j^f^^r^-lv;.' 
 
 SB&B^ .,!>':",.>;> 
 
VIEW 
 
 OF THE 
 
 ART OF COLONIZATION, 
 
 WITH PRESENT REFERENCE TO THE 
 BEITISH EMPIEE ; 
 
 IX LETTERS BETWEEN A STATESMAN AND A COLONIST, 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 ( o x E OF T H K WRITERS) 
 
 EDWARD GIBBON WAKEFIELD. 
 
 LONDON: 
 JOHN W. PARKER, WEST STRAND. 
 
 MDCrCXIJX. 
 
THIS BOOK 
 
 IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED 
 TO 
 
 JOHN H U T T, ESQ., 
 
 LATELY GOVERNOR OF WEST AUSTRALIA, 
 
 WHO, MORE THAN ANY OTHER INDIVIDUAL KNOWN TO ME, 
 
 HAS COMBINED STUDY AND EXPERIENCE 
 
 IN LEARNING THE 
 
 ART OF COLONIZATION. 
 
 356 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 SOME time ago, one of the most accomplished 
 of our public men invited me to write to him 
 on a question relating to the colonies. This 
 question really involved the whole subject of 
 colonization and colonial government. The 
 correspondence that ensued, was neither intended 
 nor suitable for publication ; but it was shown 
 confidentially to various persons. Some of 
 them, being most competent judges on such a 
 point, have repeatedly expressed their wish 
 that the letters should be published ; of course, 
 with such alterations as would render them not 
 unfit for the public eye. This suggestion is 
 now adopted. The actual correspondence has 
 been altered by omission, modification, and 
 large additions. The following letters, there- 
 
Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 fore, are very different from those which passed 
 through the post-office. But the difference 
 consists mainly in workmanship and form, not 
 in materials or substance. In aim, scope, and 
 tenour as respects the subjects examined, and 
 the ideas propounded the two sets of letters 
 are nearly alike. I indulge a hope, that the 
 fictitious correspondence may make an impres- 
 sion on many, not unlike that which the real 
 one has left on a few : for if so, systematic 
 colonization, which is at present only a vague 
 aspiration of some of the more intelligent minds, 
 would ere long become a fruitful reality. 
 
 The name of the statesman who was a party 
 to the actual correspondence, it would be at least 
 idle to exhibit in this publication. It is there- 
 fore kept out of view by the omission of dates, 
 addresses, and the formal expressions with 
 which real letters usually begin and end. The 
 letters purporting to have been written by him, 
 are described merely as Letters from a States- 
 man : my own are called Letters from a 
 
PREFACE.- IX 
 
 Colonist. I fancy myself justified in assum- 
 ing that title, as being indicative of my ac- 
 quaintance with colonial topics : for I really 
 was a colonist in Canada (having been a member 
 of its House of Assembly) under the adminis- 
 tration of two of its governors, Sir Charles 
 Bagot and Lord Metcalfe, who in practice had 
 more concern with the question of responsible 
 government for colonies than Lord Durham, 
 under whose administration the theory was first 
 officially propounded, and I was a busy actor 
 in colonial politics ; whilst under that of 
 Lord Sydenham, I was a diligent observer of 
 them on the spot. But if these are not sufficient 
 grounds on which to call myself a colonist, then 
 I would claim the title on the ground of sympathy 
 w r ith the class of our fellow-subjects who have 
 the misfortune to be nothing but colonists ; a 
 sympathy, the force of which will be understood 
 when I add, that it was acquired partly by 
 residence and frequent sojourn in British North 
 America, as well as in some States of the 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 American Union, which in one sense of the 
 word are still colonies of England ; and yet 
 more, by a very active participation, for nearly 
 twenty years, in the labours by which the two 
 youngest of England's colonies, South Australia 
 and New Zealand, have been founded in spite 
 of the most formidable opposition from the 
 colonial branch of the government of the empire. 
 
 REIGATE, 
 
 January, 1849. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 LETTER I. 
 From the Statesman. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Statesman invites the Colonist to vivd voce discussions of 
 the subject 1 
 
 LETTER II. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 The Colonist suggests the alternative of written communications, 3 
 
 LETTER III. 
 From the Statesman. 
 
 The Statesman describes the condition of his own knowledge, 
 culls for some definitions, and asks questions relating both 
 to the subject, and to the state of it as matter of public 
 opinion 5 
 
 LETTER IV. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 The Colonist proposes some definitions, which state and limit 
 the subject of inquiry, and indicates the course of the 
 investigation 15 
 
 LETTER V. 
 From the Statesman. 
 
 The Statesman objects to the proposed course of inquiry as 
 being confined to a particular project of the Colonist's, and 
 desires that a more general view of the subject may be 
 expounded 19 
 
Xll CONTENTS. 
 
 LETTER VI. 
 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Colonist explains that he always intended to expound a 
 theory, not to recommend a project. Narrative concerning 
 Lord Grey. Lord Grey's state of mind and his proceedings 
 with regard to colonization, described 23 
 
 LETTER VII. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 Mr. Mothercountry introduced 37 
 
 LETTER VIII. 
 
 From the Statesman. 
 
 The Statesman desires the Colonist to proceed 38 
 
 LETTER IX. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 State of the subject twenty years ago. Colonization Society of 
 1830. Practice without principles in the business of 
 colonization. The first theory of colonization. First 
 effort of the theorists of 1830. Foundation of South 
 Australia. Mr. Henry George Ward's Committee on 
 Colonial Lands and Emigration. Commissioners appointed 
 by the Crown. The New-Zealand Association of 1837. 
 Lord Durham's mission to Canada. Influence of the 
 Colonial Gazette. Success and failure of the theorists of 
 1830. State of opinion concerning religious provisions for 
 colonies. Summary of present state of opinion generally . 38 
 
 LETTER X. 
 From the Statesman. 
 
 The Statesman divides the sifbject into four main parts, and 
 
 indicates the order of inquiry GO 
 
CONTENTS. Xlll 
 
 LETTER XI. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Colonist proposes a further division of the subject, and 
 
 los the order of inquiry 62 
 
 LETTER XII. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 Different objects of colonization for different parts of the United 
 Kingdom. Want of room for all classes a circumstance by 
 which Great Britain is distinguished from other countries. 
 Competition amongst the labouring class a momentous 
 question. Influence of economical circumstances in political 
 revolutions 64 
 
 LETTER XIII. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 Competition for room in the ranks above the labouring class. 
 The anxious classes. Women in the anxious classes. 
 Hoarding, speculation, waste, and the spirit of the gambler . 72 
 
 LETTER XIV. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 The peculiar characteristic of colonies is plenty df room for all 
 classes ; but wages and profits are occasionally reduced by 
 j^luts of labour and capital; and whilst colonial prosperity 
 is always dependent on good government, it only attains the 
 maximum in colonies peopled by the energetic Anglo-Saxon 
 race 79 
 
 LETTER XV 
 From the Statesman. 
 
 The Statesman objects to a great diminution of the wealth and 
 population of Great Britain, and complains of a patriotic 
 head-ache 85 
 
XIV CONTENTS. 
 
 LETTEK XVI. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 As a cure for the Statesman's patriotic head-ache, the Colonist 
 prescribes the doctrine, that emigration of capital and people 
 has a tendency to increase instead of diminishing the wealth 
 and population of the mother-country 87 
 
 LETTER XVII. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 Further objects of the mother-country in promoting coloniza- 
 tion. Prestige of empire. British " supremacy of the 
 ocean " for the security of sea-going trade 96 
 
 LETTER XVIII. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 The Colonist incloses an essay on colonization by Dr. Hinds, 
 and presses it on the Statesman's attention as a view of one 
 more object of Great Britain in colonizing systematically . 106 
 
 LETTER XIX. 
 From the Statesman. 
 
 The Statesman wonders why the natural attractiveness of colo- 
 nies does not occasion a greater emigration of people and 
 capital ; points out, with a view to the objects of the mother- 
 country, that the emigration of people and capital must be 
 largely increased; and asks what is to be done in order that 
 enough people and capital may emigrate to relieve the 
 mother-country from the evils of excessive competition . .120 
 
 LETTER XX. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 The Colonist begs leave to preface an account of the impedi- 
 ments to colonization, by a notice of its charms for the 
 different classes of emigrants 126 
 
CONTENTS. XV 
 
 LETTER XXI. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Emigrants divided into Labourers, Capitalists, and Gentry. 
 How the " shovelling out of paupers," and emigration as a 
 punishment, indispose the poorer classes to emigrate, and 
 especially the better sort of them 135 
 
 LETTER XXII. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 The shame of the higher order of settlers when they first think 
 of emigrating. The jealousy of a wife. How emigration, 
 as the punishment of crime, aifects opinion in this country 
 with regard to emigration in general. Colonists and colonies 
 despised in the mother-country 140 
 
 LETTER XXIII. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 Low standard of morals and manners in the colonies. Colonial 
 " smartness." Want of intellectual cultivation. Main dis- 
 tinction between savage and civilized life 150 
 
 LETTER XXIV. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 Difference between colonization and other pursuits of men in 
 masses. Religious women as colonists. A disgusting */ 
 colony. Old practice of England with regard to religious 
 provisions. Sectarian colonies in America. The Church of 
 England in the colonies. Wesleyan Church. Church of 
 England. Roman-catholic Church. Dissenting Churches. 
 Excuse for the Church of England 155 
 
 LETTER XXV. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 :nbination and constancy of labour are indispensable condi- 
 tions of the productiveness of industry. How colonial capi- 
 talists suffer from the division and inconstancy of labour . 165 
 
XVI CONTENTS. 
 
 LETTER XXVI. 
 From the Statesman. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Statesman points out an appearance of contradiction 
 between the two assertions, that labour in new colonies is 
 very productive in consequence of being only employed on 
 the most fertile soils, and that it is unproductive in conse- 
 quence of being much divided and interrupted . . . .172 
 
 LETTER XXVII. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 The Colonist explains that scarcity of labour is counteracted by 
 various kinds of slavery, and by the drudgery of capitalists. 
 Evils of the presence of slave classes in a colony . . .174 
 
 LETTER XXVIII. 
 From the Statesman. 
 
 The Statesman almost despairs of colonization, and asks for a 
 suggestion of the means by which scarcity of labour may be 
 prevented without slavery 182 
 
 LETTER XXIX. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 State of colonial politics. Violent courses of politicians. 
 Irish disturbances. Malignity of party warfare. Desperate 
 differences of colonists. Democracy and demagoguism in 
 all colonies. Brutality of the newspapers 1 84 
 
 LETTER XXX. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 The privileged class in colonies. Nature of their privileges. 
 The road to office in representative colonies where respon- 
 sible government is established, and where it is not. Emi- 
 grants of the better order a proscribed class as respects 
 office . .193 
 
CONTENTS. XVH 
 
 LETTER XXXI. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 How officials are appointed in the bureaucratic colonies. 
 They are a sort of demigods, but very much inferior to the 
 better order of settlers in ability, character, conduct, and 
 manners. Examples thereof, and the causes of it. Be- 
 haviour of the officials to the better order of settlers . . .200 
 
 LETTER XXXII. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 The Colonist explains the urgent need of the intervention of 
 government in the multifarious business of constructing 
 society, and describes the general paucity, often the total 
 absence, of government in the colonies of Britain . . .210 
 
 LETTER XXXIII. 
 From the Statesman. 
 
 The Statesman thinks that the Colonist has exaggerated the 
 indisposition of respectable people to emigrate 217 
 
 LETTER XXXIV. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 The Colonist defends his view of the indisposition of respectable 
 people to emigrate, and suggests further inquiry by the 
 Statesman. Two more impediments to colonization . . .219 
 
 LETTER XXXV. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 The Colonist purposes to examine colonial government as an 
 impediment to colonization, as the parent of other impedi- 
 ments, and as a cause of injury to the mother-country ; and 
 
 to proceed at once to a plan for its reform 222 
 
 b 
 
XVI 11 CONTENTS. 
 
 LETTER XXXVI. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Comparison of municipal and central government. Central- 
 bureaucratic government of the colonies established by the 
 institution of the Colonial Office. The spoiling of central- 
 bureaucratic government by grafting it on to free institu- 
 tions. Feebleness of the Colonial Office . . . .. . .224 
 
 LETTER XXXVII. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 Mode of appointing public functionaries for the colonies. 
 Government by instructions. Jesuitical conduct of the 
 Colonial Office. A Colonial-Office conscience exemplified 
 by Lord Grey. Proposed tabular statistics of dispatches in 
 the Colonial Office 238 
 
 LETTER XXXVIII. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 Disallowance of colonial laws by the Colonial Office. Lot of 
 colonial governors. Effects of our system of colonial 
 government. Counteraction of the system by the vis medi- 
 catrix naturae. Proposed addition to Mr. Murray's Colonial 
 Library 253 
 
 LETTER XXXIX. 
 From the Statesman. 
 
 Mr. Mothercountry protests against the assertion, that Mr. 
 Taylor has authorized the belief, that his views of states- 
 manship were derived from experience in the colonial office, 262 
 
 LETTER XL. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 The Colonist sustains his proposition, that Mr. Taylor's ideas of 
 statesmanship were formed by long experience in the colo- 
 nial office, and appeals to Mr. Taylor himself as the best 
 authority on the question 264 
 
CONTENTS. XIX 
 
 LETTER XLI. 
 From the Statesman. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Mr. Mothercountry objects to municipal government for colonies, 
 on the ground of its tendency to democracy, republicanism, 
 and dismemberment of the empire 269 
 
 LETTER XLII. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 Municipal government has no relation to one form of government 
 more than any other ; but it is the surest means of prevent- 
 ing the disaffection of the out-lying portions of an extensive 
 empire, which surely results from central-bureaucratic go- 
 vernment. The original Mr. Mothercountry introduced . 271 
 
 LETTER XLIIL 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 Sketch of a plan of municipal-federative government for colo- 
 nies ; with an episode concerning Sir James Stephen and 
 the birthright of Englishmen 297 
 
 LETTER XLIV. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 Some reflections on the probable operation of municipal-federative 
 government for colonies, as a substitute for the central-bureau- 
 cratic-spoiled. A grand reform of the Colonial Office . .314 
 
 LETTER XLV. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 The Colonist, by a sketch of the history of slavery, traces scarcity 
 of labour in new countries to its source in the cheapness of 
 land 322 
 
 LETTER XLVI. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 The Colonist suggests the means by which land might be made 
 dear enough to prevent a scarcity of labour for hire . . .331 
 
XX CONTENTS. 
 
 LETTER XLVIL 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 In order that the price of waste land should accomplish its ob- 
 jects, it must be sufficient for the purpose. Hitherto the 
 price has been everywhere insufficient 338 
 
 LETTER XLVIII. 
 From the Statesman. 
 
 Mr. Mothercountry taunts the Colonist with being unable to say 
 what would be the sufficient price for new land .... 345 
 
 LETTER XLIX. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 The Colonist replies to Mr. Mothercountry's taunt, indicates 
 the elements of a calculation for getting at the sufficient 
 price, and refers to Mr. Stephen and the Edinburgh Review 346 
 
 LETTER L. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 Selling waste land by auction, with a view to obtaining the 
 sufficient price by means of competition, is either a foolish 
 conceit or a false pretence 353 
 
 LETTER LI. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 Further objections to the plan of selling waste land by auction. 
 
 Advantages of a fixed uniform price 357 
 
 LETTER LII. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 Lord Grey's confusion of ideas respecting the objects with 
 which a price should be required for new land. Another 
 objection to a uniform price for waste land, with the 
 Colonist's answer to it .365 
 
CONTENTS. XXI 
 
 LETTER LIIL 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 With a sufficient price for new land, profits and wages would be 
 higher, and exports greater, than without it 369 
 
 LETTER LIV. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 With a sufficient price for waste land, capitalists would obtain 
 labour by means of paying for the emigration of poor 
 people 372 
 
 LETTER LV. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 The sufficient price produces money incidentally. What should 
 be done with the purchase -money of new land ? Several 
 effects of using the purchase-money as a fund for defraying 
 the cost of emigration 375 
 
 LETTER LVI. 
 From the Statesman. 
 
 Mr. Mothercountry objects to the sufficient price, that it would 
 put a stop to the sale of waste land 382 
 
 LETTER LVII. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 The Colonist examines Mr. Mothercountry's proposition that 
 the sufficient price would put a stop to sales of land. Sug- 
 gestion of loans for emigration to be raised on the security 
 of future sales 384 
 
 LETTER LVIII. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 Suggestion of a further means for enabling the sufficient price 
 of public land to work well in colonies where private land 
 greatly superabundant and very cheap 390 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 LETTER LIX. 
 From the Statesman. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Statesman tells of Mr. Mothercountry's intention to make 
 the Commissioners of Colonial Land and Emigration write 
 objections to the sufficient price for waste land . . . . 39 G 
 
 LETTER LX. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 The Colonist anticipates the probable writing of the Commis- 
 sioners ... 397 
 
 LETTER LXI. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 The necessity of perfect liberty of appropriation at the sufficient 
 price. Liberty of appropriation dependent on ample and 
 accurate surveys. Actual surveying in the colonies . . .399 
 
 LETTER LXII. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 Proposed selection of emigrants, with a view of making the 
 emigration-fund as potent as possible. Moral advantages of 
 such a selection 405 
 
 LETTER LXIII. 
 From the Statesman. 
 
 An important objection to the Colonist's whole plan of coloniza- 
 tion apart from government 417 
 
 LETTER LXIV. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 The Colonist first admits, and then answers the objection . .418 
 
CONTENTS. xxiii 
 
 LETTER LXV. 
 From the Statesman. 
 
 PACE 
 
 The Statesman's Mr. Mother-country makes his last objection . 423 
 
 LETTER LXVI. 
 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 Mr. Mothercountry's last objection answered 425 
 
 LETTER LXVII. 
 From the Statesman. 
 
 Mr. Mothercountry once more objects to the sufficient price, as 
 
 being likely to force an injurious concentration of the settlers 429 
 
 LETTER LXVIII. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 The Colonist answers Mr. Mothercountry on the subject of 
 " concentration" and " dispersion" of settlers 430 
 
 LETTER LXIX. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 By what authority should be administered an imperial policy 
 of colonization apart from government? 439 
 
 LETTER LXX. 
 From the Statesman. 
 
 The Statesman describes a scene with Mr. Mothercountry, and 
 announces that the project of action in Parliament on the 
 subject of colonization is abandoned 442 
 
 LETTER LXXI. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 The Colonist closes the correspondence, and alludes to several 
 topics which would have been pursued if it had continued . 447 
 
XXIV CONTENTS. 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 No. I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Speech of Charles Buller, Esq., M.P., in the House of Commons, 
 on Tuesday, April 6th, 1843, on Systematic Colonization . 453 
 
 No. II. 
 
 A Letter from certain New Zealand Colonists to Mr. Hawes, 
 Under Secretary of State for the Colonies 501 
 
f "^H ; : : " ' ' - 
 
 I 
 
 A VIEW 
 
 OF 
 
 THE ART OF COLONIZATION, 
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 Page 226, line 4, /or " original," read individual." 
 _ 323, line \ 9, far " us," read " them." 
 408, line 6 from bottom, /br " all," read " always." 
 
 i <jujLuiiiz,ctiiuii ueiure me nouse 01 uommons 
 next session. Two of them probably will take an 
 active part in the discussion ; and they all wish that I 
 should co-operate with them. This I have engaged 
 to do, provided always that I shall be able in the time 
 to acquire the indispensable knowledge. Thus I am 
 pledged at all events to study the subject ; and your 
 wish on that point will at last be realized. 
 
 Xow, therefore, I am in need of all the assistance 
 you can render me. In one word, I want to be 
 crammed. Indulge on me as much as you please, 
 your turn for preaching and teaching about coloniza- 
 tion. You shall find me at any rate an assiduous 
 
 B 
 
XXIV CONTENTS. 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 No. I. 
 
 Speech of Charles Buller, Esq., M.P., in the House of Commons, * 
 on Tuesday, April 6th, 1843, on Systematic Colonization . 453 
 
 No. II. 
 

 A VIEW 
 
 OF 
 
 THE ART OF COLONIZATION 
 
 LETTER I. 
 From the Statesman. 
 
 THE STATESMAN INVITES THE COLONIST TO VIVA-VOCE 
 DISCUSSIONS OF THE SUBJECT. 
 
 YOU will be glad to learn that on coming to town, 
 I find certain friends of mine resolved to bring the 
 question of colonization before the House of Commons 
 next session. Two of them probably will take an 
 active part in the discussion; and they all wish that I 
 should co-operate with them. This I have engaged 
 to do, provided always that I shall be able in the time 
 to acquire the indispensable knowledge. Thus I am 
 pledged at all events to study the subject; and your 
 wish on that point will at last be realized. 
 
 Now, therefore, I am in need of all the assistance 
 you can render me. In one word, I want to be 
 crammed. Indulge on me as much as you please, 
 your turn for preaching and teaching about coloniza- 
 tion. You shall find me at any rate an assiduous 
 
 B 
 
2" * * VIVA-VOCE DISCUSSION. 
 
 pupil. I will endeavour to read whatever you may 
 think likely to be useful, and will give up as much 
 time to vivd-voce discussion, as may turn out to be 
 necessary, and I can possibly spare. The latter mode 
 of learning, however, would most effectually give me 
 the benefit of your studies and experience; besides 
 that, as nothing like a complete treatise on colonization 
 exists, I should be glad to avoid the cost of time and 
 trouble attendant on picking up information bit by 
 bit from a variety of books, parliamentary papers, and 
 other sources. 
 
 I have, therefore, to request that you will do me the 
 favour to call here when you shall be next in town, 
 giving me a day or two's notice. We should then, I 
 hope, as it is my intention to be near London through- 
 out the recess, be able to make arrangements for 
 frequent meetings. 
 
 Not doubting that you will be equally pleased with 
 my news and my proposal to give you all this trouble, 
 and trusting that your health is improved, &c. &c. 
 
LETTER II. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 THE COLONIST SUGGESTS THE ALTERNATIVE OF WRITTEN 
 COMMUNICATIONS. 
 
 I AM indeed pleased by your letter, but also not a 
 little annoyed. The determination of your friends 
 is most agreeable to me ; and I rejoice at hearing that 
 you intend to continue your inquiries into a subject 
 which interests me beyond all others. But in propor- 
 tion to my satisfaction on these points, I am really 
 distressed at having to inform you that, it is not in my 
 power to comply with your wish for vivd-voce communi- 
 cation with me. My health, instead of improving, 
 has got worse lately, and will probably never mend. 
 It is a disorder of the nerves which has long hindered, 
 and now absolutely precludes me from engaging in the 
 oral discussion of subjects that deeply interest me, 
 more especially if they are subjects involving argument 
 and continuous thought. You must have observed 
 how I suffered towards the end of our last conversa- 
 tion. At length, I cannot disobey the doctors' injunc- 
 tion to stay at home and be quiet, without effects that 
 remind me of a bird trying to fly with a broken wing, 
 and knocking itself to pieces in the vain exertion. 
 As respects earnest conversation, I am a helpless 
 
 B2 
 
4 AN ALTERNATIVE PROPOSED: 
 
 cripple. I would try at all risks, if there were the 
 least chance of my being able to do what is more 
 desired by me than it can be by you : as it is, I am 
 under the necessity of declining your flattering and 
 most gratifying invitation. 
 
 But there occurs to me an alternative, which I am 
 in hopes you may be disposed to adopt. With the 
 seeming caprice of most nervous disorders, mine, which 
 forbids talking, makes far less difficulty about letting 
 me write. The brain suffers greatly, only when it is 
 hurried as with old hunters " 'tis the pace that kills" 
 but can work somehow when allowed to take its own 
 time. Leisurely, in writing, I could answer questions 
 at any length, and could save you some trouble by 
 pointing out the most available sources of instruction 
 in print. I venture to suggest, therefore, the substitu- 
 tion of a correspondence by letter for the proposed but 
 impossible conversations. 
 
 The alternative might not be a pis-aller. The 
 interchange of thought would be indeed less brisk and 
 agreeable; but the greater trouble would fall princi- 
 pally on me, and would consist for both writers of 
 that more careful thinking, ^which even the sagest of 
 talkers bestow on the written communication of their 
 ideas : so that, probably, the discussion would be more 
 complete and effective. As you have a reputation for 
 success in your undertakings, which means of course 
 that you only undertake what you have resolved to 
 do as well as possible, I imagine that you may prefer 
 my suggestion to your own proposal. 
 
 If it should prove so, have the goodness to let me 
 know what the topics are on which you wish for in- 
 formation. Conversations would naturally have been 
 
ITS ADVANTAGES. 
 
 led by you. I can only place myself at your disposal, 
 promising to take the direction in which, from time to 
 time, it shall please you to point. 
 
 LETTER III. 
 From the Statesman. 
 
 THE STATESMAN DESCRIBES THE CONDITION OF HIS OWN 
 KNOWLEDGE, CALLS FOR SOME DEFINITIONS, AND ASKS 
 QUESTIONS RELATING BOTH TO THE SUBJECT, AND TO 
 THE STATE OF IT AS MATTER OF PUBLIC OPINION. 
 
 I DEEPLY regret the cause of your inability to 
 comply with my request. 
 
 At first I did not relish the proposed alternative ; but 
 on reflection and trial I am inclined to prefer it. After 
 considering in order to reconcile myself to the more 
 troublesome course for both of us, I see that, for my 
 purpose, written communications, which remain, will 
 be better than oral, which soon pass from the memory 
 when the subject of them is not one of lasting personal 
 concern: and a first trial of writing has confirmed 
 your view of its advantages; for on sitting down to 
 give you a statement of the points on which I wish 
 for information, I discover the full difficulty of the 
 task 1 have undertaken. I undertook it on the sup- 
 position, that I had definite ideas about what our 
 colonization is and ought to be; and that I had only 
 to learn the best method of improving it: but on 
 examining the matter further, as the necessity of 
 
6 BRITISH COLONIES. 
 
 writing has compelled me to do, I find that in reality 
 my knowledge is very scanty and superficial. As 
 in fact I do not know enough for telling you satis- 
 factorily what it is I want to learn, my best course 
 probably will be to describe the state of my impres- 
 sions on the subject. 
 
 In common with not a few men in public life, I 
 have lately thought that this subject is unwisely 
 neglected by us. I see with them, that colonization 
 is a natural means of seeking relief from the worst of 
 our social ills, and of thus averting formidable poli- 
 tical dangers. I see with every body who reads the 
 newspapers, that our colonies cost us money, much 
 trouble, and not a little shame, without rendering any 
 important services to us in return. All of them at 
 one time or another seem to get into a state of dis- 
 order and disaffection ; just now the number of dis- 
 turbed colonies is more than commonly large; and 
 there is not one of the whole forty (that, I believe, is 
 the sum of them) of which an Englishman can feel 
 proud. All of them together provide for fewer emi- 
 grants than the United States ; Canada, which receives 
 the greatest number of emigrants, we are by all 
 accounts only peopling and enriching for the Ame- 
 ricans to possess ere long : and of the only other part 
 of the world to which British emigrants proceed, the 
 population, after seventy years of what is termed coloni- 
 zation, amounts to no more than 300,000, or about 
 that of the town of Glasgow. The West-India colonies 
 are in a lamentable state, both economically and poli- 
 tically : so is South Africa, politically at least, with its 
 colonist rebellions and Caff re wars : so is Ceylon with 
 its uproarious governor and native insurrection: so 
 
WHAT COLONIZATION OUGHT TO BE. 7 
 
 is our youngest colony, New Zealand, as the seat of a 
 deadly feud between colonist and native, of a costly 
 military occupation in order to maintain British autho- 
 rity at all, and of the wildest experiments in colonial 
 government : so is, on one account or another, every 
 one of the colonies of England, more or less. I go 
 merely by our own newspapers for the last year or 
 two, which hardly at any time mention a colony but 
 when it is disturbed. To my mind, therefore, nothing 
 could be more unsatisfactory than our colonization as 
 it is. On that one point at least, my notions, how- 
 ever general, are sufficiently clear. On the question 
 of what our colonization ought to be, my ideas are 
 even more general, and utterly indistinct. I find 
 indeed on attempting to write them down, that they 
 consist of a most vague hope, that something very 
 useful and important might be done by us, if we 
 pursued colonization systematically. But as I confess 
 a profound ignorance of what is, so I have no con- 
 ception of the means by which my hazy aspirations 
 could be realized. LMy fancy pictures a sort and 
 amount of colonization that would amply repay its 
 cost, by providing happily for our redundant people; 
 by improving the state of those who remained at 
 home ] by supplying us largely with food and the 
 raw materials of manufacture ; and by gratifying our 
 best feelings of national pride, through the extension 
 over unoccupied parts of the earth of a nationality 
 truly British in language, religion, laws, institutions, 
 and attachment to the empire. But when I descend 
 from the regions of imagination to inquire into the 
 wherefore of the difference between this picture and 
 the dismal reality, I have no ideas at all; I have only 
 
8 THE ALPHABET OF THE SUBJECT. 
 
 a feeling almost of shame at my own want of ideas. 
 With such blindness as to causes, suitable re- 
 medies, of course, are far out of my sight : if indeed 
 suitable remedies are to be found; for now, as writing 
 leads to thinking in earnest, I almost despair of the 
 parliamentary project of my friends, and wish that I 
 had declined to share in its execution. 
 
 I say this with no present thought of drawing back 
 from my engagement, but to show you that in order 
 to qualify myself for performing it, I must begin with 
 the alphabet of our subject; and that there is hard 
 work for both of us. In order, then, to learn my 
 letters, I proceed at once to ask for some definitions. 
 
 Is British India a colony? Is Jersey one? Are 
 the United States of America colonies of England? 
 and, if they are not, why do we give the name of 
 colonies to the states which the ancient Greeks formed 
 in Sicily and Asia Minor, but which were always 
 completely independent of their parent states? Then 
 what is colonization? If French Canada, when we 
 took it, became a colony of England, the mere con- 
 quest and government of a foreign people is coloniza- 
 tion; which cannot be. Is it the sending forth of 
 people and their settlement in a distant country 
 already inhabited? or must we deem it a condition of 
 colonization, that the land of the new country should 
 be wholly or in a great measure unoccupied? Does 
 colonization include government, or relate solely to 
 emigration from an old country, and the settling of 
 the emigrants, independently of government, in their 
 new home? Even as I write these questions, some 
 answers occur to me ; but I own that I have hitherto 
 talked, and rather fast too, about colonies and colo- 
 
INDIFFERENCE RESPECTING COLONIZATION. 9 
 
 nization, without at the time exactly knowing what I 
 meant by the words. But not many among our states- 
 men could honestly point at me for this. The confes- 
 sion is singular, not the utter ignorance and indifference. 
 The last word leads to another question. What is 
 the cause of the general indifference to the subject of 
 colonization ? Quite recently indeed, a lively interest 
 has been professed in the subject by many; and it 
 may perhaps be said even that public attention is 
 turned that way : but the sort of interest is not, I 
 fear, very real. I apprehend that it somewhat re- 
 sembles the interest which a parrot feels about your 
 health, when it says in a tone of tender anxiety, " How 
 do you do?" There is a good deal of pretty and 
 seemingly earnest talking and writing about coloniza- 
 tion ; but what else I know not. Colonization, I take 
 it, is something to be done, not something to be merely 
 known, like geography or astronomy. Who is there 
 that can tell us what he would have Parliament do? 
 Who proposes any plan? Who is seriously looking to 
 important practical results? Besides, with all the 
 talking and writing about colonization, and "syste- 
 matic" colonization too, people in general seem to 
 possess no greater knowledge of the subject than the 
 ignorance that I have avowed. At least, I know not 
 where to seek real knowledge, save by applying to one 
 of a few who have made the study of the subject a 
 business for years, and who are therefore a marked 
 exception from the general rule. Generally, there is 
 still as much ignorance as ever. Ignorance implies 
 real indifference, however copious the wordmongering. 
 Does the public care so little about colonization be- 
 cause it knows so little, or know so little because it 
 
10 " SYSTEMATIC" COLONIZATION. 
 
 cares so little ? If the indifference does not arise from 
 ignorance, what, I repeat, is its cause? This last 
 question is of great importance to me, practically and 
 personally, who am not disposed to waste precious 
 time on mere speculation. Is it worth while to study 
 the subject? Shall we ever overcome the general in- 
 difference? Is there any prospect of action? 
 
 Returning to my primer, I want to know what, if 
 any, is the substantial distinction, which, in words at 
 least, many people now draw between emigration and 
 colonization. The most popular newspapers say now, 
 let us have colonization, not emigration. What does 
 this mean ? Again one hears a good deal about " sys- 
 tematic," as distinguished, I suppose, from systemless 
 colonization. But what is meant by " systematic" ? 
 With reference to what system is this epithet em- 
 ployed? Is there any known system? Are there 
 several to choose amongst? Or do the advocates of 
 systematic colonization mean that a system ought to 
 be devised? I ask these questions without forgetting 
 that there is a project of colonization which goes by 
 your name, and which is sometimes called a system. 
 Lord Grey calls it so. I remember seeing a letter of 
 his written two years ago, which was shown about for 
 the information of persons then very desirous of pro- 
 moting a great emigration from Ireland, in which he 
 said that if he continued in office your system would 
 be largely carried into effect. Has anything been 
 done with it ? It has been tried, I know, in some of the 
 Australian colonies ; but if I am to believe an official 
 acquaintance, who ought to know all about it, with 
 only failure and disappointment hitherto. At all 
 events, be so good as to tell me what I ought to read 
 
PLAN OF GOVERNMENT. 11 
 
 hi order to understand the project, of which I have but 
 a vague, perhaps an erroneous conception. 
 
 If I am not mistaken, your project of colonization 
 relates exclusively to matters of an economical nature, 
 such as emigration and the sale of waste land, leaving 
 untouched the question of political government for 
 colonies? But I have heard lately in society of a 
 plan of government for colonies, which is praised by 
 some of your friends, and which they call a plan of 
 municipal government. What is this? Is there 
 any publication which would enable me to compre- 
 hend it without troubling you on that point? I 
 think I heard somebody say, that Lord Grey's consti- 
 tution for New Zealand was founded upon this plan 
 of colonial government. If that were true, I should 
 fear that the plan cannot be a very sound one; for 
 the New-Zealand constitution was, to speak plainly, 
 so impracticable and absurd, that Lord Grey himself 
 seized the first opportunity of destroying it; and the 
 offer of its extension to New South Wales was scorn- 
 fully declined by that colony. If, therefore, Lord 
 Grey really adopted or copied from the plan lauded 
 by your friends, I must ask you to put me in the way 
 of examining some other plan or plans of colonial 
 government. Indeed I should like to read anything 
 on this branch of our subject, that you may be dis- 
 posed to recommend. I take it for granted that the 
 topic has been handled by philosophical writers, but 
 cannot recollect by whom. 
 
 In particular I wish to understand the theory of 
 what Lord Durham in his Keport, I think, called 
 " responsible government for colonies." Or are those 
 words the title of a little book, the joint authorship of 
 
12 MR. CHARLES BULLER. 
 
 which I have some faint recollection of having heard 
 attributed to yourself and Charles Buller?* Is not 
 that theory now carried into full effect in Canada? 
 And if it is, how does it work ? 
 
 Charles Buller's name reminds me of his capital 
 speech on colonization in 1843. I say capital, because 
 it excited universal admiration at the time, and had 
 the effect of placing the speaker in the first rank 
 amongst philosophical statesmen. I heard the speech 
 myself, and thought that I should never forget it ; so 
 strong and pleasing was the impression which it made 
 on me. But I have entirely forgotten it ; and I find 
 that it has escaped from the memory of others who 
 praised it to the skies at the time of its delivery. Even 
 now they say that it was a capital speech ; but they 
 cannot tell why: they say that they have forgotten 
 all about it except that it was a first-rate speech ; and 
 this is just my own predicament. 
 
 Is it desirable that I should wade through the 
 evidence taken by the recent committee of the Lords 
 on emigration? A cursory glance at it has left me 
 with the impression that it consists of an immense 
 mass of facts, or statements of fact, heaped up without 
 form or order, without regard to any guiding prin- 
 ciples, and without producing in any degree the only 
 desirable result; that, namely, of a comprehensible 
 
 ' f The manuscript of this book was nearly ready for the press 
 before Mr. Buller's death. Not a word of it has been altered in con- 
 sequence of that event. How greatly for the better it might have 
 been altered if he had lived a few weeks longer, every reader will 
 understand when I add, that it would have passed through his hands 
 for critical revision on its way to the publisher. I have wished and 
 tried to say something about him here, but cannot. 
 
COLONIZATION SOCIETIES. 13 
 
 theory or a feasible plan. Are there any other in- 
 quiries by committees of Parliament which you think 
 that it would be well for me to study? 
 
 In the session before last, the House of Commons, 
 on a motion made by Lord Lincoln, presented an 
 address to the Queen, praying that an inquiry might 
 be instituted into the subject of colonization for Ireland 
 in particular. The motion for an address was at first 
 strenuously opposed by the Government, who only 
 gave way when they found that they would be beaten 
 on a division. The address having passed, an answer 
 from the Queen promised that the wish of the House 
 of Commons should be realized. If common usage 
 had been followed, a Royal Commission of Inquiry 
 would have been appointed. Nothing of the sort was 
 done. No commission was appointed; and there has 
 been no inquiry by other means. The address and 
 answer have been utterly disregarded by the Govern- 
 ment. I have endeavoured, but in vain, to get at the 
 why and wherefore of this curious official neglect. 
 Other members of the Government merely refer me to 
 the Colonial Office, where, however, I can learn 
 nothing. My official acquaintance, who is a member 
 of that department, answers me with a vacant look, 
 and a reference to Lord Grey, to whom he well knows 
 that I should not apply for information. What does 
 all this mean? 
 
 I see by the newspapers that several societies have 
 recently been formed with a view of promoting colo- 
 nization. There is one called the Colonization Society, 
 another the Canterbury Association; I forget the 
 names of others. Have any of these societies a plan 
 to go upon, or theory to guide them? If not, I 
 
14 PURPOSE OF INQUIRY. 
 
 should only lose time in examining their schemes : 
 for I must needs obtain a general and abstract view of 
 the subject before attempting to form any opinion on 
 particular or practical questions. 
 
 At the same time, let me warn you that mere theory 
 or abstract science has no charms for me now. I 
 have now no leisure to bestow on it. I could not 
 become interested about a theory of colonization 
 which was applicable to other countries, but not to 
 our own. It is with a view to practical results for 
 this United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, 
 that I wish to master the subject of our inquiry. I 
 am in hopes, therefore, that as far as possible, without 
 discarding abstract considerations as aids in the pur- 
 suit of truth, you may be disposed and able to keep 
 practice always in view, and practice for our own 
 country especially. 
 
15 
 
 LETTER IV. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 THE COLONIST PROPOSES SOME DEFINITIONS, WHICH 
 STATE AND LIMIT THE SUBJECT OF INQUIRY, AND 
 INDICATES THE COURSE OF THE INVESTIGATION. 
 
 letter, which I have read with much interest, 
 leaves me without a doubt concerning the topic 
 to which you would first direct my attention. After 
 calling for some definitions, which are indeed required 
 with a view to accuracy and clearness throughout our 
 correspondence, your questions in fact ask for an 
 account of what may be termed the state of the sub- 
 ject. Here I will confine myself to the definitions, 
 offering besides a few remarks, not on the condition of 
 the public knowledge and opinion with regard to colo- 
 nization, to which a separate letter must be devoted, 
 but on a preliminary point which is suggested by one 
 or two of your inquiries. 
 
 I am not surprised at your asking what is meant by 
 the words colony and colonization ; for both words are 
 commonly used without a definite meaning, and even 
 with different meanings. This vagueness or confusion 
 of language arises from vagueness or confusion of 
 ideas, which arises again from indifference. Only a 
 
1 6 DEFINITIONS. 
 
 very few people have thought it worth while to form 
 a clear conception of the very marked difference of 
 feature or circumstance belonging to the numerous 
 outlying portions of a wide-spread empire. A full 
 account of those differences is given in Mr. Cornewall 
 Lewis's Essay on the Government of Dependencies; but 
 this statement I need not repeat, because it will suffice 
 for the present purpose if I mention briefly what it is 
 that, in writing to you, I shall never mean, and what 
 it is that I shall always mean, by the words colony 
 and colonization. 
 
 By the word colony, I shall not mean such a country 
 as either British India, which is a great dependency, 
 or the Mauritius, which was a colony of France, but 
 is only a dependency of England : still less would I 
 term Malta or the Ionian Islands a colony. Nor does 
 the process by which these places became dependencies 
 of England, partake in any degree of the character of 
 colonization. Of colonization, the principal elements 
 are emigration and the permanent settlement of the 
 emigrants on unoccupied land. A colony therefore is 
 a country wholly or partially unoccupied, which re- 
 ceives emigrants from a distance ; and it is a colony of 
 the country from which the emigrants proceed, which 
 is therefore called the mother-country. To the pro- 
 cess by which the colony is peopled and settled, and 
 to nothing else, I would give the name of colonization. 
 Unquestionably, the process of colonization comprises 
 government ; for in the first place the settlers must be 
 governed somehow; and secondly, the amount and 
 character of the emigration to a colony are deeply 
 affected by the manner in which the emigrants are 
 governed. Besides, the national character of the 
 
DEPENDENT AND INDEPENDENT COLONIES. 17 
 
 states formed by colonization must greatly depend 011 
 the character of the institutions of government which 
 the first settlers obtain. Regarding colonial govern- 
 ment, therefore, as an essential part of colonization, 
 the question remains whether the government of the 
 colony by the mother-country is equally so. Is the 
 subordination of the colony to the mother-country, as 
 respects government, an essential condition of colo- 
 nization? I should say not. The independent sove- 
 reign states which we term colonies of ancient Greece, 
 I shall suppose to be properly so called. To my view, 
 the United States of America, formed by emigration 
 from this country, and still receiving a large annual 
 increase of people by emigration from this country, 
 are still colonies of England. I divide colonies into 
 two classes; the dependent and the independent, like 
 Canada and Massachusetts. Which kind of govern- 
 ment is the best for colonists, which most conduces to 
 rapid and prosperous colonization, and whether or not 
 a combination of the two is preferable to either, are 
 questions foreign to my present purpose of mere defi- 
 nition, but which we shall have to examine with care ; 
 since it is clearly indispensable in colonizing to esta- 
 blish some kind of government for the colonists. It 
 may be good or bad government, and may make the 
 colonization itself good or bad ; but the forming of it, 
 and the carrying of it on if it is dependent govern- 
 ment, are essential parts of the whole process of colo- 
 nization. And so here end my definitions, which 
 have been purposely framed to make them state and 
 limit the subject of our inquiry. 
 
 With regard to your specific questions about that 
 subject, and about the state of it in the public mind, I 
 
 c 
 
18 COURSE OF INVESTIGATION. 
 
 would suggest the expediency of their being answered, 
 not at once, nor in the order in which I have received 
 them, but in the course of what I shall have to say on 
 both topics. Sooner or later they must needs be 
 answered; but to exclusively occupying ourselves 
 with them now I see a twofold objection. It would 
 be inconvenient and troublesome to notice these 
 particulars before touching upon generals ; it would 
 be useless besides, because in disposing of generals, the 
 particulars would be disposed of too. For example, 
 several of your questions relate directly to what you call 
 my " system" of colonization. Now, if that theory, as 
 I must call it, comprises, as indeed it does, the subjects 
 of emigration, settlement, and colonial government, 
 then such an account of it as some of your questions 
 require, would be all that I have to say about colo- 
 nization. It is about that theory alone, that I can 
 furnish you with information ; or rather, all the in- 
 formation I could furnish, would be nothing but an 
 exposition of that theory. Again, your questions 
 about the state of opinion with regard to colonization, 
 would be best answered by a general account thereof, 
 which would also supply some information on that 
 point for which you have not specifically asked. 
 
 Subject to your approval, therefore, I intend to 
 abstain for the present from giving a specific answer 
 to any of your questions : but I think it safe to promise 
 that they will be answered somewhere in the course of 
 what I shall write about colonization as an art, and 
 colonization as a subject of public opinion. 
 
 The latter topic will occupy my next letter. 
 
19 
 
 LETTER Y. 
 From the Statesman. 
 
 THE STATESMAN OBJECTS TO THE PROPOSED COURSE OF 
 INQUIRY AS BEING CONFINED TO A PARTICULAR 
 PROJECT OF THE COLONIST'S, AND DESIRES THAT A 
 MORE GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT MAY BE 
 EXPOUNDED. 
 
 \TOUR letter just received, shows me that my last 
 was deficient in candour, which this shall not be. 
 Coming to the point at once then, I state explicitly, 
 what something in my last was intended to convey, 
 that in asking you to afford me the benefit of your 
 long studies and experience in colonization, I meant 
 to beg for a great deal more than an account of your 
 own particular project. I must of course examine it, 
 along with others probably ; but the mere examination 
 of that or any other scheme exclusively, would be a 
 most inadequate method of endeavouring to master 
 the whole of so comprehensive a subject. Very 
 probably your plan is the best. Many clever people 
 think so; and I bow to such an authority as Mr. Mill, 
 who in his great new book speaks of it in the highest 
 terms. But with all proper deference to his singular 
 acuteness and sagacity, I have a responsibility of my 
 own to consult, which commands me to a prove all 
 
 c 2 
 
20 THE STATESMAN'S PREJUDICE 
 
 things," and "hold fast that which is good." It is, for 
 one purpose, with a view of being able to judge of parti- 
 cular plans, that I wish to acquire a general know- 
 ledge. A general and comprehensive view of the 
 subject is what I require, including, not instead of, 
 those special schemes which may seem worth careful 
 examination. 
 
 Amongst these, I think it probable that yours will 
 take the highest place in my opinion ; and I say this 
 in spite of a sort of prejudice against it, which I ought 
 to have avowed before. It has arisen as follows. 
 
 Believing that, however it may be with broth and 
 cooks, a learner cannot have too many teachers if he 
 has time to hear them all, I no sooner engaged to 
 speak about colonization in Parliament, and asked for 
 your assistance in preparing myself, than I also 
 improved my acquaintance with one of the chief clerks 
 in the Colonial Office, a gentleman of no common 
 attainments and ability, whom the facilities of railway 
 travelling have induced to reside with his family in 
 this neighbourhood. It was to him that I alluded in 
 my last. I told him that my object was to obtain 
 information from him, and to use it in Parliament, 
 but of course without quoting him as my authority. 
 He at first tried hard to dissuade me from the 
 enterprise, but finally acceded to my request that 
 he would permit me at least to refer to him occa- 
 sionally. I then told him of my intention to consult 
 you ; whereupon he appeared better disposed to lend 
 me his assistance; and indeed he said, that if I 
 listened much to you, I should be in want of well- 
 informed counsel. Having heard of some of your 
 differences with the Colonial Office, I did not mind 
 
'AGAINST THE COLONIST'S SCHEME. 21 
 
 lii< obvious aversion to you, but went on to men- 
 tion your plan of colonization, and to ask his 
 opinion of it. He expressed no opinion, but said that 
 Lord Grey has done his utmost to make something of 
 the project, but that somehow or other it breaks down 
 wherever it is tried. He afterwards sent me several 
 pamphlets and blue-books of official documents, with 
 passages marked relating to your scheme, which show 
 at least that it has not worked well in New South 
 Wales, and that there, as well as in other colonies, it 
 is very much disliked. Not satisfied with this evi- 
 dence, however, though it seems very complete as far 
 a- it goes, I spoke to one who is in the way of know- 
 ing about such things. He approves of your plan as 
 a theory, and is rather friendly than inimical to your- 
 self. But he said, that in practice the plan disap- 
 points expectation; that Lord Grey, as Colonial 
 Minister, has done it full justice by discarding some 
 parts of it which experience had shown to be 
 faulty, and by carrying the rest into effect with all 
 the power of his office ; but that, just as my official 
 informant said, the plan breaks down in the work- 
 ing. He said, further, that Lord Grey (whose know- 
 ledge of political economy and talent for mastering 
 principles we must all admit, notwithstanding his 
 conspicuous failure in the office for which he was 
 deemed particularly fit), whilst he gives you credit for 
 inventing the plan, wholly objects to parts of it which 
 you maintain to be sound, and now doubts, after 
 having believed that great things might be done with 
 it, whether it can be turned to much account. I must 
 own that this judgment of Lord Grey, considering his 
 talents and experience, has great weight with me ; and 
 
22 NO APOLOGY REQUIRED. 
 
 the more because his frequent mention of you as the 
 author of a scheme which he once so warmly approved, 
 shows that he has no personal ill-will to you like that 
 of my acquaintance in his office. 
 
