply all the fund that it may be thought advisable to spend in this matter, or that the price is to be regulated solely according to the wants of this emigration fund. But we do not acquiesce in the proposal to fix a price for the specific purpose of retarding the period at which the labourer may himself become a proprietor. The doctrine of "a sufficient price" (as it has been called, and for brevity's sake we shall adopt the name) we entirely eschew. To the imposing of an artificial value upon the land, for this purpose, we will be no parties. Simply to transport the labourer hence, shall be the object of our price, beyond such other reasons as may be given for selling at a certain moderate sum the waste land of the colonies, instead of disposing of it by free grant. This object may be shown to be equitable; it appeals to the common justice of mankind. But as to the longer or shorter term the hired labourer remains in the condition of hired labourer, for this the capitalist must take his chance. This must be determined, as it is in the old country, and as alone it can be determined amicably, by that current of circumstances over which neither party can exercise a direct control. To such collateral advantage as may accrue to the capitalist from even the price we should impose, he is welcome; only we do not legislate for this object – we neither give it, nor take it away.

The wild unappropriated land of our colonies belongs to the crown, to the state – it is, as Mr Wakefield says, "a valuable national property." In making use of this land, one main object would be to relieve the destitute of the old country; to give them, if possible, a share of it. What more just or more rational? To give, however, the soil itself to the very poor would be idle. They cannot reach it, they cannot travel to their new estate – they have no seeds, no tools, no stock of any kind wherewith to cultivate it. The gift would be a mere mockery. We will sell it, then, to those who can transport themselves thither, and who have the necessary means for its cultivation, and the purchase-money shall be paid over to the very poor. By far the best way of paying over this purchase-money, which as a mere gift of so much coin would be all but worthless, and would be spent in a week, is by providing them with a free passage to the colony where they will permanently improve their condition; obtaining high wages, and probably, after a time, becoming proprietors themselves; and assisting in turn, by the purchase-money their own savings will have enabled them to pay, to bring over other emigrants to the new field of labour, and the new land of promise.

This is an equitable arrangement, and, what is more, the equity of it is level to the common sense of all mankind. It effects also certain desirable objects, though not such as our theorist has in view. It places the land in the possession of men who will and can cultivate it, and who, by paying a certain moderate price, have shown they were in earnest in the business; and it has transmitted, at their expense, labourers to the new soil. With the question, how long these shall continue labourers, it interferes not. It is a question, we think, no wise man would meddle with. Least of all does it represent that the capitalist has obtained any claim upon the services of the labourer, by having paid for his passage out: this payment was no gift of his; it was the poor man's share of the "national property." They meet in the colony as they would have met in England, each at liberty to do the best he can for himself.

Observe how the difficulties crowd upon us, when we enter upon the other and indeed the essential part of Mr Wakefield's scheme. The emigrant is not "too soon" to become a proprietor. What does this "too soon" mean? How long is he to be retained in the condition of hired labourer? How many years? Mr Wakefield never fixes a period. He could not. It must depend much upon the rapidity of immigration into the colony. If the second batch of immigrants is slow of coming in, the first must be kept labourers the longer. If the stream of labour flow but scantily into this artificial canal, the locks must be opened the more rarely. But how is the "sufficient price" to be determined until this period be known? It is the sum the labourer can save from his wages, during this time, which must constitute the price of so much land as will support him and his family, and enable him to turn proprietor. Thus, in order to regulate the sufficient price, it will be necessary to find the average rate of wages, the average amount of savings that a labourer could make (which, again, must depend upon the price of provisions, and other necessaries of life) during an unknown period! – and, in addition to this, to determine the average produce of so many acres of land. The apparent simplicity of the scheme resolves itself into an extreme complexity. The author of it, indeed, proposes a short method by which his sufficient price may be arrived at without these calculations: what that short method is, and how fallacious it would prove, we shall have occasion to show.

But granting that, in any manner, this "sufficient price" could be determined, the measure has an unjust and arbitrary character. It is not enough that such a scheme could be defended, and shown to be equitable, because for the general good, before some committee of legislators; if it offends the popular sense of justice it can never prosper. "I know," the humble emigrant might say – "I know there must be rich and poor in the world; there always have been, and always will be. To what is inevitable one learns to submit. If I am born poor there is no help for it, except what lies in my own ability and industry. But if you set about, by artificial regulations, in a new colony, where fruitful land is in abundance, to keep me poor, because I am so now, I rebel. This is not just. Do I not see the open land before me unowned, untouched? I well enough understood that, in old England, I could not take so much of any field as the merest shed would cover – not so much as I could burrow in. Long before I was born it had been all claimed, hedged, fenced in, and a title traced from ancestor to ancestor. Here, I am the ancestor!"

Tell such a man that a price is put upon the land in order that some companions whom he left starving in England may come over and partake the benefit of this unbroken soil, – he will see a plain justice here. He himself was, perhaps, brought over by the price paid by some precursor. What he received from one more prosperous, he returns to another less prosperous than himself. But tell him that a price is put upon the land, in order that he may serve a rich master the longer, – in order that he may be kept in a subordinate station, from which circumstances now permit him to escape – he will see no justice in the case. He will do everything in his power to evade your law; he will look upon your "sufficient price" as a cruel artificial barrier raised up against him; he will go and "squat" upon the land, without paying any price at all.

Indeed, the objection to his scheme, which Mr Wakefield seems to feel the strongest, – to which he gives the least confident reply, is just this – that, equitable or not, it would be impossible to carry out his law into execution; that if the price were high enough to answer his purposes, the land, in colonial dialect, would be "squatted" on, – would be taken possession of without any payment whatever. A moderate price men will cheerfully pay for the greater security of title: Englishmen will not, for a slight matter, put themselves wittingly on the wrong side of the law. But, if coupled with a high price, there is a rankling feeling of injustice: they will be very apt to satisfy themselves with actual possession, and leave the legal title to follow as it may. It is true, as Mr Wakefield urges, the richer capitalists will by no means favour the squatter; they will be desirous of enforcing a law made for their especial benefit. But they will not form the majority. Popular opinion will be against them, and in favour of the squatter. It would not be very easy to have a police force, and an effective magistracy, at the outskirts of a settlement stretching out, in some cases, into an unexplored region. Besides, it is a conspicuous part of Mr Wakefield's plan to give municipal or local governments to our colonies: these, as emanating from the British constitution, must need be more or less of a popular character; and we are persuaded that no such popular local government would uphold his "sufficient price," or tolerate the principle on which it was founded.

But, even if practicable, if carried out into complete execution, it remains to be considered whether the measure proposed would really have the effect contemplated by our theorist – that of supplying the capitalist with the labour he needs. With a certain number of labourers it might, – but of what character? It is not a remote possibility that will influence a common day-labourer to save his earnings. It is one of the terms of the proposition that high wages are to be given; for without these there would be no emigration, and certainly no fear of a too speedy promotion to the rank of proprietor. It follows, therefore, that you have a class of men earning high wages, and not under any strong stimulus to save – a class of men always found to be the most idle and refractory members of the community. A journeyman who has no pressing motive for a provident economy, and who earns high wages, is almost invariably a capricious unsteady workman, on whom no dependence can be placed; who will generally work just so many days in the week as are necessary to procure him the enjoyments he craves. One of these enjoyments is indolence itself, – a sottish, half-drunken indolence. Drinking is the coarse pleasure of most uneducated men: it is so even in the old country; and in a colony where there are still fewer amusements for the idle hour, it becomes almost the sole pleasure. How completely it is the reigning vice of our own colonies is known to all. Imagine a labourer in the receipt of high wages, little influenced by the remote prospect of becoming, by slow savings, a proprietor of land – and feeling, moreover, that he was retained in a dependent condition, arbitrarily, artificially, expressly for the service of the capitalist – what amount of work think you the capitalist-farmer would get from such a labourer? Not so much in seven years as he would have had from him in two, if, at the end of that two, the man had calculated upon being himself a farmer.