 You will now see why, though I wish to under- 
 stand your scheme thoroughly, I am far from wishing 
 to be taught nothing else ; and why, therefore, I rather 
 invited you to separate it from the general subject, so 
 that we might dispose of it before entering upon that. 
 I ought to have been more explicit at first. My 
 plain-speaking now requires no apology, though I 
 could offer one in the form of some compliments. 
 
23 
 
 LETTER VI. 
 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 THE COLONIST EXPLAINS THAT HE ALWAYS INTENDED 
 TO EXPOUND A THEORY, NOT TO RECOMMEND A PRO- 
 JECT. NARRATIVE CONCERNING LORD GREY. LORD 
 
 GREY'S STATE OF MIND AND HIS PROCEEDINGS WITH 
 REGARD TO COLONIZATION, DESCRIBED. 
 
 I REJOICE at your plain-spoken letter, and thank 
 you for it. 
 
 To speak plainly in my turn, you have been led 
 astray by certain misnomers, which, I see, were sug- 
 gested to you by your Downing-street acquaintance. 
 You are in the state of mind with regard to me and 
 my view of the Art of Colonization, which David 
 Hume would have been hi towards Adam Smith, if 
 the latter, before publishing his view of the Causes of 
 the Wealth of Nations, had seriously told his friend 
 that it was a scheme for making the nation rich. In 
 that case, David would have fought as shy of Adam 
 and his theories, as most people do of projectors 
 and their schemes. The words " scheme" and " pro- 
 ject" have led you to fear that I should dwell con- 
 tinually on some object of my own, instead of laying 
 before you such a general view or theory as would 
 
24 TRIAL BY LORD GREY 
 
 become yours if we agreed about it after discussion. 
 But this last is what alone I intended, and proposed to 
 you. The theory may at present be so far mine as it 
 has been formed in my head by the studies and ex- 
 perience which you value; but otherwise I have no 
 more property in it, than Lindley Murray had in that 
 view of the art of English composition which is set 
 forth in his Grammar. Verily I have had schemes 
 and projects many, relating to colonization. Some of 
 these succeeded; some failed. It was by pursuing 
 them into action, that I gamed the experience on which 
 my present view of the art is in a great measure 
 founded. Therefore in conveying the view to you, I 
 shall frequently refer to that experience for the 
 purpose of illustration. But I hereby undertake that 
 it shall be for no other purpose. Have I said enough 
 on this point? Your prejudice against the theory 
 you wish to understand, must surely be removed in 
 so far as it was occasioned by misleading words. 
 
 In so far as it was caused by misrepresentation, 
 something more must be said. As so occasioned, the 
 prejudice is felt by most people who have heard of 
 the theory but have not examined it. The misrepre- 
 sentation is that the theory has been submitted to 
 the test of practice, and especially by Lord Grey. By 
 the Colonial Office, and by Lord Grey in particular, 
 the theory has been tried in practice as Charles the 
 Tenth carried into effect the British constitution 
 when he upset his throne by taking ministry after 
 ministry from the minority in parliament ; or as the 
 plan of steam navigation with screw propellers would 
 be tried, by placing the screw forward, at the bottom 
 of the ship, instead of aft. What Lord Grey has 
 done with the theory, has been to pick out bits of it 
 
OF THE COLONIST'S THEORY. 25 
 
 here and there, turn them into crotchets of his own, 
 and then call them mine. Or rather, whilst he was 
 thus mauling an important part of my theory in prac- 
 tice, he has professed to be carrying it into effect, and 
 has thus brought it into great discredit. Most true 
 is it, that what Lord Grey calls a trial of the theory, 
 lias worked ill in New South Wales, and is greatly 
 disliked there, as well as in other colonies. But my 
 statement is, that the theory has never had anything 
 like a fair trial anywhere; that the professed trials of 
 it have been something not only different from it, 
 but utterly at variance with it in reality, though 
 some likeness has been kept up by professions and 
 forms of words. The opposition between the so-called 
 trials and the theory itself, is as great as the contra- 
 diction between my statement and the one that has 
 imposed on you. Before we have done, you will have 
 ample means of determining for yourself which of 
 those statements is correct. 
 
 But even now, without delay, considering both Lord 
 Grey's deserved reputation for the talent of master- 
 ing questions of principle in political economy, and 
 his almost unlimited power in matters relating to the 
 colonies, I must give you some insight into his feelings 
 and doings with regard to my views of colonization. 
 It is really of moment to yourself, if you would exa- 
 mine them without prejudice, that you should be 
 enlightened on this point. 
 
 You think that he does not share the personal aver- 
 sion of the gentlemen in the Colonial Office to one 
 who has caused them infinite trouble. This is a great 
 mistake. His aversion to me is rather a fierce an- 
 tipathy. I am telling no secret, betraying no confi- 
 dence, but only report what many know and openly 
 
26 LORD HOWICK. 
 
 talk about, and what Lord Grey has had the satisfaction 
 of making me feel very severely. And yet, it is equally 
 true, as you say, that before the public he rather goes 
 out of his way to couple my name with a " system " 
 of colonization which he also professes to be most 
 desirous of carrying into effect. Before the public, 
 therefore, he seems to patronize and befriend me. The 
 contradiction will be explained by reference to certain 
 facts, and to Lord Grey's peculiar temper and intellect. 
 In 1831, Lord Howick, being then a very young 
 statesman, and parliamentary Under- Secretary for the 
 Colonies, was made acquainted with a part of the 
 theory of colonization which has since been attributed 
 to me. At that time, it was attributed to nobody : the 
 part of it in question was a suggestion without an 
 author, which anybody was at liberty to appropriate. 
 He adopted the principle of it at least ; and being the 
 son of the Prime Minister, with other near connexions 
 in the Cabinet and a strong will of his own, he forced 
 the Colonial Office, though sorely against the grain, 
 to do so likewise. For doing this, he was diligently 
 praised in public as a vigorous colonial reformer, and 
 the author of a valuable improvement in colonization. 
 This praise, which I think he deserved, he received 
 plentifully, and certainly did not dislike. But some 
 believers in the theory, including myself, were dis- 
 satisfied with the manner in which a part of it was sub- 
 mitted to the test of practice by Lord Howick; and 
 we determined to try the whole theory, if possible, by 
 getting a colony established upon its principles. Hence 
 the first attempts to found South Australia. In these 
 attempts, we were at first warmly encouraged by Lord 
 Howick, but in the end roughly defeated by the Colo- 
 nial Office. Subsequently, for no reason that we could 
 
SOUTH AUSTRALIA NEW ZEALAND. 27 
 
 divine, except that our comprehensive theory cast his 
 small doings as a colonizer into the shade, and also 
 called in question his mode of giving effect to a bit of 
 that theory, he became one of the most zealous of our 
 opponents. A sort of rivalry as colonizers was esta- 
 blished between him and us, during which the two 
 parties disparaged and assailed each other. Among 
 the partizans on our side, I was certainly the most 
 active, as he afterwards came to know. About 
 the same time, not I, but others, publickly attributed 
 to me the theory of which he had adopted a part when 
 it was anybody's who chose to father it; and thus he 
 found himself in the unpleasant position of having 
 caused a revolution in the economical policy of many 
 colonies at the suggestion of one who was at open war 
 with him. 
 
 Then came our first attempt to found New Zealand. 
 On this occasion, though Lord Howick was no longer 
 in the Colonial Office, we were again placed in official 
 communication with him, because when, passing by 
 the Colonial Office, for fear of its inevitable hostility 
 to our scheme, we applied to Lord Melbourne (then 
 prime minister) for the requisite powers, he desired us 
 to communicate with Lord Howick as the organ of the 
 Government pro hac vice. For a while, he encouraged 
 us to proceed with our undertaking, which was there- 
 fore considered safe as respects the grant of powers 
 by the government ; when I went to Canada with Lord 
 Durham, one of the chief promoters of the New- 
 Zealand scheme. 
 
 Among the numerous plans for settling the then 
 distracted condition of British North America, which 
 were placed in Lord Durham's hands, there was one 
 so excellent in theory that it must have been adopted 
 
28 LORD HOWICK AND LORD DURHAM. 
 
 if it had been practicable; but it happened, in con- 
 sequence of actual circumstances which its able author 
 had quite overlooked, to be utterly impracticable at 
 the time. The author of that plan was Lord Howick : 
 it was rejected by Lord Durham on the ground of its 
 impracticability ; and I am mistaken if Lord Howick 
 did not learn that Lord Durham's view of its imprac- 
 ticability was first suggested to him by me. At all 
 events, whilst Lord Durham was still in Canada, and 
 I there with him, Lord Howick zealously opposed our 
 New Zealand scheme which he had before patronized. 
 The history of his patronage and opposition is to be 
 found in the evidence taken by Lord Eliot's (now 
 St. Germans) Committee of the House of Commons 
 about New Zealand in 1840. 
 
 Lord Howick was one of the Cabinet by which, as 
 Lord Durham died believing, his Canadian mission was 
 upset ; and upon that point the brothers-in-law differed 
 as men so nearly connected are apt to differ when they 
 disagree at all. I of course sided with Lord Durham ; 
 Lord Howick well knew with what staunchness and 
 activity. At this time Lord Howick' s ill-will to me 
 was violent and undisguised, but nevertheless was 
 destined to increase. 
 
 The New- Zealand project, on the success of which 
 Lord Durham had set his heart, having been defeated 
 for a time, and mainly by Lord Howick, a Committee 
 of the House of Commons was, on Lord Eliot's motion, 
 appointed to inquire into the matter; and Lord 
 Howick was naturally appointed a member of it. 
 Before this Committee I was examined for several 
 days, Lord Howick not being present. When my ex- 
 amination was closed, he attended the Committee for 
 the first time, and complained of certain statements 
 
LORD ELIOT'S COMMITTEE. 29 
 
 made by me as a witness, which he declared to be 
 untrue. At his instance, a day was fixed when I was 
 to attend the Committee for the single purpose of 
 being cross-examined by him, and destroyed if he 
 made his charges good. When we met in the Com- 
 mittee-room, it contained, besides a full attendance of 
 members of the Committee, other members of the 
 House, who came there to witness the anticipated 
 conflict. But hardly any conflict took place. Lord 
 Howick, after arranging on the table a formidable 
 - of notes and documents, put some questions to 
 me with a view of establishing one of his accusations. 
 The answers established that I had spoken the exact 
 truth; and that my accuser himself was mistaken. 
 Instead of proceeding to another charge, he hastily 
 gathered up his papers, and left the room without a 
 remark. The Committee's blue-book reports the words 
 that passed : if it had also described the scene, you 
 would probably, upon reading it, agree with the 
 lookers-on, that in this murderous attack upon me, 
 Lord Howick was provokingly worsted. How eager 
 he was to make the attack, and how the repulse of it 
 affected his passions, is shown by two facts. On the 
 day of the attack, Lord Durham, whom, as the first 
 governor of the New Zealand Company, I almost re- 
 presented before the Committee, was dying : and he 
 was dead, but unburied, when Lord Howick attended 
 the Committee once more, to vote with a Government 
 majority of the members in rejecting a Report favour- 
 able to his brother-in-law's much-cherished objects, 
 which was drawn up by the chairman, Lord Eliot. 
 
 The next occasion on which I met Lord Howick, 
 was of a totally different kind. After the early suc- 
 cesses of the Xt-w- Zealand Company, in rescuing " the 
 
30 AFFAIRS OF NEW ZEALAND. 
 
 Britain of the South" from Louis Philippe's purpose 
 of making it a convict colony of France, I was going 
 to Canada with some chance of remaining there for 
 years. Just before my departure, my brother-directors 
 of this company invited me to a sort of public or 
 complimentary dinner at the Clarendon Hotel, to 
 which they also invited a number of public men, such 
 as Lord Eliot, and others who were interested about 
 colonization generally and New Zealand in particular. 
 To the great surprise and satisfaction of many be- 
 sides myself, Lord Ho wick attended this dinner of 
 compliment to me. We sat on either side of the chair- 
 man, conversed across him during dinner, and after 
 dinner addressed the company in civil speeches about 
 each other. I relate the facts without comment. 
 
 On returning from Canada, I met Lord Howick at 
 a private dinner table, when his manner was rather 
 friendly than as disagreeable as it usually is towards 
 his inferiors. He was now out of office. The colo- 
 nization of New Zealand was struggling for existence 
 against the hostility of the Colonial Office under Lord 
 Stanley. We (I mean the colonizers of New Zealand) 
 confiding in Lord Ho wick's power of grasping a com- 
 plicated question, and still more in his pugnaciousness 
 and resolution, were pleased to learn that he was 
 disposed to take up our cause : and this he did, not in 
 form, of course, as an advocate, but in fact to our 
 entire satisfaction. By very difficult and careful 
 management we got him to be chosen chairman of a 
 Committee of the House of Commons on New-Zealand 
 affairs, which was now appointed on the motion of 
 Mr. Aglioiiby : and we supplied him with information, 
 both written and oral, which enabled him to induce 
 the Committee, most of whom were friends of the 
 
LORD HOWICK'S PROCEEDINGS. 31 
 
 Government, to adopt a Report highly condemnatory 
 of the proceedings of the Colonial Office and Lord 
 Stanley. In the following session, we carried on 
 within the House, during debates which occupied nine 
 days, the war whose first battle had been fought in 
 Committee: and here again Lord Howick was our 
 victorious champion. Lord Stanley retired from office 
 in consequence of disagreeing with Sir Robert Peel 
 about free-trade: his most prominent antagonist be- 
 came the leader of the colonial reformers, and the states- 
 man to whom public opinion pointed as the future Colo- 
 nial Minister. Nay, some people, influenced solely by 
 his colonial reputation (for he had no other) thought 
 him in a fair way of becoming prime-minister, either 
 instead of or immediately after Lord John Russell. I 
 may confidently add, that for the whole state of the 
 public mind with regard to him, he was largely indebted 
 to the assiduous celebration of his name by colonizing 
 partizans, who had various means of exalting it and 
 making it familiar to the public ear. 
 
 In an early stage of the New- Zealand proceedings 
 in Parliament, I was warned that Lord Howick dis- 
 liked my taking an open part in them, lest it should 
 be supposed that he acted on prompting from me: 
 and I was urged (for the sake of the cause) to keep 
 entirely in the background. This advice I took, but 
 without relaxing my exertions, or ceasing to com- 
 municate indirectly with Lord Howick upon the sub- 
 ject of his exertions. 
 
 Still, although the colonizers of New Zealand had 
 gained their cause in Parliament, nothing was done to 
 accomplish their objects with regard to the state of 
 the colony. When Mr. Gladstone succeeded Lord 
 Stanley, therefore, it became a question whether we 
 
32 DOUBTS AND DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 should press those objects on the attention of the new 
 minister, or wait for the time, which everybody thought 
 to be near at hand, when Lord Howick would be in 
 power. The latter course was recommended by the 
 common belief that the weeks of Mr. Gladstone's 
 tenure of office were numbered before he accepted the 
 seals; by our conviction that Lord Howick entirely 
 agreed with us in opinion as to what ought to be done 
 in order to make colonization prosper; and by a fear 
 lest, having regard to his jealous disposition, we might 
 displease him by relying on Mr. Gladstone: but on 
 the other hand, the desperate state of the colony de- 
 manded immediate remedies ; there was just a chance 
 that the Peel ministry might not retire after carrying 
 its free-trade measures; and some of us deemed Mr. 
 Gladstone perfectly able to seize, and not likely to 
 despise, the opportunity of establishing in one instance 
 a system of colonization and colonial government, 
 that might serve as a model for the reform of other 
 colonies and for after time. Moved by the latter con- 
 siderations, I submitted to Mr. Gladstone by letter a 
 plan for the settlement of New- Zealand affairs, but too 
 late for enabling him to come to any official decision 
 upon it. A copy of that letter was confidentially 
 placed in Lord Howick's hands by one of his coadjutors 
 in the attacks on the Colonial Office under Lord 
 Stanley. 
 
 Lord Howick became Lord Grey, and Colonial 
 Minister. Mr. Hawes, who had for years been a 
 convert to my theoretical views and an active coope- 
 rator with me in attempts to give them effect who 
 had no claim to being deemed fit for the administration 
 of colonial affairs, save that he had made a sort of colo- 
 nial reputation as a disciple and coadjutor of mine 
 
('AIUNKT CHANGES. 33 
 
 became Lord Grey's Parliamentary Under- Secretary. 
 Besides a semi-official announcement that Mr. Charles 
 Buller, between whom and me the relation as colo- 
 nizers was that of each other's alter ego, was to take 
 an active part with Lord Grey in colonial affairs 
 whilst holding the somewhat sinecure office of Judge 
 Advocate General, Lord Grey himself solemnly told Mr. 
 Buller that it should be so. I could not doubt that now 
 at last, after long years of toil and trouble, I should be 
 rewarded by the utmost happiness which God vouch- 
 safes to man on earth, the realization of his own idea. 
 The question which most urgently demanded Lord 
 Grey's decision, was that of the settlement of the 
 affairs of New Zealand; and this question embraced 
 the entire subject of colonization and colonial govern- 
 ment. L'pon this subject, with relation to Xew Zea- 
 land, Lord Grey's mind had been long made up, and his 
 opinions given to the public. Amongst those opinions, 
 the one which he had most emphatically uttered, 
 was, that comprehensive, vigorous, and prompt action 
 was absolutely necessary. Yet as Minister he would 
 not move a step. He seemed incapable of deciding 
 officially any one of the points which, out of office, he 
 had so lately and so completely determined in his own 
 mind. Those who had made the colony, and recently 
 co-operated with Lord Grey in exposing its grievances 
 to Parliament, were utterly confounded. In the blind- 
 ness of their dismay, they fancied that if they could 
 bring about an interview between Lord Grey and me, 
 he might be persuaded to fulfil his late professions and 
 promises. I believe they hoped that the sight of me 
 (for I was very ill at the time) might revive in him 
 the generous impulse which took him to the Clarendon- 
 Hotel dinner. How they induced him to consent to 
 
 D 
 
34 INTERVIEW WITH LORD GREY. 
 
 an interview I never knew; but I reluctantly con- 
 sented to it ; and the meeting took place at the house 
 and in the presence of Mr. Buller. 
 
 Considering how his rank and official station placed 
 me greatly at his mercy, and that I could hardly stand 
 or speak from illness, his reception of me was perfectly 
 brutal. Bearing this with outward meekness at least 
 (for I had promised not to quarrel with him), I 
 endeavoured to perform my allotted task, but without 
 the least success. He listened to me with impatience, 
 would scarcely let me complete a single sentence, and, 
 addressing himself rather to Mr. Buller than to me, 
 talked in angry and contemptuous terms of the 
 principal suggestions contained in my letter to Mr. 
 Gladstone. Though he did not mention either Mr. 
 Gladstone's name or the letter, I now saw that the 
 attempt to make an impression on him was utterly 
 hopeless; and I therefore remained silent till, after 
 one or two fruitless attempts by Mr. Buller to mollify 
 him, he got up, and hurried out of the room and the 
 house as if we had been insulting him. 
 
 Some days later, I had a dangerous attack of illness, 
 of a kind that is commonly produced by overwork 
 and anxiety. Continued ill-health has ever since com- 
 pelled me to abstain from meddling with New-Zealand 
 affairs and colonization in general. When I was 
 no longer in the way, the New- Zealand Company 
 and Lord Grey made a settlement of the affairs of 
 that colony, which leaves every question unsettled, 
 and under which, as I believe, nothing good can be 
 done. Lord Grey and the Company naturally per- 
 suade themselves, and would persuade the public, that 
 this arrangement gives effect to the views of coloni- 
 zation and colonial government which they jointly 
 
LORD GREY'S BETE NOIRE. 35 
 
 proclaimed whilst at war with Lord Stanley; but 
 when you shall have compared that arrangement, in- 
 cluding Lord Grey's short-lived New-Zealand consti- 
 tution, with the views that I am about to lay before 
 you (views nearly identical in substance with those 
 submitted to Mr. Gladstone), you will see that the re- 
 semblance between my recommendations and Lord 
 Grey's doings is altogether unreal, and only so far 
 apparent as to preserve some show of consistency 
 IM -tween his principles in opposition and his practice 
 in office. Indeed, I think you will perceive in the end, 
 that as regards many questions besides those relating 
 to Xew Zealand, a greater ingenuity than Lord Grey's 
 has been employed to make his practice look like his 
 opinions and unlike mine. 
 
 I am assured that my letter to Mr. Gladstone is still 
 Lord Grey's bete noire; that he is still sensitively 
 fearful of being supposed to adopt opinions of mine, 
 and even more afraid that his fear on that point 
 should be perceived. The latter apprehension partly 
 accounts for his going out of his way to couple my 
 name in public with one of those opinions, with 
 which his own name is inseparably coupled. I enclose 
 some extracts from a letter of Lord Grey's, to which 
 you have alluded.* He is not afraid, not he, of being 
 
 Downi'iig Street, March Sth, 1847. 
 
 * " You will remember that in North America, the profuse grants 
 made to private persons, and the surrender of the territorial revenue 
 by the Crown to the Provincial legislature, leave to the Govern- 
 ment no power of adopting with effect the Wakefield principle of 
 colonization, as to the soundness of which I am quite of the same 
 opinion as yourself. Such are the difficulties which stand in the 
 way of doing more than has been hitherto done by the Government 
 
 to promote Emigration to North America." 
 
 ***** 
 
 1 With regard to Australia, I would observe to you, that every 
 
 D 2 
 
36 LORD GREY'S STATE or MIND. 
 
 thought to get ideas about colonization from me ; for 
 does he not himself proclaim the fact ? Add that, if 
 he did not sometimes avow the fact, as to this particular 
 suggestion, he would be open to the suspicion of rather 
 too parental an adoption of it. Think of his well-known 
 pride ; bear in mind that he can only preserve, or rather 
 recover, his reputation as a colonial statesman, by 
 trying to do a great deal in colonization; do not 
 forget, what his surprising break-down in high office 
 proves, that with a more than common talent for 
 understanding principles, he has no originality of 
 thought which compels him to take all his ideas 
 from somebody, and no power of working out theory 
 in practice which compels him to be always in some- 
 body's hands as respects decision and action: apply 
 these considerations to the above narrative, and you 
 will be at no loss to comprehend his state of mind and 
 his conduct on the subject of our correspondence. 
 
 You are now forewarned against misrepresentations 
 on that subject which mislead others, and against any 
 injustice towards Lord Grey that I may be betrayed 
 into by a resentment which it is impossible not to feel. 
 
 possible facility is now given to the purchase of land in this country, 
 
 and the application of the purchase-money in carrying out emigrants. 
 ***** 
 
 " Be assured that the colonization of Australia for its own proper 
 objects, which I consider as valuable as you do, and which I am no less 
 anxious to promote, affords no means of immediate relief from such 
 a calamity as that which has now fallen upon Ireland, and cannot be 
 hastily carried into effect. That it may be gradually very largely 
 extended, I have no doubt, and, if I continue to hold my present 
 
 office, I trust to be enabled to prove." 
 
 * # * * * 
 
 " Though I have marked this letter " private," you are quite at 
 liberty to show it to any of the persons with whom you are in com- 
 munication upon the subject to which it relates, that you may think 
 proper." 
 
37 
 
 LETTER VII. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 MB. MOTHERCOUNTRY INTRODUCED. 
 
 IT seems right to inform you, that I know the name 
 of your Downing-street acquaintance. He does 
 indeed possess uncommon attainments and ability. 
 He also knows a great deal more about the colonies 
 than I possibly can. I hope, therefore, that you will 
 continue to consult him as occasion for it may arise. 
 \V<- three may, perhaps, throw useful light on points 
 that are still in obscurity. Besides, his remarks will 
 probably afford me the best possible opportunity of 
 leading you into certain dark recesses of the Colonial 
 Office, which it much behoves you to explore. Rest 
 assured that I will not betray his participation in our 
 discussions. Indeed, as it is unwise to mention fre- 
 quently a name that one wishes to conceal, and as 
 " your Downing-street acquaintance " is an awkward 
 designation, I would propose that we call him by the 
 appropriate name of Mr. Mothercountry. You will 
 learn by-and-by how well the appellation suits any of 
 hi- class. 
 
38 
 
 LETTER VIIL 
 From the Statesman. 
 
 THE STATESMAN DESIRES THE COLONIST TO PROCEED. 
 
 T70RE WARNED is forearmed; and I feel obliged 
 by your plain-speaking. Pray go on. 
 
 LETTER IX. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 STATE OF THE SUBJECT TWENTY YEARS AGO. COLONIZA- 
 TION SOCIETY OF 1830. PRACTICE WITHOUT PRIN- 
 CIPLES IN THE BUSINESS OF COLONIZATION. THE 
 
 FIRST THEORY OF COLONIZATION. FIRST EFFORT OF 
 
 THE THEORISTS OF 1830. FOUNDATION OF SOUTH 
 
 AUSTRALIA MR. HENRY GEORGE WARD'S COMMITTEE 
 ON COLONIAL LANDS AND EMIGRATION. COMMIS- 
 SIONERS APPOINTED BY THE CROWN^ THE NEW- 
 ZEALAND ASSOCIATION OF 1837. LORD DURHAM'S 
 
 MISSION TO CANADA. INFLUENCE OF THE COLONIAL 
 
 GAZETTE. SUCCESS AND FAILURE OF THE THEORISTS 
 
 OF 1830. STATE OF OPINION CONCERNING RELIGIOUS 
 
 PROVISIONS FOR COLONIES. SUMMARY OF PRESENT 
 
 STATE OF OPINION GENERALLY. 
 
 rFWENTY years ago, colonization was in no respect 
 J- a subject of public opinion: the. public neither 
 knew nor cared anything at all about it. There 
 
COLONIZATION TWENTY YEARS AGO. 39 
 
 existed indeed at that time, a controversy between Mr. 
 AVilmot Horton and Mr. Michael Thomas Sadler con- 
 cerning emigration, which the infinite zeal of the dis- 
 putants forced into some public notice : but as the only 
 question between them was, whether, as Mr. Sadler 
 contended, paupers ought to " dwell in the land" in 
 order to be fed, or, as Mr. Wilmot Horton proposed, 
 be sent abroad out of the way, the public took no real 
 interest hi the dispute. Still less did Mr. Horton, 
 notwithstanding his singular perseverance, excite a 
 general interest in his plans of mere pauper emigration. 
 Then, as now, the "shovelling out of paupers," as 
 Charles Buller afterwards happily termed it, was a 
 displeasing topic; and though Mr. Horton rode his 
 hobby so as to induce Parliament to try on a small 
 scale a costly and deterring experiment of his well- 
 meant suggestions, he soon rode it to death. Excepting 
 the stir which his strenuous efforts made for a while, 
 I can recollect no mark, previous to 1830, of the 
 slightest public interest even in emigration; and at 
 that time, the word colonization was devoid of meaning 
 to the public ear. I will now describe briefly the 
 change which has taken place in public opinion during 
 the last eighteen years. 
 
 When Englishmen or Americans have a public 
 object, they meet, appoint a chairman and secretary, 
 pass resolutions, and subscribe money : in other words, 
 they set to work for themselves, instead of waiting to 
 see what their government may do for them. This 
 self-relying course was adopted by a few people in 
 London in 1830, who formed an association which 
 they called the Colonization Society. The object they 
 had in view was, in general terms, to substitute sys- 
 
40 COLONIZATION SOCIETY OF 1830. 
 
 tematic colonization for mere emigration, and on a 
 scale sufficient to produce important effects on the 
 mother-country. 
 
 They were an unknown and feeble body, composed 
 chiefly of very young men, some of whose names, 
 however, have long ceased to be obscure, whilst 
 others are amongst the most celebrated of our day. 
 They used to say at the time, that they were an 
 exceedingly small minority, as indeed they were; 
 for whilst the outside number of the founders of the 
 Society did not pass a dozen, the great public was 
 either hostile or utterly indifferent to their views. 
 The objectors formed two distinct classes. Belief in 
 the doctrine of superabundant population was, at that 
 time, confined to a few; and even these denied the 
 possibility of a superabundance of capital. Thus some 
 took offence at the notion of sending people out of the 
 country; and others contended that the grand object 
 in our political economy should be, instead of sending 
 capital abroad, to accumulate the utmost quantity at 
 home. But all the objectors united, though com- 
 prising nearly everybody who noticed the subject, 
 were far from numerous. The public at large cared 
 nothing about the matter, and could not be brought 
 to take the slightest interest in it. If opponents had 
 been many and much in earnest, converts would not 
 have been wanting : the general inattention was too 
 complete for an opposition that might have proved 
 useful. We could not even get up a controversy, 
 except with Mr. Wilmot Horton and Colonel Torrens ;* 
 
 * Colonel Torreus afterwards became a zealous and valuable con- 
 vert to our views of colonization as opposed to mere emigration, and 
 
MINISTER FOR THE COLONIES. 41 
 
 to which, though it put an end to our infant society, 
 the public was utterly indifferent. 
 
 We supposed, however, that the Minister for the 
 Colonies, as the guardian and organ of colonial 
 interests, which were manifestly and deeply involved 
 in the question, would bestow on our suggestions his 
 serious attention at the least. He merely told us, 
 that the Government rather wished to discourage 
 emigration : there was more already than they knew 
 how to deal with. When requested to observe that 
 the scheme was not one of emigration, but of coloniza- 
 tion, which itself would deal with the emigration, his 
 reply showed that he had not conceived the distinc- 
 tion, nor ever paid any attention to any part of the 
 subject. 
 
 That subject presented before 1830 one very re- 
 markable feature; namely, an immense amount of 
 practice without any theory. The practice of colo- 
 nization has in a great measure peopled the earth : it 
 has founded nations : it has re-acted with momentous 
 consequences on old countries, by creating and supply- 
 ing new objects of desire, by stimulating industry and 
 skill, by promoting manufactures and commerce, by 
 greatly augmenting the wealth and population of the 
 world : it has occasioned directly a peculiar form of 
 government the really democratic and has been, 
 indirectly, a main cause of the political changes and 
 tendencies which now agitate Europe. Yet so lately 
 a- twenty years ago, no theory of colonization had set 
 forth what should be the objects of the process, still 
 
 hairman of the commission for founding South Australia in 
 accordance with some of our principles. 
 
42 ALGERIA WEST AUSTRALIA. 
 
 less what are the best means of accomplishing them. 
 There were long experience without a system, im- 
 mense results without a plan, vast doings but no 
 principles. 
 
 The two chief nations of the world were, each of 
 them, founding a new colony at the time in question ; 
 France in North Africa, England in West Australia. 
 In both cases, the means of a great success were un- 
 usually large: such large means as respects capital 
 and population, the main elements of colonization 
 along with waste land, were never before at the 
 disposal of a colonizing nation. In both cases, the 
 failure has been complete. The French government 
 has spent fifty millions sterling with a really anxious 
 desire to colonize Algeria, but without colonizing it 
 in the least : the miserable doings of England at Swan 
 Kiver or West Australia do not merit the name of 
 colonization. The causes of failure in both cases will 
 be examined hereafter. It will then be apparent that 
 whatever France and England did as nations, was 
 perfectly calculated to defeat the object in view : it 
 will be seen, that in modern times the practice of co- 
 lonization has deteriorated in proportion to the greater 
 means of improvement, as much as its theory was 
 always deficient. Indeed the colonizing measures of 
 our own time have been so paltry in comparison with 
 those of ancient nations, and of our own forefathers, 
 that we now reckon colonization amongst the arts 
 which have been lost. Formerly there was practice 
 without theory, art without science : now, with wants 
 and means exceeding those of all preceding time, we 
 have neither theory nor practice, neither science nor 
 
A THEORY FRAMED. 43 
 
 art. Present colonization is only remarkable for its 
 pretence to importance and its real nothingness. 
 
 The ideas of the founders of the Colonization Society 
 of 1830 grew out of the first proceedings of the British 
 government in settling the Swan Kiver or West Aus- 
 tralia. A perception of the utter inadequacy of the 
 means employed on that occasion the curious fact of 
 a government elaborately, though unconsciously pro- 
 viding for inevitable failure, with copious elements of 
 success at its easy disposal led to a careful examina- 
 tion of the whole subject. True it is, that the blind 
 blundering at Swan Eiver directed attention rather to 
 the means than to the objects of colonization; but 
 when the means at the disposal of this country had 
 been weighed, the importance of the attainable objects 
 was perceived: and thus, at length, a system was 
 framed, which embraced both objects and means. 
 The means and the objects were not confounded, but 
 first separated, and then brought together, compared, 
 and fitted. The subject was further divided into two 
 parts; into matters economical, such as the selection 
 of poor emigrants, or the disposal of waste land, and 
 into matters political, such as the effects of extensive 
 colonization on home politics, or the nature of colonial 
 government. In a word, the colonizers of 1830 framed 
 a theory. 
 
 It was not in this respect only that they differed 
 from the rest of the community and so formed a party 
 or school : they had faith in the goodness of their pur- 
 pose. But they were rather a party than a mere 
 school : for it happened that those of them who had 
 chiefly framed the new theory, were constitutionally 
 
44 DISPOSAL OF LAND, 
 
 disposed rather to action than to preaching and teach- 
 ing. Accordingly, when they found that they could 
 make no impression on the public by argument, they 
 set about endeavouring to get their theory submitted 
 to the test of experiment. 
 
 Their first eifort, in 1831, was easily successful. It 
 must be briefly described, because in the first place 
 there is no more instructive fact relating to modern 
 colonial government by England, and secondly because 
 its results intimately belong to the present state of 
 the subject. 
 
 It will be understood at once, by even the reader 
 who has never thought at all about colonization, that 
 in the business of settling a new country, the mode in 
 which waste or public land is disposed of by the go- 
 vernment, must necessarily exercise an all-important 
 influence; an influence similar in importance, for 
 example, to that which the supply of cotton and coal 
 has upon the manufactures of Lancashire. Down to 
 1831, the general practice of the British government 
 had been to grant land for nothing, and without stint 
 as to quantity: the new theory proposed, among 
 other changes, to substitute for this plan, that of uni- 
 formly selling the land for a price in ready money. 
 A change therefore was proposed, which would be a 
 perfect revolution in the most important function of 
 colonial government. The colonies, if they had been 
 consulted, would have earnestly objected to this revo- 
 lution, as they afterwards protested against it; the 
 colonial governments and the members of the Colonial 
 Oflice as a body greatly disliked it, because it went to 
 deprive them of patronage and power; the very few 
 persons who at that time desired this change, were 
 
FORMATION OF AN EMIGRATION FUND. 45 
 
 obscure and feeble : and yet all of a sudden, without 
 inquiry by Parliament or the Executive government, 
 without a word of notice to those most concerned, 
 and without observation from anybody, out came 
 an Imperial decree, by which, in the principal colo- 
 nies of England, the plan of selling waste land was 
 completely substituted for that of free grants. At 
 the same time, another leading suggestion of the Colo- 
 nization Society was adopted by the government : as 
 respects New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land, 
 it was further enacted, that the purchase-money of the 
 waste land should be used as an emigration fund in 
 defraying the cost of the passage of labouring persons 
 to the colonies. Apparently, effect was about to be 
 given to the whole economical theory of the Society, 
 apart from the subject of government. 
 
 But the authors of that theory attached the highest 
 importance to the subject of government, believing 
 that the best economical arrangements would not 
 work well without provisions for a good political 
 government of the colonists. Now, in New South 
 Wales and Van Diemen's Land, to which alone the 
 new economical theory was, even in form, completely 
 applied, the system of government was the very re- 
 verse of what we deemed the best, being in the first 
 place completely arbitrary, and secondly as distant as, 
 in this world of twenty-four thousand miles in circum- 
 ference, a government can possibly be from its sub- 
 jects. Those settlements, moreover, had been planted 
 with convicts, a mode of colonization which the 
 theorists of 1830 regarded with the same abhorrence 
 as all the world would feel of a proposal from France 
 to pour her convicts into England or Germany. And 
 
46 AWKWARD WORKMANSHIP. 
 
 lastly, whilst we could not deny that the new regula- 
 tions for the disposal of waste land and the promotion 
 of emigration, were founded on the principles of our 
 economical theory, we saw very distinctly that the 
 official method of giving effect to those principles was 
 really calculated to defeat them, and to prevent them 
 from obtaining public favour. Instead of being 
 pleased, therefore, we were much dissatisfied with the 
 awkward workmanship of Lord Howick and the Colo- 
 nial Office upon materials which we believed to de- 
 serve more careful and skilful handling. 
 
 We hoped indeed to encourage Lord Howick to im- 
 prove himself as a systematic colonizer ; and we there- 
 fore praised his awkward attempts; but we also 
 resolved to try and establish a fresh colony, in which 
 both our economical and political views should obtain 
 a fair trial. This determination led to the foundation 
 of South Australia. At that time the extensive 
 country now known by that name, was a nameless 
 desert, about which nothing was known by the public 
 or the government. Some information concerning its 
 natural features was with difficulty acquired by the 
 would-be colonizers, who now formed a plan for the 
 intended settlement, and at last, by dint of great 
 exertion for a long while, got together a body of 
 people disposed to embark their fortunes and persons 
 in the adventure. These, along with the colonizing 
 theorists, were at first encouraged by the Colonial 
 Office, which afterwards refused their only request for 
 a charter of organization. This refusal broke up and 
 scattered the first body of South- Australian colonists ; 
 many of whom, though till then without any turn for 
 politics, now joined the rebellious Political Unions of 
 
SOUTH-AUSTRALIAN PLAN. 47 
 
 the time, whilst others sailed for the United States, 
 where they have prospered, though they resemble 
 Irish Americans in their feelings towards England. 
 
 It was clear to us that the part of our South Aus- 
 tralian-plan to which the Colonial Office most objected, 
 was a provision for bestowing on the colonists a con- 
 siderable amount of local self-government. As we 
 could not move an inch without the sanction of that 
 Office, we now resolved to abandon the political part 
 of our scheme, in the hope of being enabled to realize 
 the economical part. The latter part of the scheme 
 was explained in a book,* the publication of which 
 enabled us to get together another body of colonists. 
 With these, however, and their theoretical prompters 
 and guides, the Colonial Office played as it had done 
 before, and as the angler plays with the fish on his 
 hook. We were at the last gasp, when the Principal 
 Secretary of State was succeeded by another, from 
 whom we managed, before he had set foot in Downing- 
 street, to obtain a sufficient promise, that the Colonial 
 Office should not prevent our measure, which required 
 an act of Parliament, from passing the two Houses. 
 Somehow or other, therefore, though not without 
 many a squeak for its life, we got the South- Australian 
 Bill into the House of Lords. A Prince of the Blood 
 asked, " Pray, where is this South Australia?" and 
 the Lord Chancellor, renowned for the surpassing ex- 
 tent and variety of his knowledge, answered, " Some- 
 where near Botany Bay." It will be supposed, that 
 in an assembly where the exhibition of such complete 
 indifference to colonial matters was thought nothing 
 
 * To which the publisher, in the author's absence from England, 
 took on himself to give the puffing title of England and America. 
 
48 DUKE OF WELLINGTON. 
 
 strange, our humble project would not be opposed at 
 any rate. Nevertheless, an apparently dangerous 
 opposition met us at the first step. For reasons that 
 will be made plainer further on, the Colonial Office 
 has always cordially disliked the interference with 
 their domain, the poaching on their manor, of the new 
 school of colonizers; and although on this occasion 
 the promise of their chief, luckily obtained before they 
 had any opportunity of setting him against us, dis- 
 abled them from openly thwarting us, they found 
 means of raising against us in the House of Lords an 
 active opposition, which threatened to prove fatal, 
 because, though it was confined to a few peers, not a 
 single one, except the proposer of the bill, had any 
 active good will towards our measure. The Ministers, 
 however bound by their colleague's promise of neu- 
 trality, would give us no assistance in either House; 
 and for a time, the loss of the bill in the House of 
 Lords seemed inevitable. In this extremity, one of 
 us thought of endeavouring to interest the Duke of 
 Wellington in our favour. He assiduously examined 
 our plan, came to the opinion that " the experiment 
 ought to be tried," and then, with a straight-forward 
 earnestness that belongs to his nature, and with a 
 prompt facility for which his great personal influence 
 accounts, lifted our poor measure over all obstacles. In 
 order to mark our gratitude to him, we intended, and 
 told him so, that the metropolis of the new colony 
 should bear his name ; but this intention was shabbily 
 frustrated by some whom I abstain from mentioning.* 
 
 * The leaders of the first settlement afterwards planted in New 
 Zealand were made aware of this circumstance, by the person who 
 had applied to the Duke of Wellington in the South-Australian case, 
 
SOUTH-AUSTRALIAN ACT. 49 
 
 The South-Australian Act, in the opinion of its 
 authors, was defective in many points, and contained 
 some vicious provisions. In order to get the Bill first 
 through Down ing- street, and then through the House 
 of Commons, we had curtailed it and added largely to 
 it against our will. We struck out this provision be- 
 cause it displeased somebody, altered another to con- 
 ciliate another person, and inserted a third because it 
 embodied somebody's crotchet. Upon the whole, at 
 last, our plan was so disfigured, that we should have 
 disowned it, if enough of the original stuff had not re- 
 mained to let us hope, that with very good execution, 
 the new principle of colonization would come well out 
 of the trial. This, therefore, was peculiarly one of 
 those cases in which everything depends, as in cases 
 of political experiment everything must necessarily 
 depend for a time, upon the suitableness of the execu- 
 tive hands. The South- Australian Act confided the 
 business of colonization apart from government to a 
 commission, the members of which were to be ap- 
 pointed by the Crown ; that is, by the Colonial Office. 
 The commissioners were not to be paid. It was a 
 grand point, therefore, to find three or four persons, 
 masters of the theory, willing to undertake the task, 
 and likely from their personal character to perform it 
 under a strong sense of honourable responsibility. 
 Such persons were found, but were not appointed. 
 Instead of four commissioners such as Mr. Woolryche 
 
 and who requested them, as a personal favour in return for much 
 exertion on their behalf, to give the name of Wellington to the spot 
 most likely to become the metropolis of the Britain of the South. 
 Hence Wellington on one side of Cook's Strait, Nelson being on the 
 other. 
 
50 COMMISSION OF AMATEURS. 
 
 Whitmore, Mr. William Hutt, Mr. Grote, and Mr. 
 Warde Norman, who consented to act, only one of 
 these gentlemen was appointed; and to him were 
 joined eight others, few of whom knew or cared 
 anything about the subject. As a whole, it was a 
 commission composed, begging their pardon, of igno- 
 rant and careless amateurs. I am bound to add, 
 that for this grievous mistake, the Colonial Office, 
 then under Lord Aberdeen, was not in the least to 
 blame. 
 
 Notwithstanding this grievous mistake, and nume- 
 rous mistakes into which the commissioners fell, the 
 plan worked even better than its authors now ex- 
 pected. A fine colony of people was sent out; and 
 for the first time the disposal of waste land, and the 
 emigration of shipfulls of labourers to the other side 
 of the world, was managed with something like system 
 and care. As respects the emigration of poor people 
 to Polynesia, the first large ship of the South- Austra- 
 lian Commission served as a model for all the subse- 
 quent proceedings of that kind : and from that day to 
 this, though it was then found difficult to persuade a 
 shipfull of poor labourers to embark for so distant a 
 part of the world, there have always been more appli- 
 cants of that class for a passage to the antipodes of 
 England, than funds wherewith to grant their peti- 
 tions. 
 
 It will be understood, however, that the theorists 
 of 1830 were far from being satisfied. In order to 
 promote attention to the subject, they obtained, in 
 1836, an inquiry by a Select Committee of the House 
 of Commons into their theory of colonization apart 
 from government. The Report of this Committee on 
 
NEW-ZEALAND ASSOCIATION OF 1837. 51 
 
 Colonial Lands and Emigration, (whose labours were 
 most ably conducted by Mr. Henry George Ward), 
 had a considerable effect in spreading a knowledge 
 of the subject. It also led Lord John Russell, in 
 pursuance of one of its recommendations, to appoint 
 a Commission of Colonial Lands and Emigration; 
 which, though a mockery of what a commission 
 bearing that title ought to be, has been of service, 
 through the recognition by the Crown of the prin- 
 ciple, that the disposal of waste land in the colonies, 
 and the superintendence of emigration, are functions 
 of government which it requires a special authority 
 to perform. I shall take an opportunity of explain- 
 ing somewhere why this Commission has not realized 
 the intentions with which we must presume that it 
 was created. 
 
 One of the members of Mr. Ward's Committee was 
 Mr. Francis Baring, then and now M.P. for Thetford. 
 The inquiry induced him to lead the theorists of 1830 
 in forming the New-Zealand Association of 1837; and 
 this association founded the company and the colony, 
 whose battles with the Colonial Office have since, more 
 than anything else, helped to form the present state of 
 public opinion upon the subjects of colonization and 
 the government of dependencies by the Colonial Office. 
 
 When the New-Zealand controversy began, the 
 efforts of the colonizers of 1830 had been principally 
 directed to matters relating to their views on coloni- 
 zation apart from government. In 1838, the rebel- 
 lions in Canada gave them an opportunity of pro- 
 moting the realization of some of their opinions on 
 colonial government, One of them was the Chief 
 Secretary in Lord Durham's mission; and another 
 
 E 2 
 
52 THE COLONIAL GAZETTE. 
 
 took a part in it, which was to some extent described 
 in a despatch from Lord Durham to Lord Glenelg, 
 since " mislaid " by the Colonial Office. Hence, the 
 much agitated question of " responsible government 
 for colonies," with which even the British public was 
 for a time made almost familiar by Lord Durham's 
 Report and other writings of a similar tenour. 
 Amongst these, one of the most efficient was a news- 
 paper entitled the Colonial Gazette, which was esta- 
 blished, and was for some years carried on, by members 
 of the Colonization Society of 1830. This journal exer- 
 cised an influence very much greater than its circula- 
 tion. In consequence of the smallness of the demand 
 for such a publication in the mother-country, and the 
 very small sale for it in the colonies, because the local 
 newspapers, one and all, reprinted its contents, it 
 could not be carried on without a loss of money, and 
 was finally abandoned on that account : but whilst it 
 lasted, it may be said to have had more influence 
 than the Colonial Office on the government of Canada : 
 it produced important changes of opinion in the West 
 Indies upon both economical and political questions : 
 it originated in many colonies an ardent longing for 
 self-government: above all, it continually applied a 
 stimulating goad to the sluggish Colonial Office, which 
 it thus urged into the performance of some good, 
 besides stripping and exposing it to the public gaze. 
 