Recollect that it is not slave labour, or convict labour, that we are here dealing with: it is the free labour of one man working for another man, at wages. He gets all the wages he can, and gives as little labour as he can. If the wages are high, and the inducement to save but feeble, he will probably earn by one day's work what will enable him to pass the two next in idleness and debauchery. What boon will Mr Wakefield have conferred upon the capitalist?

The theory of a "sufficient price" is, therefore, placed in this hopeless predicament: – 1. It would be almost impossible to enforce it; and, 2. If enforced, it would fail of its purpose. It would supply the capitalist with inefficient, profligate, and idle workmen, on whose steady co-operation and assistance he could never calculate.

That it may be desirable to tempt the capitalist abroad by securing him an abundance of hired labour, something like that which lies at his door in England, we do not dispute. But the thing is impossible. You cannot manage this by direct legislation. You cannot combine in one settlement the advantages of a new and of an old country. It is not in the wit of man to bring together these two stages of society. Our political economist is in too great a haste to be rich: he forgets the many lessons he has given to others against bootless and mischievous intermeddling with the natural course of things. Meanwhile "the attempt will confound us," – it will throw an unpopularity over the whole subject of emigration in the minds of the working classes. Already we hear it murmured that the land is to be made a monopoly for the rich; that the man of small substance is to be discouraged; that the sole object of the moneyed class is to make profit of the labours of others; and that they are bent upon creating, artificially, in the colony, those circumstances which put the workmen in their power in the old country. We would earnestly counsel those who are interested in the subject of emigration, to consider well before they teach or practise this new "art of colonisation."

Those who have not perused Mr Wakefield's book may, perhaps, entertain a suspicion that, in thus separating the objects for which a price is to be laid on land, admitting the one and rejecting the other, we are only engaging ourselves unnecessarily in a theoretical debate. If a price is to be affixed, the result, it may seem to them, is practically the same, whatever the object may be. But the practical result would be very different; for a very different price would be exacted, according to the object in view, as well as a very different motive assigned for imposing it. The price at which a considerable fund would be raised for the purpose of emigration, would be too low to answer the purpose of restraining the labourer from soon becoming a proprietor of land. Those, however, who are familiar with Mr Wakefield's book, know well that this last purpose forms the very substance of the plan it proposes; and that hitherto no price – although it has ranged as high as 40s. per acre – has been considered sufficiently high to effect the object of the theorist.

"There is but one object of a price," says Mr Wakefield, (p. 347,) "and about that there can be no mistake. The sole object of a price is to prevent labourers from turning into landowners too soon: the price must be sufficient for that one purpose, and no other." "The sufficient price," he says, (p. 339,) "has never yet been adopted by a colonising government." And a little further, (p. 341,) he thus continues: "There are but three places in which the price of new land has had the least chance of operating beneficially. These are South Australia, Australia Felix, and New Zealand. In none of these cases did the plan of granting with profusion precede that of selling; but in none of them did the price required prevent the cheapest land from being cheap enough to inflict on the colony all the evils of an extreme scarcity of labour for hire. In these cases, moreover, a large portion of the purchase-money of waste land was expended in conveying labourers from the mother-country to the colony. If this money had not been so spent, the proportion of land to people would have been very much greater than it was, and the price of new land still more completely inoperative. More facts might be cited to show the insufficiency of the highest price yet required for new land."

We will continue our first quotation from p. 347. The manner in which Mr Wakefield himself exposes the difficulties of fixing the "sufficient price," and the very inadequate expedient he points out for obviating, or avoiding, these difficulties, may throw some further light upon the matter.