 Leading members of the Colonial Office never miss 
 an opportunity of saying, that every labour of the 
 new school of colonizers has proved a failure. There 
 is a great deal of truth in the assertion ; but it is not 
 quite true. A comparison of failure and success 
 would exhibit a large balance of failure; but the 
 
SUCCESSES OF THE NEW SCHOOL. 53 
 
 success is not quite despicable. Two important 
 colonies South Australia and New Zealand have 
 been founded by the hands of the theorists of 1830. 
 The prosperity of a third, Port Philip or Australia 
 Felix, has been wholly derived from a realization, how- 
 ever defective, of their economical theory. The sale 
 of waste land in the Southern colonies has produced 
 about three millions of money, which used, though 
 but in part, as an emigration fund, have carried out to 
 that part of the world a large proportion of its present 
 white population exclusive of convicts. The great 
 evil of Clergy Reserves in Canada has been abated. 
 In all the British-American colonies, but especially 
 Canada, the inhabitants have acquired a great deal 
 more of local government, and of the reality of free 
 institutions, than they ever possessed before. In the 
 West Indies, the causes of economical stagnation and 
 ruin, as well as of want of government and of political 
 disturbance, have been made familiar to the colonists. 
 Exertions, commenced by Archbishop Whately, for the 
 purpose of getting convict colonization abolished, were 
 vigorously followed up for a time by members of the 
 new school of colonizers, led by Sir William Molesworth, 
 and have never been entirely relaxed: and those 
 labours have at least had the effect of shaking the 
 abomination, by forcing the Colonial Office to make 
 change after change in it; changes which only more 
 fully show the impossibility of reforming it ; the abso- 
 lute necessity of abolishing it with a view to prosperous 
 colonization in the South. Lastly, our success has 
 been considerable in a matter which, on account of its 
 novelty and importance, deserves separate consideration. 
 When the theorists of 1830 had been some time en- 
 
54 EPISCOPACY 
 
 gaged in the business of colonization, they discovered, 
 and some of them became deeply convinced, that it 
 cannot be done satisfactorily, still less as well as pos- 
 sible, without ample provisions of a religious nature. 
 I shall have to dwell at length on this point hereafter. 
 Here it is only needful to state, that we managed to 
 give some effect to our opinions by proceedings which 
 I will briefly describe. 
 
 Episcopacy is surely an essential attribute of the 
 Church of England. Until the Association was 
 formed which made New Zealand a British colony, 
 nobody had proposed to establish bishoprics in new 
 settlements: it was only in old colonies, which had 
 made considerable progress in population, and in 
 which most of the settlers had become Dissenters 
 either from the Church of England or from all re- 
 ligion, that bishops had hitherto been appointed. We 
 asked for a bishop for the first settlement in New Zea- 
 land. Everybody laughed at us. We could obtain 
 hardly any serious attention to our proposal. The 
 Colonial Office, which hated our whole proceedings, 
 sneered at the episcopal scheme, and at us for making 
 it, all the more openly because the public, so far as 
 the public thought at all about the matter, supported 
 the gentlemen of Downing- street in treating us as 
 visionary enthusiasts. On account of our scheme of 
 a bishopric, the newspapers turned us into ridicule ; 
 public men of mark refused us their support generally ; 
 and even leading members of the Society for the Pro- 
 pagation of the Gospel, with the Bishop of London at 
 their head, thought our proposal absurdly imprac- 
 ticable. We persevered, however. At length one of us, 
 Dr. Hinds, the present Dean of Carlisle, converted the 
 
FOR NEW SETTLEMENTS. 55 
 
 late Archbishop of Canterbury to our view. By degrees 
 the suggestion made way in high quarters, and became 
 the parent of the bishoprics of Tasmania, South Aus- 
 tralia, South Africa, Australia Felix, &c., &c. I hear 
 you say, Well and what has come of it as respects the 
 improvement of colonization? Little or nothingper - 
 tainly as yet : but I think that a foundation of much 
 good has been laid. When I shall come to the argu- 
 ments by which we recommended episcopacy for infant 
 settlements, you will perceive why colonization has not 
 yet been much improved by the institution of these 
 bishoprics. But these arguments had a considerable 
 effect on opinion in this country. We took care to 
 sow them about in all directions, with a view to that 
 result, as well as to our immediate object. They took 
 strong root in many quarters. I have watched the 
 growth of the plants : the harvest time is not yet come : 
 but even at present there is a promising crop in the 
 new and lively, though too vague interest in the sub- 
 ject of colonization, which is now taken by the clergy of 
 the Church of England, and by laymen who peculiarly 
 sympathize with them. It is amongst religious church- 
 men, both lay and clerical, that this novel interest is 
 most felt. This is a very important improvement in 
 the state of opinion on the subject of colonization : 
 how and why important, will be made plain when 1 
 shall come to the arguments for religious provisions 
 in the very founding of colonies, in the spread of which 
 the change of opinion took its origin. 
 
 But it was not by addressing himself to English 
 churchmen only, that the author of the New-Zealand 
 bishopric persuaded men of various religious denomi- 
 nations to assist him in compelling the Colonial 
 
56 RELIGIOUS PROVISIONS. 
 
 Office to adopt the principle of episcopacy for the 
 Church of England in new settlements: by general 
 arguments in favour of religious provisions for 
 colonists of whatever denomination, he induced not 
 only Roman Catholics, Scotch Presbyterians, and 
 Dissenters, but also men of the world who had formerly 
 ignored the vast influence of religion in politics, and 
 who at first pooh-poohed his suggestions, to co-operate 
 with English churchmen in the endeavour to make 
 religious provisions for every body a part of the business 
 of colonization. Accordingly, as a colonizing body, 
 composed, like the legislature, of people differing in 
 creed, we determined to assist all denominations of 
 settlers alike, with respect to religious provisions. We 
 have assisted Roman Catholics according to their 
 numbers, and the Church of Scotland on the same 
 principle. In founding the settlement of Otago, we 
 have intimately co-operated with the General Assembly 
 of the Free Church of Scotland, for whose emigrating 
 members this spot has been adapted by special provisions 
 for religion and education according to their tenets; 
 and we are co-operating with the Canterbury Associa- 
 tion, the names of whose members I inclose.* Amongst 
 
 
 * The Archbishop of Canterbury, President. 
 
 The Archbishop of Dublin. 
 The Duke of Buccleugh. 
 The Marquis of Cholmondeley. 
 The Earl of Ellesmere. 
 The Earl of Harewood. 
 The Earl of Lincoln, M.P. 
 Viscount Mandeville, M.P. 
 The Bishop of London. 
 The Bishop of Winchester. 
 The Bishop of Exeter. 
 The Bishop of Ripon. 
 The Bishop of St. David's. 
 
 The Bishop of Oxford. 
 
 Bishop Coleridge. 
 
 Viscount Alford, M.P. 
 
 Lord Ashburton. 
 
 Lord Lyttelton. 
 
 Lord Ashley, M.P. 
 
 Lord Courtenay, M.P. 
 
 Lord A. Hervey, M.P. 
 
 Lord J. Manners. 
 
 Sir Walter Farquhar, Bart. 
 
 Sir Wm. Heathcote Bart., M.P. 
 
 Sir Win. James. Bart. 
 
JEWS OF ENGLAND. 57 
 
 us, thus aiding English bishops to found a Church-of- 
 England settlement, there is an eminent and very 
 religious Jew : which may not surprise you on learn- 
 ing, that he did not join us till our principle of strict 
 equality as respects religious provisions for all sorts of 
 colonists, had been manifested to his people by a 
 circumstance, which, though trifling in itself, is a good 
 illustration of the principle. Among the first 
 emigrants to New Zealand were some Jews, who 
 asked us " with bated breath and whispering humble- 
 ness," if a priest authorized to kill animals for meat 
 according to Jewish custom, could have accommoda- 
 tion in their ship. We treated their inquiry as a 
 request, and granted it with alacrity, taking care 
 besides that every arrangement should be made to 
 satisfy their religious scruples. The Jews of England 
 have since done the New-Zealand Company's settle- 
 ments more than one service; and if they were an 
 emigrating class, many of them would have been 
 attracted thither. But how powerfully religious 
 provisions for emigrants tend to promote colonization, 
 is a question into which I must not enter here. In 
 
 Sir Willoughby Jones, Bart. 
 Right Hon. H. Goulbourn, M.P. 
 Right Hon. Sidney Herbert, M.P. 
 Hon. Sir Edward Cust, K.C.H. 
 The Dean of Canterbury. 
 C. B. Adderly, Esq., M.P. 
 W. H. Pole Carew, Esq., M.P. 
 Hon. R. Cavendish. 
 Hon. F. Charteris, M.P. 
 Thos. Somers Cocks, Esq., M.P. 
 Rev. E. Coleridge. 
 W. Forsythe, Esq. 
 Rev. G. R. Gleig. 
 
 Edmund Halswell, Esq. 
 
 Ven. Archdeacon Hare. 
 
 Rev. E. Hawkins. 
 
 Rev. Dr. Hinds. 
 
 Rev. Dr. Hook. 
 
 John Hutt, Esq. 
 
 G. K. Richards, Esq. 
 
 J. Simeon, Esq., M.P. 
 
 A. Stafford, Esq., M.P. 
 
 Hon. J. Talbot. 
 
 Rev. C. M. Torlesse. 
 
 Rev. R, C. French. 
 
 E. Jerningham Wakefield, Esq. 
 
 J. R. Godley, Esq. Ven. Archdeacon Wilberforce. 
 
58 FAILURES OF THE THEORISTS. 
 
 this place, I will only say further, that our small 
 doings in this matter are an example which a really 
 colonizing legislature would not despise. 
 
 On the other hand, it must be admitted, that not 
 one of the objects of the theorists of 1830 has been 
 fully accomplished. South Australia, as an experiment 
 of their economical theory, has rather failed than 
 succeeded : the experiment did not attain the success 
 of being fairly tried. In New South Wales, the ex- 
 periment, as such, has been little more than a make- 
 believe, whilst it has proved very injurious to the 
 colonists in another point of view. New Zealand 
 altogether, as respects both colonization and govern- 
 ment, is a miserable mess. There is no part of the 
 colonial empire of Britain, no portion of the colonizing 
 proceedings of the mother-country apart from govern- 
 ment, still less any instance of colonial government, 
 which the theorists of 1830 can regard without dis- 
 appointment and regret. The only aspect of the 
 subject that is agreeable to them, is the present state 
 of opinion both at home and in the colonies. Every- 
 where in the British Empire, they find ideas about 
 colonization prevailing, and a lively interest in it, 
 which twenty years ago were exclusively their own ; 
 and when they trace the birth and progress of 
 these opinions to their own exertions, they almost 
 forget the painful disappointments which they have 
 suffered, in the hope that the time is now not distant 
 when their conceptions may at length be realized. 
 
 It would be affectation to pretend, that in the 
 labours of the theorists of 1830, I have had any but 
 the principal share. Whilst thus claiming my own 
 for the first time, I long to dwell on the more brilliant 
 efforts, and the public-spirited sacrifices of time, 
 
THE SPECTATOR NEWSPAPER. 59 
 
 money, and comfort, which others have made in the 
 endeavour to colonize in spite of the Colonial Office : 
 above all, I would speak of the generous sympathy 
 and aid, by which many have laid me under deep 
 personal obligation : but these topics alone would fill a 
 long letter, and I have no right to intrude them on you. 
 I will therefore pass on, after saying, however, that 
 by far the heaviest of my debts of gratitude is due to 
 the proprietor and editor of The Spectator news- 
 paper. You have not to learn what the influence 
 of that journal has been during its disinterested 
 labours of near twenty years in the cause of colonial 
 reform and systematic colonization, 
 
 I however entirely agree with you, that the pre- 
 sent ideas about colonization consist for the most 
 part of mere aspiration; of opinions concerning aims 
 or objects, with but little regard to the means of 
 accomplishment. Opinion of the most enlightened 
 and respectable order in the mother-country knows 
 what it thinks ought to be, wishes for large and defi- 
 nite result, dislikes and despises what has been and 
 what is, [but is still in the dark with respect to the 
 mode of setting about the realization of its wishes^] In 
 the colonies, ideas with respect to means are some- 
 what better defined ; for there, opinion generally longs 
 for a permanent supply of labour as the indispen- 
 sable means of economical prosperity, and for local 
 self-government as the sine qud non of a tolerable 
 colonial existence. Whether the colonists are right 
 in these views, is a point upon which opinion at home 
 is in a state not merely of doubt, but of what the late 
 Mr. Thomas Peregrine Courtenay called, being like a 
 sheet of white paper. It is to opinion at home, there- 
 fore, that you must address yourself in Parliament. 
 
60 DISPERSED THOUGHTS. 
 
 In the endeavour to assist you, it will not be in my 
 power to do more than repeat what others as well as 
 myself, theorists of 1830, or subsequent converts to 
 our opinions, have already written or spoken. The 
 exposition of our theory (let me call it so once more) 
 is scattered about in a great variety of publications. 
 These are books, blue-books, pamphlets, reports of 
 speeches in Parliament and elsewhere, and many 
 newspapers published in different places. But most 
 of them are forgotten, as you have forgotten Charles 
 Buller's speech ; still more are out of print, and dif- 
 ficult of access. My object, therefore, will be to col- 
 lect these dispersed thoughts, and lay them before you 
 with such corrections and additions as the most recent 
 experience has suggested. Your remarks from time 
 to time, especially with the aid of Mr. Mothercoun- 
 try's objections and great information, will probably 
 suggest other improvements, besides correcting errors. 
 The order of our inquiry remains to be pointed out 
 by you. 
 
 LETTER X. 
 From the Statesman. 
 
 THE STATESMAN DIVIDES THE SUBJECT INTO FOUR MAIN 
 PARTS, AND INDICATES THE ORDER OF INQUIRY. 
 
 f AM now sufficiently interested at least, to have a 
 -- conception of the order in which I should like our 
 investigation to proceed. In describing it, I must 
 recur to thoughts and expressions which you have 
 adopted from my previous letters. 
 
DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT. 61 
 
 It strikes me that the distinction which terms colo- 
 nization an art rather than a science, is not pedantic, 
 but highly useful. Colonization, as I have said before, 
 is something to be done, not merely something to be 
 known; and a knowledge of it consists of knowing 
 how to do something. In colonization, as in watch- 
 making or navigation, the doing has certain results in 
 view. In order to learn how these objects may be 
 best secured, they must be clearly ascertained before 
 the means of securing them are considered: for, of 
 course, when there is something to be done, the 
 character of the means depends altogether on the 
 character of the objects. Our first topic, therefore, is 
 the objects of a systematic colonization. I wish to 
 learn what you think our colonization ought to be, as 
 respects the objects of the mother-country. 
 
 This question being disposed of, I think that we 
 should do well to compare our aspirations with the 
 present state of things. Our second step, therefore, 
 should be to examine colonization as it is. 
 
 Since we are sure to be dissatisfied with colonization 
 as it is, and since, in order to improve it, a knowledge 
 of the causes of its actual state is indispensable, but 
 more especially of the causes of what is most objection- 
 able in it, I would propose that our third step should 
 be to examine colonization with a view of determining 
 why it is what it is. 
 
 This done, we shall be in a condition to work with 
 effect at the more practical, I would call it, the plan- 
 ning part of our task, by considering colonization for 
 the purpose of learning how to make it what it ought 
 to be. 
 
 To recapitulate : we should divide colonization, as a 
 subject of inquiry, into four parts. 
 
62 OKDER OF INQUIRY. 
 
 1. What it ought to be, as respects the objects of 
 the mother-country. 
 
 2. What it is; or the points in which our coloniza- 
 tion differs from what it ought to be. 
 
 3. Why it is what it is; or the causes of the above 
 difference. 
 
 4. How to make it what it ought to be; or the 
 means of attaining the desired objects. 
 
 LETTER XL 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 THE COLONIST PROPOSES A FURTHER DIVISION OF THE 
 SUBJECT, AND SETTLES THE ORDER OF INQUIRY. 
 
 I CORDIALLY adopt the suggested division of our 
 subject, but would propose that we divide it 
 further into two distinct parts, into which, indeed, the 
 nature of things has divided it. This separation, 
 however clear to the mind, cannot be described in a 
 sentence, nor neatly at all by words, in consequence 
 of the unfortunate title given to Political Economy. 
 
 The politics of a colony that is, all things relating 
 to colonial government as there is government in an 
 old country are totally distinct from the economy of 
 a colony that is, all things relating only to immigra- 
 tion and the disposal and settlement of waste land 
 which are matters pertaining to colonies. This marked 
 separation in fact would I think be usefully observed 
 in dealing with each of your four divisions, though 
 
FURTHER DIVISION PROPOSED. 63 
 
 less completely with regard to some of them than to 
 others. I would suggest, therefore, that in treating of 
 what British colonization ought to be, what it is, why 
 it is what it is, and how to make it what it ought to 
 be, we more or less separate considerations relating to 
 politics from those relating to economy. 
 
 This separation might be the least complete in the 
 first branch of the subject ; because, though the objects 
 of the mother-country in colonization are both eco- 
 nomical and political, the two classes are so far blended 
 in fact, and dependent on each other, that they may 
 be examined at the same time without confusion, but 
 with a due regard to the difference between them. In 
 the other three divisions, which relate almost exclu- 
 sively to the colonies, and in which we have to deal 
 with the unaccustomed elements of waste land, im- 
 migration, and settlement, the separation between 
 economy and politics should be more complete, though 
 not equally so as to all of them. The most con- 
 venient course, as it strikes me, would be, after entirely 
 disposing of the objects, to examine colonization as it 
 is both economically and politically. Under this head 
 would come all the impediments to a colonization 
 sufficient for the objects of the mother-country. I 
 would then proceed to the causes of the political im- 
 pediments, and go on to the means of removing them 
 by a reform of colonial government. Lastly, the causes 
 of economical impediments should be considered, with 
 a view to their removal by means of a plan of coloni- 
 zation apart from government, which would conclude 
 our work. 
 
 If you do not write objecting to this arrangement, 
 I shall suppose that you approve of it, and shall pro- 
 ceed at once to the objects of colonization. 
 
64 
 
 LETTER XII. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 DIFFERENT OBJECTS OF COLONIZATION FOR DIFFERENT 
 
 PARTS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM. WANT OF ROOM 
 
 FOR ALL CLASSES A CIRCUMSTANCE BY WHICH GREAT 
 BRITAIN IS DISTINGUISHED FROM OTHER COUNTRIES. 
 
 COMPETITION AMONGST THE LABOURING CLASS A 
 
 MOMENTOUS QUESTION. INFLUENCE OF ECONOMICAL 
 
 CIRCUMSTANCES IN POLITICAL REVOLUTIONS. 
 
 IN order to determine the objects of this United 
 Kingdom in promoting colonization, it seeins ne- 
 cessary to mark the different circumstances of different 
 parts of the country. The economical and political 
 circumstances of Ireland on the one hand, are so dif- 
 ferent from those of Great Britain on the other, that 
 like effects might not be produced in both countries 
 by the going forth of people and capital to plant or 
 extend colonies; and if so, colonization would be un- 
 dertaken with different objects for Ireland from those 
 which would be had in view for England and Scotland. 
 For example, it is certain that Ireland cannot spare 
 any capital, although in Great Britain, on the con- 
 trary, capital sometimes accumulates so far beyond 
 the room for productive investment, that a great mass 
 of capital is wasted, both at home and abroad, in all 
 
OBJECTS OF COLONIZATION. 65 
 
 sorts of unproductive enterprises. For Great Britair 
 accordingly, but not for Ireland, it may be an object 
 of colonization to provide a productive field of em- 
 ployment for superabundant capital. This example 
 will suffice to explain why I propose to consider how 
 Great Britain might be affected by colonization, sepa- 
 rately from the question of how Ireland might be 
 affected by it. 
 
 There is a general circumstance, comprising many 
 particulars, by which Great Britain is at present dis- 
 tinguished from all other countries. That circum- 
 stance may be termed a want of room for people of all 
 classes. The peculiarity consists, not in mere want of 
 room, for that is felt by some classes in old countries 
 generally, but in the extension of the want to all 
 classes. In Ireland there is a want of room for the 
 poor, but plenty of room for capitalists if they could 
 be got to go or to grow there : in France there is a 
 remarkable want of room for the literary class, though 
 not for capitalists, who would be far more numerous 
 without hurtful crowding if there were more security 
 against revolutions : in Russia, where trade is despised 
 by the nobility, there is a great want of room for 
 cadets of that class ; whilst if capital were more abun- 
 dant, there would be plenty of room for more people 
 of the labouring class, or else waste land would not 
 abound, and slavery would not continue : but in Great 
 Britain all classes suffer from the want of room; the 
 labourers, the small and great capitalists, the pro- 
 fessional classes, and even the landed and monied 
 aristocracy, who are yet more puzzled than other 
 people to know what to do with their younger sons 
 and their daughters. 
 
66 COMPETITION OF LABOUK. 
 
 By a want of room, I mean a want of the means of 
 a comfortable subsistence according to the respective 
 standards of living established amongst the classes, 
 and obviously arising from the competition of the 
 members of each class with one another. Whatever 
 the fund for the maintenance of any of the classes, it 
 is divided amongst too many people; there are too 
 many competitors for a limited fund of enjoyment. It 
 may be said that the fund is too small, not the com- 
 petitors too many; but, take it either way, whether 
 we say that the competitors are too many or the fund 
 is too small, there is a want of room. At all events, 
 there are too many competitors in proportion to the 
 fund ; there is actually a want of room ; and the im- 
 mediate cause of it is over-crowding. 
 
 The hurtful competition of labourers with each 
 other is an old story amongst political thinkers ; that 
 of the other classes had not been noticed till it was 
 pointed out by the colonizing theorists of 1830. In- 
 deed it was then a new circumstance in our political 
 economy, having grown up from 1815, with the cessa- 
 tion of war, which promoted a rapid increase of capital ; 
 with the improvement and spread of education, which 
 augmented the numbers of the educated classes; and 
 with the diminution of public expenditure, which cut 
 down the fund for the maintenance of the children of 
 the gentry. Since 1830, this competition of capital 
 with Capital, of education with education, and of place- 
 hunting with place-hunting, has been continually on 
 the increase. It has at length, along with the com- 
 petition of labour with labour, produced a state of 
 things which requires some notice in detail. 
 
 I am not going to harp upon the well-worn string 
 
AN INSTRUCTIVE " FOOLOMETER." G7 
 
 of the labourers' competition: the topic is too stale 
 and familiar. But some features of this competition 
 are peculiar to Great Britain, and others are new even 
 there. These I will briefly notice. 
 
 In Great Britain, far more than in any other part 
 of the world, the labourers 7 competition is a momen- 
 tous question : and the reason for this is, that in con- 
 sequence, partly of the growth of manufacturers, and 
 partly of the decrease of small proprietorship in land 
 and small land-holdings amongst tenants, there is now 
 in Great Britain a larger proportion of labourers for hire 
 of people whose subsistence depends wholly on wages 
 than in any other part of the world: in Great 
 Britain, though nowhere else, I rather think, labourers 
 for hire do constitute the bulk of the people. 
 
 In the next place, the bulk of the people in this 
 country has been taught to read. It is the fashion to 
 praise this so-called education, and to insist that all 
 sorts of good will grow out of it. I hope so : I think 
 so : but I must be allowed to add that the good has 
 hardly yet begun to grow. Thus far, the education 
 of the common people has not improved their lot ; it 
 has only made them discontented with it. The pre- 
 sent fruits of popular education in this country are 
 chartism and socialism. 
 
 There is a tradesman in the Strand, who was a 
 special constable on the 10th of last April, and who 
 has no doubt that chartism and socialism were put 
 down for ever on that day. I mention him as an 
 instructive " foolometer:" his opinion is common 
 enough amongst very dull people of the middle and 
 highest classes. Others know that chartism and 
 socialism were not rampant on that day, but only a 
 
 F 2 
 
68 CHARTISM AND SOCIALISM. 
 
 pretence of chartist agitation by a few scatter-brained 
 English busy-bodies, and some Milesian-Irish settlers 
 in Liverpool, Manchester, and London. Chartism, 
 and still more socialism, are not yet ripe: but they 
 are growing apace: and they present, I think, some 
 fearful dangers in the prospect. 
 
 I look upon chartism and socialism as representa- 
 tives of discontent. The honest chartists and socialists 
 (not meaning thereby any of the rogues who trade in 
 the discontent of the working class) are people of the 
 working class, who have got more education than the 
 rest. All those of the working class who are the 
 best educated that is, who know most who in 
 stolid ignorance least resemble the bulk of the pea- 
 santry are not indeed chartists and socialists; but 
 chartists and socialists are mainly composed of that 
 class ; and I cannot help expecting that as education 
 spreads as the dullest of the common people become 
 more knowing chartism and socialism will spread 
 likewise, and in the same proportion. If so, in the 
 end, chartism and socialism will be able to disturb the 
 peace of this country. I do not pretend that either 
 is likely to triumph for a long while yet : ages hence 
 perhaps, both will have triumphed; chartism first, 
 then some kind of socialism : but it seems plain to my 
 apprehension, that with the continuance of discontent 
 and the spread of education amongst the common 
 people, chartism and socialism will have many a 
 struggle for the mastery over a restricted franchise and 
 private property: and in these struggles I perceive 
 immense danger for everybody. 
 
 Political disturbance is the form in which these 
 struggles would appear. Now, I say that this country 
 
CURRENCY AND CREDIT. 69 
 
 i- less capable than any other in the world is, or ever 
 . of undergoing great political disturbance without 
 mortal injury. The nature of the injury and the pro- 
 bability of its occurrence depend upon certain pecu- 
 liarities in our condition. 
 
 There is not, and probably never was, a country in 
 which credit played so important a part as it does now 
 in Great Britain. In this country alone among the 
 more populous nations, have barter and payment of 
 wages in kind entirely ceased. All transactions are 
 carried on by money of one sort or other. Of the 
 money, the currency of which does not depend upon 
 credit that is, the precious metals, which owe none 
 of their value to credit there does not and cannot 
 exist more than enough for carrying on a very small 
 proportion of the transactions, by means of which the 
 whole nation is fed and society held together. The 
 rest of the money, composed of bank-notes, bills of ex- 
 change, book-debts, credits, and all kinds of securities 
 or engagements to pay something, owes its cur- 
 rency entirely to credit. Overturn, or only shake 
 the belief, that the promises will be kept, and you 
 thoroughly destroy the value of this credit money. 
 Xow the belief, that the promises to pay, which con- 
 stitute the great bulk of our money, will be kept, 
 depends altogether on the preservation of political 
 order; if there were political disturbance enough to 
 cause a general and serious doubt of the steady exe- 
 cution of the laws, credit would cease : and if credit 
 ceased in this country, what would happen? 
 
 Bank-notes would not pass; sovereigns would be 
 hoarded ; there would be no buying and selling. Such 
 a -rate of things could not last long anywhere. If it 
 
70 EFFECT OF SHAKING CREDIT. 
 
 lasted in a country like France, or Ireland, or one of 
 the United States of America, where the bulk of the 
 people live upon the land and have food under their 
 hands, means might be found to feed the town popu- 
 lation. In such a case, the town population might be 
 fed by the government, because it bears so small a 
 proportion to the rural population. But in Great 
 Britain the rural population, which can always feed 
 itself in case of extremity, bears a small proportion to 
 the town population : in Great Britain so large a ma- 
 jority of the people live in towns, and are totally 
 dependent on credit for their daily bread, that poli- 
 tical disorders which should destroy credit, would 
 inevitably occasion famine in our towns. If credit 
 ceased, the town markets would be bare of food; and 
 we should have great masses of people in a state of 
 hunger and starvation. This would surely increase 
 the political disturbance. Whatever course events 
 might then take, there would be a high probability, to 
 say the least, of the ruin of our country. 
 
 There is a great gap in the history of the French Re- 
 volution, which may perhaps be yet filled up. Through- 
 out that history one meets with indications of an all-im- 
 portant influence on events arising from purely econo- 
 mical circumstances, and especially from those relating 
 to the supply of food in towns. One sees, for example, 
 that the bloody fury of the reign of terror may have 
 been a lunacy of the populace occasioned by the mad- 
 dening horrors of famine, and caught or simulated by 
 the demagogues. But these incidental glimpses of 
 the truth are very unsatisfactory. We want a distinct 
 and full account of the political economy of the French 
 Revolution. To France just now it would be a book 
 
A GAP IN HISTORY. 71 
 
 ot inestimable value: I cannot help thinking that it 
 would bring the minds of our statesmen to reflect on 
 national dangers, which they now seldom heed because 
 the ugly prospect is too indistinct, the danger too far 
 off, to be remembered except under the pressure of 
 immediate uneasiness occasioned by some passing 
 aspect of chartism and socialism. Without the in- 
 struction of such a history, however, we may surely 
 see enough in this country for arriving at these two 
 conclusions; that the singular state of our political 
 economy renders us peculiarly liable to injury from 
 merely political disturbance ; and that it is well worth 
 while to try colonization, or anything that affords a 
 chance of reducing that competition amongst the work- 
 ing classes which is the cause of their political discon- 
 tent. If other motives are required for inducing us 
 to adopt some practical solution of the " condition-of- 
 England question,' 7 they are plentifully furnished by 
 the present state of Europe, and in particular by the 
 infectious character of the communist and socialist 
 agitation in France and Germany. 
 
 Whether colonization would have the desired effect, 
 can only be finally determined by an attempt to make 
 it do so : but the mere attempt, if set about in the 
 spirit that actuates such men as Lord Ashley, and 
 that formed the unceasing public motive of the late 
 Mr. Walter, would go a long way towards softening 
 the hearts of the common people, and inducing them 
 to bear their lot with patience. Do you doubt that 
 Mr. Walter's battling for the rights of paupers, and 
 Lord Ashley's agitation of the Ten Hours factory 
 question, had a conservative effect upon the popular 
 mind? I feel as sure of it, as that the Parliamentary- 
 
72 MIDDLE-CLASS 
 
 Fare law and Rowland Hill's Penny Postage had far 
 more to do with keeping the peace of the country 011 
 the 10th of April last, than all Sir George Grey's 
 special constables, and all the Duke of Wellington's 
 excellent precautions. If the classes who alone wield 
 political power according to law, cannot always serve 
 the people by legislation, they can at least show that 
 they would if they could : and the oftener they do this, 
 the more, we may rely upon it, the common people 
 will take the will for the deed. 
 
 LETTER XIII. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 COMPETITION FOR EOOM IN THE BANKS ABOVE THE LA- 
 BOURING CLASS. THE ANXIOUS CLASSES. WOMEN IN 
 
 THE ANXIOUS CLASSES. HOARDING, SPECULATION, 
 
 WASTE, AND THE SPIRIT OF THE GAMBLER. 
 
 THE competition of the other classes, apart from 
 that of the labourers, is as obvious as theirs, and, 
 like the large proportion which labourers for hire bear 
 to the other classes, as peculiar to the condition of 
 Great Britain. If it is not so obviously dangerous, 
 we may yet believe that it is an element of political 
 danger : for it is a competition even more distressing 
 to behold than that of the labourers, because the other 
 classes feel more acutely than the common people, the 
 uneasiness and anxiety arising from excessive com- 
 petition. Thus we have considerable numbers capable 
 
AGITATION. 73 
 
 of exerting the power which knowledge gives, who 
 are dissatisfied with their lot, and prone to attribute its 
 evils to the actual order of things political. It was 
 this sort of discontent that induced the middle classes 
 to join heartily in the agitation for the Reform Bill : 
 a like discontent amongst the section of them who live 
 
 o 
 
 in large towns, formed the Anti-Corn-Law League, 
 and would have led to most dangerous political agita- 
 tion if Sir Robert Peel's practical conservatism had 
 not been there to avert it : and, notwithstanding the 
 present calm in our politics, occasioned in some mea- 
 sure by exhaustion, and the breaking up of parties 
 after the Corn- Law struggle, though probably more by 
 late events in Europe, which naturally indispose our 
 middle classes to political agitation, there are symptoms 
 of restlessness and a vague longing for change, which 
 indicate that another storm may not be very distant. 
 It is true that agitation raised by the middle class 
 alone, however it carried along with it men of the 
 highest class actuated by motives of party rivalry and 
 personal ambition (as always happens when agitation 
 is seen to be real), would only be dangerous if it did 
 not accomplish its object : it is a kind of agitation that 
 may be bought off by concessions : but on the other 
 hand, concessions as such, only whet the appetite for 
 more; the tendency of all our concessions is towards 
 democracy ; and there is always a risk that concession 
 to middle-class agitation may not be made in time to 
 prevent the middle and the working classes from com- 
 bining in a greater agitation, which, in the present 
 state of this country, might easily prove a revolution. 
 But there is a less selfish point of view than that of 
 political eon*.TViitism, in which competition in the 
 
74 COMPETITION : 
 
 classes above the common people has lately obtained 
 the notice of conservative statesmen. The misery and 
 vice of the bulk of the people, as produced by this 
 competition with each other, is a stale topic, by dwell- 
 ing on which in the House of Commons you might 
 only weary your audience : but a fervent sympathy 
 would attend you there and " out of doors" if you 
 painted a true picture of the misery and corruption 
 of the other classes as arising from excessive com- 
 petition. What class does this competition not affect 
 painfully and corruptingly ?. One only; those alone 
 who are in the actual enjoyment of incomes derived 
 from property and equal to their reasonable wants. 
 If the income is not derived from property transmis- 
 sible after death, there is extreme anxiety for the 
 future welfare of children: and, in most cases, how- 
 ever large the transmissible property may be, the 
 custom of primogeniture by means of settlement and 
 will, places the daughters and younger sons amongst 
 the uneasy class. Speaking generally, then, the class 
 which alone does not suffer from competition, is a 
 very small one. The others are always suffering from 
 it in a variety of forms, as great as the variety of their 
 positions in the community and modes of subsistence. 
 In every kind of trade, from the banker's to the cos- 
 termonger's, the complaint is that there are too many 
 dealers : but in truth there is too much capital, as is 
 manifested in the banker's trade by the low rate of 
 interest occasioned by the competition of capital with 
 capital in the money market. In the professions, one 
 and all, the same competition prevails, but manifested 
 here by the excess of qualified numbers snatching the 
 bread out of each others' mouths. All trades and 
 
ITS EFFECTS UPON ALL CLASSES. 75 
 
 professions being full to overflowing, the risk of enter- 
 ing either career is very great; and thus the com- 
 petition for employment in the public service, where 
 there is no risk after gaining the object, is even more 
 severe than in commerce, law, and physic. But all 
 this relates only to one sex. With regard to the other, 
 the mention of one fact will suffice for that mere in- 
 dication of the symptoms of excessive competition in 
 all ranks of the middle class, which alone I pretend to 
 submit to you. Assuredly there is not in the world 
 a community, in which the proportion of women past 
 the marriageable age, but condemned to forego the 
 joys of marriage and maternity, is as large as in this 
 country at this time. Was there ever a country in 
 which grown-up unmarried women were as numerous 
 in proportion to the married? In this respect, Great 
 Britain differs from all other countries at all times, 
 and, surpassing those countries in which the institution 
 of nunneries has most flourished, [is the greatest and 
 the saddest convent that the world has seenT] I say 
 nothing of the monastic life of the unmarried men, 
 who, if there were as much room here as in America, 
 would be the husbands of our countless miserable nuns. 
 The unhappiness ! the vice ! These topics, you will 
 excuse me for saying, would be best brought before 
 the House of Commons by Lord Ashley, who, besides, 
 is in spirit a zealous friend of colonization. 
 
 With regard to the competition of capital with 
 capital, I would only explain further, that it appears 
 to be the immediate cause of all the other competitions. 
 Our power of increasing capital seems to be unlimited. 
 If the continually-increasing capital of Great Britain 
 could be continually invested so as to yield high profits, 
 
76 SUPERABUNDANCE 
 
 the labourers' competition would cease, because there 
 would be ample employment at good wages for the 
 whole class. Trade of every kind would present an 
 unlimited field of employment for classes above the 
 common people ; the professional field of employment 
 would be equally large in proportion to the cultivators ; 
 and in all ranks, neither daughters nor younger sons 
 would be more in excess than the eldest sons of men 
 of assured fortune are at present. The one thing 
 needful for all society is more room for the profitable 
 employment of capital : it is in the excess of capital 
 above the means of profitable investment, that this 
 country differs injuriously from the United States. 
 Do you adopt this proposition? if not, you will not 
 go along with me in deeming colonization a suitable 
 remedy for our social ills. So anxious am I for our 
 agreement on this point, that I will trouble you with 
 one more illustration of the superabundance of capital 
 in Great Britain. 
 
 I allude to the necessity in this country of an 
 occasional destruction of capital on the grandest scale. 
 Perhaps if a less energetic people had too much capital, 
 they would waste a little of it continually, so as to 
 keep down the amount without fully exhibiting the 
 destruction ; but this is not our mode of proceeding. 
 The practice with us seems to be to hoard up capital 
 till we know not what to do with it, and then to throw 
 it away as rapidly as possible till the quantity for use 
 is brought to a level with the field of investment. 
 Thus one observes for a time a general care and 
 prudence in the making of investments : mere specula- 
 tion is almost unknown : everybody that saves, saves 
 now. Presently, a decreasing rate of interest on good 
 
OF CAPITAL. 77 
 
 securities shows that a want of room for capital is 
 growing; and the least prudent turn an eye to unsafe 
 securities which yield a higher return: but the 
 hoarding goes on. At length, interest on good 
 securities is so low, or so nearly reduced to nothing, 
 that the annoyance of risking to lose becomes less than 
 that of the certainty of not gaining : and all the world, 
 everybody being afraid lest his neighbour should get 
 before him, rushes headlong into speculation. Capital 
 without end is thrown into operations from which large 
 returns are expected, but which turn out more or less 
 ruinous : a great amount of capital has disappeared. 
 The ruin and misery thus brought upon individuals 
 frighten the whole body of capitalists: and now 
 another set of people are ruined by the difficulty or 
 impossibility of obtaining capital for safe undertakings. 
 By degrees the panic subsides; steady hoarding goes 
 on again; and after a while the same process is 
 repeated. 
 
 The alternations of hoarding, wasting, and panic, 
 are full of evils of various kinds. The misery which 
 they occasion by the breaking down of fortunes, adds 
 to the number of needy or desperate people, not 
 ignorant populace, whose position could not be made 
 worse, and might be improved by a revolutionary state 
 of things. A ruined man is a dangerous citizen ; and 
 I suspect that there are at all times in this country 
 more people who have been ruined than in any other 
 country. During the time of speculation indeed, some 
 gain; those who are fortunate or sharp enough to 
 " get out" of bad speculations before their badness is 
 generally known. These gain suddenly and largely : 
 they are, for the most part, gamblers for life. Their 
 
78 SPECULATION. GAMBLING. 
 
 success is an example which induces others to become 
 gamblers when the speculation- time comes round again. 
 Indeed, during the time of speculation most people 
 are gamblers. I know of nothing for which these 
 violent alternations of " prosperity" and " distress," 
 of speculation and panic, are more to be regretted 
 than for their effect in nurturing the spirit of the 
 gambler. Ever since capital began to be superabun- 
 dant in England, the spirit of the gambler has been 
 growing amongst our commercial and manufacturing 
 classes. The old-fashioned, steady, plodding, prudent, 
 and honourable merchant or manufacturer has be- 
 come a rare exception from the general rule : speak- 
 ing generally, our men of business of all ranks and 
 kinds are, in comparison with their predecessors of 
 the last century, unsteady, in haste to be rich, fear- 
 less of risk, sharp or ready to take advantage of all 
 opportunities, rather than signally honest and true. 
 A similar change has doubtless taken place in Ame- 
 rica, but from totally different causes, to be noticed 
 hereafter. There, the general standard of honour and 
 honesty has been lowered during this century, and 
 especially within the last thirty years: here, on the 
 contrary, it seems higher than ever. Out of business, 
 all sorts of people are more strict than their grand- 
 fathers : it is in the various ranks of business only, 
 that the standard of right conduct has sunk. I can 
 find no cause for the change but the spread of the 
 spirit of gambling and unscrupulousness, produced by 
 the excessive competition of capital with capital. 
 
79 
 
 LETTER XIV. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 THE PECULIAR CHARACTERISTIC OF COLONIES IS PLENTY 
 OF ROOM FOR ALL CLASSES ; BUT WAGES AND PROFITS 
 ARE OCCASIONALLY REDUCED BY GLUTS OF LABOUR 
 
 AND CAPITAL; AND WHILST COLONIAL PROSPERITY is 
 
 ALWAYS DEPENDENT ON GOOD GOVERNMENT, IT ONLY 
 ATTAINS THE MAXIMUM IN COLONIES PEOPLED BY THE 
 ENERGETIC ANGLO-SAXON RACE. 
 
 TTTHILST it is the peculiar characteristic of Great 
 Britain to exhibit a want of room for all classes, 
 it is that of colonies or new countries to exhibit plenty 
 of room. In colonies, the field of production is un- 
 limited ; and the use of it may be enlarged faster than 
 capital and population can possibly increase. In 
 colonies, therefore, the greatest increase of capital and 
 people occasions no mischievous competition. Both 
 profits and wages are always at the maximum. And 
 this happens not only in spite of the greatest increase 
 of capital and people in the colony, but also in spite 
 of a further increase by means of the importation of 
 capital and people. Do what we may in colonies, we 
 cannot overcrowd the field of employment for capital 
 and labour. 
 But this proposition must be qualified. There may be 
 
80 OCCASIONAL GLUTS OF 
 
 a temporary excess of capital and people in a colony; 
 and this sometimes happens in small colonies. It 
 happens when a sudden importation of capital, ex- 
 ceeding the actual supply of labour, or of labour ex- 
 ceeding the supply of capital, disturbs the ordinary 
 state of things. In some of the newest, and therefore 
 smallest colonies, we have witnessed at times such a 
 redundancy of capital in proportion to labour, that 
 wages rose to an enormous pitch; the labourers got 
 nearly all, or all, the capital of their employers, and 
 spent a good deal of it in drinking stuff called port 
 wine and champagne. It was not unusual at Adelaide 
 in South Australia, and Port Philip in Australia Felix, 
 for half a dozen common labourers to leave their work, 
 go to a public house, and order a case of wine for their 
 present drinking. I have known the same thing 
 happen at Wellington in New Zealand. In these 
 newest colonies, desert spots are pointed out where a 
 public house once stood, and where now nothing 
 remains but a hillock of broken glass, the debris of 
 bottles of porter, ale, and wine imported from England, 
 and sold to these common labourers at the rate of 
 2s. per bottle for the ale and porter, and 6s. , 6s., and 
 Is. for the wine. On the other hand, in these newest 
 colonies, a sudden importation of labour exceeding 
 the demand for labour that is, the supply of capital 
 has knocked down wages to a very low rate, and 
 even occasioned a total want of employment for 
 some labourers. In all these very new colonies, there 
 has been what we call here " distress " amongst the 
 labouring class. But whether as respects labour or 
 capital, these disturbances of the ordinary state of 
 things do not last. An excessive capital is soon 
 
CAPITAL AND LABOUR. 81 
 
 wasted ; an excess of labour is soon remedied by fresh 
 importations of capital, or by the rapid increase of 
 capital in the colony. These rare events might be 
 averted by care; but even if they could not, they 
 would only be rare exceptions from the general rule. 
 The general rule is a continual state of high profits 
 and high wages. 
 
 But there is another case of exception from this 
 general rule which must not be overlooked. In many 
 colonies, and in quite modern times, neither capital 
 nor labour has always obtained a high remuneration. 
 Algeria, I believe, is one of them. A list of them would 
 contain most of the colonies, lately dependencies, of 
 Spain in South America. In the newest English colony, 
 Xew Zealand, profits have at times been low, most of 
 the capitalists for the time being were ruined, and a 
 large proportion of the labourers were thrown out of 
 employment, by causes altogether independent of any 
 excess of capital in proportion to labour, or of labour 
 in proportion to capital. The cause of the mischief 
 in such cases, is one that has at all times prevailed 
 over the greatest portion of the world ; it is insecurity 
 of property. If there is not a fair prospect of enjoy- 
 ing the proper fruits of enterprise and industry, enter- 
 prise and industry are feeble : they are paralysed if 
 there is a well-founded fear of never enjoying their 
 fruits ; of reaping instead nothing but loss and disap- 
 pointment. Security of property is the indispensable 
 foundation of wealth, let all other circumstances be 
 what they may. Security of property depends wholly 
 on government. In order, therefore, that profits and 
 wages should be constantly high in a colony, it is 
 essential that the colony should be tolerably well 
 
82 GOOD GOVERNMENT ESSENTIAL. 
 
 governed; well enough, that is, to hold out a fair 
 prospect that enterprise and industry will enjoy their 
 proper fruits. In all the cases that I can call to mind, 
 of low profits and low wages in a colony, not occa- 
 sioned by the disturbing causes above mentioned, the 
 cause has been a stagnation of enterprise and industry, 
 arising from insecurity of property ; and the insecurity 
 of property arose from defective or vicious govern- 
 ment. I lay it down as an axiom therefore, that 
 tolerably good colonial government is an essential 
 condition of that state of continual high profits and 
 high wages, which moderately well-governed colonies 
 exhibit. 
 
 Provided, then, that care is taken to prevent 
 temporary gluts of either capital or labour in very 
 young colonies, and provided also that colonial govern- 
 ment is tolerably good, it may be affirmed with con- 
 fidence, that neither too much capital nor too many 
 people can be sent to a colony; for the more of both 
 the colony receives, the more readily will fresh 
 importations of capital and people find profitable 
 employment; certainly without any decrease, perhaps 
 with an increase, in the rates of profit and wages. 
 
 The normal state of high profits and wages, not- 
 withstanding the utmost importation of capital and 
 people, in colonies where the proper fruits of enter- 
 prize and industry are secured by good government, 
 arises partly from the manner in which the produce 
 of colonial industry is distributed; partly from the 
 great productiveness of industry in a country where 
 only the most fertile spots need to be cultivated. In 
 colonies, as compared with old countries, the landlord 
 and the tax-gatherer get but a small share of the 
 
COLONIES EXPORTING COMMUNITIES. 83 
 
 produce of industry : the producer, therefore, whether 
 capitalist or labourer, gets a large share : indeed, they 
 nearly the whole: and this whole, as before 
 observed, is very large in consequence of the great 
 natural fertility of all the cultivated land, or the small 
 cost of production. Both the labourer and the 
 capitalist, therefore, get more than they consume. 
 The labourer saves, and the capitalist saves: capital 
 augments rapidly. But as nearly all the colonists 
 are either capitalists or labourers, who have more 
 than they can consume, the whole colony has more 
 than it can consume. Colonies, therefore, are, may I 
 say, naturally exporting communities: they have a 
 large produce for exportation. 
 
 Not only have they a large produce for exportation, 
 but that produce is peculiarly suited for exchange 
 with old countries. In consequence of the cheapness 
 of land in colonies, the great majority of the people 
 are owners or occupiers of land ; and their industry is 
 necessarily in a great measure confined to the pro- 
 ducing of what comes immediately from the soil; viz., 
 food, and the raw materials of manufacture. In old 
 countries, on the other hand, where the soil is fully 
 occupied and labour abundant, it may be said that 
 manufactured goods are their natural production for 
 export. These are what the colonists do not produce. 
 The colony produces what the old country wants; 
 the old country produces what the colony wants. 
 The old country and the colony, therefore, are, natu- 
 rally, each other's best customers. 
 
 But of such great surplus production in a colony 
 as renders the colony a best-possible customer of its 
 mother-country, there is an essential condition over 
 
 G2 
 
84 COLONIES THE BEST CUSTOMERS 
 
 and above good government. At least, I rather think 
 so. I doubt whether the singular energy of British 
 industry that characteristic of our race, whether 
 here or in America is not necessary to the produc- 
 tion of a very large surplus produce under any cir- 
 cumstances : and looking at the present state of what 
 may be termed the colonial world, I think that this 
 notion is borne out by facts. I doubt whether a 
 purely Milesian-Irish or Celtic-French colony, how- 
 ever well it should be governed, would be anything 
 like as good a customer of its mother-country, as a 
 purely English or Lowland Scotch colony. Numerous 
 illustrations of this will occur to you : I would only 
 mention two. The United States of America, which 
 have been chiefly colonized by English blood, are 
 the best customers that ever mother- country had; 
 and secondly, of the whole produce exported from 
 Canada to England, which purchases the whole ex- 
 port from England to Canada, nineteen-twentieths, 
 I feel confident, are raised by the enterprise and 
 energy of British, that is, of Scotch and English 
 blood, although a good deal more than half the popu- 
 lation of Canada consists of Celtic-French 1 * and Mile- 
 sian-Irish blood. I speak of enterprise and energy 
 only, not of mere labour for hire; for in Canada, 
 labour, hired and guided by men of English and Low- 
 land-Scotch extraction, is principally that of Cana- 
 dians of French origin and Milesian-Irish emigrants. 
 Mere labour, without the enterprise and energy re- 
 quired for rendering a wilderness productive, will not 
 raise a large surplus produce from even the most fertile 
 
 * Brittany more than France in general is the mother-country of 
 French Canada. 
 
OF THEIR MOTHER- COUNTRY. 85 
 
 soils. In the business, therefore, of creating customers 
 by colonization, Great Britain, like the older States of 
 the American Union, would create better customers 
 than most other countries could. 
 
 LETTER XV. 
 From the Statesman. 
 
 THE STATESMAN OBJECTS TO A GREAT DIMINUTION OF 
 THE WEALTH AND POPULATION OF GREAT BRITAIN, 
 AXD COMPLAINS OF A PATRIOTIC HEAD-ACHE. 
 
 SO far as my judgment is under the influence of 
 reason, I adopt your conclusions with respect to 
 the point in which this country and our colonies in 
 general most signally differ: but from these conclu- 
 sions an inference is reasonably drawn, which offends 
 some sentiment or prejudice not under the control of 
 reason. The inference is, that in order to prevent 
 overcrowding here, where there is too little room, we 
 must send our whole superabundance of capital and 
 people to the colonies, where the room for both is at 
 all times unlimited. You propose, therefore, to di- 
 minish very considerably the wealth and population 
 of Great Britain. The removal of so great a number 
 of capitalists and labourers would, I dare say, be 
 beneficial to those who were not removed; but the 
 idea of it is disagreeable to me. 
 
 " I do not like thee, Dr. Fell : 
 The reason why, I cannot tell, 
 But I do not like thee, Dr. Fell." 
 
86 TOO MUCH EMIGRATION. 
 
 Is it a feeling of national pride, or the vulgar anti- 
 Malthusian prejudice, that leads me, as I am per- 
 suaded it would lead the House of Commons and the 
 public, to prefer the manifest evils of excessive com- 
 petition to such a diminution of our wealth and 
 numbers as must lower our country in the scale of 
 nations? Since I have reflected seriously about colo- 
 nization, my wish has been to learn by what means 
 we could bring about a sufficient emigration of capital 
 and people, to have the effect of raising profits and 
 wages here: but now that I perceive what a vast 
 amount of capital and population must be removed in 
 order to produce this effect, I begin to sympathize 
 with the school of political economists who think that 
 no country can ever have too much capital, and even 
 with the very different school who deny that popula- 
 tion can be superabundant. To think of seeing Eng- 
 land less wealthy and populous makes me uncomfort- 
 able. I am out of order this morning. Can you 
 prescribe a remedy for this sort of head-ache ? 
 
87 
 
 LETTER XVI. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 AS A CURE FOR THE STATESMAN'S PATRIOTIC HEAD- 
 ACHE, THE COLONIST PRESCRIBES THE DOCTRINE, THAT 
 EMIGRATION OF CAPITAL AND PEOPLE HAS A TEN- 
 DENCY TO INCREASE INSTEAD OF DIMINISHING THE 
 WEALTH AND POPULATION OF THE MOTHER-COUNTRY. 
 
 I HOPE that it will not prove impossible to recon- 
 cile your judgment with your patriotism; but in 
 order to do so we must look a little more closely into 
 the effects of colonization on the wealth and population 
 of the mother-country. 
 
 Let us begin by defining what we mean by want 
 of room. Room signifies the fund for the maintenance 
 of all classes according to their respective standards 
 of living. This fund is the whole annual produce of 
 the industry of the country. If the fund were larger, 
 population not increasing and the present distribution 
 into shares holding good, there would be more for all 
 classes ; more rent, more profit, higher wages, a larger 
 income for everybody. So, likewise, if the produce 
 remained as it is, and the number of people in every 
 class were diminished, everybody would get more. It 
 appears, consequently, that there are two ways of 
 
88 CAUSE OF COMPETITION. 
 
 remedying excessive competition ; either by increasing 
 the whole annual produce of the country, or diminish- 
 ing the number of competitors in all classes. A time 
 may come when people in all classes will have the sense, 
 which some few classes of people have now (such as 
 the Quakers), to keep their numbers within their 
 means of comfortable subsistence ; but at present we 
 must endeavour to increase the whole annual produce. 
 Why does not the whole annual produce increase fast 
 enough for the object in view? It does so in America. 
 In this country there is want enough, capital enough, 
 industry and skill enough : there are all things except 
 one, which abounds in America, but which cannot be 
 increased here; and that is land. It is the want of 
 more land which stops us, and which is at the bottom 
 of the excessive competition. 
 
 It is not a want of more acres, but of more capacity 
 of production, whether by means of more acres, more 
 fertility in the acres we have, or more skill for making 
 those acres yield more. If we could suddenly make 
 the land of Great Britain produce double what it does 
 now, with the present outlay of capital and labour, 
 all classes would be in a state of high prosperity until 
 their numbers increased up to the limit of the 
 augmented fund. There has been an unremitting 
 increase of all classes for centuries, with hardly any 
 importation of food until lately: it arose from and 
 was wholly dependent upon agricultural improvements, 
 by which the fund of maintenance was augmented 
 without any acreable increase of the land. But un- 
 fortunately, it seems to be in the nature of agricultural 
 improvements to advance very slowly: they never 
 have advanced, and probably never will advance, faster 
 
ARGUMENT FOR FREE TRADE. 89 
 
 than the increase of people in all classes. This being, 
 apparently, a law of nature in the present state of 
 human impulse and self-restraint, competition is un- 
 affected by an increase of produce arising from agri- 
 cultural improvements. Along with the improve- 
 ments, there are more people of all classes to consume 
 the greater produce ; and the competition is unaltered. 
 As a remedy for competition, therefore, it is more 
 land that we want. 
 
 But it is not more land here. It is not the land 
 that we want, but the use of it. The use of land may 
 be got elsewhere. It may be got by means of ex- 
 change. If, without any increase of capital or people, 
 we could purchase with manufactured goods twice as 
 much food as we obtain now by various means, every- 
 body here would enjoy the same prosperity as if our 
 land were doubled, or as actually happens in America 
 and other new countries. Every fresh importation of 
 food by means of exporting more manufactured goods, 
 is an enlargement of the field of production ; is like an 
 acreable increase of our land; and has a tendency to 
 abolish and prevent injurious competition. This was 
 the best argument for the repeal of our Corn-Laws. 
 It was little urged in words, but, if I may use the ex- 
 pression, much felt instinctively by the sufferers from 
 competition. 
 
 The question remains, however, whether the im- 
 portation of food can outrun the increase of people. 
 It never has done so yet; and apparently, it never can 
 do so in the present state of the world. For to every 
 importation there are two parties ; the buyer and the 
 seller of the thing imported. We could make goods 
 for exportation much faster than population can pos- 
 
90 MANUFACTURES FOB FOOD. 
 
 sibly increase; but where would be the buyers? We 
 could buy the food; but who would have it to sell? 
 It is not manufactured goods only that we want to 
 increase rapidly, but also customers who would buy 
 them with food. Now, in countries where food can 
 only be increased by agricultural improvements, the 
 increase of food is very slow, like the advance of those 
 improvements : in such countries, the increase of food 
 will probably not advance much more quickly than 
 the increase of their own population. A great many 
 such countries, besides, almost exclude our manu- 
 factured goods by means of hostile tariffs ; and not a 
 few of them are just now in a state of political con- 
 vulsion which threatens to diminish their food-export- 
 ing, goods-importing power. There remain countries 
 where food is increased by taking fresh land into cul- 
 tivation; new countries; North America and the 
 British colonies. There, the power of increasing food 
 is practically unlimited; and the pace at which food 
 is increased in such countries might (as I shall take 
 pains to show by-and-by) be very much accelerated. 
 It does seem possible, therefore, that Great Britain, 
 without Corn-Laws, might enlarge her whole field of 
 production more quickly than her population could 
 increase. 
 
 But this is an unsolved problem; and time is re- 
 quired for its solution. For the meanwhile, at all 
 events, there must be a pressure of all classes upon 
 their means of subsistence ; the field of employment 
 for capital, labour, knowledge, and ambition, must be 
 too small for the number of cultivators; and mis- 
 chievous competition must last. For we have now to 
 observe a distinct and very important phenomenon. 
 
REMEDY FOR WANT OF LAND. 91 
 
 X cither by improvements of agriculture, nor by the 
 importation of food, if these fall short of the power of 
 the people to increase, is the competition of excessive 
 numbers in all classes diminished in the least. By what- 
 ever means the field of employment for all classes is 
 enlarged, unless it can be enlarged faster than capital 
 and people can increase, no alteration will take place 
 in profits or wages, or in any sort of remuneration for 
 exertion : there is a larger fund, but a corresponding 
 or greater increase of capital and people, so that com- 
 petition remains the same, or may even go on becoming 
 more severe. Thus a country may exhibit a rapid 
 growth of wealth and population such an increase 
 of both as the world has not seen before with direful 
 competition within every class of society, excepting 
 alone the few in whose hands very large properties 
 have accumulated. This is our own case now. In 
 whatever light, then, this matter is viewed, we trace 
 the competition to want of room; that is, to a 
 deficiency of land in proportion to capital and people, 
 or an excess of capital and people in proportion to 
 land. 
 
 After reaching this conclusion as to the nature of 
 the malady, the appropriate remedy almost suggests 
 itself. If we could sufficiently check the increase of 
 capital and people, that would be an appropriate 
 remedy; but we cannot. Can we then sufficiently 
 enlarge the whole field of employment for British 
 capital and labour, by means of sending capital and 
 people to cultivate new land in other parts of the 
 we rid? If we sent away enough, the effect here 
 would he the same as if the domestic increase of 
 capital and people were sufficiently checked. But 
 
92 
 
 CAPITAL AND PEOPLE: 
 
 another effect of great importance would take place. 
 The emigrants would be producers of food; of more 
 food, if the colonization were well managed, than they 
 could consume : they would be growers of food and 
 raw materials of manufacture for this country: we 
 should buy their surplus food and raw materials with 
 manufactured goods. Every piece of our colonization, 
 therefore, would add to the power of the whole mass 
 of new countries to supply us with employment for 
 capital and labour at home. Thus, employment for 
 capital and labour would be increased in two places 
 and two ways at the same time; abroad, in the 
 colonies, by the removal of capital and people to fresh 
 fields of production; at home, by the extension of 
 markets, or the importation of food and raw materials. 
 It is necessary and very interesting to observe, that 
 colonization has a tendency to increase employment 
 for capital and labour at home. When a Hampshire 
 peasant emigrates to Australia, he very likely enables 
 an operative to live in Lancashire or Yorkshire. 
 Besides making food in the colony for himself, he 
 makes some more to send home for the manufacturer, 
 who in his turn makes clothes or implements for the 
 colonist. Accordingly, if colonization proceeded faster 
 than capital and people increased, hurtful competition 
 would be at an end; and yet capital and people might 
 increase here in Great Britain faster than they do 
 now. At what rate capital increases here nobody 
 can tell ; but it is said that people increase here at the 
 rate of 1,000 a day : if there were colonization enough, 
 they might increase at the rate of 1,100 a day or more. 
 The common idea is that emigration of capital and 
 people diminishes the wealth and population of the 
 
THEIR RATE OF INCREASE. 93 
 
 mother-country. It has never done so ; it has always 
 increased both population and wealth at home. And 
 the reason is obvious. In the case supposed of a great 
 colonization, and of our actual free trade, viewing 
 Great Britain and all new countries as one country 
 for the purposes of production and exchange, there 
 would be in the whole of this great empire an increase 
 of production exceeding the utmost possible increase 
 of capital and people. Capital and people, therefore, 
 would increase as fast as possible. Some of the 
 increase would take place in the new-country or 
 colony part of the empire ; some here : and it might 
 well happen that our share of the increase would be 
 greater than our present increase of wealth and 
 population. " To appreciate," says Mr. Mill, " the 
 benefits of colonization, it should be considered in its 
 relation, not to a single country, but to the collective 
 economical interests of the human race. The question 
 is in general treated too exclusively as one of distribu- 
 tion; of relieving one labour-market and supplying 
 another. It is this, but it is also a question of pro- 
 duction, and of the most efficient employment of the 
 productive resources of the world. Much has been 
 said of the good economy of importing commodities 
 from the place where they can be bought cheapest ; 
 while the good economy of producing them where 
 they can be produced cheapest, is comparatively little 
 thought of. If to carry consumable goods from the 
 places where they are superabundant to those where 
 they are scarce, is a good pecuniary speculation, is it 
 not an equally good speculation to do the same thing 
 with regard to labour and instruments? The ex- 
 portation of labourers and capital from old to new 
 
94 EFFECT OF COLONIZATION 
 
 countries, from a place where their productive power 
 is less, to a place where it is greater, increases by so 
 much the aggregate produce of the labour and capital 
 of the world. It adds to the joint wealth of the 
 old and new country, what amounts in a short period 
 to many times the mere cost of effecting the transport. 
 There needs be no hesitation in affirming that 
 colonization, in the present state of the world, is the 
 very best affair of business, in which the capital of an 
 old and wealthy country can possible engage." 1 * 
 
 Nor is it necessary that the increase of capital and 
 people at home should be wholly dependent on, and 
 therefore in proportion to the importation of food from 
 new countries. Of course, before there can anywhere 
 be any increase of people under any circumstances, 
 save one, there must be the one circumstance of an 
 increase of food. The food must come first ; then the 
 people. And further, capital must consist for the 
 most part of food; for if capital employs people, of 
 course it feeds them : the feeding of labourers whilst 
 the produce of their labour is coming to perfection, is 
 the main business of capital. More food is a condition 
 precedent of more capital and people. But all the new 
 food need not come from abroad. Colonization has 
 the effect of increasing the production of food at home. 
 Compare the agriculture of England now with what it 
 was before we began to colonize. Can you doubt that 
 the flourishing manufactures of Yorkshire and Lan- 
 cashire, for example, and in so far only as they grew 
 out of colonization, have stimulated and improved the 
 agriculture of England, and been the means of in- 
 
 * Principles of Political Economy, with some of their Applications 
 to Social Philosophy. By JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
ON AGRICULTURE AT HOME. 95 
 
 creasing the quantity of food and the number of people 
 in the mother-country? An intimate connexion in 
 the form of cause and effect, between the English 
 colonization of the West Indies and America on the 
 one hand, and the improvement of agriculture, with 
 the consequent increase of food and people in England, 
 on the other, would be exhibited by a review of the 
 facts since the time of Elizabeth : and many other in- 
 stances might be cited, in which colonists, by furnish- 
 ing to their mother-country new objects of desire, new 
 materials of manufacture, and new markets for the 
 disposal of goods, in return not for food, but for such 
 luxuries as sugar and tobacco, have been the not very 
 indirect means of stimulating agricultural industry 
 and enterprise in the country from which they 
 emigrated. France, with her wretched agriculture, 
 is a country that stands in the utmost need of this 
 effect of colonization; and we are very far from 
 having brought our agriculture to such perfection as 
 to make this effect of colonization no longer an object 
 of importance to us. An increase of food grown at 
 home by means of improved agriculture is, I think, 
 one of the objects of colonization. If you think so, 
 and if you agree with Mr. Mill and me as to the 
 natural effect of colonization in augmenting the wealth 
 and population of the mother-country by means of the 
 importation of food and other produce grown on 
 fresh land, your judgment as an economist and your 
 patriotism as an Englishman must have made up their 
 quarrel. 
 
 My next letter, however, will be exclusively ad- 
 dressed to your patriotism. 
 
96 
 
 LETTER XVII. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 FURTHER OBJECTS OF THE MOTHER- COUNTRY IN PRO- 
 MOTING COLONIZATION. PRESTIGE OF EMPIRE. BRI- 
 TISH " SUPREMACY OF THE OCEAN" FOR THE SECURITY 
 OF SEA-GOING TRADE. 
 
 THINK that an old country has objects in pro- 
 moting colonization, over and above those which 
 we term economical objects. In explaining my view 
 of some of them, I must needs dispose, in part at least, 
 of a question, the whole of which at first sight may 
 seem to belong to the means rather than the objects 
 of colonization. The question is, whether it is desir- 
 able that a colony should be dependent or independent 
 as respects government. At first sight it would 
 appear, that this question requires solution only with 
 a view to ascertaining whether the objects of coloniza- 
 tion would be best promoted by dependent or inde- 
 pendent colonial government as a means ; but if we 
 look a little further, we shall see that the possession of 
 colonies may be good or bad for the mother-country; 
 that is, may or may not be an object of colonization. 
 And it is in this point of view alone, that I propose 
 now to examine the question. The question thus 
 
A BOUNDARY QUESTION. 97 
 
 restricted, and moreover put into a practical form, is 
 whether or not it is desirable that this country should 
 retain possession of its colonies, not as possession or 
 dependence would best promote colonization, but in- 
 dependently of colonizing purposes. 
 
 I once heard a discussion of this question at the 
 Political- Economy Club. With its usual neglect of 
 the most important colonial subjects, the Colonial 
 Office had permitted the question of the boundary of 
 New Brunswick towards Maine to grow into a question 
 of peace or war between England and the United 
 States. The Americans would have readily agreed 
 with us upon this boundary question when it was of 
 no practical moment: when in consequence of the 
 progress of settlement in Maine and New Bruns- 
 wick, large interests came to be involved in it, they 
 seemed quite unmanageable, and would not, I believe 
 (for I was a keen observer on the spot), have been 
 managed except by war, or by that diplomacy of 
 perfect candour and straight-forwardness, combined 
 with resolution and a capital cook, by means of which 
 they were managed by the late Lord Ashburton. 
 The near prospect of war produced in this country an 
 interest about New Brunswick; and the question of 
 her boundary was discussed in all companies. At the 
 Political-Economy Club, a mere man of science con- 
 tended that the loss of a part, and still more the whole, 
 of New Brunswick would be a gain to England. Of 
 what use, he said, is this colony to the mother-country, 
 that it would not be if it were independent? It is of 
 no use except as a market ; and it would be as good a 
 market if independent as it is now. We need not 
 possess a country in order to trade with it. Its 
 
 H 
 
98 ARGUMENT FOR 
 
 dependence is of no use to us; but it is an injury, 
 since the ordinary defence of the colony as British 
 territory is costly ; and the possession of the colony is 
 apt to involve us in costly and otherwise mischievous 
 disputes with foreign countries. This was the whole 
 of his argument. 
 
 The other side of the question was argued by a 
 London banker, whose sagacity and accomplishments 
 are unsurpassed. He began by admitting that pos- 
 session of a colony may not make it better as a 
 market; that it costs something in ordinary times; 
 and that it exposes us to the risk of disputes with 
 foreign nations, from which we should be free if the 
 colony were independent. He admitted the whole 
 argument of the merely scientific economist. But, on 
 the other hand, said he, I am of opinion that the ex- 
 tent and glory of an empire are solid advantages for 
 all its inhabitants, and especially those who inhabit 
 its centre. I think that whatever the possession of 
 our colonies may cost us in money, the possession is 
 worth more in money than its money cost, and infi- 
 nitely more in other respects. For by overawing 
 foreign nations and impressing mankind with a pres- 
 tige of our might, it enables us to keep the peace of 
 the world, which we have no interest in disturbing, 
 as it would enable us to disturb the world if we 
 pleased. The advantage is, that the possession of this 
 immense empire by England causes the mere name 
 of England to be a real and a mighty power; the 
 greatest power that now exists in the world. If we 
 use the power for our own harm, that is our fault; the 
 being able to use it for our good is, to my mind, an 
 inestimable advantage. You tell us of the cost of de- 
 
POSSESSING COLONIES. 99 
 
 pendencies : I admit it, but reply that the cost is the 
 most beneficial of investments, since it converts the 
 mere sound of a name into a force greater than that of 
 the most costly fleets and armies. If your argument 
 is good for New Brunswick, it is good for all our depen- 
 dencies. Suppose that we gave them all up, without 
 losing any of their utility as markets : I say that the 
 name of England would cease to be a power; and that 
 in order to preserve our own independence, we should 
 have to spend more than we do now in the business of 
 defence. It would be supposed that we gave them up 
 because we could not help it : we should be, with respect 
 to other nations, like the bird which has been wounded, 
 and which therefore the others peck to death. You 
 talk as if men were angels, and as if nations were 
 communities always under the influence of Christian 
 love for each other : whereas men are to some extent 
 devils; and nations take a pleasure in subjugating 
 one another when they can. Y?^7? emulation, 
 jealousy, hatred, ambition, loye_of^lory, loy_of con- 
 quest and mastery ; these are all national attributes : 
 and whether any nation is independent of a foreign 
 yoke, is always a question merely of whether, either 
 by forces of her own, or by the aid of a powerful ally 
 whom jealousy of some other nation induces to be- 
 friend her, she is able to resist aggression. Let all 
 our dependencies be taken away or given up, and the 
 name of England would go for nothing : those of our 
 dependencies which are weak, would be seized by 
 other nations, which would soon want to seize England 
 herself, and would be strongly tempted by our apparent 
 weakness, by the loss of the prestige of our greatness, 
 to try their hand at seizing us. Or would you have 
 
 H 2 
 
100 COLONIES REMARKABLE FOR 
 
 England, after giving up her dependencies, continue 
 to defend them from foreign aggression? Most of 
 them could not maintain their own independence if 
 we gave it to them; and the maintenance of it for 
 them by us would cost incalculably more without the 
 prestige of a mighty empire, than our dependencies 
 now cost with that important adjunct of real, effec- 
 tive power. I am for retaining New Brunswick ; and 
 though I think that we shall be under vast obligation 
 to Lord Ashburton if he should enable us to keep it 
 without a war, I would devote all the means of the 
 empire to a war for preserving it. 
 
 The banker's argument satisfied me. But he was 
 not aware of a peculiarity of colonies, as distinguished 
 from dependencies in general, which furnishes another 
 reason for wishing that they should belong to the 
 empire. I mean the attachment of colonies to their 
 mother-country. Without having lived in a colony 
 or at any rate without having a really intimate ac- 
 quaintance with colonies, which only a very few 
 people in the mother-country have, or can have it is 
 difficult to conceive the intensity of colonial loyalty 
 to the empire. In the colonies of England, at any 
 rate, the feeling of love towards England and of pride 
 in belonging to her empire, is more than a sentiment ; 
 it is a sort of passion which all the colonists feel, except 
 Milesian-Irish emigrants. I have often been unable 
 to help smiling at the exhibition of it. In what it 
 originates, I cannot say : perhaps in a sympathy of 
 blood or race, for the present Anglo-Americans (not 
 counting those Milesian-Americans who pass for 
 belonging to the Anglo-Saxon race) feel in their 
 heart's core the same kind of love and respect for 
 
LOVE OF THE MOTHER- COUNTln . 
 
 England, that we Englishmen at home feel for the 
 memory of Alfred or Elizabeth : but, whatever may 
 be its cause, I have no doubt that love of England 
 is the ruling sentiment of English colonies. Not 
 colonists, let me beg of you to observe, but colonial 
 communities; for unfortunately the ruling passion of 
 individuals in our colonies is a love of getting money. 
 How strong the collective love of England is, how 
 incapable of being even much diminished by treatment 
 at the hands of England which is calculated to turn 
 love into hatred, you will be better able to judge when 
 I shall come to our system of colonial government. 
 Here I must beg of you to take my representation in 
 a great measure upon trust. If it is correct, the fact 
 shows, that the possession of dependencies which are 
 also colonies, conduces to the might, security, and peace 
 of the empire, not merely by the prestige of greatness, 
 as other dependencies do, but also by the national 
 partizanship for England of the communities which 
 she plants. To her own strength there is added that 
 of a large family of devoted children. The empire is 
 preserved, not alone by its greatness, but by the 
 strong cohesion to the centre of its colonized, as dis- 
 tinguished from its conquered portions. 
 
 The possession by England of colonies which she 
 plants, conduces, I fancy, to another national advan- 
 tage. It is an advantage reaped exclusively by these 
 islands. For some time, these little islands, with their 
 thirty millions of people, have been becoming, and 
 they are sure to be still more, dependent on the con- 
 tinuance of sea-going trade as the only means of pre- 
 venting famine and horrible convulsion. The steady 
 continuance of sea-going trade depends, for these 
 
202 NAVAL SUPREMACY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 islands, on the inability of foreign nations to stop or 
 harass our commercial marine. The British " supre- 
 macy of the ocean," which has been a boast and a 
 benefit, has become a necessity. If I were prime 
 minister of England, now that the Corn Laws are 
 repealed, I should not be able to sleep if I thought 
 that the war marine of England was not stronger than 
 that of all the nations combined, which there is the 
 least chance of ever seeing engaged in a conspiracy for 
 our destruction. The strength of our war marine is 
 greatly dependent on that of our commercial : for a 
 war marine is composed of practised sailors as well as 
 ships and guns ; and it is a commercial marine alone 
 that makes plenty of first-rate sailors. We are about 
 to repeal the Navigation Laws, which were designed 
 to foster, and which, for anything that we can yet 
 positively know to the contrary, had the effect of 
 fostering, our commercial marine. There is some 
 risk that a larger proportion than at present of our 
 external trade may be carried on by the commercial 
 marine of other nations ; a smaller proportion by our 
 own. It behoves us therefore to maintain and aug- 
 ment our commercial marine by all the reasonable 
 means in our power. The means of restraint and 
 bounty, on the principle of the Navigation Laws, are 
 dying out. But, notwithstanding ample freedom of 
 commercial navigation, the trade between a dependent 
 colony and its mother-country would almost inevitably 
 be carried on by the mother-country's ships and sailors. 
 Moreover, an independent colony, like Massachussetts, 
 cultivates a commercial marine of its own for its own 
 defence, and is likely to convert the sailors of the 
 mother-country into foreign sailors: if a dependent 
 
HER COMMERCIAL MARINE. 103 
 
 colony has a marine of its own (as New Zealand, for 
 example, is sure to have in course of time, for coasting 
 and intercolonial purposes), this colonial marine be- 
 longs to the empire; it adds to the number of our 
 sailors in case of war. 
 
 How colonization itself, irrespective of colonial 
 dependency, adds to the commercial marine of the 
 con nt ly which founds the colonies, is a distinct 
 question on which you would do well to consult an 
 intelligent ship-owner. He would tell you that in our 
 own time the little that has been done in the way of 
 systematic colonization, has had a visible effect in 
 adding to the demand for shipping, and especially for 
 ships of the first class making a voyage round the 
 world. He would show you two numbers of a Lon- 
 don daily newspaper, in the front page of which pas- 
 senger ships are advertised; the first published at a 
 time when the founding of South Australia, Australia 
 Felix, and Xew Zealand, was most active ; the second 
 published when these colonizing operations were much 
 impeded by the success of some anti-colonizing policy 
 of the Colonial Office ; and then your own eyes would 
 tell your understanding of the bustle of business in the 
 docks at the one time, and the comparative stagnation 
 at the other of the trades of the outfitter, the provision- 
 merchant, and the first-class ship-owner. The tem- 
 porary briskness of these trades was solely occasioned 
 by the sale of waste land in the aforesaid colonies, and 
 the outlay of some of the purchase-money as an 
 emigration fund : the single cause of the dulness (as 
 I shall have to prove hereafter) was the stoppage of 
 this species of colonization by bureaucratic states- 
 manship, when a few different strokes of the official 
 
i-__uii; 
 
 104 COLONISTS THE BEST CUSTOMERS 
 
 pen would have continued and augmented it beyond 
 assignable limit. I cite this case because it occurred 
 lately, and may be proved by living testimony. But 
 this is an insignificant case, because the colonizing 
 operation was stopped. Turning to greater cases, in 
 which colonizing enterprise was not put down by a 
 Colonial Office which indeed took place before we 
 had a Colonial Office I would point to the effects on 
 the ports of London, Bristol, Liverpool, and Glasgow, 
 of the colonization of the West Indies and North 
 America by our forefathers. It created a large pro- 
 portion of the trade of the port of London : at Bristol, 
 Liverpool, and Glasgow, it may be said to have called 
 ports into existence, with their docks, ships, and sailors. 
 But that was long ago, I hear a politician of the pure 
 Manchester school object, when trade with foreign 
 countries was fettered, and colonization produced 
 shipping because with colonies alone was the mother- 
 country free to trade ; but now that we are free to 
 trade with all the world as we please, it is not neces- 
 sary to have colonization in order to have plenty of 
 ships: our trade with foreign nations will support 
 an ample commercial marine. I ask, in reply, with 
 what foreign nations? With the United States, says 
 he. But the United States, like the ports of Bristol, 
 Liverpool, and Glasgow, were called into existence by 
 colonization; and they are still, as regards trade, 
 colonies of England, with the exception always of 
 their hostile tariff. Take the United States, however, 
 with their hostile tariff, and all the other colonies 
 of England, which, being dependencies likewise, have 
 no hostile tariffs ; and see what proportion the ship- 
 ping engaged in our trade with them, both inde- 
 
OF THE MOTHER-COUNTRY. 105 
 
 pendent and dependent colonies, bears to that employed 
 in our trade with foreign countries. The countries 
 colonized by England, carry it hollow ; more especially 
 if we add those, such as British India, in which, 
 without colonizing them, we have substituted better 
 for worse government, and some security for utter 
 insecurity of property. And the reasons are as plain 
 as the fact. They are the reasons before set forth, 
 why British colonists are the best of their mother- 
 country's customers: for British colonization called 
 the town as well as the port of Glasgow into existence, 
 Manchester as well as Liverpool ; and every new piece 
 of our colonization adds to our commercial marine, 
 not merely by the demand which it occasions for 
 emigrant ships, but further in proportion as it 
 augments our sea-going trade of import and export. 
 
106 
 
 LETTER XVIII. 
 Prom the Colonist. 
 
 THE COLONIST INCLOSES AN ESSAY ON COLONIZATION BY 
 DR. HINDS, AND PRESSES IT ON THE STATESMAN'S 
 ATTENTION AS A VIEW OF ONE MORE OBJECT OF 
 GREAT BRITAIN IN COLONIZING SYSTEMATICALLY. 
 
 THERE remains for consideration only one more 
 particular in which the mother-country has an 
 end to attain by colonization. It would be gratifying 
 to our national pride, if our colonies were made to 
 resemble their parent ; to be extensions of the mother- 
 country, as you have said, over the unoccupied parts 
 of the earth of a nationality truly British in language, 
 religion, laws, institutions, and attachment to the 
 empire. How this aim might be accomplished is 
 indeed a question of means; but in order to the 
 adoption of effectual means, we must have a distinct 
 view of the object. The object is charmingly 
 described in the inclosed paper, which I have copied 
 from an appendix to Thoughts on Secondary Punish- 
 ments, by the Archbishop of Dublin. That work was 
 published in 1832, and has been long out of print. 
 The author of the little essay on colonization, which I 
 extract from it, is the present Dean of Carlisle. You 
 
DH. HINDS' ESSAY ON COLONIZATION. 107 
 
 will learn on reading it, that there has been one 
 colonizing theorist besides those of 1830, who only 
 obtained in 1837 the advantage of Dr. Hinds 7 ac- 
 quaintance, counsel, and co-operation. His dissertation 
 on colonizing, however brief and slight in texture, is 
 full of the spirit of kindness and wisdom which belongs 
 to his character. I would earnestly press you to read 
 it now; that is, before we dismiss the question of 
 objects, to take up that of colonization as it is with a 
 view of ascertaining the best means of making it what 
 it ought to be. 
 
 There is only one point on which I differ from Dr. 
 Hinds. I think that he underrates the social position 
 at home of the emigrants who led the old English 
 colonization of America. But on this point I shall 
 have to dwell at some length in the proper place. 
 
 " COLONIZATION. 
 
 " SUPPOSING the system of stocking colonies with criminals to 
 be, as may be hoped, abandoned, never to be restored, it be- 
 comes an important question, what steps shall be taken in 
 respect of the now convict-colonies ; of our other existing 
 colonies ; and of any that may hereafter be contemplated. 
 Shall everything be left to go on as it is, with the single ex- 
 ception of no longer transporting criminals ? Or shall any 
 means be thought of for remedying the mischiefs done to our 
 convict-colonies, and assimilating them to the character of 
 our other colonies ? Or shall we consider whether important 
 improvements may not be introduced into those also, and 
 into the whole of our plans of founding and conducting 
 colonies ? 
 
108 ESSAY 
 
 " In order to discuss these questions profitably, it will be 
 necessary to premise a brief statement of some general prin- 
 ciples that have been usually overlooked, which has been 
 attempted in the following suggestions for the improvement 
 of our system of colonization. 
 
 " It is remarkable, that notwithstanding the greater facilities 
 which modern times afford for the settlement and growth of 
 colonies, the ancients were more successful with theirs than 
 we are with ours. If we look back on the history of Greek 
 emigrations especially, we find many ruinous enterprises in- 
 deed, owing sometimes to the situation for the new settlement 
 being ill-chosen, sometimes to the difficulties and dangers of 
 rude and unskilful navigation ; sometimes again, to the im- 
 prudence of settlers, or the jealousy of neighbours embroiling 
 the infant state in quarrels before it was strong enough to 
 protect itself. But supposing the colony to escape accidents 
 of this kind, it was generally so efficient in itself, so well 
 organized and equipped, as to thrive; and this at far less cost, 
 it would seem, and with less looking after, on the part of the 
 parent state, than is usually bestowed (and often bestowed in 
 vain) on our colonial establishments. After a few years, a 
 colony was seen, not unfrequently, to rise into a condition of 
 maturity that afforded support or threatened rivalry to the 
 state that had lately called it into existence. 
 
 " Our colonies are, in fact, far less liable to those accidents 
 which have been alluded to as occasionally interfering with 
 the success of those of ancient times, both from the greater 
 stock of useful knowledge, and from the greater power and 
 wealth possessed by those who now send out colonies. And 
 yet how many instances are there of modern European states, 
 carefully providing for a new plantation of its people ex- 
 pending on it ten times as much money and labour as sufficed 
 in earlier ages ; and still this tender plant of theirs will be 
 stunted and sickly ; and, if it does not die, must be still 
 tended and nursed like an exotic. At length, after years of 
 anxious looking after, it is found to have cost the parent state 
 more than it is worth ; or. perhaps, as in the case of the 
 
ON COLONIZATION. 109 
 
 Tnited States, we have succeeded in rearing a child that dis- 
 owns its parent that has acquired habits and feelings, and a 
 tone and character incompatible with that political aropyv 
 which colonies formerly are represented as entertaining, 
 through generations, for the mother-country. 
 
 " 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 pau- 
 pers, 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 meantime, we 
 are cherishing at home. The ancients, on the contrary, sent 
 out a representation of the parent state colonists from all 
 rank*. We stock the farm with creeping and climbing plants, 
 without any trees of firmer growth for them to entwine round. 
 A hop- ground left without poles, the plants matted confusedly 
 together, and scrambling on the ground in tangled heaps, 
 with here and there some clinging to rank thistles and hem- 
 locks, would be an apt emblem of a modern colony. They 
 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 aristo- 
 cracy its choicest nobleman ; a democracy its most influential 
 citizen. These naturally carried along with them some of 
 their own station in life, their companions and friends; some 
 of their immediate dependents also of those between them- 
 selves and the lowest class ; and were encouraged in various 
 ways to do so. The lowest class again followed with alacrity, 
 because they found themselves moving with, and not away 
 from the state of society in which they had been living. It 
 was the same social and political union under which they had 
 been born and bred ; and to prevent any contrary impression 
 being made, the utmost solemnity was observed in transferring 
 the rites of pagan superstition. They carried with them their 
 
110 ESSAY 
 
 gods their festivals their games; all, in short, that held 
 together, and kept entire the fabric of society as it existed in 
 the parent state. Nothing was left behind that could be 
 moved, of all that the heart or eye of an exile misses. The 
 new colony was made to appear as if time or chance had re- 
 duced the whole community to smaller dimensions, leaving it 
 still essentially the same home and country to its surviving 
 members. It consisted of a general contribution of members 
 from all classes, and so became, on its first settlement, a 
 mature state, with all the component parts of that which sent 
 it forth. It was a transfer of population, therefore, which 
 gave rise to no sense of degradation, as if the colonist were 
 thrust out from a higher to a lower description of community. 
 " Let us look now at the contrast which a modern colony 
 presents, in all these important features, and consider the 
 natural results. Want presses a part of the population of an 
 old-established community such as ours. Those who are 
 suffering under this pressure are encouraged to go and settle 
 themselves elsewhere, in a country whose soil, perhaps, has 
 been ascertained to be fertile, its climate healthy, and its other 
 circumstances favourable for the enterprise. The protection 
 of our arms, and the benefit of free commercial intercourse 
 with us and with other nations, are held out as inducements 
 to emigrate. We are liberal, perhaps profuse, in our grants 
 of aid from the public purse. We moreover furnish for our 
 helpless community a government, and perhaps laws; and 
 appoint over them some tried civil or military servant of the 
 state, to be succeeded by others of the same high character. 
 Our newspapers are full of glowing pictures of this land of 
 milk and honey. All who are needy and discontented all 
 who seek in vain at home for independence and comfort and 
 future wealth, are called on to seize the golden moment, and 
 repair to it. 
 
 " ' Eja ! 
 Quid statis ? Nolint. Atque licet esse beatis P 
 
 Those who do go, have, for the most part, made a reluctant 
 choice between starvation and exile. They go, often indeed 
 
ON COLONIZATION. Ill 
 
 with their imaginations full of vague notions of future riches, 
 for which they are nothing the better : but they go, with a 
 consciousness of being exiled; and when they arrive at their 
 destination, it is an exile. I am not now alluding to the 
 morbid sensibilities of a refined mind : I am speaking of the 
 uneducated clown, the drudging mechanic. His eye and his 
 heart miss in all directions objects of social interest, on the 
 influence of which he never speculated ; but which he never 
 theless felt, and must crave after. He has been accustomed, 
 perhaps, to see the squire's house and park ; and he misses 
 this object, not only when his wants, which found relief there, 
 recur; but simply because he, from a child, has been ac- 
 customed to see gentry in the land. He has been used to go 
 to his church ; if the settlement be new, there is no place of 
 worship. He has children old enough for school ; but there 
 is no schoolmaster. He needs religious comfort or instruc- 
 tion, or advice in the conduct of his life ; there is no parson, 
 and no parson's wife. His very pastimes and modes of re- 
 laxation have been so associated with the state of society, in 
 which he learnt to enjoy them, that they are no longer the 
 same to him. In short, no care has been taken, as was the 
 custom formerly, to make especial provision for the cravings 
 of his moral nature; no forethought to carry away some of 
 the natural soil about the roots of the tree that has been 
 transplanted. We have thought of our colonist, only as so 
 much flesh and blood requiring to be renewed by food, and 
 protected by clothing and shelter ; but as for that food of the 
 heart, which the poor man requires as much as the more 
 refined, although of a different quality, it has not been 
 thought of. 
 
 " Nor is this defect in our system of colonization, one that 
 merely affects the happiness of the emigrant-colonist, by 
 adding to the strangeness of his condition, and keeping alive 
 a mischievous regret for his old country. He was a member 
 of a community made up of various orders; he was a wheel 
 in a machine of a totally different construction ; it is a chance 
 if he answers under circumstances so different. He must 
 
112 ESSAY 
 
 adapt his habits of thinking and acting to the change ; and in 
 doing this he ceases to be an Englishman. He has no longer, 
 probably, his superior in wealth to ask for pecuniary assist- 
 ance ; his superior in education to ask for instruction and 
 advice. His wits are, doubtless, sharpened by the necessity of 
 doing without these accustomed supports ; but whilst he learns 
 to be independent by sacrificing some objects, or by otherwise 
 supplying some, he finds himself and those around him 
 gradually coalescing into a community of a totally different 
 character from that which they left at home. Witness the 
 United States of America. Let any thoughtful observer 
 consider the traits of character that distinguish these children 
 of our fathers from Englishmen of the present day ; and the 
 probable causes of the difference. We are apt enough, 
 indeed, to ridicule as foibles, or to censure as faults, their 
 national peculiarities their deviations from our habits. But 
 it would be wiser and worthier of us to trace them to their 
 causes, and to add the result of our inquiry to our stock of 
 legislative experience. We sent them forth, poor and 
 struggling only for the means of subsistence. Is it we that 
 should taunt them with becoming a money-making, trafficking 
 people ? We severed the humble from the nobles of our 
 land, and formed the embryo of a plebeian nation. Is it we 
 that should find fault with their extravagant abhorrence of 
 rank, or their want of high breeding and gentle blood which 
 we so sparingly bestowed on them ? We gave for the new 
 community only some of the ingredients that enter into our 
 own. Can we wonder at the want of resemblance, and of 
 congenial feeling, which has been the result ? 
 
 " And yet our American colonies, including the islands which 
 are still attached to us, were not altogether without an admix- 
 ture of the higher ranks of the British community ; and no 
 doubt their early advance to wealth and strength was greatly 
 promoted by this circumstance. But the advantage, such as 
 it was, was accidental. It made no part of our legislative 
 project. Whoever of birth or fortune betook themselves to 
 the settlements of the New World, did so from no design, of 
 
'<>L<)\I/ATIOX. 113 
 
 their own or of their government, to henefit the colonies. 
 They went into exile through the influence of political or 
 other evils at home, such as drive out some of the better 
 portions of the community, as a portion of the life-blood is 
 forced from a wound, and not as a healthy secretion. Our 
 later colonies have not had even this scanty and ill-adminis- 
 tered aid. They are regular communities of needy persons 
 representing only one class in the parent country, persons 
 who carry away with them the habits of a complex fabric 
 of society to encounter the situation of a solitary savage 
 tribe, each member of which has been trained from infancy 
 to live among equals ; to shift for himself, however rudely, 
 and to perform, though with barbarian clumsiness, almost all 
 the offices of life. The military and civil appointments 
 attached to them form really no exceptions ; for these are no 
 parts of the permanent community, but extraneous to it 
 temporary props, instead of stones to the edifice. They live 
 to themselves, and are always in readiness to shift their 
 quarters. 
 
 " Much has been said lately about enlarging our colonies, or 
 establishing new ones, in order to relieve Great Britain of a 
 portion of its needy population. Our success, experience 
 shows, must be purchased, if at all, at an enormous rate, and 
 the final result must be the rise of states, which, like those in 
 America, may be destined to influence the character and 
 manners of the whole world, and to form important portions 
 of civilized society, without deriving from us any of that 
 national character, on which we so much congratulate our- 
 selves ; owing their national character, in fact, to chance, and 
 that chance a very unpromising one. 
 
 " But what is to be done ? Are we to force our nobles and 
 gentry to join the herd of emigrants ? They have no need 
 to go, no inclination to go ; and why should they go ? Can 
 we afford to bribe them ? They may, I conceive, be bribed to 
 go ; but not by pounds, shillings, and pence. Honour, and 
 rank, and power, are less ruinous bribes than money, and yet 
 are more to the purpose, inasmuch as they influence more 
 
 I 
 
114 ESSAY 
 
 generous minds. Offer an English gentleman of influence, 
 and competent fortune (though such, perhaps, as may fall 
 short of his wishes) a sum of money, however large, to quit 
 his home permanently and take a share in the foundation of 
 a colony; and the more he possesses of those generous traits 
 of character which qualify him for the part he would have to 
 act, the less likely is he to accept the bribe. But offer him a 
 patent of nobility for himself and his heirs, offer him an 
 hereditary station in the government of the future community ; 
 and there will be some chance of his acceding to the proposal. 
 And he would not go alone. He would be followed by some 
 few of those who are moving in the same society with him, 
 near relations, intimate friends. He would be followed by 
 some, too, of an intermediate grade between him and the 
 mass of needy persons that form the majority of the colony, 
 his intermediate dependents, persons connected with them, 
 or with the members of his household. And if not one, but 
 some half-dozen gentlemen of influence were thus tempted 
 out, the sacrifice would be less felt by each, and the numbers 
 of respectable emigrants which their united influence would 
 draw after them so much greater. A colony so formed would 
 fairly represent English society, and every new comer would 
 have his own class to fall into ; and to whatever class he 
 belonged he would find its relation to the others, and the 
 support derived from the others, much the same as in the 
 parent country. There would then be little more in Van 
 Diemen's Land, or in Canada, revolting to the habits and 
 feelings of an emigrant than if he had merely shifted his 
 residence from Sussex to Cumberland or Devonshire, little 
 more than a change of natural scenery. 
 
 " And among the essential provisions which it would then be 
 far easier to make than at present, is the appointment of one 
 or more well-chosen clergymen. It is so great a sacrifice to 
 quit, not simply the place of abode, but the habits of society, 
 to which an educated man is brought up, that, as our new 
 colonies are constituted, it would be no easy matter to obtain 
 accomplished clergymen for them. In truth, however, it 
 
ON COLONIZATION. 115 
 
 makes no part of our colonization-plans ; and when a religions 
 establishment is formed in any of these settlements, it has to 
 contend with the unfavourable habits which have been formed 
 among Christians, whose devotions have been long unaided 
 by the presence of a clergyman or a common place of worship. 
 By an accomplished clergyman, however, I do not mean a 
 man of mere learning or eloquence, or even piety ; but one 
 whose acquirements would give him weight with the better 
 sort, and whose character and talents would, at the same time, 
 answer for the particular situation in which he would be 
 placed. 
 
 " The same may be urged in respect of men of other profes- 
 sions 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: if it 
 succeeds, we shall have saved so much expense and trouble 
 in the rearing; as soon as it strikes its roots into the new 
 soil it will shift for itself. Such a colony, moreover, will be 
 united to us by ties to which one of a different constitution 
 must be a stranger. It will have received from us, and will 
 always trace to us, all its social ingredients. Its highest class 
 will be ours, its gentry ours, its clergy ours, its lower and 
 its lowest rank all ours ; all corresponding and congenial to 
 our manners, institutions, and even our prejudices. Instead 
 of grudgingly casting our morsels to a miserable dependent, 
 we shall have sent forth a child worthy of its parent, and 
 capable of maintaining itself. 
 
 " These suggestions are obviously no more than prefatory to 
 a detailed scheme for the formation of a colony on the general 
 principle which I have been advocating ; but, supposing that 
 principle to be sound, the details of the measure w r ould not be 
 difficult Certain it is that our colonies prove enormously 
 expensive to us : such a system promises an earlier maturity 
 to them, and consequently a speedier release from the cost of 
 
 I 2 
 
116 ESSAY 
 
 assisting them. Our colonies are associated in the minds of 
 all classes, especially of our poorer classes, with the idea of 
 banishment from all that is nearest to their hearts and most 
 familiar to their habits. Such a system would remove much 
 that creates this association. Our colonies are not only slow 
 in growing to maturity, but grow up unlike the mother-country, 
 and acquire a national character almost necessarily opposed to 
 that of the parent state ; such a system would remove the 
 cause of this, too. And lastly, among the disadvantages 
 under which the colonist is now placed, none is more pain- 
 fully felt by some, none so mischievous to all, as the want of 
 the same religious and moral fostering which was enjoyed at 
 home. This, too, is a defect whose remedy is proposed in the 
 above scheme. It contemplates a colony in short, that shall 
 be an entire British community, and not merely one formed of 
 British materials, a community that shall carry away from 
 the soil of Great Britain the manners, the institutions, the 
 religion, the private and the public character of those whom 
 they leave behind on it ; and so carry them away as to plant 
 them in the new soil where they settle. 
 
 " Should it be replied, however, that all this is indeed theo- 
 retically true, but cannot be reduced to practice in modern 
 times, it is at least some advantage, though it may be a mor- 
 tifying one, to know where we actually stand, and to be aware 
 of our own inferiority, in this point, to the Greeks and Komans, 
 if not in political wisdom, at least in the power of applying it. 
 If the art of founding such colonies as theirs be indeed one of 
 the artes perdita, it is well to be sensible of the difference 
 and the cause of it, that we may at least not deceive ourselves 
 by calculating on producing similar effects by dissimilar and 
 inadequate means. But if we are ashamed to confess this 
 inferiority, we should be ashamed to exhibit it : we should 
 consider whether we may not, from candidly contemplating 
 it, proceed to do something towards at least diminishing, if we 
 cannot completely remove it. 
 
 " It may be necessary to notice an objection that is not 
 unlikely to be raised against the practical utility of the fore- 
 
<>X COLONIZATION. 117 
 
 going remarks. These views, it may be said, might have been 
 advantageously acted on when we first began to colonize. 
 But we have not now to form a system of colonization; this 
 has been long since done. Wisely or unwisely, we have 
 adopted a different coarse, and are actually proceeding on it. 
 The practical and pressing questions, therefore, about coloni- 
 zation, are those which relate to the state of things as they 
 are in these settlements of ours, the best remedies which 
 may be applied to the evils existing in them, the best 
 method of improving them now that they have been founded. 
 
 " And it must be admitted that, with respect to our old 
 colonies, this is true ; but our new colonies are not yet out of 
 our forming bands. There is one, especially, in the constitu- 
 tion of which we are bound to retrace, if possible, all our 
 steps, bound on every principle of expediency and national 
 honour ; nay, on a principle (if such a principle there be) of 
 national conscience. It will be readily understood that this 
 one is the convict colony in New South Wales, a colony 
 founded and maintained on principles which, if acted upon by 
 an individual in private life, would expose him to the charge 
 of insanity or of shameless profligacy. Imagine the case of 
 a household most carefully made up of picked specimens from 
 all the idle, mischievous, and notoriously bad characters in 
 the country ! Surely the man who should be mad or wicked 
 enough to bring together this monstrous family, and to keep 
 up its numbers and character by continual fresh supplies, 
 would be scouted from the society he so outraged, would be 
 denounced as the author of a diabolical nuisance to his 
 neighbourhood and his country, and would be proclaimed 
 infamous for setting at nought all morality and decency. 
 What is it better, that, instead of a household, it is a whole 
 people we have so brought together, and are so keeping up? 
 that it is the wide society of the whole world, and not of a 
 single country, against which the nuisance is committed ? 
 
 " If then, the question be, What can be done for this colony ? 
 
 Begin, I should say, by breaking up the system ; begin by 
 
 ving all the mieinancipated convicts. I do not undertake 
 
118 ESSAY 
 
 to point out the best mode of disposing of these ; but let them 
 be brought home and disposed of in any way rather than 
 remain. There is no chance for the colony until this pre- 
 liminary step be taken. In the next place I should propose 
 measures, which may be compared to the fumigation of pesti- 
 lential apartments, or to the careful search made by the 
 Israelites in every recess and corner of their houses, for the 
 purpose of casting away all their old leaven before beginning 
 to make the unleavened loaves for the Passover. There 
 should be a change of place, a transfer, if possible, of the 
 seat of government to some site within the colony, but as yet 
 untainted with the defiling associations of crime and infamy. 
 Names of places, too, should be changed ; they make part of 
 the moral atmosphere of a country; witness the successful 
 policy of the French at the revolution. The name of Botany 
 Bay, &c., could not, for generations, become connected in 
 men's minds with honesty, sober industry, and the higher 
 qualities of the British character. Change as much as will 
 admit of change in place and name ; and the colonists sent 
 out with authority to effect this may then be selected on the 
 principles which I have recommended for the foundation of 
 an entirely new colony. And it might be worth while to 
 bestow, at first, a labour and expense on this new portion of 
 the colony more than adequate to its intrinsic importance ; 
 because it would be destined to serve as a nucleus of honest 
 industry, civilization, and general improvement for the rest 
 of the colony, a scion, as it were, grafted on the wild stock, 
 and designed to become, in time, the whole tree. 
 
 " But these measures, if carried into effect at all, must be 
 taken in hand soon. Time, no distant time, perhaps, may 
 place this ' foul disnatured' progeny of ours out of our power 
 for good or for harm. Let us count the years that have past 
 since we first scattered emigrants along the coast of America. 
 It is but as yesterday, and look at the gigantic people that 
 has arisen. Thank Heaven that in morals and in civilization 
 they are at this day what they are. But can we look forward 
 without a shudder, at the appalling spectacle which a few 
 
ON COLONIZATION. 119 
 
 generations hence may be doomed to witness in Australia? 
 Pass by as many years to come as it has taken the United 
 States of America to attain to their present maturity, and here 
 will be another new world with another new people, stretching 
 out its population unchecked; rapid in its increase of wealth, 
 and art, and power, taking its place in the congress of the 
 mightiest nations ; rivalling, perhaps, ruling them ; and then 
 think what stuff this people will have been made of; and who 
 it is that posterity will then curse for bringing this mildew on 
 the social intercourse of the world ; who it is that will be 
 answerable for the injury done by it to human virtue and 
 human happiness, at a tribunal more distant, but more awful 
 even than posterity." 
 
 I would now beg of you, before we proceed to colo- 
 nization as it is, to read Charles Buller's speech of 
 1843. A copy of it is enclosed, in the form in which 
 it was published by Mr. Murray at the time, and wa* 
 soon out of print. As it relates principally to the 
 objects which this country has in colonizing systemati- 
 cally, I think that when you shall have read it, we 
 ina\' deem that part of our subject finally disposed of.* 
 
 * Since Mr. Buller's death, I have determined to reprint his 
 speech of 1843, in an appendix to this correspondence. It will be 
 found at the end of the volume, with a statement of facts concerning 
 him, explanatory of the circumstances which prevented him from 
 following up his great effort of 1843, by submitting to the public a 
 plan of colonization as complete as his exposition of the objects with 
 which such a plan ought to be framed. 
 
120 
 
 LETTER XIX. 
 From the Statesman, 
 
 THE STATESMAN WONDERS WHY THE NATURAL ATTRAC- 
 TIVENESS OF COLONIES DOES NOT OCCASION A GREATER 
 EMIGRATION OF PEOPLE AND CAPITAL; POINTS OUT, 
 WITH A VIEW TO THE OBJECTS OF THE MOTHER- 
 COUNTRY, THAT THE EMIGRATION OF PEOPLE AND 
 CAPITAL MUST BE LARGELY INCREASED ; AND ASKS WHAT 
 IS TO BE DONE IN ORDER THAT ENOUGH PEOPLE AND 
 CAPITAL MAY EMIGRATE TO RELIEVE THE MOTHER- 
 COUNTRY FROM THE EVILS OF EXCESSIVE COMPETITION. 
 
 YOUR recent letters, the Dean of Carlisle's beautiful 
 Essay, and Charles Buller's masterly speech, have 
 made a general impression on me, which I think ought 
 to be communicated to you now. It will resolve itself 
 into questions. If you can answer them satisfactorily, 
 we shall have taken a good step forward. 
 
 Admitting, as I already do, that the distinguishing 
 characteristics of this country and the colonies are a 
 want of room for all classes here, and plenty of room 
 for all classes there, I want to know why it is that 
 people of all classes, and capital, do not emigrate in 
 sufficient numbers and quantities to reduce competition 
 in this country within tolerable limits. The competi- 
 
MOTIVES FOR EMIGRATION. 121 
 
 tion must be painful, arid the attraction of the colonies 
 great. These forces co-operating, the one in driving 
 and the other in drawing people away, why is it that 
 so few go? why is not more capital sent? But let us 
 note a few particulars. The life of people here who 
 are continually in a state of anxiety with respect to 
 support according to their station, must be disagree- 
 able in the extreme; and I should think that the life 
 of an emigrant colonist, in whatever rank, must be 
 very agreeable. If I were a common labourer, and 
 knew what I know about colonies, I am sure that I 
 would not stay in this country if I could anyhow find 
 the means of emigration to high wages, to the fairest 
 prospect of comfortable independence, and the imme- 
 diate enjoyment of that importance which belongs to 
 the labouring class in colonies. It strikes me, that 
 men possessing a small or moderate capital should 
 have the same desire to remove from a place where 
 they are pinched and uncomfortable, to one where 
 they would enjoy the (to them I imagine) unspeakable 
 satisfaction of daily counting an increased store. To 
 the poorer gentry even, especially younger sons of 
 men of fortune, and parents whose families of children 
 are as large as their fortunes are small, the colonies 
 must, I fancy, hold out a most agreeable prospect. 
 Indeed, the last of these classes appears to me to be 
 the one that would benefit the most by emigrating. 
 In money they would gain like other people; in feeling 
 more than other people, because they are peculiarly 
 susceptible of such pain as they suffer here and such 
 pleasure as> they would enjoy there. They are a class 
 with whom pride, far more than love of money, is the 
 ruling sentiment. I do not mean an improper pride. 
 
122 THE PAIN OF SINKING. 
 
 What they chiefly suffer here, is the pain of sinking, 
 or seeing their children sink, into a lower station: 
 what they would chiefly enjoy in a colony, is the 
 pleasure of holding themselves the highest position, 
 and seeing their children, the sons by exertion, the 
 daughters by marriage, continue in the first rank. 
 The rank of the colony is doubtless very inferior to 
 that of the mother-country; but of what use is his 
 country's rank to one whose lot is most wounding to 
 his pride? With regard to pride, is not the first 
 position anywhere better than sinking anywhere? I 
 can understand that for a " gentleman," as we say, 
 emigration may be a mortifying acknowledgment to 
 those whom he leaves behind, that he has been forced 
 away by his necessities ; but, as a rule, people care 
 very little about what is thought of them by others 
 whom they leave behind for life: the mortification 
 must soon be over : and on the other hand there is the 
 prospect of being received with open arms by the 
 community with which your lot is now cast. If you 
 tell me that there are attachments at home, a love 
 of localities and persons, which indispose all classes to 
 emigrate, I answer that in the class of poor gentry, 
 whether young and unmarried, or of middle age with 
 families, having no good prospect here, it would be 
 troublesome to find one who would refuse a lucrative 
 and honourable appointment for life in any healthy 
 part of the world. For this class, I take it, emigration, 
 as it is going to money and importance, is like a 
 lucrative and honourable appointment for life, and 
 beyond life for the benefit of children as well. Why 
 then do so few of this class emigrate ? Cadets of this 
 class swarm in the professions and at the doors of the 
 
PRACTICAL QUESTIONS. 123 
 
 public offices, beyond all means of providing for them : 
 and there must be thousands, nay, tens of thousands, 
 of families living in what may be termed "genteel 
 colonies" at home and on the continent, for what they 
 call cheapness, but really for the purpose of enjoying 
 more importance than their income would give any- 
 where else but in a colony. In a colony, their im- 
 portance would be infinitely greater. Why do they 
 not rather emigrate and prosper, than hide themselves, 
 *n innate, and sink? 
 
 Again, supposing that there are circumstances 
 which deter people from emigrating, why is not 
 capital sent ? To some extent capital is invested in the 
 colonies with larger returns than could be obtained for 
 it here, and without being accompanied by its owners ; 
 but the amount is too small for its abstraction to pro- 
 duce any effect on the money-mgrket of this country. 
 You say that in colonies there is an unlimited field for 
 the productive employment of capital : if so, larger in- 
 vestments of British capital in the colonies are not pre- 
 vented by want of room there. If A B, remaining in 
 this country, sends out his capital to the colonies and 
 invests it with large returns, why should not C D, and 
 all the rest of the alphabet do the same? I suppose 
 that there must be some limit to the investment of 
 British capital in colonies, though you have not alluded 
 to it, and I cannot exactly perceive what it is. 
 
 These questions are pertinent and practical : if the 
 emigration of capital and people has reached its 
 maximum according to the present circumstances of 
 this country and of our colonial empire, it would be 
 idle to think of more extensive colonization as a means 
 of remedying our economical evils and averting our 
 
124 SUPPOSED LIMIT TO THE 
 
 political dangers. We cannot force either capital or 
 people to emigrate. The principle of laissez-faire 
 must be strictly observed in this case: and were it 
 otherwise, I cannot imagine the law or act of govern- 
 ment that would have the effect of inducing anybody, 
 not being so minded at present, to send his capital to 
 a colony, or go thither himself. If there is no limit 
 in colonies to the profitable employment of capital 
 and labour, there must be a limit here to the disposi- 
 tion to take advantage of that circumstance, which no 
 legislation, that I can think of, would overcome. Let 
 us beware of indulging in day-dreams. It is plain, 
 according to your own showing, that the emigration 
 both of capital and people must be greatly increased 
 in order to effect the true objects of colonization. It 
 is to the necessity of this great increase that I would 
 direct your attention. I acknowledge on the general 
 principles which you have urged, that the tendency of 
 colonization is to reduce to cure and prevent, if you 
 will injurious competition at home : but practically 
 all depends on the amount of the colonization. If in 
 colonizing we should not reach the indispensable 
 point, we might as well do nothing as regards the 
 effect upon this country. By increasing the emigra- 
 tion of people and capital in a less degree than the 
 whole case demands, we should indeed benefit the 
 individual emigrants and owners of the exported 
 capital ; and we should likewise, so to speak, enable a 
 number of people to live here and a quantity of 
 capital to get employment here, which cannot do so 
 now: we should do this, according to your theory, 
 partly by creating a vacuum of people and capital, 
 which would be instantly filled, partly by enlarging 
 
EMIGRATION OF PEOPLE AND CAPITAL. 125 
 
 the home field of employment for capital and labour, 
 us that depends on the extent of the foreign market: 
 but in doing all this, which I admit is not to be de- 
 spised as an object of national care, we should do 
 nothing in the way of raising either wages or profits 
 at home; we should produce, let me repeat, no effect 
 whatever on the excessive competition for which you 
 present colonization as a remedy. What is the amount 
 of colonization that would affect wages and profits at 
 home ? The question is not to be answered ; but we 
 may be sure that the requisite amount could not be 
 reached without greatly increasing the emigration of 
 people and capital. I call on you to show how this 
 essential condition of the most effective colonization 
 is to be secured in the face of a limit, in the minds of 
 men, to the emigration of people and capital, over 
 which law and government have no control. To re- 
 capitulate in a single question, I ask, what can we do 
 in order that our colonial territories should have 
 the same effects for us, as the unsettled territory of 
 the United States has for the older portion of that 
 country ? 
 
126 
 
 LETTER XX. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 THE COLONIST BEGS LEAVE TO PREFACE AN ACCOUNT 
 OF THE IMPEDIMENTS TO COLONIZATION BY A NOTICE 
 OF ITS CHAKMS FOR THE DIFFERENT CLASSES OF 
 EMIGRANTS. 
 
 I ACCEPT your challenge without fear, not boast- 
 fully, but from confidence in the truth of my 
 opinion that law or government has control over 
 the disposition of people and capital to emigrate, and 
 could, by encouraging that disposition, bring about an 
 amount of colonization sufficient to affect wages and 
 profits at home. This opinion has not been hastily 
 formed, and cannot be very briefly explained ; for it is 
 a deduction from many facts. I will go on to these 
 after a word of preface. 
 
 It is my intention to accept your challenge strictly 
 in your own sense of it, when I say that the disposi- 
 tion of people and capital to emigrate is limited by 
 impediments which it is in the power of law or govern- 
 ment to remove. Law or government has also the 
 power to encourage that disposition. In removing 
 the impediments, and affording the encouragement, 
 would consist the whole art of national colonization. 
 
CHARMS OF COLONIZATION. 127 
 
 It is time for us, therefore, to examine the impedi- 
 ments. But before doing this, I would draw your 
 attention by the present letter to some particulars 
 of the inducements to emigration for various classes of 
 people. These may be termed the charms of colo- 
 nization. Until you shall be aware of their force, you 
 cannot well understand that of the impediments which 
 counteract them. 
 
 Without having witnessed it, you cannot form a 
 just conception of the pleasurable excitement which 
 those enjoy, who engage personally in the business of 
 colonization. The circumstances which produce these 
 lively and pleasant feelings, are doubtless counteracted 
 by others productive of annoyance and pain ; but at 
 the worst there is a great deal of enjoyment for all 
 classes of colonists, which the fixed inhabitants of an 
 old country can with difficulty comprehend. The 
 counteracting circumstances are so many impediments 
 to colonization, which we must examine presently : I 
 will now endeavour to describe briefly the encouraging 
 circumstances, which put emigrants into a state of ex- 
 citement similar to that occasioned by opium, wine, or 
 winning at play, but with benefit instead of fatal 
 injury to the moral and physical man. 
 
 When a man of whatever condition has finally de- 
 termined to emigrate, there is no longer any room in 
 his mind for thought about the circumstances that 
 surround him : his life for some time is an unbroken 
 and happy dream of the imagination. The labourer, 
 whose dream is generally realized, thinks of light 
 work and high wages, good victuals in abundance, 
 beer and tobacco at pleasure, and getting in time to 
 be a master in his trade, or to having a farm of his 
 
128 THE LABOURER'S ARRIVAL. 
 
 own. The novelty of the passage would be a delight 
 to him, were it not for the ennui arising from want of 
 occupation. On his arrival in the colony, all goes 
 well with him. He finds himself a person of great 
 value, a sort of personage, and can indulge almost any 
 inclination that seizes him. If he is a brute, as many 
 emigrant labourers are, through being brutally brought 
 up from infancy to manhood, he lives, to use his own 
 expression, " like a fighting cock," till gross enjoy- 
 ment carries him off the scene : if he is of the better 
 sort by nature and education, he works hard, saves 
 money, and becomes a man of property; perhaps 
 builds himself a nice house; glories with his now 
 grand and happy wife in counting the children, the 
 more the merrier; and cannot find anything on earth 
 to complain of but the exorbitant wages he has to 
 pay. The change for this class of man, being from 
 pauperism, or next door to it, to plenty and property, 
 is indescribably, to our apprehensions almost incon- 
 ceivably, agreeable. 
 
 But the classes who can hardly imagine the pleasant 
 feelings which emigration provides for the well- 
 disposed pauper, have pleasant feelings of their own 
 when they emigrate, which are perhaps more lively 
 in proportion to the greater susceptibility of a more 
 cultivated mind to the sensations of mental pain and 
 pleasure. Emigrants of cultivated mind, from the 
 moment when they determine to be colonists, have 
 their dreams, which though far from being always, or 
 ever fully realized, are, I have been told by hundreds 
 of this class, very delightful indeed. They think 
 with great pleasure of getting away from the dis- 
 agreeable position of anxiety, perhaps of wearing 
 
INTENDING EMIGRANTS. 129 
 
 dependence, in which the universal and excessive 
 competition of this country has placed them. But it is 
 on the future that their imagination exclusively seizes. 
 They can think in earnest about nothing but the 
 colony. I have known a man of this class, who had 
 been too careless of money here, begin, as soon as he 
 had resolved on emigration, to save sixpences, and 
 take care of bits of string, saying, " everything will be 
 of use there." There ! it is common for people whose 
 thoughts are fixed " there," to break themselves all at 
 once of a confirmed habit; that of reading their 
 favourite newspaper every day. All the newspapers 
 of the old country are now equally uninteresting to 
 them. If one falls in their way, they perhaps turn 
 with alacrity to the shipping-list and advertisements 
 of passenger- ships, or even to the account of a sale of 
 Australian wool or New-Zealand flax: but they 
 cannot see either the Parliamentary debate, or the 
 leading article which used to embody their own 
 opinions, or the reports of accidents and offences of 
 which they used to spell every word. Their reading 
 now is confined to letters and newspapers from the 
 colony, and books relating to it. They can hardly 
 talk about anything that does not relate to " there." 
 Awake and asleep too, their imagination is employed in 
 picturing the colony generally, and in all sorts of par- 
 ticulars. The glorious climate, the beautiful scenery, 
 the noble forests, the wide plains of natural grass 
 interspersed with trees like an English park; the fine 
 harbour, the bright river, the fertile soil; the very 
 property on which they mean to live and die, first, 
 as it is now, a beautiful but useless wilderness, and 
 then as they intend to make it, a delightful residence 
 
130 LOVE OF CONSTRUCTION. 
 
 and profitable domain: all this passes before the 
 greedy eyes of the intending settler, and bewitches 
 him with satisfaction. 
 
 This emigrant's dream lasts all through the passage. 
 He has left a country in which the business of the 
 inhabitants is to preserve, use, improve, and multiply 
 the good things they have; he settles in one where 
 everything must be created but the land and some 
 imported capital. He finds that colonizing consists of 
 making all sorts of things not yet in existence. He 
 beholds either nothing but a wilderness, or the first 
 settlers engaged in making roads and bridges, houses 
 and gardens, farms, mills, a dock, a lighthouse, a court- 
 house, a prison, a school-house, and a church. If he 
 goes to a colony already established, still the further 
 construction of civilized society is the sight that 
 meets his eyes in every direction. His individual 
 pursuits consist of a share in the general work of con- 
 struction. A love of building, which is apt to ruin 
 people here, so tempting is the pleasure which its in- 
 dulgence affords, may there be indulged with profit : 
 or rather the building of something is everybody's 
 proper business and inevitable enjoyment: for the 
 principle of human nature which causes the loftiest as 
 well as the meanest minds to take a pleasure in build- 
 ing, is called into exercise, not more in the erection of 
 a palace or cathedral, than in the conversion of a piece 
 of desert into productive farms, in the getting up of a 
 fine breed of cattle or sheep, or in the framing of in- 
 stitutions and laws, suitable from time to time to the 
 peculiarities of a new place, and to the changeful wants 
 of a growing and spreading community. This prin- 
 ciple of human nature is a love of planning for oneself, 
 
CHARMS OF AGRICULTURE. 131 
 
 executing one's own plan, and beholding the results 
 of one's own handiwork. In colonizing, individuals 
 and communities are always planning, executing, and 
 watching the progress, or contemplating the results of 
 their own labours. The results come so quickly and 
 are so strikingly visible ! If you had been a colonist, 
 or architect of society, you would feel, as well as 
 Bacon knew by means of his profound insight into 
 human nature, that colonization is heroic work. 
 
 Man's love of construction is probably at the bot- 
 tom of the pleasure which the cultivation of the earth 
 has. in all ages and countries, afforded to the sanest 
 and often the most powerful minds. The healthful- 
 ness of the occupation must no doubt count for some- 
 thing; and more, perhaps, should be allowed for the 
 familiar intercourse with nature, which belongs to a 
 pursuit affected by every change of season and wea- 
 ther, and relating to the growth of plants and the 
 production of animal life; but the main charm, I 
 suspect, of the farmer's existence whether he is a 
 rustic incapable of enjoyment away from his farm, or 
 a retired statesman whose most real enjoyment is his 
 farm arises from the constructiveness of the pursuit ; 
 from the perpetual and visible sequence of cause and 
 effect, designed and watched by the operator. What- 
 ever the proportion to each other, however, that we 
 may assign to the charms of agriculture, they are all 
 felt in a high degree by colonial settlers on land, 
 amongst whom, by the way, must be reckoned nearly 
 all emigrants of the richer and better order. The 
 nature with which a colonial farmer associates, has a 
 great deal of novelty about it as respects the seasons, 
 the weather, the capacities of the soil, the seeds, the 
 
 K2 
 
132 CHARMS OF COLONIZATION. 
 
 plants, the trees, the wild animals, and even the tame 
 live-stock, which is affected, often improved, by the 
 new soil and climate : and all this novelty is so much 
 pleasant excitement. But, above all, the farm of the 
 colonial settler has to be wrought into being: the 
 whole aspect of the place has to be changed by his 
 own exertions; the forest cleared away, the drainage 
 and irrigation instituted, the fencing originated, the 
 house and the other buildings raised from the ground 
 after careful selection of their site, the garden planned 
 and planted: the sheep, the cattle, the horses, even 
 the dogs and poultry, must be introduced into the 
 solitude ; and their multiplication by careful breeding 
 is a work of design with a view to anticipated results. 
 The life of a settler, when colonization prospers, is a 
 perpetual feast of anticipated and realized satisfaction. 
 The day is always too short for him ; the night passed 
 in profound, invigorating sleep, the consequence of 
 bodily fatigue in the open air, not to mention the 
 peace of mind. Add the inspiriting effect of such a 
 climate as that of Canada during three parts of the 
 year, or that of the Southern colonies all the year 
 round ; and you will believe me when I tell you that 
 most colonial settlers are passionately fond of their 
 mode of life; you will also perceive why the draw- 
 backs or impediments to colonization which I am 
 about to describe, do not quite prevent the better sort 
 of people from emigrating. 
 
 I ought to have remarked sooner, perhaps, that 
 when once a colony is founded, emigration to it, of all 
 classes, depends in a great measure on the reports 
 which the settlers send to this country of the circum- 
 stances in which they are placed in the colony. If 
 
COLONISTS' REPORTS. 133 
 
 the emigrants have prospered according to the ex- 
 itions with which they left home, or if their 
 anxious hopes have been disappointed, every letter 
 from the colony makes an impression accordingly upon 
 a circle of people in this country. All these im- 
 pressions together gradually merge into a public im- 
 pression. The colony gets a good or a bad name at 
 home. Nothing can counteract the force of this 
 influence. No interest here, such as that of a colo- 
 nizing company or busy agents of the colony; no 
 power or influence, such as that of the government; 
 can puff into popularity a colony which is not pros- 
 perous; nor can the utmost efforts of rival colonial 
 interests in this country, or of the colonial branch of 
 government, jealous of the prosperity of a colony which 
 has been founded against its will, run down a pros- 
 perous colony in public opinion here, so as to check 
 emigration to it. Whether or not, and to what extent, 
 there shall be emigration to it, depends upon the letters 
 from the colony itself, and the reports made by colo- 
 nists who return home for some purpose or other. I 
 am inclined to say, that private letters and reports 
 alone have this influence ; for books, or other publica- 
 tions about a colony, are suspected of having been 
 written with the intention of puffing or disparaging. 
 The private letters and reports have more influence 
 than anything else, because they are believed to con- 
 tain, as they generally do contain, true information. 
 It is true information from a colony, therefore, about 
 the condition of people in the colony; it is the colonial 
 condition of emigrants which, in a great measure, 
 regulates emigration, and more especially the emigra- 
 tion of those classes whose ability to emigrate is always 
 to their inclination. 
 
134 COLONISTS' KEPORTS. 
 
 It is not merely because the inclination of the 
 labouring class to emigrate is under the control of 
 their ability, that their emigration is less affected than 
 that of the other classes by reports from the colony. 
 Emigrants of the labouring class very seldom return 
 home to make reports in person; and the writing of 
 letters is not their forte : it is a disagreeable tax upon 
 their attention, almost a painful effort of their feeble 
 skill. The postage deters them, as well as their 
 illiterate state of mind. They receive fewer letters to 
 answer. They have, in comparison with the other 
 classes, an awful conception of the distance which 
 separates them from birthplace, and a vague notion 
 that letters for home may not reach their destination. 
 In comparison with the other classes, emigration 
 severs them from the mother-country completely and 
 for ever. 
 
 We may now proceed to the impression made on 
 the different classes at home, by colonization as it is. 
 
135 
 
 LETTER XXI. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 EMIGRANTS DIVIDED INTO LABOURERS, CAPITALISTS, AND 
 
 GENTRY. HOW THE " SHOVELLING OUT OF PAUPERS," 
 
 AND EMIGRATION AS A PUNISHMENT, INDISPOSE THE 
 POORER CLASSES TO EMIGRATE, AND ESPECIALLY THE 
 BETTER SORT OF THEM. 
 
 T AYIXG aside for the present the subject of the 
 *-^ emigration of capital without its owners, there 
 are three classes of people whose inclination to emigrate 
 is variously affected by impeding circumstances. 
 These I shall call the Labourers, the Capitalists, and 
 the Gentry ; and it is my intention to notice separately 
 how each class is affected by these circumstances. 
 Let me first, however, say a few words about the 
 gentry class. 
 
 This is a class composed of what you call " gentle- 
 men." They may become landowners in the colony, 
 or owners of capital lent at interest, or farmers of 
 their own land, merchants, clergymen, lawyers, or 
 doctors, so that they be respectable people in the sense 
 of being honourable, of cultivated mind, and gifted 
 with the right sort, and right proportion of self-respect. 
 This is what I shall always mean, when calling them 
 
136 DIVISION OF EMIGRANTS 
 
 "respectable," whether or not they keep a carriage 
 and a butler. The most respectable emigrants, more 
 especially if they have a good deal of property, and 
 are well connected in this country, lead and govern 
 the emigration of the other classes. These are the 
 emigrants whose presence in a colony most beneficially 
 affects its standard of morals and manners, and would 
 supply the most beneficial element of colonial govern- 
 ment. If you can induce many of this class to settle 
 in a colony, the other classes, whether capitalists or 
 labourers, are sure to settle there in abundance : for a 
 combination of honour, virtue, intelligence, and pro- 
 perty, is respected even by those who do not possess 
 it; and if those emigrate who do possess it, their 
 example has an immense influence in leading others 
 to emigrate, who either do not possess it, or possess it 
 in an inferior degree. This, therefore, is the class, the 
 impediments to whose emigration the thoughtful 
 statesman would be most anxious to remove, whilst 
 he further endeavoured to attract them to the colony 
 by all the means in his power. I shall often call them 
 the higher order, and the most valuable class of 
 emigrants. 
 
 The labourers differ from the other classes in this, 
 that however inclined to emigrate, they are not always 
 able to carry their own wish into effect. With them, 
 and especially with the poorest of them, who would 
 be most disposed to emigrate, it is a question of ability 
 as well as inclination. They often cannot pay for 
 their passage. For reasons to be stated hereafter, 
 colonial capitalists will not pay for their passage, how 
 much soever the richer class may long to obtain in the 
 colony the services of the poorer. To some extent, the 
 
INTO CLASSES. 137 
 
 cost of passage for very poor emigrants has been de- 
 frayed by persons wishing to get rid of them, and by 
 the public funds of colonies wishing to receive them. 
 It will be my business hereafter to show how easily 
 the latter kind of emigration-fund might be increased 
 beyond any assignable limit ; but, at present, we must 
 take the fact as it is, that, even now, more of the 
 labouring class are disposed to emigrate, than can 
 find the means of getting to a colony. Supposing, 
 however, that this difficulty were removed, as I firmly 
 believe it may be, we should then see that the dis- 
 position of the labouring classes to emigrate is limited 
 by circumstances not relating to their ability. 
 
 The first of these is their ignorance of the paradise 
 which a colony is for the poor. If they only knew 
 what a colony is for people of their class, they would 
 prefer emigrating to getting double wages here; and 
 how glad they would be to get Double wages here need 
 not be stated. I have often thought that if pains 
 were taken to make the poorest class in this country 
 really and truly aware of what awaits emigrants 
 of their class in North America, and if a suitable 
 machinery were established for enabling them to cross 
 the Atlantic, and get into employment, by means 
 of money saved by themselves here, enough of them 
 would emigrate to cause a rise of wages for those who 
 remained behind. At present, speaking of the class 
 generally, they know hardly anything about colonies, 
 and still less about what they ought to do in order to 
 reach a colony, if they could save wherewith to pay 
 for the passage. The colonies are not attractive to 
 them as a class, have no existence so far as they know, 
 never occupy their thoughts for a moment. That 
 
138 "SHOVELLING-OUT" OF PAUPERS 
 
 they have not much inclination to emigrate should 
 surprise nobody. 
 
 But, secondly, they have a disinclination to emigrate 
 occasioned by the " shovelling out of paupers." A 
 parish-union, or landlord, or both together, wishing to 
 diminish the poor's rate by getting rid of some paupers, 
 raise an emigration-fund, and send out a number of 
 their poor to Canada or Australia ; probably to Canada, 
 because the cost of passage is so much less. Who are 
 they that go? probably the most useless, the least 
 respectable people in the parish. How are they got 
 to go? probably by means of a little pressure, such 
 as parishes and landlords can easily apply without 
 getting into a scrape with The Times. Occasionally 
 they refuse to go after preparation has been made for 
 their departure. Whether they go or stay, the at- 
 tempt to remove them, not by attraction, but repulsion, 
 makes an impression in the neighbourhood, that 
 emigration is only fit for the refuse of the population, 
 if it is not going to some kind of slavery or destruc- 
 tion. The tendency of these pauper-shovellings is to 
 make the common people think of emigration with 
 dislike and terror. 
 
 Thirdly, the punishment of transportation excites 
 amongst the common people a strong prejudice against 
 emigration. The judge, when he sentences a convict 
 to transportation, tells him (and what the judge says, 
 the convict's neighbours learn), that for his crime he is 
 to be punished by being removed from his country 
 and home, separated from his relations and friends, 
 condemned to pass the whole, or a great part, of his 
 life amongst strangers in a distant land. The parson 
 of the parish might, with equal truth, address the 
 
DISCOURAGES EMIGRATION. 139 
 
 very same words to an honest labourer about to 
 emigrate. The judge, indeed, in speaking to the con- 
 vict, goes on to say, that in addition to the punish- 
 ment of emigration, he will have to undergo some 
 punishment in the colony ; whereas the parson would 
 say to the honest labourer, you as a colonist will be 
 jolly and comfortable. But it so happens, that trans- 
 ported convicts, whether in writing from the colony 
 to their acquaintances here, or talking with them 
 here on their return from transportation, almost in- 
 variably report, that they, too, have led a jolly and 
 comfortable colonial life. The assertion is often true: 
 whether true or false, it is insisted upon by the con- 
 vict, who naturally wishes to persuade others that he 
 has undergone no punishment; that he has cheated 
 the law; that he is not an unhappy wretch, but a 
 favourite of fortune. Now and then, a transported 
 convict may acknowledge to his friends at home, that 
 he is unhappy in the colony ; but this is a case of rare 
 exception: in the great majority of cases in those 
 which make the impression here the transported 
 convict speaks of his own condition, as a convict, in 
 the very terms which an honest, industrious emigrant 
 uses, when telling of his light work and high wages, 
 his lots of victuals, drink, and tobacco, his frequent 
 amusements, and his contemplated purchase of a 
 hundred acres. Such reports from convicts are being 
 continually received amongst the poor in all parts of 
 this country. They may encourage crime; but they 
 certainly discourage emigration. In the mind of the 
 common people, they confound emigration and punish- 
 ment, emigration and disgrace, emigration and shame. 
 And the impression is strongest on the best of the 
 
140 GENTRY CLASS OF COLONISTS. 
 
 common people ; on those, that is, who would be pre- 
 ferred by a colony choosing for itself, and whom an 
 imperial legislature would prefer if it really wished to 
 found colonies with the best materials. 
 
 LETTER XXII. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 THE SHAME OF THE HIGHER ORDER OF SETTLERS WHEN 
 
 THEY FIRST THINK OF EMIGRATING. THE JEALOUSY 
 
 OF A WIFE. HOW EMIGRATION, AS THE PUNISHMENT 
 
 OF CRIME, AFFECTS OPINION IN THIS COUNTRY WITH 
 
 REGARD TO EMIGRATION IN GENERAL. COLONISTS 
 
 AND COLONIES DESPISED IN THE MOTHER-COUNTRY. 
 
 IT has been my lot to become acquainted with a con- 
 siderable number of the gentry class of emigrants ; 
 and I declare, in the first place, that I never met with 
 one, who, when he first contemplated emigration, was 
 not ashamed and afraid of his own purpose; and 
 secondly, that I know not of one whose objects in emi- 
 grating have been realized. I wish I did not know a 
 great many whose hopes as emigrants have been bit- 
 terly disappointed. The causes of the disappointment, 
 as well as the shame and fear, may be easily explained. 
 I will begin with the shame. 
 
 You may have a difficulty in believing or under- 
 standing it, but much experience has made me confi- 
 dent, that the highest class who think of emigrating, 
 to whom the idea of emigration for themselves ever 
 
A WIFE'S JEALOUSY. 141 
 
 occurs, associate that idea with the idea of convict 
 transportation, even more painfully than the poorest 
 and meanest class do. This association of ideas is not 
 deliberate, but undesigned, almost unconscious : it is 
 a consequence of the facts, and of the nature of the 
 human mind. A case is within my knowledge, in 
 which a gentleman of good birth and connexions con- 
 templated emigrating to Australia Felix. He had a 
 small fortune, a large family of children, and a hand- 
 some wife, to whom he was tenderly attached, though 
 she was not the wisest of her sex. As the children 
 grew up, the income seemed to grow smaller, though it 
 remained the same; the wants increased whilst the 
 means of supplying them were stationary. The edu- 
 cation of the boys was costly; that of the girls inferior 
 to that of other girls in their station. To provide for 
 both, one after another of the parents' luxuries, and of 
 the outward marks of their station, was reluctantly 
 laid down. In order to establish the sons in life, more 
 money was required than could by any means be 
 found ; and two of the daughters had already entered 
 on the miserable period between lively girlhood and 
 confirmed old-maidism. The father passed from the 
 state of self-satisfied enjoyment, first into uneasiness, 
 then into impatience, and at last into a discontent at 
 once angry and mournful: the mother fretted con- 
 tinually. They had married very young, and were still 
 in the prime of life. At last, there was added to the 
 mother's troubles, that of jealousy. She had reason to 
 think that her husband's affections were estranged from 
 her. He went to London without telling her for what. 
 He returned without reporting whom he had seen, or 
 what he had done. At home, he took no interest in 
 
142 THE JEALOUSY EXPLODES. 
 
 his usual occupations or amusements. He was ab- 
 sorbed with secret thoughts, absent, inattentive, and 
 unaffectionate, but in apparent good humour with 
 himself, and charmed with the subject of his secret 
 contemplations. He had a key made for the post-bag, 
 which had been without one for years ; and instead of 
 leaving all his letters about, as was his wont, he care- 
 fully put some of them away, and was caught once or 
 twice in the act of reading them in secret with smiling 
 lips and sparkling eyes. His wife did not complain, 
 but now and then hinted to him that she perceived 
 the change in his demeanour. On these occasions he 
 protested that she was mistaken, and for a while after- 
 wards put a guard upon his behaviour for the evident 
 purpose of averting her suspicions. At last, poor 
 woman, her jealousy exploded; and it turned out that 
 he had been all this time forming a plan of emigration 
 for the family. Whilst he was so engaged, his mind 
 had naturally fixed on the pleasant features of the 
 project; the delightful climate, the fine domain, the 
 pastoral life, the creative business of settling, the full 
 and pleasing occupation, the consequence which a 
 person of his station would enjoy in the colony, the 
 ample room for boys and girls, and the happy change 
 for his harassed wife. This explains his smiling self- 
 satisfaction : his secrecy was deliberate, because he was 
 afraid that if he disclosed his scheme at home before 
 it was irrevocably matured, his wife and her relations, 
 and his own relations as well, would call it a scheme 
 of transportation, and worry him into abandoning it. 
 
 They did worry him by talking about Botany Bay. 
 In vain he protested that Australia Felix is not a 
 penal colony: they found out, that though convicts 
 
A PLAN OF LORD GREY'S. 143 
 
 are not sent to Port Philip to undergo punishment as 
 convicts, they are sent thither as " exiles ;" and that 
 swarms of emancipated convicts resort thither from 
 Van Diemen's Land and New South Wales : the lady's 
 brother, the rector of their parish, explained that Lord 
 Grey's plan of convict transportation is a plan of emigra- 
 tion for convicts ; the very plan contemplated by the 
 brother-in-law for himself and family. They got hold 
 of a Hobart-Town newspaper, which contained the 
 report of a public meeting held for the purpose of 
 laying before her Majesty's Government a description 
 of the social horrors inflicted on Tasmania by the plan 
 of exiling convicts to that island, and starting them 
 out of the ship on their arrival as free as any other 
 emigrants, or as thieves in the Strand. The would-be 
 emigrant so far gave way to this domestic storm, as to 
 offer, that New Zealand instead of Australia Felix 
 should be their destination ; but then they proved to 
 him, with the aid of a cousin who is in the Colonial 
 Office, that convict-boys from Parkhurst prison are 
 sent to New Zealand, and that Lord Grey contem- 
 plates making those islands a receptacle of convict 
 " exiles." In the end, they taunted him into giving 
 up his scheme, and settling, poor fellow, at Boulogne, 
 in order to be somebody there instead of nobody at 
 home. 
 
 I do not pretend that the only argument of the wife 
 and her supporters consisted of taunts founded on the 
 late resemblance between emigration and transporta- 
 tion, on their present identity, or on the state of 
 society in the Southern colonies as it has been affected 
 by convict colonization. They used other arguments, 
 but so far of a like kind, that however politely ex- 
 
144 COLONIES INSULTED. 
 
 pressed in words, they consisted of sneers, taunts, and 
 reproaches. Having themselves a lively antipathy to 
 the notion of a gentleman's family emigrating at all, 
 they painted emigration in all its most unfavourable 
 and repulsive colours; and some of the darkest of 
 these are drawn from emigration as the result of 
 burglary, bigamy, or murder, and from the moral and 
 social pestilence inflicted upon colonies by convict 
 emigration. But there are several dark colours besides 
 these, in which emigration for respectable families may 
 be truly described. The next that occurs to me has 
 but an indirect relation to the emigration of con- 
 victs. 
 
 I would beg of you to exert your imagination for 
 the purpose of conceiving what would be the public 
 state of mind in this country, if the Emperor Nicholas, 
 or President Polk should ask us to let him send the 
 convicts of his nation to inhabit this country as free 
 exiles. Fancy John Bull's fury. His rage would 
 arise partly from his view of the evils to which our 
 country would be subjected, by continually adding to 
 our own criminals a number of Eussian or American 
 robbers and assassins; but it would be partly, and I 
 think chiefly, occasioned by the national insult of the 
 proposal for treating his country as fit to be the 
 moral cess-pool of another community. We should 
 feel, that the Russians or Americans as the case might 
 be, most cordially despised us; that as a nation or 
 community we were deemed inferior, low, base, utterly 
 devoid of honourable pride, and virtuous self-respect ; 
 that we ought instantly to go to war and thrash the 
 insolence out of the Yankees or the Cossacks. But 
 you can't thoroughly imagine the case, because so 
 
COLOXIES DESPISED. 145 
 
 gross an insult to so powerful a nation as this, is 
 inconceivable. We put this affront on some of our 
 colonies with as much coolness and complacency as if 
 we thought they liked it. Without the least com- 
 punction or hesitation, we degrade and insult a group 
 of our colonies, by sending thither, as to their proper 
 home, our own convicts and those of our other depen- 
 dencies. In many other ways we treat them as com- 
 munities so mean and low in character, as to be 
 incapable of feeling an outrage. Our own feeling of 
 contempt for them was capitally expressed long ago 
 by an English Attorney-General under William and 
 Mary. This high officer of the crown was instructed 
 to prepare a charter for establishing a college in 
 Virginia, of which the object was to educate and 
 qualify young men to be ministers of the Gospel. He 
 protested against the grant, declaring he did not see 
 the slightest occasion for such a college in Virginia. 
 A delegate of the colonists begged Mr. Attorney 
 would consider that the people of Virginia had souls 
 to be saved as well as the people of England. " Souls !" 
 said he; "damn your souls! make tobacco." That 
 was long ago : well, but you will recollect, because it 
 belongs to the history of home politics, that letter 
 which, in Lord Melbourne's time, Mr. O'Connell wrote 
 to one of his " tail," who had got himself banished from 
 decent society in this country, saying in effect, though 
 1 can do nothing for you here, if you will retire from 
 Parliament for the sake of the credit of our party, I 
 will get you a place in the colonies. Anything is 
 good enough for the colonies. It would be easy to 
 cite, if they had been published, as Mr. O'ConnelTs 
 letter was, very many cases in which, and quite of 
 
 L 
 
146 CONTEMPTUOUS TREATMENT OF COLONISTS. 
 
 late years too, somebody has obtained a place in the 
 colonies, not only in spite of his having lost his 
 character here, but because he had lost it : somebody 
 wanted to get rid of him, and anything is good enough 
 for the colonies. Some four or five years ago, a young 
 clergyman, wishing to qualify for an appointment in 
 the colonies, was under examination by a bishop's 
 chaplain : the bishop came into the room, and pre- 
 sently observed to his chaplain, that he thought the 
 examination was insufficient as a test of the proper 
 qualities of a clergyman, when the chaplain excused 
 himself by saying, "It is only a gentleman for the 
 colonies:" and the bishop seemed perfectly satisfied 
 with the answer. Contempt for the colonies, a sense 
 of their inferiority or lowness, pervades society here. 
 When it is proposed by a thoughtful statesman to 
 bestow upon those colonies which have none, a con- 
 siderable portion of local self-government, the vulgar 
 mind of this country is a little offended, and thinks 
 that a colonial community is rather presumptuous in 
 supposing itself capable of managing its own affairs as 
 well as they can be managed by the Right Honourable 
 Mr. or Lord Somebody, who sits in the great house at 
 the bottom of Downing-street. The vulgar notion is, 
 that, as in the opinion of William and Mary's Attorney- 
 General, the Virginians had not souls to be saved, so 
 colonists in general have not, and have no business to 
 have, political ideas ; that the only business for which 
 they are fit, is to send home, for the good of this country, 
 plenty of timber, or flour, or sugar, or wool. As anything 
 is good enough for the colonies, so the colonies are good 
 for nothing but as they humbly serve our purposes. 
 If we look with care into the causes of the revolt of 
 
CONTEMPTUOUS TREATMENT OF COLONISTS. 147 
 
 the thirteen great English colonies of North America, 
 \\v find that the leading colonists were made disaffected 
 more by the contemptuous, than by the unjust and 
 tyrannical treatment, which their country received 
 at the hands of its parent. Franklin, the represen- 
 tative in this country of one of the greatest of those 
 colonies, was shied and snubbed in London : the first 
 feeling of disloyalty was probably planted in the breast 
 of Washington by the contemptuous treatment which 
 he received as an officer of the provincial army. The 
 instances of such treatment of colonists are without 
 number. 
 
 But that, you may say again, was long ago : well, 
 let us mark the present difference of the reception 
 which we give to foreigners, from that which we give 
 to colonists when they visit England. When a person 
 of any mark in any foreign country comes to London 
 on a visit of curiosity, he has only to make known his 
 arrival, in order to receive all kinds of attentions 
 from the circles whose civilities are most prized; if 
 only a personage in some German principality, or 
 small Italian state, he is sought out, feted, perhaps 
 lionized, all to his heart's content. When a dis- 
 tinguished colonist comes to London one even, 
 whose name stands as high in his own community as 
 the names of the leaders of the Government and Oppo- 
 sition do here he prowls about the streets, and sees 
 sights till he is sick of doing nothing else, and then 
 returns home disgusted with his visit to the old 
 country. Xobody has paid him any attention because 
 he was a colonist. Not very long ago, one of the first 
 men in Canada, the most important of our colonies, 
 came to England on a mission with which he was 
 
 L2 
 
148 CONTEMPTUOUS TREATMENT OF COLONISTS. 
 
 charged by the colonial House of Commons. He was 
 a Canadian of French origin, of most polite manners, 
 well informed, a person of truth and honour, altogether 
 equal to the best order of people in the most important 
 countries. On account of these qualities, and also 
 because he was rich and public spirited, he enjoyed 
 the marked respect of his fellow-colonists. The delays 
 of the Colonial Office kept him in England for, I be- 
 lieve, more than two years ; and during all this time, 
 he resided at a tavern in the city, the London Coffee- 
 House on Ludgate Hill, totally unknowing and un- 
 known out of the coffee-room. He was a Canadian, 
 that is a colonist, and was less cared about here than 
 a load of timber or a barrel of flour coming from the 
 St. Lawrence. This is no solitary instance. Colonists, 
 more especially if they are rich, intelligent, and of im- 
 portance in their own country, frequently come to Eng- 
 land, not merely as foreigners do, to see, but to admire 
 and glory in the wonders of our great little country ; 
 and, I repeat, those who come are generally the first 
 people in the colony. Do you ever meet any of them 
 in the houses of your friends ? Has ever the name of 
 one of them been upon your own invitation list ? Cer- 
 tainly not, unless by some singular accident. But I, 
 in my obscure position, and as having been a colonist 
 myself, see numbers of these neglected visitors of Eng- 
 land; and I see how others treat them, or rather 
 neither well nor ill treat them, but take no sort of 
 notice of them, because they despise them as colonists. 
 I am not thinking in the least now of the national im- 
 policy of such inhospitality and bad manners, but ex- 
 clusively of the fact, that among the gentry rank of 
 this country, colonies and colonists are deemed inferior, 
 
CONTEMPTUOUS TREATMENT OF COLONISTS. 149 
 
 low, a baser order of communities and beings; and 
 that in this despicable light we regard them, quite as 
 unaffectedly as William and Mary's Attorney-General 
 did, though we do not express our opinion so em- 
 phatically. Is it surprising, then, that an English 
 gentleman should feel somewhat ashamed of himself 
 when he first entertains the idea of becoming a colo- 
 nist ? is not the indisposition of our gentry to emigrate 
 just what might have been expected? 
 
 AVhat is worse, speaking generally, colonies and 
 colonists are in fact, as well as in the estimation of the 
 British gentry, inferior, low, unworthy of much respect, 
 properly disliked and despised by people of refinement 
 and honour here, who happen to be acquainted with 
 the state of society in the colonies. But the proof of 
 this must be reserved for another letter. 
 
150 
 
 LETTER XXIII. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 LOW STANDARD OF MOEALS AND MANNERS IN THE 
 COLONIES. COLONIAL " SMARTNESS." WANT OF IN- 
 TELLECTUAL CULTIVATION. MAIN DISTINCTION BE- 
 TWEEN SAVAGE AND CIVILIZED LIFE. 
 
 T7TROM the sweeping assertion which closed my last 
 -L letter, I would except many individuals in every 
 colony, but only one colonial community. However 
 marked and numerous the exceptions may be in some 
 colonies, they are but exceptions from the rule in ah 1 ; 
 and in some, the rule has few exceptions. I proceed 
 to explain and justify the statement. 
 
 In all colonies not infected with crime by convict 
 transportation or banishment, crime is rare in com- 
 parison with what it is in this country : it is so, be- 
 cause in a country where the poorest are well off, and 
 may even grow rich if they please, the temptation to 
 crime is very weak. In the rural parts of uninfected 
 colonies, the sorts of crime which fill our gaols at 
 home, and found some of our colonies, are almost en- 
 tirely unknown. I have known a considerable district 
 in French Canada, in which the oldest inhabitant did 
 not remember a crime to have been committed; and 
 
COLONIAL "SMARTNESS." 151 
 
 in the whole of that part of North America, which is 
 soi uc hundred miles long and which contains as many 
 people as the rural counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, 
 the only buildings in which you can lock up a criminal 
 are two or three jails in towns where British soldiers 
 and shovelled-out paupers are numerous. Crime is 
 rare in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick; so it is in 
 South Africa and West Australia. The colonial soil, in a 
 word, is unsuitable for crime, which grows there slowly 
 and with difficulty. In the convict colonies and their 
 immediate neighbours, it is the imperial government 
 which forces crime to grow abundantly in a soil 
 naturally unfavourable to it. 
 
 But the colonial soil everywhere seems highly 
 favourable to the growth of conduct which, without 
 being criminal according to law, is very much objected 
 to by the better sort of people in this country. I 
 mean all those acts which, in Upper Canada and the 
 State of New York, are called "smart" conduct; which 
 consist of taking advantage or overreaching, of forget- 
 ting promises, of betraying confidence, of unscrupu- 
 lously sacrificing all the other numbers to "number 
 one." In colonies, such conduct is commonly termed 
 clever, cute, dexterous; in this country, it is called 
 dishonourable : the honourable colonists who strongly 
 disapprove of such conduct, more especially if they are 
 recent emigrants of the better order, often call it 
 "colonial." For the growth of honour, in a word, 
 the colonies are not a very congenial soil. Neither is 
 knowledge successfully cultivated there. In all the 
 colonies, without exception, it is common to meet with 
 ponple of the greatest mark in the colony, who are 
 ignorant of everything but the art of getting money. 
 
152 INTELLECTUAL CULTIVATION. 
 
 Brutish ignorance keeps no man down, if he has in a 
 large degree the one quality which is highly prized 
 in the colonies; the quality of knowing how to grow 
 rich. In hardly any colony can you manage, without 
 great difficulty, to give your son what is esteemed a 
 superior education here ; and in all colonies, the sons 
 of many of the first people are brought up in a wild 
 unconsciousness of their own intellectual degradation. 
 
 Colonial manners are hardly better than morals, 
 being slovenly, coarse, and often far from decent, even 
 in the higher ranks ; I mean in comparison with the 
 manners of the higher ranks here. Young gentlemen 
 who go out there, are apt to forget their home man- 
 ners, or to prefer those of the colony; and one sees 
 continually such cases as that of a young member of a 
 most respectable family here, who soon becomes in the 
 colony, by means of contamination, a thorough-paced 
 blackguard. 
 
 If the bad propensities of colonists are not as much 
 as we could wish them under the restraint of either 
 honour, or reason, or usage, neither are they under 
 that of religion. Here, however, I must make one 
 great and signal exception. There is not in the world 
 a more religious people than the great bulk of French 
 Canadians, nor, upon the whole, I believe, anywhere 
 a people so polite, virtuous, and happy. The French 
 Canadians owe their religious sentiments to a peculiar 
 mode of colonization, as respects religion, which is no 
 longer the fashion among the colonizing states either of 
 Europe or America. I speak of quite modern colonies, 
 such as Upper or English Canada, Michigan, South 
 Australia, and New Zealand, when I say that religion 
 does not flourish there. There is in all of them, more 
 
SAVAGE AND CIVILIZED LIFE CONTRASTED. 153 
 
 or less, u good deal of the observance of religious forms, 
 ind the excitement of religious exercises. But in 
 none of them does religion exercise the sort of influence 
 which religion exercises here upon the morals, the 
 intelligence, and the manners of those classes which 
 we consider the best-informed and the best-behaved; 
 that is, the most respectable classes in this country, or 
 those whose conduct, knowledge, and manners con- 
 stitute the type of those of the nation. Let me 
 endeavour to make my meaning clear by an illustra- 
 tion. Think of some one of your friends who never 
 goes to church except for form's sake, who takes the 
 House-of-Commons oath, " on the faith of a Christian," 
 as Edward Gibbon took it, but who has a nice sense of 
 honour; who is, as the saying goes, as honourable 
 a fellow as ever lived. Where did he get this sense of 
 honour from? He knows nothing about where he got 
 it from ; but it really came to him from chivalry ; and 
 chivalry came from religion. He would not do to any- 
 body anything, which he thinks he should have a right 
 to complain of, if somebody did it to him : he is almost 
 a Christian without knowing it. Men of this sort are 
 rare indeed in the colonies. Take another case; that 
 of an English matron, whose purity, and delicacy, and 
 charity of mind, you can trace to the operation of 
 religious influences: such beings are as rare in the 
 colonies, as men with that sense of honour which 
 amounts to goodness. In many parts of some colonies, 
 there is, I may say, no religion at all ; and wherever 
 this happens the people fall into a state of barbarism. 
 If you were asked for a summary definition of the 
 contrast between barbarism and civilization, you would 
 not err in Baying that civilized men differ from savages 
 
154 SAVAGE AND CIVILIZED LIFE CONTRASTED. 
 
 in having their natural inclinations restrained by law, 
 honour, and religion. The restraint of law is imposed 
 on individuals by the community; and, as before 
 observed, this sort of restraint, since it only applies to 
 crime, is less needed in colonies than in old countries. 
 But the restraint of honour and religion is a self-re- 
 straint ; and as it relates only to matters of which the 
 law takes no cognizance to bad natural inclinations 
 which are equally strong everywhere it is as much 
 a condition of civilization in the newest colony as in 
 the oldest mother-country I can only attribute the 
 low standard of honour in colonies to the insignificant 
 proportion which emigrants of the better order bear 
 to the other classes, and to the foul example of the 
 only privileged class in colonies; namely, the public 
 functionaries. These two causes of the want of honour 
 shall be fully noticed ere long. The weakness of reli- 
 gious restraint is owing to the inadequacy of religious 
 provisions for our colonists : and to this topic my next 
 letter will be devoted. 
 
155 
 
 LETTER XXIV. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 DIFFERENCE BETWEEN COLONIZATION AND OTHER PUR- 
 SUITS OF MEN IN MASSES. RELIGIOUS WOMEN AS 
 
 COLONISTS. A DISGUSTING COLONY. OLD PRACTICE 
 
 OF ENGLAND WITH REGARD TO RELIGIOUS PROVI- 
 SIONS. SECTARIAN COLONIES IN AMERICA. THE 
 
 CHURCH OF ENGLAND IN THE COLONIES. WESLEYAN 
 
 CHURCH. CHURCH OF ENGLAND. ROMAN CATHOLIC 
 
 CHURCH. DISSENTING CHURCHES. EXCUSE FOR THE 
 CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 
 
 MUST now beg of you to observe a particular in 
 which colonization differs from nearly every other 
 pursuit that occupies mankind in masses. \In trade, 
 navigation, war, and politics in all business of a public 
 nature except works of benevolence and colonization 
 the stronger sex alone takes an active part ; but in colo- 
 nization, women have a part so important that all de- 
 pends on their participation in the work.l If only men 
 emigrate, there is no colonization ; if only a few women 
 emigrate in proportion to the men, the colonization is 
 slow and most unsatisfactory in other respects: an 
 equal emigration of the sexes is one essential condition 
 of the best colonization. In colonizing, the woman's 
 participation must begin with the man's first thought 
 about emigrating, and must extend to nearly all the 
 
156 RELIGIOUS WOMEN AS COLONISTS. 
 
 arrangements he has to make, and the things he has 
 to do, from the moment of contemplating a departure 
 from the family home till the domestic party shall be 
 comfortably housed in the new country. (J"he influ- 
 ence of women in this matter is even greater, one may 
 say, than that of the men. You may make a colony 
 agreeable to men, but not to women ; you cannot make 
 it agreeable to women without being agreeable to men?. 
 You may induce some men of the higher classes to 
 emigrate without inducing the women; but if you 
 succeed with the women, you are sure not to fail with 
 the men. A colony that is not attractive to women, 
 is an unattractive colony : in order to make it attrac- 
 tive to both sexes, you do enough if you take care 
 to make it attractive to women. 
 
 Women are more religious than men; or, at all 
 events, there are more religious women than religious 
 men : I need not stop to prove that. There is another 
 proposition which I think you will adopt as readily : 
 it is, that in every rank the best sort of women for 
 colonists are those to whom religion is a rule, a guide, 
 a stay, and a comfort. You might persuade religious 
 men to emigrate, and yet in time have a colony of 
 which the morals and manners would be detestable ; 
 but if you persuade religious women to emigrate, the 
 whole colony will be comparatively virtuous and 
 polite. \A respects morals and manners, it is of little 
 importance what colonial fathers are, in comparison 
 with what the mothers arel3 It was the matrons 
 more than the fathers of the New-England pilgrimage, 
 that stamped the character of Massachusetts and 
 Connecticut; that made New England, for a long- 
 while, the finest piece of colonization the world has 
 
A DISGUSTING COLONY. 157 
 
 exhibited. Imagine for a moment, that like Penn or 
 Baltimore, you had undertaken to found a nation. 
 Think of the greatness of the responsibility; figure to 
 yourself how ardent would be your desire to sow the 
 finest seed, to plant the most healthy offsets, to 
 build with the soundest materials. Is there any effort 
 or sacrifice you would be unwilling to make for the 
 purpose of giving to your first emigration a character 
 of honour, virtue, and refinement? Now go on to 
 suppose that in planning your colonization, you had 
 >me strange oversight omitted all provisions for 
 religion in the colony ; and that accordingly, as would 
 surely be the case, you found amongst religious 
 people of all classes, but especially amongst the higher 
 classes, and amongst the better sort of women of every 
 class, a strong repugnance to having anything to do 
 with you. If you had made no provisions for religion 
 in your colony, and if people here only cared enough 
 about you to find that out, your scheme would be 
 vituperated by religious men, who are numerous; by 
 religious women, who are very numerous ; and by the 
 clergy of all denominations, who are immensely 
 powerful. You would have to take what you could 
 get in the way of emigration. Your labouring class 
 of emigrants would be composed of paupers, vagabonds, 
 and sluts : your middle class, of broken-down trades- 
 men, over-reachers, semi-swindlers, and needy adven- 
 turers, together with a few miserable wives, and a 
 good many mistresses : your higher order of emigrants 
 would be men of desperate fortunes, flying from debt 
 and bedevilment, and young reprobates spurned or 
 coaxed into banishment by relatives wishing them 
 dead. You would sow bad seed, plant sorry offsets, 
 
158 RELIGION IN THE COLONIES. 
 
 build with rotten materials: your colony would be 
 disgusting. 
 
 In former times, before the art of colonization was 
 lost, it was the universal practice in the planting of 
 colonies to take careful heed of religious provisions. 
 Do not be alarmed. I am not going to repeat the 
 sayings that one hears at meetings of the Society for 
 the Propagation of the Gospel, and even in colonization 
 debates in the House of Commons, about the sacred 
 fire of the ancient Greeks transported to their colonies, 
 and the gods of the Romans worshipped in their most 
 distant settlements. Neither would I dwell on the 
 religious zeal which nourished the energy of the 
 Spaniards in their wonderful conquests of Mexico and 
 Peru. But there is a religious feature in the old colo- 
 nization of England, on which I would gladly fix your 
 attention. 
 
 In colonizing North America, the English seem to 
 have thought more about religious provisions than 
 almost anything else. Each settlement was better 
 known by its religion than by any other mark. Yir- 
 ginia, notwithstanding the official reception in England 
 of the proposition that its inhabitants had souls to be 
 saved like other people, was a Church-of-England 
 colony ; Maryland was the land of promise for Roman 
 Catholics ; Pennsylvania for Quakers ; the various set- 
 tlements of New England for Puritans. History tells 
 us that the founders of the religious English colonies 
 in North America, crossed the Atlantic in order to 
 enjoy liberty of conscience. I fancy that this is one 
 of the many errors which history continues to propa- 
 gate. I doubt that the founders of any of these 
 colonies went forth in search of a place where they 
 
COLONIAL SECTARIANISM. 159 
 
 miirlit be free from religious persecution:* a careful 
 inspection of their doings, on the contrary, leaves the 
 impression that their object was, each body of them 
 ctively, to find a place where its own religion 
 would be the religion of the place; to form a com- 
 munity the whole of which would be of one religion ; 
 or at least to make its own faith the principal religion 
 of the new community. The Puritans went further : 
 within their bounds they would suffer no religion but 
 their own ; they emigrated not so much in order to 
 escape from persecution, as in order to be able to per- 
 secute. It was not persecution for its own sake that 
 they loved ; it was the power of making their religion 
 the religion of their whole community. Being them- 
 selves religious in earnest, they disliked the congrega- 
 tion and admixture of differing religions in their settle- 
 ments, just as now the congregation and admixture of 
 differing religions in schools and colleges is disliked by 
 most religious people of all denominations : they wanted 
 to live, as religious people now send their children to 
 school, in contact with no religion but their own. 
 Penn and Baltimore, indeed, or rather Baltimore and 
 Penn (for the example was set by the Roman Catholic) 
 made religious toleration a fundamental law of their 
 settlements ; but whilst they paid this formal tribute 
 of respect to their own history as sufferers from per- 
 secution at home, they took care practically, that 
 Maryland should be especially a Roman-Catholic 
 c< )1< >ny, and Pennsylvania a colony for Quakers. There- 
 fore, the Roman Catholics of England were attracted 
 to Maryland; the Quakers to Pennsylvania. New 
 
 * See, for an interesting view of this question, Letters from America, 
 by John Robert Godley: John Murray, 1844. 
 
160 COLONIAL SECTARIANISM. 
 
 England attracted its own sect of religious people ; 
 and so did Virginia. 
 
 Altogether, the attraction of these sectarian colonies 
 was very great. The proof is the great number of 
 people of the higher orders who emigrated to those 
 colonies as long as they preserved their sectarianism 
 or religious distinctions. Settled history has made 
 another mistake in leading us to suppose, that the 
 Puritan emigrants belonged chiefly, like the Came- 
 ronians in Scotland, to the humbler classes at home : 
 most of the leaders, on the contrary, were of the 
 gentry class, being persons of old family, the best 
 education, and considerable property. It was equally 
 so in Pennsylvania; for in the colonization of that 
 day, there were leaders and followers ; and the leading 
 Quakers of that day belonged to the gentry, as respects 
 birth, education, and property. The emigration to 
 Maryland and Virginia was so remarkably aristocratic, 
 that one need not correct history on that point. The 
 emigration to New York, to the Carolinas, to all the 
 colonies, exhibited the same feature, sometimes more, 
 sometimes less, down to the time of the discontents 
 which preceded their independence. All that coloni- 
 zation was more or less a religious colonization : the 
 parts of it that prospered the most, were the most 
 religious parts : the prosperity was chiefly occasioned 
 by the respectability of the emigration : and the re- 
 spectability of the emigration to each colony had a 
 close relation to the force of the religious attraction. 
 
 I am in hopes of being able, when the proper time 
 shall come for that part of my task, to persuade you 
 that it would now be easy for England to plant sectarian 
 colonies; that is, colonies with the strong attraction 
 for superior emigrants, of a peculiar creed in each 
 
COLONIAL EPISCOPACY. 161 
 
 colony. Meanwhile, let us mark what our present 
 colonization is as respects religious provisions. It is 
 lu-arly all make-believe or moonshine. The subject 
 of religious provisions for the colonies figures occa- 
 sionally in speeches at religious meetings, and in 
 Colonial-Office blue-books; but whatever composes 
 the thing itself the churches, the funds, the clergy, 
 the schools, and colleges appears nowhere else 
 except on a scale of inadequacy that looks like 
 mockery. If England were twice as large as it is, 
 and ten times as difficult to travel about, then one 
 bishop for all England would be as real a provision 
 for the episcopacy of our church at home as there is 
 in Upper Canada, or indeed in any of our more ex- 
 tensive colonies : it would not be a real, but a sham 
 provision. Let me pursue the example of Upper 
 Canada. If the one bishop is a mockery of episcopacy, 
 still, it may be said, there are clergymen of the Church 
 of England in sufficient abundance. I answer, there 
 are indeed clergymen, but they are not clergymen of 
 the Church of England. They differ from clergymen 
 of the Church of England : they are not supported by 
 endowments which would enable them to be the leaders, 
 rather than the servants of their flocks ; they are not 
 otherwise qualified to lead any body, being men of an 
 inferior order as respects accomplishments and wisdom. 
 The ministers of a church, whose system of discipline 
 is based on endowment and dignities, they have no 
 ranks and no endowments. Men of mark or promise 
 in the church at home would not go there : those who 
 do - o, are men of neither mark nor promise. Even 
 these are so few in proportion to the great country, 
 as are of course the churches likewise, that out of the 
 
 M 
 
162 CHURCHES OF ROME AND SCOTLAND. 
 
 towns it is ten to one that a Church-of-England 
 emigrant misses his own church altogether: so he 
 joins some other denomination, or, what is more com- 
 mon perhaps, soon really belongs to none. Thus what 
 is called an extension of the Church of England in Upper 
 Canada, consists of a single bishop for half a dozen 
 Englands as respects the means of episcopal action ; of 
 a few dependent, half-starved, makeshift clergy; and 
 of, for the greater part of the colony, nothing at all. 
 The Roman- Catholic Church is not much better off. 
 Mainly dependent for the subsistence of its priesthood 
 on the voluntary contributions of poor Irish emigrants, 
 it is a starved church like the other ; whilst, like the 
 other again, it is a church of endowments, but unen- 
 dowed. What that is, you may judge by the Roman- 
 Catholic Church in Ireland, of which I assure you 
 that both the Roman- Catholic Church and Church of 
 England in Upper Canada have frequently reminded 
 me, by the contrast between their theory of government 
 and their actual position. 
 
 The Church of Scotland, by reason of the compara- 
 tive homeliness and democracy of its theory of govern- 
 ment, is in a less false position in the colonies ; and it 
 acquires more easily a far greater resemblance to its 
 mother-church. It never indeed leads colonization 
 (with the exception, however, of what the Free Church 
 of Scotland is now doing at Otago in New Zealand) ; 
 but wherever Scotch settlers abound, the Scottish 
 Church grows after awhile into a position of respecta- 
 bility and usefulness; of very marked respectability 
 and usefulness as compared with that of the great 
 churches of Rome and England. It is, however, be- 
 hind another church, which alone in the colonies per- 
 forms the functions of a church; I mean that of the 
 
WKSLEYAN CHURCH. 163 
 
 Wesieyan Methodists. Oh! but this is not a church ! 
 Isn't it ? At any rate it has all the properties of one. 
 It has [i profound and minute system of government, 
 which comprehends the largest and takes care of the 
 smallest objects of a church. It has zeal, talents, 
 1'iKTgy, funds, order and method, a strict discipline, 
 and a conspicuous success. But our concern with it 
 is only in the colonies. There, it does not wait, as the 
 other churches do, till there is a call for its services, 
 and then only exhibit its inefficiency; but it goes be- 
 fore settlement; it leads colonization; it penetrates 
 into settlements where there is no religion at all, and 
 gathers into its fold many of those whom the other 
 churches utterly neglect. This church alone never 
 acts on the principle that anything is good enough for 
 the colonies. Whether it sends forth its clergy to the 
 backwoods of North America, the solitary plains of 
 South Africa, the wild bush of Tasmania and Aus- 
 tralia, or the forests and fern-plains of New Zealand, 
 it sends men of devoted purpose and first-rate ability. 
 lects its missionaries with as much care as the Pro- 
 paganda of Rome. It rules them with an authority that 
 is always in full operation; with a far-stretching arm, 
 and a hand of steel. It supplies them with the means 
 < f < Unvoting themselves to their calling. Accordingly it 
 succeeds in what it attempts. It does not attempt to 
 supply the higher classes of emigrants with religious 
 observances and teaching. It does this for its own 
 people, who are nearly all of the middle or poorer 
 classes; and, above all, it seeks, and picks up, and 
 cherishes, and humanizes the basest and most brutish 
 of the emigrant population. In the colonies generally, 
 it i- the antagonist, frequently the conqueror, of 
 
 M 2 
 
164 DISSENTING CHURCHES. 
 
 drunkenness, which is the chief bane of low colonial 
 life. It makes war upon idleness, roguery, dirt, 
 obscenity, and debauchery. In the convict colonies, 
 and those which are infected by them, it is the great 
 antagonist of Downing-street, whose polluting emigra- 
 tion it counteracts, by snatching some, and guarding 
 others from the pestilence of convict contamination. 
 If it had the power which the Church of England has 
 in our legislature, it would put a stop to the shame of 
 convict colonization, open and disguised. For it is 
 truly a colonizing church : it knows that in coloniza- 
 tion, as you sow, so shall you reap: it acts on this 
 belief with vigour and constancy of purpose that put 
 the other churches to shame, and with a degree of 
 success that is admirable, considering that its first 
 " centenary" was only held the other day. 
 
 After the Wesleyans, I should award the first rank 
 in point of efficiency to the two churches of Scotland, 
 but especially to the Free Church, but merely because 
 in the colonies it is becoming the only Church of 
 Scotland. Next come Independents, Baptists, and 
 other Dissenters from the Church of England. Then 
 the Roman Catholics, whose lower position arises from 
 no want of zeal or organization, but solely from the 
 poverty of the great bulk of Catholic emigrants. And 
 last of all figures the Church of England, which, 
 considering the numbers and wealth of her people at 
 home, and her vast influence accordingly, can oifer no 
 excuse for neglecting her colonial people ; save one only, 
 that in consequence of her connexion with the state, 
 she is, in the colonies, subject to the Colonial Office, and 
 therefore necessarily devoid of energy and enterprise. 
 
 I will not meddle here with the causes of the 
 
CONDITION OF HIGH PROFITS. 165 
 
 inadequacy of religious provisions for our colonies; 
 still less with the means of removing them. My only 
 object heiv has been to show, that the actual state of 
 colonial provisions for religion is well calculated to 
 deter the better order of people, and especially the 
 better order of women, from going to live and die in 
 a colony. 
 
 LETTER XXV. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 COMBINATION AND CONSTANCY OF LABOUR ARE INDIS- 
 
 PENSABLE CONDITIONS OF THE PRODUCTIVENESS OF 
 INDUSTRY. - HOW COLONIAL CAPITALISTS SUFFER FROM 
 THE DIVISION AND INCONSTANCY OF LABOUR. 
 
 rPHE condition of a capitalist in a colony is gene- 
 rally well known in the circle which he quitted 
 on emigrating. It is not always a condition envied 
 by them or agreeable to himself: it is often, on the 
 contrary, a state of great unhappiness. Referring to 
 what has been said before about the high rate of 
 colonial profits, I have now to request your special 
 attention to an absolute condition of a high rate of 
 profit anywhere, and, indeed, of any return whatever 
 from capital, which is often wanting or deficient in 
 colonies, though not in old countries. 
 
 In this country, for example, it never comes into 
 anybody's head to doubt that capital can be employed 
 in a productive business. There is the capital, and 
 
166 COMBINATION AND CONSTANCY OF LABOUR, 
 
 there is the business : put the one into the other, and 
 all will go well. The business, let us suppose, is the 
 farming of 500 acres of fertile land in a high state of 
 cultivation, well found in drainage, fences, and build- 
 ings, and rent free : the capital is 5000 worth of the 
 things requisite for carrying on the business of the 
 farm, such as crops in the ground, live stock, fodder, 
 implements, and money at the bank wherewith to pay 
 outgoings till incomings restore the invested capital. 
 Nothing more seems requisite. Now, let us suppose 
 that, by some strange means or other, the farmer were 
 deprived of his horses, and precluded from getting 
 others: his balance, at the end of the year, would 
 probably be on the wrong side. But, now, let us 
 suppose, the number of labourers on this farm being 
 thirty, that two-thirds of them quitted their employer, 
 and that he was totally unable to get others in their 
 place : and suppose, further, that in order to keep the 
 services of the labourers who remained with him, he 
 was obliged to triple their wages. This farmer would 
 soon be ruined. He would be ruined, not by having 
 to pay such high wages, because his whole outlay 
 in wages would not be increased, but by the unpro- 
 ductiveness of the labour of ten men in a business 
 requiring that of thirty. We can hardly bring our- 
 selves to imagine the occurrence of such a case here. 
 It is substantially an every-day case in the colonies. 
 Farmers, or other men of business there, can get and 
 keep horses as many as they please, but they cannot 
 do so with labourers. Labour, which is here a drug, 
 is scarce there. The scarcity of labourers in colonies 
 has effects on the condition of capitalists which require 
 some particular description. 
 
INDISPENSABLE CONDITIONS. 167 
 
 It has long been an axiom with political economists, 
 that the most important improvement in the applica- 
 tion of human industry is what they call " the division 
 of labour :" the produce, they show, is great in pro- 
 portion as the labour is divided. Adam Smith's famous 
 chapter on the subject satisfies the mind on this 
 point. But he fell into an error of words, which has 
 kept out of view until lately, that what he calls the 
 division of labour, is wholly dependent upon something 
 It is dependent upon combination amongst the 
 labourers. In his illustrative case of the pin-factory, 
 for example, the separate parts of the whole work of 
 making a pin could not be assigned to different persons 
 one drawing the wire, another polishing it, a third 
 cutting it in bits, a fourth pointing one end of the bits, 
 a fifth making the heads, a sixth putting them on, and 
 so forth unless all these persons were brought together 
 under one roof, and induced to co-operate. The 
 bringing together of workmen, and inducing them to 
 co-operate, is a combination of labour : it cannot be 
 properly called by any other name. But how can the 
 same thing be division of labour, and combination of 
 labour? One of the expressions must be wrong. We 
 have seen that what is called combination of labour, 
 is what it is called. Is that really " division of labour," 
 which is so called? It is not. The assignment of 
 several parts of a work to different labourers is a 
 division, not of the labour, but of the work or employ- 
 ment. The whole work or employment of making a 
 pin is divided amongst many persons, each of whom 
 takes a distinct part : their labour is not divided, but 
 is .ii the contrary combined, in order to enable them 
 to divide the employment. 
 
168 COMBINATION AND CONSTANCY OF LABOUR, 
 
 This is not a merely verbal distinction : it is neces- 
 sary to prevent confusion of ideas, indispensable in 
 order to understand the principal impediment to the 
 emigration of capitalists and gentry. The division of 
 employments, as I cannot help always calling it, 
 increases the produce of industry. But it never can 
 take place without combination of labour. Combina- 
 tion of labour is a condition of all the improvements 
 of industry, and of all the increase of produce in pro- 
 portion to capital and labour, which are occasioned by 
 division of employments. Combination of labour is 
 further indispensable to the carrying on of works or 
 employments, which are never divided into parts. 
 There are numerous operations of so simple a kind as 
 not to admit of a division into parts, which cannot be 
 performed without the co-operation of many pairs of 
 hands. I would instance the lifting of a large tree on 
 to a wain, keeping down weeds in a large field of 
 growing crop, shearing a large flock of sheep at the 
 right time, gathering a harvest of corn at the time 
 when it is ripe enough and not too ripe, moving any 
 great weight; everything in short, which cannot be 
 done unless a good many pairs of hands help each 
 other in the same undivided employment, and at the 
 same time. 
 
 The principle of the combination of labour, which 
 seems more important the more one reflects on it, was 
 not perceived until a colonial inquiry led to its dis- 
 covery : it was unnoticed by economists, because they 
 have resided in countries where combination of labour 
 takes place, as a matter of course, whenever it is re- 
 quired : it seems in old countries like a natural pro- 
 perty of labour. But in colonies the case is totally 
 
INDISPENSABLE CONDITIONS. 169 
 
 different. There, the difficulty of inducing a number 
 of people to combine their labour for any purpose, 
 meets the capitalist in every step of his endeavours, 
 and in every line of industry. I shall speak of its 
 consequences presently. 
 
 There is another principle of labour which nothing 
 
 points out to the economical inquirer in old countries, 
 
 but of which every colonial capitalist has been made 
 
 conscious in his own person. By far the greater part 
 
 of the operations of industry, and especially those of 
 
 which the produce is great in proportion to the capital 
 
 and labour employed, require a considerable time for 
 
 their completion. As to most of them, it is not worth 
 
 while to make a commencement without the certainty 
 
 of being able to carry them on for several years. A 
 
 large portion of the capital employed in them is fixed, 
 
 inconvertible, durable. If anything happens to stop 
 
 the operation, all this capital is lost. If the harvest 
 
 cannot be gathered, the whole outlay in making it 
 
 irrow has been thrown away. Like examples, without 
 
 end, might be cited. They show that constancy is a 
 
 no less important principle than combination of labour. 
 
 The importance of the principle of constancy is not 
 
 seen here, because rarely indeed does it happen, that 
 
 the labour which carries on a business, is stopped 
 
 against the will of the capitalist ; and it perhaps never 
 
 happens, that a capitalist is deterred from entering on 
 
 an undertaking by the fear that in the middle of it he 
 
 may be left without labourers. But in the colonies, 
 
 on the contrary, I will not say that this occurs every 
 
 day, because capitalists are so much afraid of it, that 
 
 they avoid its occurrence as much as they can, by 
 
 avoiding, as much as possible, operations which re- 
 
170 DIVISION AND INCONSTANCY OF LABOUR 
 
 quire much time for their completion ; but it occurs, 
 more or less, to all who heedlessly engage in such 
 operations, especially to new comers ; and the general 
 fear of it the known difficulty of providing with cer- 
 tainty that operations shall not be stopped or in- 
 terrupted by the inconstancy of labour is as serious a 
 colonial impediment to the productiveness of industry 
 as the difficulty of combining labour in masses for 
 only a short time. 
 
 Combination and constancy of labour are provided 
 for in old countries, without an effort or a thought on 
 the part of the capitalist, merely by the abundance of 
 labourers for hire. In colonies, labourers for hire are 
 scarce. 'The scarcity of labourers for hire is the uni- 
 versal complaint of colonies. It is the one cause, both 
 of the high wages which put the colonial labourer at 
 his ease, and of the exorbitant wages which sometimes 
 harass the capitalist. I inclose a letter. The writer 
 was a peasant girl in the parish of Stoke-by-Nayland, 
 Suffolk, whose vicar enabled her to emigrate with her 
 penniless husband to New Zealand. The couple are 
 now worth in land, stock, and money, perhaps seven 
 or eight hundred pounds. She says, " the only cuss 
 of this colony is the exhorburnt wagers one has to pay." 
 She liked the " exhorburnt wagers " whilst her husband 
 received them. I am personally acquainted with a 
 good many cases in which, in West Australia, South 
 Australia, Australia Felix, and New Zealand, the 
 whole property of a capitalist was drawn out of him 
 by exorbitant wages. In those cases, the unfortunate 
 capitalist was a recent emigrant; and he undertook 
 some operation, generally farming on a scale in the 
 English proportion to his capital, which could not be 
 
INJURIOUS TO COLONISTS. 171 
 
 carried on without constantly combining a good deal of 
 labour for hire; and he paid away his property in 
 order to induce a number of labourers to continue in 
 his service; in order, that is, to obtain combination 
 and constancy of labour. If he had not obtained it, 
 after placing his capital in an investment that required 
 it, he would have been as effectually ruined as he was 
 by paying exorbitantly for it. Emigrant capitalists 
 are not generally ruined in this way, because they 
 al >stain from placing their whole capital in the jeopardy 
 of being dependent for its preservation on combination 
 and constancy of labour. They regulate their pro- 
 ceedings by the supply, and the prospect of a supply, 
 of labour in the colony; and if labour is, or is likely to 
 be, scarce, they abstain from undertaking operations, 
 to the successful completion of which a scarcity of 
 labour is necessarily fatal. But this abstinence is 
 annoying to them ; the necessity of observing it, frus- 
 trates their plans, and disappoints their hopes. The 
 scarcity of labour forces them into a way of life which 
 they never contemplated, and which they dislike. 
 They are disappointed and uncomfortable. That they 
 are so, becomes known to their friends in England; 
 and the circulation of this knowledge through a num- 
 ber of channels here, gradually forms a public opinion 
 unfavourable to the prospect of capitalists in this or 
 that colony, and becomes a serious impediment to the 
 emigration of people of that class. 
 
172 
 
 LETTER XXVL 
 From the Statesman. 
 
 THE STATESMAN POINTS OUT AN APPEARANCE OF CON- 
 TRADICTION BETWEEN THE TWO ASSERTIONS, THAT 
 LABOUR IN NEW COLONIES IS VERY PRODUCTIVE IN 
 CONSEQUENCE OF BEING ONLY EMPLOYED ON THE 
 MOST FERTILE SOILS, AND THAT IT IS UNPRODUC- 
 TIVE IN CONSEQUENCE OF BEING MUCH DIVIDED AND 
 INTERRUPTED. 
 
 T/'OUR account of the life of a colonial capitalist 
 is not very pleasing ; and I can well understand 
 how the circumstances you describe, should operate as 
 a check to the emigration of people who have the 
 means of carrying on business here. I fancy that if 
 the truth, as you conceive it, were fully known in this 
 country, very few capitalists would be disposed to 
 emigrate; or that, at all events, but few colonies 
 would be very attractive to emigrants of that class. 
 But your view of the matter appears to be at variance 
 with one of your main propositions as to the attractive- 
 ness of colonies. You are impressed with a belief 
 that in colonies generally, the rate of profits is high as 
 compared with its rate in this country ; and in one of 
 your letters you explained that the high rate of colonial 
 
A PARADOX. 173 
 
 profits is occasioned, partly by the great productive- 
 ness of industry, and partly by the fact that the land- 
 lord and the government take but a small share of 
 that large produce. But is the produce large? Is 
 colonial industry so productive as you assert? That 
 they are so is a common belief; but I cannot reconcile 
 the fact with your explanation of the manner in which 
 the scarcity of labour for hire in the colonies impedes 
 combination and constancy of labour. You insist, 
 with every appearance of being in the right, that com- 
 bination and constancy are essential to a large pro- 
 duction in proportion to the capital and labour em- 
 ployed: you say that in colonies, combination and 
 constancy of labour are always difficult, often impos- 
 sible ; that one of the characteristics of colonies is the 
 general separation of labour into single pairs of hands, 
 and the difficulty of retaining even one pair of hands 
 in the service of the capitalist : yet you say that the 
 produce of capital and labour in colonies is greater 
 than in old countries, where the utmost combination 
 of uninterrupted labour by the same hands is general 
 and always facile. Here surely is, if you will pardon 
 me for saying so, the appearance of a monstrous con- 
 tradiction. I trust that you may be able to explain 
 it away. 
 
174 
 
 LETTER XXVII. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 THE COLONIST EXPLAINS THAT SCARCITY OF LABOUR IS 
 COUNTERACTED BY VARIOUS KINDS OF SLAVERY AND 
 
 BY THE DRUDGERY OF CAPITALISTS. EVILS OF THE 
 
 PRESENCE OF SLAVE CLASSES IN A COLONY. 
 
 THE two propositions are not a contradiction, but 
 the appearance of one ; and the paradox will be 
 easily explained away. 
 
 In spite of the scarcity of labour for hire in colonies 
 generally, and in all prosperous colonies without 
 exception, every colony that has prospered, from the 
 time of Columbus down to this day (nor would I 
 exclude the colonies of ancient Greece and Rome), has 
 enjoyed in some measure what I have termed combina- 
 tion and constancy of labour. They enjoyed it by means 
 of some kind of slavery. In the colonies of ancient 
 Greece and Rome, all the labourers were slaves. Their 
 labour was employed as constantly, and as much in 
 combination, as their masters pleased. It was the 
 same in the West-India colonies of Spain, England, 
 France, Holland, and Denmark. The slavery of the 
 Indians furnished constancy and combination of labour 
 to the Spanish colonies of Mexico and South America ; 
 
HOW SCARCITY OF LABOUR IS COUNTERACTED. 175 
 
 that of negroes to the Portuguese colonizers of Brazil. 
 In the greater part of the English colonies of North 
 AiiuTu-a, negro slavery counteracted the scarcity of 
 labour for hire. In New South Wales and Van 
 Diemen's Land, there has been convict slavery; in 
 South Africa, the Mauritius, and Bourbon, negro 
 slavery. In the colonies of North America, where 
 negro slavery was not at all, or not largely, established, 
 there has been a virtual slavery in the forms of ser- 
 vants kidnapped in Europe, and "indented" in Ame- 
 rica, and " redemptioners," or immigrants whom a 
 contract bound to their masters for a term of years, 
 and whom either their utter ignorance of the law and 
 language of America, or the force of opinion and 
 combination amongst the masters, compelled to abide 
 by their contracts for service. There are other ways 
 in which there may be slavery in fact without the 
 name. The freed negroes, and their descendants, of 
 some of the states of North America which either 
 never permitted, or have abolished slavery, are vir- 
 tually a sort of slaves, by means of their extreme 
 degradation in the midst of the whites; and the hordes 
 of Irish-pauper emigrants who pour into North 
 America, British and American, are, in a considerable 
 proportion, virtually slaves by means of their servile, 
 In xy. reckless habit of mind, and their degradation in 
 the midst of the energetic, accumulating, prideful, 
 domineering Anglo-Saxon race. The slavery of all 
 these different kinds, in these many countries, has 
 constituted an enormous amount of slavery. The negro 
 slaves of the United States must be approaching four 
 millions in number, and worth to sell at market about 
 half the amount of our immense national debt. If we 
 
176 HOW SCARCITY OF LABOUR IS COUNTERACTED. 
 
 could count the slaves, nominal and virtual negroes, 
 called slaves, trampled free-negroes, indented servants, 
 redemptioners, convicts, and slavish Irish who have 
 inhabited modern colonies in various parts of the world 
 since the discovery of America, we should readily 
 understand their importance as an element of colonial 
 society. 
 
 Colonial slavery in its various forms has been the 
 principal means of raising that great produce for ex- 
 portation, for which prosperous colonies are remark- 
 able. Until lately, nearly the whole of the exported 
 produce of the United States, consisting of sugar, rice, 
 tobacco, and cotton, was raised by the combined and 
 constant labour of slaves ; and it could not have been 
 raised under the circumstances by any other means. 
 The like cases of the West Indies and Brazil would 
 have occurred to you without being mentioned. The 
 great public works of those states of the American 
 Union that forbid slavery, could not have been at- 
 tempted without a large supply of slavish Irish 
 labour, by which, indeed, as regards labour, they have 
 been almost entirely executed. Domestic service in 
 those countries depends on the existence of " niggers" 
 called free, and of servile Irish emigration. I could 
 fill a whole letter with bare examples of a like kind, 
 but will confine myself to one more, which will serve 
 for general illustration. 
 
 In Tasmania, which is fast losing its ugly name of 
 Van Diemen's Land, there are farms, being single pro- 
 perties, consisting of seven or eight hundred acres 
 each, under cultivation, besides extensive sheep and 
 cattle runs, the farming of which is not inferior to that 
 of Norfolk and the Lothians. A description of one of 
 
SCARCITY OF LABOUR. 177 
 
 rlu >e farms is before me. The eight hundred acres 
 a iv divided into fields of from thirty to fifty acres 
 'jK-h. The fences are as good as can be. The land 
 is kept thoroughly clear of weeds ; a strict course of 
 husbandry is pursued; and the crops, especially of 
 turnips, are very large. The garden and orchards are 
 extensive, kept in apple-pie order, and very productive. 
 The house is of stone, large and commodious. The 
 farm buildings are ample in extent, and built of stone 
 with solid roofs. The implements are all of the best 
 kinds, and kept in perfect order. The live stock, for 
 the most part bred upon the spot, is visited as a show 
 on account of its excellence, and would be admired in 
 the best-farmed parts of England: it consists of 30 
 cart horses, 50 working bullocks, 100 pigs, 20 brood 
 mares, 1000 head of horned cattle, and 25,000 fine- 
 wooled sheep. On this single establishment, by one 
 master, seventy labourers have been employed at the 
 same time. They were nearly all convicts. By con- 
 vict labour, and that alone, this fine establishment was 
 founded and maintained. Nothing of the sort could 
 have existed in the island if convicts had not been 
 transmitted thither, and assigned upon their landing 
 to settlers authorized to make skves of them. In this 
 small island, of which the whole population is under 
 70,000, there have been at one time fifty establish- 
 ments much resembling that which I have described. 
 In British North America, there is not one that bears 
 the slightest resemblance to it, in point of scale, per- 
 fection of management, or productiveness in propor- 
 tion to the capital or labour employed : for the slavish 
 Irish labour of a colony is less easily combined, and 
 (ess surely retained, than convict slave-labour, I 
 
 N 
 
178 SCARCITY OF LABOUR. 
 
 doubt whether in all Canada, though many a first-rate 
 English and Scotch farmer have emigrated thither, 
 there is even one farm of 500 acres, the management 
 of which would not be deemed very slovenly in Scot- 
 land or England, or of which the produce in propor- 
 tion to capital and labour amounts to half that of a 
 Tasmanian farm. I rather think, indeed, that in all 
 Canada, there is not a farm of 500 acres in real culti- 
 vation, however slovenly and unproductive. The 
 Tasmanian farmer grows rich (or rather did grow 
 rich, for a change of policy at the Colonial Office has 
 put a stop to the supply of useful convict labour) : 
 the Canadian farmer vegetates or stagnates : if he and 
 his family do not work hard themselves as labourers, 
 he is very apt to be ruined. 
 
 This brings me to another feature of colonial life, 
 which is occasioned by the scarcity of labour for hire. 
 In the colonies where the scarcity of labour for hire is 
 not counteracted by a slavery sharp enough for the 
 purpose, capitalists generally, and especially those of 
 them who cultivate the soil, work a great deal with 
 their own hands : they are labourers as well as capi- 
 talists. If a solitary individual cannot without the 
 consent of others enjoy any combination of labour be- 
 yond that of his own two hands, he can at any rate make 
 that labour constant : he can depend upon himself for 
 the continuance of the labour which his own hands 
 are capable of performing. The capitalist, therefore, 
 by working himself, secures the constant labour of one 
 pair of hands at any rate. Moreover, when the capi- 
 talists generally work with their own hands, they 
 make arrangements among themselves for occasionally 
 combining their labour. Nine of them meet, and 
 
DRUDGERY OF CAPITALISTS. 179 
 
 help a tenth, A, to build him a house, clear his land, 
 <>r outlier in his crop. Another day, A meets eight 
 of his neighbours, to help B : in turn, C, D, E, F, and 
 the rest get helped. They are all benefited by some 
 combination of labour. Without any kind of slavery, 
 therefore, in a colony, and with the utmost scarcity of 
 labour for hire, there is some constancy and some 
 combination of labour ; but the labour which is con- 
 stant, is that of the capitalist working himself, who is 
 the master of his own pair of hands ; and the labour 
 which is combined, is that of more than one capitalist, 
 occasionally agreeing to work together for the benefit 
 of each of them in turn. The farmers of Canada, and 
 of the non-slaveholding states of America, are gene- 
 rally labourers as well as capitalists: it is their 
 drudgery as labourers, not their skill as capitalists, 
 which enables them to produce wheat for exportation. 
 I have endeavoured to show, that the scarcity of 
 labour for hire in the colonies has been counteracted 
 partly by some kind of slavery, partly, though in a 
 less degree, by the drudgery of the capitalist. If you 
 see this plainly, the paradox must have vanished. 
 The two propositions do not contradict each other. 
 Combination and constancy of labour are essential to 
 a large production. In colonies, combination and 
 constancy of labour are always difficult, often impos- 
 sible: one of the characteristics of colonies is the 
 uvncral separation of labour into single pairs of hands. 
 But the colonial tendency to separation and incon- 
 stancy of labour is counteracted by slavery in various 
 forms, and by the drudgery of the capitalist. The 
 labour of slaves and of capitalists is applied to only 
 the most fertile soils ; nearly all the produce is shared 
 
 N2 
 
180 SLAVE LABOUR. 
 
 by those who raise it, because the share of the land- 
 lord and the government is insignificant : the net pro- 
 duce, over and above rent and taxes, is sufficient to 
 provide for high wages and high profits. 
 
 But that which in colonies counteracts the tendency 
 of scarcity of labour for hire, is an obstacle to the emi- 
 gration of capitalists. Capitalists brought up in this 
 country do not like to work with their own hands : 
 they like to direct with their heads the labour of 
 others. The necessity of working with their own 
 hands is apt to disgust the emigrant capitalist, and to 
 send him back to this country a discontented and 
 complaining man. If, in order to avoid the annoyance, 
 and, as he feels it, the degradation, of working with his 
 own hands, and making his children work with theirs, 
 he resorts to some sort of slavery, he is still apt to be 
 very much annoyed. Negro slavery is detestable for 
 the master who was not bred, born, and educated 
 within hearing of the driving-whip. If I could find 
 a stronger word than detestable, I would apply it to 
 the life of a decent Englishman who has become a 
 driver of convicts in Tasmania. "Free nigger" labour, 
 even in domestic service, is not agreeable for the master, 
 because he continually feels that the servant ought to 
 hate him as one of the class which despises and loathes 
 the whole negro race. The careless, lazy, slovenly, 
 dirty, whining, quarrelsome, Saxon-hating, Irish- 
 pauper emigrants are labourers, whom no English or 
 Scotch or American capitalist would be dependent 
 upon for carrying on his business, if he could by 
 any means avoid the trouble and annoyances of such 
 a dependence. 
 
 As respects the degraded races and orders of men, 
 
SLAVE-CLASSES IN COLONIES. 181 
 
 whose presence in colonies counteracts the scarcity of 
 labour for hire, I have thus far alluded only to the 
 individual feelings of capitalists as employers of such 
 labour ; but the subject involves another consideration 
 which must not be left unnoticed. The presence of 
 these degraded people in a colony, whether they are 
 negro slaves, " free niggers," convicts in bondage, 
 emancipated convicts, the immediate oifspring of 
 convicts, or pauper- Irish emigrants, is a public 
 nuisance, a political danger, a social plague. It is 
 tolerable, indeed, for those who are used to it, and to 
 whom it is, moreover, a convenience in other respects : 
 but the British capitalist is not used to it; it is not 
 yet a nuisance to him, however convenient; he is not 
 forced to put himself into the midst of it; and, in 
 proportion as he is acquainted with its operation in 
 colonies, he is disinclined to emigrate. Something 
 about it is known in this country; enough to create a 
 vague impression that the scarcity of good labour for 
 hire in colonies is a great evil. More and more is 
 likely to be known about it ; and I do believe that if 
 the affliction which colonies suffer from the presence 
 of substitutes for good labour for hire, were generally 
 and familiarly known in this country, the emigration 
 of respectable people would nearly cease. 
 
182 
 
 LETTER XXVIII. 
 From the Statesman. 
 
 THE STATESMAN ALMOST DESPAIRS OF COLONIZATION, 
 AND ASKS FOR A SUGGESTION OF THE MEANS BY 
 WHICH SCARCITY OF LABOUR MAY BE PREVENTED 
 WITHOUT SLAVERY. 
 
 \7"OUR explanation has satisfied my judgment 
 on the point in question, but disappointed my 
 hopes. I had hoped that we might, at least, colonize 
 on a much greater scale than at present ; but now I 
 almost despair of it. I saw before how the scarcity of 
 labour for hire, by injuriously affecting the productive- 
 ness of capital and labour, limited the attraction of 
 colonies for emigrants of the richer class; and I now 
 perceive how this colonial deficiency is counteracted ; 
 but the remedy strikes me as being worse than the 
 disease. As an economical remedy, it is but partial 
 and incomplete, whilst it is itself a political and social 
 malady. Even if the existence of slave classes in the 
 colonies were not a political and social evil, how could 
 we make it correspond in amount with the progress 
 of colonization? how maintain a supply of slavish 
 labour in proportion to a great increase of capitalist 
 emigration? In the British colonies, negro slavery 
 
IMPEDIMENTS TO COLONIZATION. 183 
 
 has ceased, and convict slavery has, I believe, been 
 nearly abolished. Will not the total abolition of con- 
 vict slavery in Tasmania have the same effect for 
 capitalists there, as the abolition of negro-slavery in 
 the British West Indies ? It can have no other effect, 
 if your view of the whole subject is just. Irish-pauper 
 emigration may doubtless be greatly extended; but 
 there are many colonies to which this emigration does 
 not proceed ; and in the colonies to which it does, it 
 brings about a state of national antagonism so like 
 that which prevails in Ireland, as to be very disagree- 
 able for Scotch and English emigrants of every class. 
 Upon the whole therefore, it seems to me that we are 
 stopped by a difficulty as formidable, as the scarcity of 
 labour for hire appeared to me before you explained 
 how it was counteracted. I see no use hi going on 
 with our inquiry, if you do not see a way of counter- 
 acting scarcity of labour for hire in colonies, otherwise 
 than by some kind of slavery. What other impedi- 
 ments to colonization there may be, it matters little to 
 ascertain if the impediment of scarcity of labour for 
 hire, or of the multiform slavery by which it is coun- 
 teracted, is to continue unabated. I think, therefore, 
 that this is the proper stage in our inquiry for deter- 
 mining what means there may be, besides slavery, of 
 counteracting the scarcity of labour for hire. I am 
 aware that you have a theory on that subject. It is 
 founded of course on a view of the causes of the 
 scarcity of labour for hire, to which I now observe 
 that you have not made any allusion. I understand 
 that you intend to explain them, and to propose a 
 means of removing or counteracting them ; but I wish 
 to know at once what your plan is, so that I may 
 
184 STATE OF COLONIAL POLITICS. 
 
 determine whether or not it is worth my while to 
 bestow more attention on the whole subject. If your 
 plan for counteracting scarcity of labour for hire with- 
 out any kind of slavery, should appear sufficient for 
 its purpose theoretically, and practicable as well, let 
 us go on to the other impediments of colonization ; if 
 not, let us confess, or I for one shall be under the 
 necessity of confessing, that an increase of colonization 
 corresponding with the wants of the mother-country 
 is out of our reach. 
 
 LETTER XXIX. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 STATE OF COLONIAL POLITICS. VIOLENT COURSES OF 
 
 POLITICIANS. IRISH DISTURBANCES. MALIGNITY OF 
 
 PARTY WARFARE. DESPERATE DIFFERENCES OF CO- 
 LONISTS. DEMOCRACY AND DEMAGOGUISM IN ALL 
 
 COLONIES. BRUTALITY OF THE NEWSPAPERS. 
 
 T HAVE deliberately abstained from alluding to the 
 -- causes of the scarcity of labour. I did so with a 
 view of preserving the order of discussion, which I 
 understood to be a settled point. That order would 
 be greatly disturbed, if I were now to go into the 
 causes of any of the existing impediments to coloniza- 
 tion; still more, if I were to pursue the subject of 
 remedies for these impediments. There is, of course, 
 an intimate relation between the causes and the 
 remedies ; and in this instance, if I touched upon the 
 
STATE OF COLONIAL POLITICS. 185 
 
 causes, I should be led to the subject of remedies, and 
 should almost reverse the settled order of inquiry, by 
 discussing means and plans before the character of the 
 obstacles was denned. It happens, moreover, that the 
 means by which some of the impediments might be 
 removed, would also have the effect of removing others. 
 Before entering on the subject of means, therefore, it 
 seems very expedient to consider all the impediments. 
 I proceed accordingly, taking for granted that on 
 reflection you will approve of it, to notice the re- 
 maining impediments to colonization. 
 
 I have hitherto spoken of capitalists as a distinct 
 class, because it is as a distinct class that they suffer 
 more than anybody else from the scarcity of labour 
 for hire. But they also suffer along with others from 
 another sort of colonial evils. These evils are all 
 impediments to colonization. They affect the higher 
 order of emigrants. The one to which I propose 
 confining this letter, is the state of colonial politics. 
 
 There is nothing perhaps which more offends the 
 tastes and habits of the better class of emigrants, than 
 the state of colonial politics. By the word politics I 
 do not mean government, but what one sex in England 
 supposes that the other talks about when left alone 
 after dinner. Colonial party -politics, then, are remark- 
 able for the factiousness and violence of politicians, 
 the prevalence of demagoguism, the roughness and 
 even brutality of the newspapers, the practice in 
 carrying on public differences of making war to the 
 knife, and always striking at the heart. In a colony 
 with a representative form of government, if the exe- 
 cutive, which generally sides with the minority, pro- 
 poses something disagreeable to the majority, or if the 
 
186 VIOLENT COURSES OF POLITICIANS. 
 
 majority proposes something of which the minority 
 disapproves, the two parties insult and provoke each 
 other for a time; and the majority is apt to resort to 
 impeachment or a stoppage of the supplies. On the 
 other hand, the minority, not to be behind the majo- 
 rity in resorting to extreme measures, frequently uses 
 the veto. The last resource of the British constitution, 
 which we have hardly used at all since we completed 
 our constitution in 1688, and shall probably never use 
 again, are ordinary weapons of colonial party warfare. 
 Rebellions are not very uncommon, and are not com- 
 mon only because, in most colonies, rebellion has no 
 chance of success. In all our colonies, at all times, a 
 rebellious spirit may be observed. In saying this, I 
 do not forget my previous statements about the impe- 
 rial loyalty of colonists. The rebellious spirit in ques- 
 tion does not hate England or the imperial connexion ; 
 it only hates the government of the colony, which is 
 not England nor the imperial government. What it is, 
 I shall have the pleasure of explaining soon. Mean- 
 while you will comprehend, that this hatred of their 
 government by colonists, and, as a consequence, of 
 colonists by their government, are disagreeable circum- 
 stances in the social state of colonies. It was from 
 such a state of hatred between subjects and their 
 government, that the Canadian rebellions sprang, and 
 that the body of South- African colonists fled, who 
 settled at Port Natal, and are now fighting with us 
 there for their independence. It is a state of things 
 by no means confined, as the last instance shows, to 
 representative colonies, or caused by representative 
 institutions. On the contrary, there is less of it in 
 Canada at this time than in any other colony, because 
 
IRISH DISTURBANCES. 187 
 
 there representative institutions are becoming a reality, 
 and regular party-government is taking the place of 
 what Lord Durham called a " constituted anarchy." 
 These extremes of violence do riot of course break out 
 veiy frequently : still, as they are of a character to 
 insure their being heard of in this country, they hap- 
 pen often enough to make an impression here, that 
 the peace of colonies is apt to be disturbed by them ; 
 that colonial public life resembles public life in Ireland. 
 
 Essentially Irish disturbances of another kind are 
 by no means rare in some colonies. In Canada, the 
 Orange and Milesian factions have been effectually 
 transplanted, and wage a perpetual war. Savage 
 encounters between them, resulting in bloodshed 
 amongst the combatants, and producing terror and 
 disgust for other people, are of frequent occurrence. 
 Even at the antipodes of Ireland, at Port Philip, in 
 Australia Felix, a large immigration of Milesian Irish 
 has produced faction fights and frightful rows, that 
 could only be suppressed by the armed force of govern- 
 ment. But in this respect, Mr. Mothercountry may 
 say, the colonies only suffer in common with ourselves. 
 He ought to say, in common with that part of the 
 kingdom which is called Ireland, and which in can- 
 dour he should add, is the last place to which the in- 
 habitants of the other parts would think of emigrating. 
 
 But there is a violence short of rebellion, faction- 
 fighting, impeachment, and stopping the supplies, by 
 which public and also private life in the colonies 
 generally, more or less, is made uncomfortable for emi- 
 grants who have not yet learned to practise it ; and 
 especially if they are emigrants of the most valuable 
 class. When colonists, I am speaking generally, 
 
188 MALIGNITY OF PARTY WARFARE. 
 
 and would allow for exceptions, differ upon such 
 a point, for example, as the amount of a proposed 
 import duty or the direction of a road, both sides 
 treat the question as if it were one of life and death ; 
 and instead of compromising their difference, or giving 
 a quiet victory to the preponderating weight of 
 votes or influence, they instantly set about tearing 
 each other to pieces with the tongue and pen, after 
 the manner of the late Daniel O'Connell. A colo- 
 nist who meddles with public matters, should have 
 a skin of impenetrable thickness. Quiet sort of 
 people who emigrate, though often the best quali- 
 fied for public business, generally refuse to meddle 
 with it : they cannot endure the scarification to which 
 any interference with it would expose them. But it 
 is not the skin alone that suffers, when thin enough. 
 Frequent scarification renders mt>st colonial skins so 
 impenetrably thick, that the utmost vituperation makes 
 hardly any impression upon them. Eecourse there- 
 fore is had to something sharper than billingsgate. 
 It is a general custom in the colonies, when your 
 antagonist withstands abuse, to hurt him seriously if 
 you can, and even to do him a mortal injury, either 
 in order to carry your point, or to punish him for 
 having carried his. In every walk of colonial life, 
 everybody strikes at his opponent's heart. If a 
 governor or high officer refuses to comply with the 
 wish of some leading colonists, they instantly try to 
 ruin him by getting him recalled with disgrace: if 
 two officials disagree, one of them is very likely to be 
 tripped up and destroyed by the other : if an official 
 or a colonist offends the official body, they will hunt 
 him into jail or out of the colony : if two settlers dis- 
 
COLONIAL DEMOCRACY. 189 
 
 agree about a road or a watercourse, they will attack 
 i -arli other's credit at the bank, rake up ugly old 
 stories about each other, get two newspapers to be the 
 instruments of their bitter animosity, perhaps ruin 
 each other in a desperate litigation. Disagreement 
 and rivalry are more tiger-like than disagreement and 
 rivalry in this country. Colonists at variance resemble 
 the Kilkenny cats. 
 
 Colonial democracy is not pleasant to emigrants of 
 the gentry class : and least of all is it pleasant to them 
 when they happen to be very well qualified by moral 
 and intellectual qualities for taking a useful part in the 
 public affairs of their new country. Colonial demo- 
 cracy is of two distinct kinds. First, in the represen- 
 tative colonies, there is the democracy which arises 
 from a suffrage practically next to universal; and 
 secondly, there is the democracy of the bureaucratic 
 colonies which grows out of arbitrary government. I 
 hope that a few words about each of them may not be 
 unacceptable. 
 
 In Canada, as in most of the adjoining States, the 
 best men, as we should consider them, that is, the 
 wisest and most upright men are seldom the favourite 
 candidates of the majority of voters, generally not 
 oven candidates at all. The favourite candidates are 
 the ablest demagogues ; the men who best know how 
 to flatter the prejudices and excite the passions of the 
 ignorant and passionate mass of electors. The result 
 is that not a few of the "representatives of the people," 
 whether in the House of Assembly or the District 
 Councils, are of that order of noisy, low-lived, spout- 
 ing, half-educated, violent, and unscrupulous poli- 
 ticians, one or two of whom occasionally get into the 
 
190 COLONIAL DEMOCRACY. 
 
 British House of Commons. In the Canadian As- 
 sembly, there is always a considerable proportion of 
 Busfield Ferrands and Feargus O'Connors. From 
 this fact you will infer many more which exhibit the 
 influence of Canadian democracy. It is an influence 
 which pervades public life in the colony, and thus to 
 a great extent keeps the best class of emigrants out of 
 public life. In saying that the other representative 
 colonies resemble Canada more or less in this respect, 
 I must exclude those of the West Indies, in which the 
 bulk of the people, having been recently slaves, have 
 not yet acquired the voter's qualification. In those 
 colonies, however, if the bottom of society is not yet 
 put at top by a suitable parliamentary suffrage, there 
 is the prospect of a Black democracy less tolerable for 
 the higher order of colonists and even for all Whites, 
 than is, for settlers of the higher order, the actual de- 
 mocracy of colonies inhabited by people of one colour. 
 The democracy of the representative colonies is 
 obviously caused by a democratic suffrage : that of the 
 bureaucratic colonies is occasioned by withholding from 
 all settlers all part in the government of their country. 
 In the latter case, the settlers having no political 
 rights, resort to agitation as the only means of in- 
 fluencing the governor and his nominated council of 
 officials. They make use of petitions, remonstrances, 
 and public meetings. The Opposition of the colony as 
 distinguished from its Government, is carried on by 
 means of public meetings. In New South Wales, 
 Australia Felix, South Australia, and New Zealand, 
 the common mode of endeavouring to influence the 
 local government or its masters in Downing-street, is 
 by getting up a public meeting, and publishing its 
 
BRUTALITY OF THE NEWSPAPERS. 191 
 
 proceedings in the newspapers. The calling of a 
 public meeting is an appeal to numbers, to the majo- 
 rity, to the democratic principle. The device of select 
 meetings, such as those from which our anti-corn-law 
 league used to exclude people who disagreed with them, 
 by means of tickets of admission, is not adopted in colo- 
 nies because it would not work there. It would not 
 work for two reasons ; first, because the official party 
 would in some cases snap their fingers at what they might 
 truly call a " hole-and-corner" meeting; and secondly, 
 because, if the majority were excluded from a meeting 
 by means of tickets, and thereby deeply offended, the 
 official party, by the aid of some purchased dema- 
 gogue, would easily get up a counter meeting more 
 numerous and violent than the one directed against 
 themselves. The system of opposing government by 
 means of public meetings is an irregular democracy 
 for opposition purposes. When the object is, as some- 
 times happens, to support the government faction, it is 
 more than ever necessary to avoid offending the ma- 
 jority, who therefore enjoy for the occasion a sort of 
 universal suffrage. None of the factions into which 
 a colony may be divided, has recourse to a public 
 meeting without intending an appeal to numbers. 
 The practice of appealing to numbers becomes habitual. 
 Politicians in the bureaucratic colonies, therefore, not 
 \< '-pting the highest officials when it happens to suit 
 their purpose, naturally resort to the arts of the dema- 
 gogue; demagogues are the leading politicians. The 
 newspaper press of these bureaucratic colonies is to the 
 full as demagoguish as coarse, as violent, as unscru- 
 pulous, often as brutal as that of the representative 
 c<>loiik-> in which the democracy is constituted bylaw. 
 
192 BRUTALITY OF THE NEWSPAPERS. 
 
 Of course, there are exceptions to this as to every 
 other rule. There have been colonial newspapers, 
 though I do not recollect one that lasted long, re- 
 markable for moderation and forbearance. There are 
 one or two colonies, I believe, like West Australia, 
 so stagnant, tame, and torpid, as to have no politics. 
 Even in the most political colonies, there are times, of 
 course, when politics are comparatively asleep. I am 
 speaking generally. As a general rule, colonial politics 
 are like what ours would be, if our suffrage were either 
 made universal, or totally abolished. In either of those 
 cases, I fancy, a colony which had representative go- 
 vernment, with a suffrage that gave influence to the 
 wisest and most upright, would attract swarms of the 
 most valuable class of emigrants. At present that is 
 a class of emigrants, which colonial politics repel. 
 
193 
 
 LETTER XXX. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 THE PRIVILEGED CLASS IN COLONIES. NATURE OF THEIR 
 PRIVILEGES. THE ROAD TO OFFICE IN REPRESENTA- 
 TIVE COLONIES WHERE RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT IS 
 
 ESTABLISHED, AND WHERE IT IS NOT. EMIGRANTS 
 
 OF THE BETTER ORDER A PROSCRIBED CLASS AS RE- 
 SPECTS OFFICE. 
 
 T/ r OU may suppose that the democracy of the colonies 
 is accompanied by a perfect equality. It is so 
 with the democracy of the United States, but not with 
 that of our colonies. As in Turkey there is equality 
 without democracy, so in our colonies there is demo- 
 cracy without equality. In the colonies, however, 
 there is but one privileged class which, so to speak, is 
 more privileged than any class in any European 
 country at present, excepting Russia perhaps. This 
 privileged class is as proud, though in a way of its 
 own, as exclusive, as insolent, as deeply convinced of 
 the inferiority or nothingness of the other classes, as 
 was the noblesse of old France. But its privileges are 
 not in any measure the attribute of birth : on the con- 
 trary, those who possess them are seldom high-born, 
 often of the meanest extraction. Neither do the pri- 
 vileges grow out of the possession of wealth : on the 
 
 o 
 
L94 THE PKIVILEGED CLASS IN COLONIES. 
 
 contrary, numbers of the privileged class in colonies 
 are generally without property, often in great want of 
 money, not very seldom on the verge of insolvency. 
 The privileged class in colonies is the official class. 
 
 I feel at a loss for the means of getting you to 
 understand the nature and extent of the privileges en- 
 joyed by the official class in colonies. It would be 
 easier to make a Frenchman acquainted with the sub- 
 ject. In our colonies, as in France now, office is the 
 only distinction. Of course, whatever is the only dis- 
 tinction in any part of the world, is, in that part of 
 the world, greedily desired and devoutly worshipped 
 by most people. The panting, the dying for office in 
 colonies, is a sight to see. But office in the colonies 
 is so precious, not only because it is the only dis- 
 tinction, but also because it is the only reality of 
 power. The government of our colonies is, for the 
 most part, bureaucratic. In some of the representa- 
 tive colonies, indeed, especially in Canada, the recent 
 adoption of what is called " responsible government" 
 places power in the hands of the parliamentary con- 
 stituencies and those who can win their confidence ; 
 but this is a complete and very modern innovation ; 
 and it has by no means been extended to all the repre- 
 sentative colonies. As in Canada before this innovation, 
 so now in the representative colonies to which it has 
 not been extended, and in all the bureaucratic colonies 
 without exception, all power originates in and is inhe- 
 rent to office. But there is a distinction between the 
 representative and the bureaucratic colonies which must 
 be noted. In the representative colonies which have 
 not obtained responsible government, as formerly in 
 the two Canadas, the executive and the representative 
 
COLONIAL OFFICIALS. 195 
 
 branches of government are generally at variance: 
 the executive branch sides with the minority in the 
 representative branch. In order to carry on govern- 
 ment at all under this curious system, it is indispen- 
 sable that the executive should have the support of a 
 party or faction in the colony. The governor, therefore, 
 who represents the crown, disposes of offices in favour 
 of such a faction : indeed, the official faction is really the 
 government. It consists of officials and their parti- 
 sans hoping to be officials. It is composed, for the 
 most part, of colonists ; that is, natives or fixed resi- 
 dents of the colony: and it enjoys all the power that 
 is exercised in the colony ; all the power, that is to 
 say, which is compatible with the existence of a vast 
 deal of worrying and sometimes impeding opposition 
 from the majority of the representative body. 
 
 In the bureaucratic colonies, on the other hand, where 
 constitutionally there is only one branch of government, 
 where the officials alone legislate as well as execute, 
 and where accordingly government may be carried on 
 somehow without the aid of a faction of colonists, the 
 best offices are filled by appointment from Downing- 
 street, generally by strangers to the colony, and almost 
 always without any regard to the wishes of the colo- 
 nists ; and these superior officers appoint to the inferior 
 offices. In those colonies, therefore, the power which 
 the official class enjoys is strictly a privilege, because 
 it is a power independent of its subjects, inherent, as 
 I said before, to the possession of office. But it is not 
 an unlimited power. As in representative colonies 
 not having responsible government, the power of the 
 official faction is limited by the hindering, worrying 
 power of the House of Assembly, so in the bureaucratic 
 
 o2 
 
196 COLONIAL OFFICES. 
 
 colonies, the power of the official class is limited by 
 the superior power of the Colonial Office at home. In 
 the former colonies, an official faction enjoys power 
 limited by a nasty local opposition : in the latter, an 
 official class enjoys power limited by a nastier inter- 
 ference from Downing-street. Still in both cases, the 
 power is immense. In the two Canadas, the official 
 faction, backed by the might of the empire, used to 
 have its own way in spite of the Assembly; and has 
 still, in the representative colonies to which responsible 
 government has not been extended : and in the bureau- 
 cratic colonies, the interference of Downing-street is so 
 weakened by distance as to place no very effectual 
 limit on the governing powers of the official class. 
 
 Whilst speaking of the official class, I wish to 
 exclude for the present the officers called governors, 
 who represent the crown, are nearly always strangers 
 to the colony, and generally hold their appointment 
 for only a few years, sometimes for only a few months. 
 
 The rest of the official body consists of the colonial 
 secretary; the president of the executive council; the 
 treasurer or inspector-general, who is the principal 
 financial officer; the surveyor-general, and commis- 
 sioner of crown lands, who are a very important 
 people in colonies where there is waste land to be dis- 
 posed of; the attorney and solicitor general ; the judges, 
 and several other judicial officers, such as the sheriff 
 and prothonotary ; and some more which it is not 
 worth while to specify. Nor is the above list appli- 
 cable to all colonies alike, either as respects titles or 
 functions. I give it as a sample, for the mere purpose 
 of indicating the general nature of the functions of the 
 official body in a colony. The subject of those func- 
 
COLONIAL OFFICES. 197 
 
 tions and the manner in which they are performed, 
 will be fully considered under the head of colonial 
 government. 
 
 In every colony, nearly all the offices are filled by 
 the governor's appointment in form, just as, in form, 
 the crown appoints to most offices in this country. 
 But the manner in which the appointments take place, 
 differs according to certain peculiar circumstances of 
 each of the three classes of colonies before pointed 
 out. In responsible-government colonies, or rather in 
 Canada alone, because there alone has responsible 
 government obtained anything like a firm footing, the 
 governor appoints on the advice of his executive 
 council or cabinet of ministers; and the ministers are 
 from time to time that set of leading colonists who 
 possess the confidence of the representative body. 
 The ministers being, as with us, responsible to par- 
 liament, and appointed or removed by the votes of 
 parliament, really carry on the government, and there- 
 fore, of course, make the appointments to office, in- 
 cluding their own : the governor does not govern, any 
 more than the Queen here; he only reigns, like her 
 Majesty. In Canada, accordingly (though how long 
 this may last, I pretend not to opine ; for the new 
 system is far from being thoroughly established), an 
 emigrant colonist may get into office if he takes the 
 proper road. The road to office is open to him as 
 well as to any native. The road to office is popular 
 favour, or the confidence of the constituencies; and 
 there is nothing to prevent any emigrant from winning 
 that, after he gets into the way of winning favour in 
 a country where the suffrage is practically almost 
 universal. 
 
198 EXCLUSION OF EMIGRANTS FROM OFFICE. 
 
 In the representative colonies from which respon- 
 sible government is still withheld, it is exceedingly 
 difficult for an emigrant to get into office by any 
 means. The colonial faction which governs in spite 
 of a representative assembly, does so by means of 
 holding the governor in leading-strings. This is not 
 the proper place for describing the nature of these 
 strings. Suffice it to say here, that they are most 
 artistically formed and as carefully kept in work- 
 ing order. For the making and preservation of 
 them, time, consecutive effort, and incessant vigilance 
 are indispensable. Those, therefore, who hold the 
 strings are a party of long standing and of permanent 
 organization. They belong to the colony. A stranger 
 arriving there would be incapable of joining them from 
 his ignorance of local politics. Besides, they want all 
 the appointments for themselves and their adherents. 
 Unless the whole, or nearly the whole, patronage of 
 the colony were at their disposal, they could not hold 
 together, and defy the representative body, for a single 
 year. They do hold together so as to be commonly 
 called the family compact. In the course of time, an 
 emigrant who has great talents for intrigue, may 
 penetrate into this close corporation, and become one 
 of it : the thing happens every now and then. But 
 allowing for such rare exceptions, the family compact 
 vigorously excludes emigrants from office. It dislikes 
 and fears emigrants as a class. It dislikes them, 
 more especially if they are rich and clever, as persons 
 who may be willing and able to obtain political in- 
 fluence ; as possible rivals, and almost inevitable fault- 
 finders and opponents: it fears them, because they 
 may be able through their connexions at home to get 
 
EXCLUSION OF EMIGRANTS FROM OFFICE. 199 
 
 at the governor in some way, and may try to take 
 him out of his leading-strings. They would rejoice 
 if there were no* emigration of the better order of 
 people. They do much to prevent it ; and they succeed 
 in materially checking it, by variously ill-treating 
 emigrants of that class. The family compact of 
 Upper Canada, before the black day for them which 
 introduced responsible government, used not only to 
 exclude emigrants of that class from distinction 
 and political power in the land of their adoption, but 
 also to affront and injure them by the numerous means 
 which power can employ for such a purpose. This 
 was one of the causes of the rebellion in Upper Canada. 
 Not that the higher class of emigrants, who were then 
 very numerous, were disposed to rebel : their maladie 
 du pays, their passionate love of England, prevented 
 that : but those who did rebel, thought that, to be 
 sure, the emigrants who had been so ill-treated by the 
 ruling faction, would be disposed to join in a rebellion; 
 and this expectation, it is now well known, had a 
 considerable share in leading the rebels into action. 
 The case of Upper Canada was not singular, though 
 it is better known than others. I think we may lay 
 it down as a rule, with but very rare exceptions, that 
 in a colony governed by a family compact, emigrants 
 of the better order are a proscribed class as respects 
 the enjoyment of distinction and power. They are 
 mere settlers, snubbed and ill-treated by those who 
 enjoy a monopoly of distinction and power; and they 
 can be nothing else. 
 
200 
 
 LETTER XXXI. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 HOW OFFICIALS ARE APPOINTED IN THE BUREAUCRATIC 
 
 COLONIES. THEY ARE A SORT OF DEMIGODS, BUT 
 
 VERY MUCH INFERIOR TO THE BETTER ORDER OF SET- 
 TLERS IN ABILITY, CHARACTER, CONDUCT, AND MAN- 
 NERS. EXAMPLES THEREOF AND THE CAUSES OF IT. 
 BEHAVIOUR OF THE OFFICIALS TO THE BETTER 
 ORDER OF SETTLERS. 
 
 IN a bureaucratic colony, as in others, the governor ap- 
 points to office. He is generally in leading-strings 
 like the governor of a family-compact colony ; but the 
 strings are pulled by two different sets of hands. As 
 to the great bulk of the higher appointments, he obeys 
 the commands of the Colonial Office at home, which 
 reach him in the form of recommendations delivered 
 by the persons in whose favour they are made. Occa- 
 sionally, with respect to a higher appointment, and 
 always with respect to a good many of the inferior 
 appointments, especially those of which the salary is 
 small, he takes the advice of " the people about him ;" 
 that is, of those among the higher officials who really 
 govern the colony subject to interference from Down- 
 
APPOINTMENT OF OFFICIALS. 201 
 
 ing-street. These virtual rulers of the colony do not 
 hang together with the tenacity of a regular family 
 compact. Their position does not require that they 
 should do so. They owe their appointments to Down- 
 ing-street; and as long as Downing-street supports 
 one of them he is in no danger of losing his office. 
 The influence at home which induced Downing-street 
 to make the appointment, generally contrives to induce 
 it to support the colonial officer. Such officials, 
 therefore, are in a great measure independent of the 
 governor: they may safely, as respects their own 
 position, neglect the manifold precautions by which 
 a regular family compact keeps the governor in order. 
 Neither are they tormented by a house of assembly, 
 and compelled to guard against its endeavours to take 
 a part in governing the colony. They are altogether 
 more at their ease than the members of a regular 
 family compact, more independent of control, more 
 free to indulge their personal inclinations and passions. 
 We find accordingly, that they often quarrel among 
 themselves, and sometimes with the governor. The 
 jealousies, and rivalries, and hatreds which belong to 
 poor human nature, but which in well-ordered societies 
 are subdued by various restraints, break out uncon- 
 trolled amongst the officials of a bureaucratic colony. 
 The official body is sometimes split into hostile fac- 
 tions ; individuals have bitter public quarrels ; even his 
 excellency the governor himself is often worried, some- 
 times upset, by these his nominal subordinates. But 
 there is one point on which the officials of a bureau- 
 cratic colony never differ; one respect in which they 
 hold together as tenaciously as the best-cemented family 
 compact. They agree in thinking that colonists or 
 
202 DIGNITY OF THE OFFICIALS. 
 
 settlers, people who come out all that way to improve 
 their condition by their own exertions, are an inferior 
 order of beings ; and they stick close together in re- 
 sisting all attempts on the part of settlers to become 
 officials; to get a share in governing the colony. If 
 they were settlers themselves as well as officials, it 
 would be a fair struggle between the ins and the outs, 
 to which no Englishman would think of objecting : 
 but the officials of a bureaucratic colony are hardly 
 ever settlers. They have their salaries to live on, and 
 generally no other property; that is, no property at 
 all in the colony. They consider their salaries a pro- 
 perty for life ; and the source of it is far away from 
 the colony. They arrive in the colony as utter 
 strangers to it, and in order to exercise the power of 
 governing it : they are, in their own estimation and in 
 that of a good many of the humbler colonists, a sort 
 of demigods, coming from another planet, and gifted 
 by some distant and mysterious authority with the 
 right of governing the settlers. Their dignity would 
 suffer if they became settlers ; if they associated with 
 the settlers except on the most unequal terms, or 
 sympathized with them in any way. Like the caste 
 of Brahmins, they hold themselves apart from the rest 
 of the community and immeasurably superior to it : or 
 rather (for this is a truer comparison) they do not 
 belong to the community at all, but resemble the 
 official class in British India, which exclusively 
 governs, but does not settle, and which regards the 
 natives as a race only fit to be governed by a superior 
 race. For natives, read settlers when a bureaucratic 
 colony is in view. 
 
 In British India, the natives are what the white 
 
CHARACTERISTICS OF OFFICIALS. 203 
 
 officials deein them: if they were not, they would 
 hardly submit to be ruled by a handful of foreigners. 
 But in the bureaucratic colonies, the officials are, apart 
 from their official position, which is one of exceeding 
 superiority, very much inferior to the better order of 
 settlers. Pray observe that I speak generally, not 
 denying that there are exceptions, and exceptions 
 which it is a pleasure to record. But, speaking gene- 
 rally, the officials of a bureaucratic colony are inferior 
 to the best settlers in property, manners, and character. 
 The most valuable settlers have a good deal of pro- 
 perty; some a great deal: the officials hardly ever 
 have any property : it is their poverty at home which 
 induces them to seek a colonial appointment ; and they 
 generally spend the whole of their salaries, not unfre- 
 quently as much more as they can get into debt. The 
 best settlers are often men of great ability; as is 
 proved by their success as settlers notwithstanding all 
 the hindrances I have enumerated and some which re- 
 main to be noticed : most of the officials are persons 
 who, in consequence of their want of ability, have 
 broken down in some career at home, or have had no 
 career but that of being supported in idleness by their 
 relations. It is interest of a kind to be hereafter ex- 
 plained, not suitable ability, which in Downing-street 
 is deemed a qualification for office in the colonies: 
 and those for whom this interest is exerted, are, in 
 point of ability only " good enough for colonies ;" 
 that is, persons whose want of ability unfits them for 
 holding office, or otherwise earning their own bread, at 
 home. There are exceptions of more than one kind. 
 It happens sometimes by accident, that a young man 
 of real ability is urged by necessity or led by inclina- 
 
204 INFERIORITY OF OFFICIALS 
 
 tion to prefer an immediate provision in the colonies 
 to waiting for what his talents might obtain for him 
 at home ; but generally when a person of real ability 
 gets his friends to solicit Downing- street for a colonial 
 appointment, he either prefers an easy life abroad to 
 hard work at home, or has defects of character, perhaps 
 habitual vices, which disqualify him from getting on 
 where he is known. There are a few men of superior 
 ability in the colonial official class appointed by Down- 
 ing-street, who are open to no countervailing reproach : 
 and there are more whose ability is allied to defects 
 or vices of character, that render their talent an evil 
 instead of a benefit to the colony : but all the rest, who 
 therefore constitute the great majority, and exemplify 
 rule, are persons who, in consequence of their want of 
 ability, find office in the colonies a refuge from desti- 
 tution. 
 
 What are the conduct, character, and manners of 
 the best class of emigrants, is a point that requires 
 only one remark: those only form the best class of 
 emigrants, whose manners, character, and conduct are 
 unexceptionable. Unexceptionable : I would propose 
 no higher standard by which to measure the conduct, 
 character, and manners of the official class in bureau- 
 cratic colonies. Before applying the measure, however, 
 let me again acknowledge that in all colonies probably, 
 certainly in many, there are persons in office who are 
 above the standard ; whom we should unjustly disparage 
 by saying that in conduct, character, and manners, 
 they are only unexceptionable. In every class of man- 
 kind as numerous as the official class in bureaucratic 
 colonies, there are some people who have been always 
 good, and whom nothing can make bad; "nature's 
 
TO THE BETTER ORDER OP SETTLERS. 205 
 
 noblemen," whose duty to their neighbour is pre- 
 scribed by an inborn conscience, and whose manners 
 represent an inherent benevolence and delicacy. Such 
 people may be found at plough, among common sailors, 
 in the rank and file of desolating armies, in the cor- 
 ruptest parts of great cities ; I had almost said amongst 
 thieves, the thieving apart. Such people there are in 
 bureaucratic-colony official life ; duty-doing men, true, 
 honourable, and public spirited, having generous sym- 
 pathies, and manners remarkable for gentleness and 
 refinement. I am half inclined to mention the names 
 of some of them. But all their names would not 
 occupy much space. They are a small minority ; and 
 they would be amongst the first to admit the truth of 
 what I say about the others. The majority is com- 
 posed of people, some of whom just come up to the 
 standard above proposed ; some a little below it ; some 
 below it to a degree which you, who have had no per- 
 sonal experience of the colonies, will not readily credit. 
 Or rather what you will with difficulty believe, is the 
 large proportion of officials in the bureaucratic colonies 
 who are below the standard. I mean a large proportion 
 whether of the whole number of colonial officials, or 
 in comparison with the proportion of official people in 
 this country whose manners, character, and conduct, 
 are worse than unexceptionable. But how, you will 
 ask, can this be ascertained? With respect to con- 
 duct at least, I can suggest a means by which your 
 curiosity might be satisfied. The Colonial Office could 
 if it pleased, and would if the House of Commons in- 
 sisted on it, though sorely against the grain, furnish a 
 return of the number and titles of officials in the bu- 
 reaucratic colonies, who during the last twenty years 
 
206 DISMISSAL OF OFFICIALS. 
 
 have been dismissed from office for misconduct. It 
 would be needless to specify the nature of the mis- 
 conduct in each case, because the severe punishment 
 of dismissal from office is only applied in gross and 
 flagrant cases. Indeed, the natural tenderness of 
 officials towards officials induces the Colonial Office, 
 which alone of our public departments is thoroughly 
 bureaucratic in its composition and character, to avoid 
 as much as possible the form of dismissal; and this 
 tenderness equally actuates governors and other colo- 
 nial officials, when they are under the necessity of 
 removing an erring brother. The usual form of dis- 
 missal, therefore, is an intimation to the wrong-doer, 
 that he will only avoid the disgrace of a formal dis- 
 missal by tendering his resignation. The form of 
 dismissal is hardly ever used, I think, except when 
 the wrong-doer is also the scape-goat of his official 
 brethren or of his superiors in Downing-street. The 
 common form of real dismissal is resignation. I men- 
 tion this in order that, if you should try to get such a 
 return, your object may not be defeated by an evasion 
 which might not be discovered, and, if it were, might 
 be defended on the ground of formal accuracy. The 
 return should state under separate heads, whether the 
 officer resigned or was dismissed ; if he was dismissed, 
 for what reason ; if he resigned, for what known or 
 supposed reason; and whether the expediency of his 
 resignation was intimated to him by superior authority. 
 I have no doubt that there are materials in the Colo- 
 nial Office for framing such a return, though for most 
 of them a search must be made in the " confidential," 
 "private," and "secret" pigeon-holes of that depart- 
 ment; for of course, with the exception always of 
 
OFFICIAL DEFAULTERS. 207 
 
 scape-goat cases, official misconduct in the colonies is 
 carefully kept out of view by those who, if it were 
 mentioned in blue-books, might be held responsible 
 for it. 
 
 It would be well in such a return to have a column 
 for cases of pecuniary default, which are very nume- 
 rous and very important in the amount of money lost, 
 when compared with such cases here. In this column 
 the sum in default should be given, together with the 
 population and annual income of the colony, so as to 
 afford the means of proportionate comparison with 
 this country. Some of the obvious conclusions from 
 this column would startle the British public. Other 
 sorts of misconduct could not be so easily presented 
 in a tabular form : and, at best, many cases of gross 
 misconduct would escape notice, because the wrong- 
 doers were not dismissed in form or in fact, but are 
 still, socially, high above the worthiest of the settlers. 
 Low character and disgusting manners could not be 
 any how set forth in a return. If we could get at 
 ample information on the whole subject of conduct, 
 character, and manners, the disclosures would make 
 honest John Bull's hair stand on end. We should 
 hear of judges deeply in debt, and alone saved by the 
 privilege of their station from being taken to jail by 
 the officers of their own court. We should hear even 
 of governors landing in secret on their arrival, and 
 getting hastily sworn into office in a corner, for the 
 purpose of hindering officers of the sheriff from 
 executing a writ of arrest against his excellency. We 
 should learn that in the single colony of New South 
 Wales, of which the population was at that time under 
 200,000, many high officials passed through the in- 
 
208 OFFICIAL INSOLVENTS. 
 
 solvent court in a single year. It was a year, no 
 doubt, of extraordinary speculation in the colony, 
 occasioned by certain pranks which the government 
 played with the plan of disposing of waste land by 
 sale: but the year 1847 was a year of extraordinary 
 speculation in England without our beholding a consi- 
 derabffc proportion of the highest of our public servants 
 relieved from their speculative engagements by our 
 courts of insolvency : and it is right to observe further, 
 that speculation in railways here by people in office is 
 not misconduct, as speculation in the disposal of colo- 
 nial public land is when the speculators constitute the 
 government which disposes of the land as a trustee for 
 the public. Private speculation by members of the 
 cabinet in a public loan would be more like what took 
 the officials of New South Wales into the insolvent 
 court. In this country, again, bankruptcy or insol- 
 vency deprives a member of parliament of his seat; 
 whereas the insolvent officials of New South Wales 
 continued to hold power afterwards as if they had 
 done nothing wrong: a circumstance proper to be 
 noted, as it serves to show the whereabouts of the 
 standard of respectability among the depositories of 
 power in our colonies. But this is an unpleasant 
 topic; and I will dismiss it after mentioning a few 
 more cases, which are taken from a single colony, 
 and occurred at the same time not long ago. The 
 Treasurer that is, the colonial chancellor of the 
 exchequer was a defaulter. The Colonial Secretary 
 that is, the governor's prime minister was obliged 
 to resign his appointment in consequence of a discovery 
 that a lady who passed as his wife was not married to 
 him ; and he afterwards resigned another office in con- 
 
LOW OFFICIALS. 209 
 
 sequence of being accused of forging public documents. 
 An office, the duties of which required very high and 
 peculiar qualities that of sole judge of a court of law 
 and conscience was held by a country attorney, whose 
 chief business in England had been the dirty work of 
 elections, and who by that means got the appointment. 
 Another office of still more difficulty and delicacy was 
 given to an awkward half-educated lad of eighteen. 
 Two principal officers of the government fled the 
 colony without waiting to be dismissed, in order to 
 avoid being tried, the one for robbing the pool at 
 cards, the other for a yet more disgraceful crime. 
 And, to conclude, another person, filling an office of 
 great power and importance, was a blackguard in the 
 constant habit of swearing " by the hind leg of the 
 Lamb of God." This last fellow afterwards had the 
 confiding ear of the Colonial Office, in a matter which 
 was decided according to his views, and almost fatally 
 for the colony. 
 
 Now for the moral, in pursuit of which I have raked 
 into all this mass of filth. The class amongst whom, 
 to say the least, such people are found in no inconsi- 
 derable number, constitutes the only and greatly 
 privileged class in the colonies; the demigods who 
 came from another planet to rule over the settlers. 
 In the colony from which all the latter instances have 
 been taken, there happened to be at the time a number 
 of settlers of the very best sort, gentlemen belonging 
 to some of the best families hi England and Scotland ; 
 Pet res, Cliffords, Dillons, Vavasours, Tytlers, Moles- 
 worths, Jerninghams, Sinclairs, Welds, and such like. 
 They went out under the delusion, among others, that 
 they should have some voice in the government of the 
 
210 HOW MUCH GOVERNMENT 
 
 colony. Instead of that, they were treated by the 
 officials as an inferior sort of people, whose only 
 proper business it was to create a colonial revenue by 
 their industry, and to take off their hats on-meeting a 
 public functionary. You doubt : I did myself when 
 first I heard of these things. Pray make inquiry for 
 yourself amongst the families above named. By doing 
 so, you will moreover learn how powerfully the low 
 standard of character amongst the only privileged 
 class in colonies, operates against the emigration of 
 the best class of settlers. 
 
 LETTER XXXII. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 THE COLONIST EXPLAINS THE URGENT NEED OF THE 
 INTERVENTION OF GOVERNMENT IN THE MULTIFA- 
 RIOUS BUSINESS OF CONSTRUCTING SOCIETY, AND DE- 
 SCRIBES THE GENERAL PAUCITY, OFTEN THE TOTAL 
 ABSENCE, OF GOVERNMENT IN THE COLONIES OF 
 BRITAIN. 
 
 T HAVE said that the officials govern. How they 
 - govern, that is, what sort of laws they make, and 
 how they administer them, and how, to a great extent, 
 they govern without laws according to their own will 
 at the moment ; this is an important question to be 
 considered hereafter; but there is another question 
 relating to colonial government which is of even greater 
 importance; namely, how much government British 
 
BRITISH COLONISTS OBTAIN. 211 
 
 colonists obtain. You may think that the quality is 
 of more moment than the quantity. That depends, 
 however, on the degree in which government is needed. 
 In this country, we suppose that there is always plenty 
 of government : we have no idea of a state of things 
 in which people feel that any government, good, bad, 
 or indifferent, would be better than not enough of any 
 sort. In the colonies this is the ordinary state of 
 things ; and the paucity of government is more inju- 
 rious in the colonies than it would be in an old 
 country. I will try to explain. 
 
 Referring to my letter on the charms of colonization, 
 I would say that the intervention of government is 
 more, and more constantly, needed in the multifarious 
 business of constructing society, than in that of pre- 
 serving it. The very first operation is to obtain land ; 
 and land, with the essential addition of a good title to 
 it, can only be obtained by the action of government 
 in opening the public waste to settlers by extensive 
 and accurate surveys, and in converting it into private 
 property according to law. The general drainage of 
 the new land, and the making of roads and bridges, 
 require taxation according to law. Magistrates can 
 only be appointed by authority; and even so simple 
 and necessary a law as one for putting trespassing 
 cattle into the pound, cannot exist without the action 
 of government. A good and well-executed law of 
 fencing is indispensable to the well-doing, and even to 
 the peace of a new settlement. Such examples might 
 be multiplied without end. Without plenty of govern- 
 ment, the settlement of a waste country is barbarous 
 and miserable work : the vain exertions, the desperate 
 plunges, the stumbles, the heavy falls, the exhaustion 
 
 p2 
 
212 SEAT OF GOVEKNMENT. 
 
 and final faintness of the settlers put one in mind of 
 running, as it is called, in a sack. It is as difficult, 
 as impossible, to colonize well without plenty of go- 
 vernment, as to work a steam-engine without fuel, or 
 breathe comfortably without enough air. Ample 
 government, in a word, is the pabulum vitce, the unre- 
 mitting sine qud non of prosperous colonization. The 
 quality of government, I repeat, is of less moment to 
 colonists than the amount. 
 
 Throughout the British colonies, the amount of 
 government is curiously small. In every one of our 
 colonies, the main principle of the government of 
 France has been adopted. Whether the government 
 of the colony is democratic in quality, like that of 
 Canada under the responsible system with a suffrage 
 nearly universal, or despotic like that of South Africa 
 or New Zealand, it is at any rate exceedingly central. 
 Whatever else it may be, every colonial government 
 is of the central kind, just like that of modern France, 
 which resides in Paris, whether it is an emperor Napo- 
 leon relying on his army, or a republic based on 
 universal suffrage. In our colonies, government re- 
 sides at what is called its seat : every colony has its 
 Paris or " seat of government." At this spot there is 
 government ; elsewhere little or none. Montreal, for 
 example, is the Paris of Canada. Here, of course, as 
 in the Paris of France, or in London, representatives 
 of the people assemble to make laws, and the executive 
 departments, with the cabinet of ministers, are esta- 
 blished. But now mark the difference between Eng- 
 land on the one hand, and France or Canada on the 
 other. The laws of England being full of delegation 
 of authority for local purposes, and for special pur- 
 
CENTRE OF GOVERNMENT. 213 
 
 poses whether local or not, spread government all over 
 the country; those of Canada or France in a great 
 measure confine government to the capital and its 
 immediate neighbourhood. If people want to do 
 something of a public nature in Caithness or Corn- 
 wall, there is an authority on the spot which will 
 enable them to accomplish their object without going 
 or writing to a distant place : at Marseilles or Dun- 
 kerque you cannot alter a high road, or add a gens- 
 d'arme to the police force, without a correspondence 
 with Paris : at Gaspe and Niagara you could not until 
 lately get anything of a public nature done without 
 authority from the seat of government. But what 
 is the meaning in this case of a correspondence with 
 Paris or Montreal? it is doubt, hesitation, and ignorant 
 objection on the part of the distant authority; re- 
 ferences backwards and forwards; putting off of 
 decisions; delay without end; and for the applicants 
 a great deal of trouble, alternate hope and fear, much 
 vexation of spirit, and finally either a rough defeat of 
 their object or its evaporation by lapse of time. In 
 France, accordingly, whatever may be the form of the 
 general government, improvement, except at Paris, is 
 imperceptibly slow, whilst in Old, and still more in New 
 England, you can hardly shut your eyes anywhere 
 without opening them on something new and good, 
 produced by the operation of delegated government 
 residing on the spot, or delegated government specially 
 charged with making the improvement. In the colonies, 
 it is much worse than in France. The difficulty there, 
 is even to open a correspondence with the seat of 
 government; to find somebody with whom to corre- 
 spond. In France, at any rate, there is at the centre 
 
214 PAUCITY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 a very elaborate bureaucratic machinery, instituted 
 with the design of supplying the whole country with 
 government : the failure arises from the practical in- 
 adequacy of a central machinery for the purpose in 
 view : but in our colonies, there is but little machinery 
 at the seat of government for even pretending to 
 operate at a distance. The occupants of the public 
 offices at Montreal scarcely take more heed of Gaspe, 
 which is 500 miles off and very difficult of access, 
 than if that part of Canada were in Newfoundland 
 or Europe. Gaspe therefore, until lately, when on 
 Lord Durham's recommendation some machinery of 
 local government was established in Canada, was 
 almost without government, and one of the most 
 barbarous places on the face of the earth. Every part 
 of Canada not close to the seat of government was 
 more or less like Gaspe. Every colony has numerous 
 Gaspes. South Africa, save at Cape Town, is a 
 Gaspe all over. All Australia Felix, being from 500 
 to 700 miles distant from its seat of government at 
 Sydney, and without a made road between them, is a 
 great Gaspe. In New Zealand, a country 8 or 900 
 miles long, without roads, and colonized as Sicily was 
 of old, in many distinct settlements, all the settlements 
 except the one at which the government is seated, are 
 miserable Gaspes as respects paucity of government. 
 In each settlement indeed there is a meagre official 
 establishment, and in one of the settlements there is a 
 sort of lieutenant-governor : but these officers have no 
 legislative functions, no authority to determine any- 
 thing, no originating or constructive powers : they are 
 mere executive organs of the general government at 
 the capital for administering general laws, and for 
 
COLONISTS AT WELLINGTON. 215 
 
 carrying into effect such arbitrary instructions, which 
 are- not laws, as they may receive from the seat of 
 government. The settlers accordingly are always 
 calling out for something which government alone 
 could furnish. Take one example out of thousands. 
 The settlers at Wellington in New Zealand, the prin- 
 cipal settlement of the colony, wanted a lighthouse at 
 the entrance of their harbour. To get a lighthouse 
 was an object of the utmost importance to them. The 
 company in England, which had founded the settle- 
 ment, offered to advance the requisite funds on loan. 
 But the settlement had no constituted authority that 
 could accept the loan and guarantee its repayment. 
 The company therefore asked the Colonial Office, 
 whose authority over New Zealand is supreme, to un- 
 dertake that the money should be properly laid out 
 and ultimately repaid. But the Colonial Office, 
 charged as it is with the general government of some 
 forty distinct and distant communities, was utterly 
 incapable of deciding whether or not the infant settle- 
 ment ought to incur such a debt for such a purpose : 
 it therefore proposed to refer the question to the 
 general government of the colony at Auckland. But 
 Auckland is several hundred miles distant from Wel- 
 lington ; and between these distant places there is no 
 road at all : the only way of communication is by sea : 
 and as there is no commercial intercourse between the 
 places, communication by sea is either so costly, when, 
 as has happened, a ship is engaged for the purpose of 
 sending a message, or so rare, that the settlers at 
 Wellington frequently receive later news from Eng- 
 land than from the seat of their government: and 
 moreover, the attention of their government was 
 
216 PAUCITY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 known to be at the time absorbed with matters re- 
 lating exclusively to the settlement in which the 
 government resided. Nothing, therefore, was done: 
 some ships have been lost for want of a lighthouse ; 
 and the most frequented harbour of New Zealand is 
 still without one. 
 
 Volumes might be filled with cases like this. I do 
 not mean cases furnished by all the colonies, but that 
 from each colony cases might be drawn that would 
 fill volumes. Nay more, each settlement of every 
 colony would furnish its volumes of cases. For now, 
 please to observe, that although in such a country as 
 New Zealand the general government provides an 
 official establishment, however rude and meagre, for 
 each distinct settlement, there are parts of every 
 settlement into which the action of the local official 
 establishment never penetrates at all. This arises 
 from the difficulties of communication in a new coun- 
 try. There is a considerable proportion of every 
 extensive colony generally the parts most recently 
 occupied in which there is no government. But 
 there are parts of the colony in which construction 
 or creation is more especially the business of the 
 settlers, and in which, therefore, government is more 
 needed than in the other parts. I hope you perceive 
 now, that there is not an outlying district of any of 
 our extensive colonies but would furnish its volumes 
 of cases in which government fails to supply some 
 urgent want of the settlers. The slow progress, the 
 rudeness, the semi-barbarism of what are called back- 
 settlements in Canada and New Brunswick, bush 
 settlements in Australia and New Zealand, are thus 
 sufficiently accounted for. The wonder is that they 
 
INDISPOSITION TO EMIGRATE. 217 
 
 get on as well as they do. Of this, also, you will 
 probably desire an explanation. It shall be given in 
 due time. Meanwhile, you now, I hope, understand 
 how greatly, not the quality but the paucity of 
 government in our colonies, operates as an impedi- 
 ment to emigration, and more particularly to the emi- 
 gration of the most valuable class of settlers. 
 
 LETTER XXXIII. 
 From the Statesman. 
 
 THE STATESMAN THINKS THAT THE COLONIST HAS 
 EXAGGERATED THE INDISPOSITION OF RESPECTABLE 
 PEOPLE TO EMIGRATE. 
 
 PERMIT me to ask you whether you may not be 
 overstating your case. Any one of the impedi- 
 ments to colonization, as you describe them, appears to 
 me by itself sufficient to deter respectable people from 
 emigrating; and I cannot understand how, with such 
 a number of these impediments as you present to my 
 view, there is any respectable emigration whatever. 
 Yet there is some. One hears, every now and then, 
 in society, of some peer's son, or family of good con- 
 dition, though not large fortune, going out to a colony 
 to settle. I am told that the number who went to 
 Canada shortly before the rebellions was considerable ; 
 and the respectability of the emigration to New Zea- 
 land was a common topic some few years ago. Mr. 
 Mothercountry assures me, that persons highly con- 
 
218 DISPOSITION TO EMIGRATE. 
 
 nected in this country have gone to Port Philip, and 
 even to New South Wales, which is altogether a con- 
 vict colony; not persons, he says, who though be- 
 longing to families of consequence were in difficulty or 
 under a cloud, but persons who took with them an 
 exemplary character and large capital. He offered to 
 give me their names, and to put me in the way of veri- 
 fying his statement by communication with their 
 families in England. He insists that the facts con- 
 tradict your view of the force of all these obstacles to 
 colonization. I do not agree with him to that extent ; 
 but it appears to me, supposing the facts to be as he 
 represents them, that you over-rate the force of those 
 obstacles. If your estimate of it were perfectly correct, 
 nobody would emigrate but the labouring poor and 
 desperate or needy people of the other classes. Will 
 you excuse me for saying that we must be careful to 
 avoid exaggeration. 
 
219 
 
 LETTER XXXIV. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 THE COLONIST DEFENDS HIS VIEW OF THE INDISPOSI- 
 TION OF RESPECTABLE PEOPLE TO EMIGRATE, AND 
 
 SUGGESTS FURTHER INQUIRY BY THE STATESMAN. 
 
 TWO MORE IMPEDIMENTS TO COLONIZATION. 
 
 I AM glad that you inquire for yourself, in order 
 to test the soundness of my views. The more 
 you may do so, the better I shall be pleased. Pray 
 do take the names of the well-born emigrants, who 
 carried a high character and good capital to Port 
 Philip and Xew South Wales : and ask their relatives 
 what has become of them. Let me warn you, how- 
 ever, that in putting the question, you must take 
 some care in order to avoid giving pain. If you find 
 that half, or a quarter, of these emigrants have 
 realized the hopes with which they left home if you 
 find the family of even one of them pleased with his 
 position as a colonist I will acknowledge that I have 
 exaggerated. You will learn that most of them have 
 returned to this country, after losing their property 
 either in the gulf of " exhorburnt wagers," or in some 
 pit of colonial " smartness" which was dug on purpose 
 for the unsuspecting emigrant to fall into. You will 
 
220 DISAPPOINTED COLONISTS. 
 
 not learn that one of them really liked anything but 
 the climate, and the absence of that uneasiness and 
 poverty which in this country arises from excessive 
 competition. I wish you could fall in with a gentle- 
 woman who has been induced to emigrate; more 
 especially if she should be attached to her church and 
 disposed to enjoy its observances. Failing such a lady 
 herself, her correspondents would enlighten you if you 
 could lead them to tell of her disappointments. It is 
 indifferent to me what colony you inquire about. I 
 have inquired about many about some with my own 
 eyes and ears and I feel confident that the whole 
 emigration to Upper Canada and New Zealand, for 
 example, furnishes no instance of the ultimate settle- 
 ment of a gentleman's family with satisfaction to 
 themselves and their friends at home. There are 
 families that do not complain; that are induced by 
 mere pride to conceal their disappointment, or by 
 pride and common sense to make the best of irre- 
 mediable ills; to put up even cheerfully with the 
 painful consequences of an irretrievable step. But 
 sift these cases to the bottom, not trusting to generals 
 but really getting at particulars ; and they will sustain 
 my position even more effectually than cases of sudden 
 and total failure, for which not circumstances alone 
 but the individual may have been chiefly to blame. 
 There is another class of cases, which, though more 
 numerous, I am afraid, it is not so easy to investigate. 
 I mean cases in which the emigrant, after being 
 shocked at the difference between what he expected 
 and what he finds, gradually learns to like the baser 
 order of things, takes a pleasure in the coarse licence 
 and physical excitement of less civilized life, and 
 
OBSTACLES TO COLONIZATION. 221 
 
 becomes a satisfied colonist by imbibing colonial tastes 
 and habits. When this happens, it is difficult for a 
 stranger here to learn the fact; but the relations 
 know and deplore it; and it operates against the 
 emigration of people whose tastes and habits are not 
 colonial, though not so obviously, quite as surely, as 
 cases of loud complaint. 
 
 Nevertheless, there are still emigrants of the gentry 
 class: yes, Mr. Mothercountry is right in that; but 
 please to ask him if he knows of any who are going 
 to a colony under the influence of satisfactory reports 
 from other emigrants of that class. At all times there 
 is a certain number of the most valuable class of emi- 
 o-rants; but they go, every one of them, under the 
 influence of some great delusion. One expects to 
 grow rich fast ; another, to be of great importance in 
 the colony; a third, to enjoy a great domain as a 
 great domain is enjoyed here ; a fourth, to see his wife 
 and daughters, who are fretting here, as happy there 
 as the day is long. All these expectations prove, in 
 ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, mere dreams of 
 the fancy. Those who give way to them, go in spite 
 of the impediments I am describing. If the deluded 
 class was very large, this part of my subject would 
 not exist. The question is, not how many go in spite 
 of the impediments, but how many do the impedi- 
 ments prevent from going? to what extent do the 
 impediments countervail the natural attractions of 
 colonization ? 
 
 There are two other impediments to colonization, 
 which, as they do not affect all colonies, may be post- 
 poned for future consideration; I mean, first, the 
 colonial as distinguished from the home effects of 
 
222 OBSTACLES TO COLONIZATION. 
 
 Convict Transportation, which occur only in the 
 colony of New South Wales and its near neighbours ; 
 and, secondly, the presence of Aboriginal Natives; 
 with the revolting process by which their extermina- 
 tion is brought about. The latter set of colonial evils 
 belong chiefly to the colonies of South Africa, Ceylon, 
 and New Zealand. But there remains to be noticed 
 at present one other impediment, the greatest of all, 
 the parent of all the others ; and this is our system 
 of colonial government, which will occupy my next 
 letters. 
 
 LETTER XXXY. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 THE COLONIST PURPOSES TO EXAMINE COLONIAL GOVERN- 
 MENT AS AN IMPEDIMENT TO COLONIZATION, AS THE 
 PARENT OF OTHER IMPEDIMENTS, AND AS A CAUSE OF 
 INJURY TO THE MOTHER-COUNTRY; AND TO PROCEED 
 AT ONCE TO A PLAN FOR ITS REFORM. 
 
 HITHERTO in treating of an impediment to colo- 
 nization, I have attended only to the thing itself 
 and its particular influence on emigration, without 
 noticing any other effect it may have, and without 
 alluding to its causes. A different course will, I think, 
 be found convenient and useful when examining colo- 
 nial government generally. Our whole system of 
 colonial government is not only by itself an impedi- 
 ment, but also the cause of the other impediments to 
 
OBSTACLES TO COLONIZATION. 223 
 
 emigration, which I have barely described : it is also 
 the cause of effects which, though they may help to 
 impede emigration, yet are all something more than 
 that, and different from it ; such effects, for example, 
 as the heavy cost which the country incurs in holding 
 its colonies as dependencies, and the disaffection of 
 colonies towards the imperial power. These are not 
 merely colonial, but also imperial considerations. Our 
 system of colonial government is a prolific parent of 
 diversified offspring, the whole of which I would, if 
 possible, represent in one picture. It is also a new 
 system, differing widely from what was formerly the 
 English system of colonial government : I think there- 
 fore that in describing it I shall do well to compare it 
 with its predecessor. And, lastly, as an examination of 
 the subject would be idle save with a view to practical 
 improvement, I purpose, whilst treating of British 
 colonial government as it is and as it was, to collect 
 some materials for a plan of reform, by means of 
 showing how the present system has grown up, and 
 adverting occasionally to the first principles of govern- 
 ment and human nature. In a word, I shall aim at 
 making the view of colonial government as complete, 
 as it is in my power to make it without occupying 
 too much of your time. 
 
224 
 
 LETTER XXXVI. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 COMPARISON OF MUNICIPAL AND CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. 
 - CENTRAL BUREAUCRATIC GOVERNMENT OF THE 
 COLONIES ESTABLISHED BY THE INSTITUTION OF THE 
 COLONIAL OFFICE. - THE SPOILING OF CENTRAL- 
 BUREAUCRATIC GOVERNMENT BY GRAFTING IT ON TO 
 FREE INSTITUTIONS. - FEEBLENESS OF THE COLONIAL 
 OFFICE. 
 
 are two main principles on which, or on a 
 combination of them, any system of colonial 
 government must of necessity be founded. The two 
 principles are of an opposite nature. The first, which 
 for shortness I shall call the municipal principle, is 
 that of local self-government; the second, that of 
 government from the distant centre of the empire, 
 which may be called the central principle. These, I 
 say, are the main principles; because whether the 
 government of a colony is democratic, aristocratic, or 
 despotic, it must be either municipal or central, or 
 both combined in some proportion to each other. 
 The government of Algeria, like that of any depart- 
 ment of France, is now democratic, being founded on 
 representation in the national assembly with a uni- 
 
MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT. 225 
 
 versal suffrage ; but it is eminently central, since the 
 representatives of Algeria have no functions out of 
 Paris, which is the centre of the empire, and no 
 special functions whatever with regard to the colony. 
 Once elected, they are representatives of all France ; 
 and the government of all France, Algeria included, 
 is still pre-eminently central and bureaucratic not- 
 withstanding democratic representation. The go- 
 vernments of some of the old English colonies in 
 America were extremely aristocratic, but also muni- 
 cipal, as being authorities identified with their sub- 
 jects by being formed and fixed on the spot. A colony 
 has been allowed to place itself under the dictatorship 
 of a single colonist : its government was, for the time, 
 despotic but municipal. When a colony submitted 
 itself to the rule of a privileged class, being persons 
 identified with the colony, its government was muni- 
 cipal though aristocratic. These examples suffice to 
 show that in colonial government, the principles of 
 democracy, aristocracy, and despotism are of secondary 
 importance to the municipal and central principles. 
 In colonial government, the grand questions are, which 
 system is to be preferred, the municipal or the cen- 
 tral? is it expedient to combine them in one govern- 
 ment? and if so combined, which of them should 
 predominate? in what proportion should they be 
 mixed? 
 
 In order to solve these questions, it is requisite to 
 compare the two systems in principle and operation. 
 
 For the present generation of European statesmen, 
 several things have conspired to place the subject of 
 municipal government in obscurity. Wherever French 
 jacobinism penetrated, it destroyed whatever municipal 
 
 Q 
 
226 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT. 
 
 government it found, and created in its place a system 
 of pure centralization : and that a priori philosophy 
 which has been so fashionable in our day, and which / 
 treats mankind as a multiplication of the Original * 
 thinker, has in this country brought views of centrali- 
 zation so much into vogue, that the very subject of 
 municipal government is but little understood by some 
 of the best-informed of our public men. The most 
 common notion of it is, that it is an authority relating 
 exclusively to cities or towns. Yet the municipal 
 institution was but little known to the ancient Greeks, 
 who, with their numerous colonies, chiefly inhabited 
 cities ; and a ramification of it appears now throughout 
 the United States, in the " township" government of 
 districts consisting solely of woods and farms. Another 
 common view of the municipal principle is, that it is 
 confined to objects of very minor importance, such as 
 paving and lighting or police in towns, and the ma- 
 nagement of highways and church-rates in the country. 
 How few remember practically, so to speak, that 
 municipal government was a main cause of the great- 
 ness of the greatest of empires. Still fewer ever 
 reflect that the present greatness of England is in no 
 small degree owing to the institution, which colonized 
 English America and formed our Indian empire. 
 
 The municipal principle, being that of a delegation 
 of power by the supreme authority, with limits as to 
 locality, or object, or both, may be applied no doubt 
 to the least important matters. It is indeed the prin- 
 ciple of that infinite variety of corporations for special 
 or limited purposes (such as our Universities, the 
 Trinity House, the Moneyers of the Mint, and the 
 Bank of England, down to the meanest joint-stock 
 
MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT. 227 
 
 company), which distinguish England and English 
 America from the rest of the world, as they have 
 formed the practical and self-relying character of our 
 race. But whilst the municipal principle embraces 
 the minutest subject, as to which the supreme authority 
 may choose to delegate power, it admits of a delegation 
 of the highest power short of sovereignty or national 
 independence. The custom with those nations which 
 have governed their dependencies municipally, has 
 been a delegation of the maximum of power compatible 
 with allegiance to the empire. Those nations are 
 chiefly the Romans, and the English of the 16th and 
 17th centuries. But the municipal dependencies of 
 Rome* and England were formed by very different 
 processes. If the Romans had colonized like the 
 Greeks, by the creation of independent sovereign 
 states, they would not have invented a system of muni- 
 cipal government for dependencies. The purpose of 
 the invention was to render sovereign states subordi- 
 nate to Rome, without depriving them locally of the 
 institutions or rights which they possessed before. A 
 city or state, enjoying sovereign power, incurred 
 allegiance to Rome, and became imperially dependent ; 
 but it preserved its old laws untouched within its own 
 limits. This mode of acquiring empire by absorption 
 or annexation did not call for the making of municipal 
 constitutions. Xor were the regulations of the Romans 
 for founding military colonies, municipal constitutions, 
 properly speaking : they rather resembled the central 
 authority by which the conquered provinces of Rome 
 were usually governed. Roman history accordingly 
 supplies us with no complete charter of a municipal 
 government. But when England began to enlarge 
 
 Q2 
 
228 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT. 
 
 her empire by colonization, our ancestors had to devise 
 a kind of municipality quite different in form from 
 that of the Romans. There is ample proof of their 
 having seen the impossibility of governing distant 
 communities well by means of constantly exercising 
 the imperial authority. Besides such evidence on this 
 point as is furnished by the preambles of our old 
 charters of colonial government, it is a remarkable 
 fact, that, until we began to colonize with convicts 
 towards the end of the last century, the imperial 
 power of England never, I believe, in a single instance, 
 attempted to rule locally from a distance a body of its 
 subjects who had gone forth from England and planted 
 a colony. In every such case down to that time, the 
 imperial authority recognised by word and deed the 
 necessity of allowing the colonists themselves to govern 
 locally. Emigrants, however, differed from the in- 
 habitants of such states as became true municipalities 
 of Rome, in already possessing an allegiance which 
 they desired to preserve, and in not possessing a con- 
 stitution of local government. England therefore 
 reversed the Roman process. The allegiance of the 
 distant community was preserved instead of being 
 created ; and the local constitution was created instead 
 of being preserved. But the principle was identical 
 in both cases; namely, delegation, tacit or express, 
 of local powers limited only by general or imperial 
 subordination. 
 
 The English mode of giving effect to this principle, 
 being by express delegation, required that municipal 
 constitutions should be framed and written. It has, 
 therefore, furnished us with abundance of models for 
 present use. All of them display one striking feature, 
 
LORD BALTIMORE. 229 
 
 though more or less prominently. In every case, the 
 object seems to have been to confer local powers more 
 or less similar in scope to those of a true Roman 
 municipality. Lord Baltimore, the wisest and most 
 successful of English colonizers, was authorized " by 
 and with the advice, assent, and approbation of the 
 freemen of Maryland, or the greater part of them, or 
 their delegates and deputies, to enact any laws what- 
 soever appertaining either unto the public state of the 
 said province, or unto the private utility of particular 
 persons." With regard to powers, Penn merely copied 
 the charter of Baltimore, whose disciple and close imi- 
 tator he was in many other respects. The Connecticut 
 charter authorized the colonists " from time to time to 
 make, ordain, and establish all manner of wholesome 
 and reasonable laws, statutes, orders, directions, and 
 instructions, as well for settling the forms and cere- 
 monies of government and magistracy, fit and neces- 
 sary for the said plantation and the inhabitants there, 
 as for naming and styling all sorts of officers, both 
 superior and inferior, which they shall find needful for 
 the government and plantation of the said colony." 
 The first charter of Massachussetts grants power " to 
 make laws and ordinances for the good and welfare of 
 the said company and plantation, and the people in- 
 habiting and to inhabit the same, as to them from 
 time to time shall be thought meet." The colonists 
 of Rhode Island were empowered "to make, ordain, 
 and constitute, or repeal, such laws, statutes, orders 
 and ordinances, forms and ceremonies of government 
 and magistracy, as to them shall seem meet for the 
 good and welfare of the said company, and for the 
 government and ordering of the lands and heredita^ 
 
230 MUNICIPAL SYSTEM. 
 
 ments, and of the people that do, or at any time here- 
 after shall, inhabit or be within the same." It is 
 needless to multiply such examples. Speaking gene- 
 rally, the powers of local government, both legislative 
 and executive, were granted by a few simple and 
 comprehensive words. Then came the restrictions, 
 such as the condition that local laws should not be 
 repugnant or contrary to the laws of England, and 
 the reservation by the Crown, in some cases, of the 
 right to disallow laws, and to appoint certain officers. 
 These limitations must be carefully examined here- 
 after. In spite of them, the general characteristic of 
 England's municipal system of colonial rule, was local 
 self-government. How well the system worked, not- 
 withstanding a good deal of counteraction, is best 
 seen by comparing its results with those^of the central 
 system. 
 
 This is the system which has been pursued by other 
 colonizing states of modern Europe. As strangers to 
 self-government at home, they were incapable of deli- 
 berately employing the municipal system. Therefore, 
 the dependencies of France and Spain, for example, 
 were ruled from the seat of empire. And what has 
 this system produced? Communities so feeble, so de- 
 ficient in the Anglo-municipal quality of self-reliance, 
 so devoid of " those feelings of pride, and of love and 
 attachment to liberty, which," says Burke, " belong to 
 self-government," that some of them have been, and 
 all probably will be, swallowed up by the self-governed 
 and energetic English race. It was really the colonists 
 of New-England who took Canada from France; 
 Louisiana, which would have been taken if it could 
 not have been bought, would not have been sold if it 
 
SYSTEM OF FRANCE AND SPAIN. 231 
 
 had been worth keeping; and the American colonies 
 of Spain, after a brief exhibition of splendour, occa- 
 sioned solely by the accident of their abundance in 
 the precious metals, seem destined to be colonized 
 over again by the people whom England's municipal 
 
 cm has planted by their side. 
 
 The colonial system of France or Spain exhibits a 
 twofold inferiority when compared with that of Eng- 
 land. The old English colonists under the best char- 
 ters were self-governed in two senses; first, as their 
 government was local, and next, as it was free or 
 popular : whereas the governments of the old colonies 
 of France or Spain were both absolute and distant. 
 Supposing it allowed that an absolute form of govern- 
 ment is suitable for new colonies emanating from 
 despotic states, still it is above all things necessary 
 that an absolute government, in order to be tolerable 
 anywhere, should be administered by one who sympa- 
 thizes with his subjects, whose glory is their prosperity, 
 to whom their misfortunes are at least a discomfort, 
 and whom, if he should be a very bad man, they can 
 at all events check in cases of great need by threaten 
 hig him with the ultima ratio of popular despair. But 
 the French or Spanish system placed power in the 
 hands of one who had no sympathy with the colonists, 
 who was not of them, who intended to live amongst 
 them only till he had enriched himself at their ex- 
 pense, and whom even the despair of his subjects did 
 not influence, because he could rely on the support of 
 an overwhelming distant power, whose confidence he 
 possessed, and whose jealousy of its own authority 
 and dignity he could easily excite against the colonists 
 by calling them " disaffected." Nay more, when it 
 
232 CENTRAL SYSTEM. 
 
 happened that a virtuous individual did sympathize 
 with the colonists and generously cultivate their well- 
 being, he was usually recalled by the supreme power, 
 which became jealous of his popularity, or took offence 
 at his disobedience of its ignorant and probably mis- 
 chievous orders. If the absolute form of government 
 was necessary, then at least sovereign or independent 
 despotism should have been erected. Had this been 
 done, the French and Spaniards might perhaps have 
 shared pretty equally with the English in the ultimate 
 colonization of America; but a combination of the 
 despotic form with distant administration was the 
 worst conceivable government ; and the tree has yielded 
 its proper fruit in the degenerate and fading com- 
 munities resulting from French and Spanish coloniza- 
 tion in America. 
 
 The first effectual trial of the central system by 
 England was our attempt to deprive the great English 
 colonies in America of their dearest municipal right. 
 It cost us their allegiance. This wound to our 
 national pride seems to have brought the muni- 
 cipal principle into disfavour, when it should have 
 rather produced aversion to the central. Then came 
 convict colonization, to which the municipal system 
 was wholly inapplicable. It was deemed as inap- 
 plicable to the helpless communities which came 
 under our dominion by conquest, French Canada 
 alone excepted; and even there, after granting a free 
 form of government to the colonists, we systematically 
 withheld till the other day every proper consequence 
 of representation. By degrees the central system pre- 
 vailed over the municipal. The establishment of an 
 office in London for the express purpose of adminis- 
 
CENTRAL SYSTEM. 233 
 
 tering the central system, has finally almost extermi- 
 nated the old institution; public opinion has nearly 
 forgotten it; and now every portion of our vast 
 colonial empire is liable to the most serious in- 
 jury from an oversight, a misapprehension, a want 
 of right information, or an error of judgment on 
 the part of a gentleman sitting in Downing-street, and 
 called Principal Secretary of State for the Colonies ; 
 not to mention the exhaustion of his mind and body 
 in the endeavour to do somehow, without neglecting 
 more urgent calls, what twenty colonial ministers 
 could not do well, if they had nothing else to do, and 
 had been brought up to the business. 
 
 For the English, having free institutions at home, 
 had no machinery for administering the central system 
 abroad. It was impossible that Parliament should 
 itself legislate for many far-off dependencies ; and the 
 Crown or its Ministry of responsible advisers was as 
 incapable of performing the executive part of govern- 
 ment for the outlying portions of the empire. England, 
 therefore, once more acknowledged the necessity of a 
 delegation of power by the supreme authority for 
 the purpose of governing colonies. But instead of 
 delegating power to the colonies themselves, as till 
 then had been the rule, the supreme authority created 
 an office in London, and upon it bestowed legislative 
 and executive power over the colonies. Since then it 
 has been only on rare occasions that Parliament has 
 meddled with colonial questions; and nearly always 
 when the interference has been of a legislative cha- 
 racter, the enactment was either for the purpose of 
 authorizing the Colonial Office to legislate by means 
 of orders or instructions, or for that of adopting 
 
234 BUREAUCRATIC SYSTEM. 
 
 without understanding a suggestion of the Colonial 
 Office. The only real exceptions from the rule of 
 Colonial-Office supremacy have occurred when gross 
 errors of administration, as in Canada and New Zea- 
 land, have drawn public attention in this country to a 
 colonial subject. Such exceptions will doubtless be 
 more numerous, if ever the subject of colonization 
 should become popular in this country ; but at present, 
 speaking generally, our colonial system of government 
 is thoroughly bureaucratic as well as central. 
 
 And hence arises another important consideration. 
 The bureaucratic system is essentially repugnant to 
 our general institutions, and even to our national 
 character. This is shown by its extreme unpopularity 
 as applied to the management of the poor. For the 
 infinitely more difficult task of managing all the public 
 affairs of some forty distant communities, the bureau- 
 cratic system in perfection would have been a wretched 
 instrument. But we use it for that purpose in a very 
 imperfect form. In Prussia, where the bureaucratic 
 system worked as well as it ever can, the head of an 
 official department was brought up to the business, 
 commonly died at his post, and was succeeded by one 
 not less intimately acquainted with the subject matter, 
 and habitually versed in the exercise of official au- 
 thority. The head of our Colonial Office is a Cabinet 
 Minister and a member of either House of Parliament ; 
 and if he is a man of any ability, the calls of party, 
 Parliamentary debate, and general legislation, leave 
 him hardly time for sleep, much less for the deliberate 
 and careful exercise of his vast colonial authority. It 
 matters little, therefore, that he enters the Colonial 
 Office with no special aptitude for directing it, and 
 
WEAKNESS OF THE COLONIAL OFFICE. 235 
 
 generally leaves it, for a reason totally unconnected 
 Avith colonial affairs, soon after, or even before, acquir- 
 ing some knowledge of its business. The Parliamentary 
 Under-Secretary precisely resembles his chief, except 
 in being subordinate to him, and in not bearing the 
 burden of Cabinet discussions and responsibilities. 
 The great bulk, accordingly, of the labours of the 
 office are performed, as the greater portion of its 
 legislative and executive authority is necessarily 
 wielded, by the permanent Under-Secretary and the 
 superior clerks. These are men of great ability ; but 
 it is ability of a peculiar sort. It is the sort of ability 
 which serves the interests of an office, as such ; mere 
 official ability; great diligence, a perfect command 
 over the elements of order, and an intimate knowledge 
 of forms, precedents, and past transactions. These 
 are not qualifications for law-giving and command. 
 And, moreover, so little is the public aware that the 
 real legislators and rulers of our colonial empire 
 possess even the qualities which I attribute to them, 
 that their very names are hardly known beyond the 
 precincts of Downing-street. It follows that they are 
 sheltered from all responsibility to public opinion. 
 Where bureaucracy is not a delegated power, but in 
 itself supreme, public opinion which has formed it, 
 and which alone sustains it, likewise watches it and 
 keeps it in order. Our colonial system of government 
 is the bureaucratic, spoiled by being grafted on to free 
 institutions. 
 
 This spoiling is very conspicuous in the weakness 
 of the Colonial Office at home, notwithstanding its 
 despotic authority abroad. It is a government in the 
 wrong place ; a government seated in a foreign country. 
 
236 WEAKNESS OF THE COLONIAL OFFICE. 
 
 Not having been formed by the communities whose 
 government it is, not even breathing the same air with 
 them, it wants the strength which a domestic govern- 
 ment derives from its nationality. The nation which 
 surrounds it, scarcely recollects its existence. As a 
 government, therefore, it is like a tree without roots, 
 all stem and branches, apt to be bent any way. As a 
 machine of government, the forces by which it is 
 moved or stayed are quite insignificant when compared 
 with the power they influence. If ever the Colonial 
 Office originates a scheme of policy, it seldom pursues 
 it consistently to the end. It sets off in one direction, 
 and takes another the moment some interest, or clique, 
 or association in this country strongly objects to the 
 first course. At one time, the West-India Body in 
 England suggests what it shall do; at another, the 
 Anti- Slavery Society impels it. To-day its measures 
 originate with some Canada merchants in London; 
 to-morrow it abandons those measures, and pursues 
 others of an opposite tendency at the instance of some 
 London newspaper. At the instigation of a missionary 
 society it all but made New Zealand a convict colony 
 of France ; and then yielding to the remonstrances of 
 a joint- stock company, it established the British 
 sovereignty which it had just before loudly repudiated. 
 For awhile the Company led it to favour colonization ; 
 but ere long the anti-colonizing views of the Society 
 again prevailed with it ; and of late years its policy as 
 to New Zealand has been an alternation of shuttlecock 
 flights between the battledores of Salisbury- Square 
 and Broad-Street-Buildings. It even yields to indivi- 
 dual pressure, such as no other department would 
 heed or feel ; such as no domestic government would 
 
MEDDLERS IN COLONIAL AFFAIRS. 237 
 
 tolerate. Conscious of feebleness arising from the want 
 of n public on the spot to sustain it in doing right 
 and prevent it from doing wrong fully aware of its 
 own unpopularity as a bureaucratic institution in a 
 free country well acquainted with the facilities which 
 the free press and the free institutions of this country 
 afford for pressing it disagreeably the Colonial Office 
 but faintly resists anybody who may choose to make 
 a business of pressing it. A list of the individuals 
 who have made this their business during the last 
 twenty years, would not be very short, and might be 
 given with chapter and verse for what each of them 
 successfully pressed it to do, undo, or leave undone. 
 The whole would form a book of directions for future 
 meddlers in colonial affairs. They would learn from 
 its pages how easy it is for even the most obscure 
 person, if he resides here and sets about the work in 
 earnest, to prompt or thwart the policies of the 
 Colonial Office, to suggest or overturn its decisions, to 
 get its servants appointed or recalled, and to give the 
 great bureaucracy more trouble in a year than it ever 
 spontaneously bestowed on the distant colonies in five. 
 Verily the Colonial Office would be at least more self- 
 impelled if it were seated in Russia or St. Helena. 
 
 The spoiling of a bureaucratic institution by seating 
 it in a free country, is more fully seen on examining 
 the defective instruments by which the power of the 
 Colonial Office is administered at a distance. These 
 are, first, officers sent out to the colonies, and, secondly, 
 instructions for their guidance. But it is time to 
 close this letter. 
 
238 
 
 LETTER XXXVII. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 MODE OF APPOINTING PUBLIC FUNCTIONARIES FOR THE 
 COLONIES. GOVERNMENT BY INSTRUCTION. JESUITI- 
 CAL CONDUCT OF THE COLONIAL OFFICE. A COLONIAL 
 
 OFFICE CONSCIENCE EXEMPLIFIED BY LORD GREY. 
 PROPOSED TABULAR STATISTICS OF DISPATCHES IN THE 
 COLONIAL OFFICE. 
 
 THE officers are not a peculiar class, brought up to 
 their peculiar business, like members of the various 
 professions and servants of the East India Company. 
 Some of them are picked up, one scarcely knows how ; 
 for it is difficult to say by what means they get their 
 appointments, unless it be that, having broken down in 
 some regular profession or having taken a dislike to it, 
 they are in want of a provision and gain it in the colonies 
 by dint of importunity. Others, and these are a very 
 numerous class, owe their appointments to Peers and 
 Members of Parliament, who having poor relations to 
 provide for, or electioneering obligations to pay off, 
 seldom think of the colonies but as Mr. O'Connell wrote 
 about them in that letter which I have already noticed. 
 The Treasury has a share of the patronage, the Admi- 
 ralty another, the Horse-Guards a third, and the Board 
 
MODE OF APPOINTING PUBLIC FUNCTIONARIES. 239 
 
 of Ordnance comes in for pickings. How would a Prus- 
 sia 11 bureau have worked with scarcely a voice in the 
 selection of its own instruments? With the real disposers 
 of colonial patronage, fitness is the last consideration ; 
 and, what is still worse, inasmuch as there is no public 
 at home taking an interest in colonial affairs, colonial 
 patronage becomes the refuge for men, whose unfitness 
 for any office whatever forbids their employment by 
 departments which public opinion controls as well as 
 sustains. Those other departments make a conve- 
 nience of the Colonial Office: the patronage of the 
 colonies is the receptacle into which they cast their 
 own importunate but very incompetent applicants for 
 public employment. The great bulk, accordingly, of 
 those whom we send out to the colonies to administer 
 government, even those appointed to the highest 
 offices, are signally unfit for the duties imposed on 
 them. On this point it is needless to add a word to 
 what has been said before. 
 
 But there are exceptions, more especially as to 
 governors, sometimes by design, oftener by accident. 
 Since the rebellions in Canada, the governors of that 
 province have been men of experience and high repu- 
 tation in public life. Lord Durham was sacrificed by 
 the Colonial Office, which in its miserable weakness 
 let him fall a victim to party strife at home. Lord 
 Sydenham, as Governor of Canada, used to speak 
 openly with aversion and contempt of the permanent 
 or bureaucratic part of the Colonial Office, and to 
 boast with justice of his sole reliance for support in 
 England, on his party connexions there, and Lord 
 John Russell's private friendship. Sir Charles Bagot, 
 who, I fully believe, preserved the colony to England 
 
240 GOVERNMENT BY INSTRUCTIONS. 
 
 by a bold and startling measure, seemed to die of 
 the supposed though unpublished disapproval by the 
 Colonial Office of a policy which delighted precisely 
 ten-elevenths of the provincial representative body. 
 The dauntless self-reliance of the last Governor of 
 Canada made him careless of support from any quarter, 
 and even gave him a sort of mastery over the Colonial 
 Office; but his successors, since there are not two 
 Lord Metcalfes, may painfully learn that a department, 
 itself unsupported by public opinion, is always apt to 
 withhold support from its servants at the very time 
 when they need it most. 
 
 Next as to instructions. These are necessarily 
 written, on account of the distance. What is the 
 subject of them? All the public concerns of about 
 forty distinct communities, scattered over the world, 
 and comprising an endless diversity of languages, 
 laws, religions, customs, wants, and economical cir- 
 cumstances. For writing statistically or theoretically, 
 and but once, on so vast and varied a theme, the 
 knowledge of the wisest of mankind would be in- 
 sufficient; a thousand sages would be incapable of 
 writing upon it continually in the form of useful prac- 
 tical directions. Who it is that writes, I need not 
 repeat. And what is it that is written? it is legisla- 
 tion and mandate. The commission of every governor 
 now-a-days enjoins him to rule according to the in- 
 structions which he shall receive from Downing-street, 
 In the bureaucratic colonies, instructions from Downing- 
 street have the force of Acts of Parliament : in the 
 representative colonies, the governor, being himself a 
 branch of the legislature as well as the head of the 
 executive, is bound to obey them implicitly. Instruc- 
 
GOVERNMENT BY INSTRUCTIONS. 241 
 
 tions written in Downing-street really constitute, 
 therefore, the main instrument of government for our 
 vast colonial empire. We have subjected a large por- 
 tion of the world to none of the old forms of govern- 
 ment, but to something which differs altogether from 
 monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, and every com- 
 bination of these three. Government by instructions ! 
 This institution is so little known except to colonists 
 and colonizers, that a member of both classes may be 
 excused for attempting to describe it. 
 
 Legislation and mandate must be founded on in- 
 formation of some kind. When these suit the character 
 and wants of a people, the largest portion of the 
 business of government consists in the gathering and 
 sifting of information. In Prussia, the work used to 
 be done by a vast and well-ordered official establish- 
 ment : it is done in England, though in some measure 
 by official means, still chiefly by petitions to Par- 
 liament, by debates in Parliament, and above all by 
 the press, quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily, morning 
 and evening, and extra-editional : for the colonies, it 
 purports to be done by the reports of governors. A 
 governor's reports, and the instructions founded on 
 information derived from them, form a correspondence 
 legislative and executive. In this potent interchange 
 of letters, months elapse, in some cases twelve months, 
 before an answer can come by return of the post. 
 Without reverting to the character and position of the 
 writers on both sides, it is obvious that government 
 by instructions must be a great make-believe of good 
 government. Cases indeed happen, but every honest 
 governor or intelligent colonist would declare them 
 to be extraordinary cases, in which something useful 
 
 R 
 
242 INOPERATIVE DISPATCHES. 
 
 is done for a colony by means of instructions from 
 Downing-street. Allowing for these rare exceptions, 
 Colonial-Office instructions are either mischievous or 
 inoperative. When founded on a wrong or imperfect 
 view of things in the colony, as must be the case nine 
 times out of ten, they are mischievous if executed. If 
 mischievous in character, but not executed by a 
 governor of sense and courage, they are still mis- 
 chievous in effect, by worrying the governor, irritating 
 the colonists, and exposing the supreme authority to 
 little less odium than it incurs when mischievous in- 
 structions are executed by a dull or timid governor. 
 The proportion of inoperative instructions is immense. 
 They are inoperative from having been outrun by 
 time and events, or from some other inapplicability to 
 things real in the colony. Why then write at all, 
 except in the few cases where there is a clear necessity 
 for writing, and good assurance that the trouble will 
 not be lost? Because, in fact, the trouble is not lost as 
 respects the writers. Real government of the colonies 
 from London is impossible, but an appearance of 
 governing must be kept up for the sake of the im- 
 portance and dignity of the Office. The new head of 
 the Office (and the head of the Office is always more or 
 less new*) likes to sign well- written dispatches which 
 may figure in a blue-book; and the writer of them 
 takes a pleasure in giving this satisfaction to his chief. 
 Both classes like the semblance of governing. The 
 writing, therefore, of inoperative despatches is not 
 
 * In about twenty years, there have been thirteen Principal 
 Secretaries of State for the Colonies : Bathurst, Huskisson, Murray, 
 Goderich, Stanley, Spring Rice, Aberdeen, Glenelg, Normanby, John 
 Russell, Stanley again, Gladstone, and Grey. 
 
DIDACTIC DISPATCHES. 243 
 
 labour lost; but it is mischievous nevertheless. I 
 have seen the House of Assembly in Canada incapable 
 of restraining their mirth, whilst the Speaker was 
 gravely reading instructions to the Governor which 
 his Excellency had been desired to communicate to 
 them: they laughed at the ludicrous inapplicability 
 to Canada of the views expounded in these dispatches, 
 as the dock-yard people at Kingston on Ontario, 
 laughed at the arrival from England of a consign- 
 ment of water-casks for the use of ships floating on 
 the fresh-water Lake. Considering that these de- 
 spatches were written in the name of the imperial 
 Sovereign, this disrespectful treatment of them was 
 surely very mischievous. 
 
 The official necessity of writing, moreover, com- 
 bined with the difficulty of writing for practical pur- 
 poses, has begotten the custom of writing didactically. 
 Long theories of philanthropy and political economy 
 are propounded in despatches. A pamphlet printed 
 in London, and consisting of the opinions of the writer 
 concerning the aborigines of New Zealand, was tran- 
 scribed, of course without acknowledgment, into the 
 form of a didactic despatch. Certain theories of the 
 Colonial Office versus the opinions of the last Com- 
 mittee of the House of Commons on New Zealand, 
 were elaborately set forth in the shape of instructions 
 to Governor Fitzroy, whose own theories were known 
 to be identical with those contained in the despatch. 
 Some twelve years ago, in a circular despatch addressed 
 to the governors of the West-India colonies, I met 
 with a new theory of my own which had been pub- 
 lished anonymously not long before. The subject was 
 of vital importance to the West Indies; and the theory 
 
 R2 
 
244 DIDACTIC DISPATCHES. 
 
 pointed to measures which the colonists anxiously 
 desired. Seeing my humble notions dressed up in the 
 ornaments of the best official style, and dignified with 
 the semblance of original thoughts formed in the brain 
 of the Colonial Minister, I innocently concluded that 
 something to be sure would come of it. And some- 
 thing did come of it. The well- written despatch was 
 published here for the credit of the Office; and the 
 colonists soon discovered that all the fine promises it 
 held out to them were nothing but what they disre- 
 spectfully called Colonial-Office flummery. How the 
 fact was I cannot know ; but I can assure you that in 
 Canada, the despatch of the Colonial Office which led 
 to the British-Canada Corn Act, was originally deemed 
 nothing but a piece of didactic writing. The leading 
 colonists still pride themselves on having converted 
 mere compliment into a valuable reality, by treating 
 it las if it had been a practical suggestion. If this 
 despatch was not written at the instance of the Cabinet 
 at home, with a deliberate view to the admission of 
 American wheat through Canada into England at a 
 fixed duty of four shillings per quarter, it was what 
 the colonists believed it to be ; and at any rate, their 
 belief shows that this kind of instructions cannot be 
 very uncommon. The first governor of New Zealand 
 received a body of general instructions, which every 
 reader of them must pronounce admirable in doctrine, 
 tone, and expression. The local government read 
 them by the rule of contraries, having for years pur- 
 sued a line of conduct just opposite to their particular 
 suggestions and general tenour. Did punishment or 
 censure follow? No, nor complaint, nor even a word 
 of notice. These instructions were of the didactic 
 kind, not intended for effect save in a blue-book. 
 
OBSCURE DISPATCHES. 245 
 
 Figuring there, they had the effect of inducing a 
 superior class of persons to emigrate, with the hope of 
 doing well under a government so admirably taught. 
 I could name several who were led to ruin by their 
 credulous reliance on that didactic dispatch. 
 
 Then there is a class of despatches which may be 
 properly termed the obscure. Time will be saved in 
 describing them by first quoting an author who is 
 himself one of the ablest writers of Colonial-Office 
 despatches. In his very clever and entertaining book, 
 called The Statesman* which we are told " treats of 
 topics such as experience rather than inventive medi- 
 tation suggested to him," he says that the " far greater 
 proportion of the duties which are performed in the 
 office of a minister, are and must be performed under 
 no effective responsibility;" that there are "means 
 and shifts by which the business of the office may be 
 reduced within a very manageable compass without 
 creating public scandal ;" and that by these arts the 
 doer of the business " may obtain for himself the most 
 valuable of all reputations in this line of life, that of a 
 4 safe man.' ' The means and shifts are "by evading 
 decisions wherever they can be evaded; by shifting 
 them on other departments where by any possibility 
 they can be shifted; by giving decisions upon super- 
 ficial examinations, categorically, so as not to expose 
 the superficiality in propounding the reasons ; by de- 
 ferring questions till, as Lord Bacon says, ' they 
 4 resolve themselves ;' by undertaking nothing for the 
 public good which the public voice does not call for; 
 by conciliating loud and energetic individuals at the 
 expense of such public interests as are dumb or do 
 
 * T/ie Statesman. By HENRY TAYLOR, Esq. 1836. 
 
246 OBSCURE DISPATCHES. 
 
 not attract attention; and by sacrificing everywhere 
 what is feeble and obscure to what is influential and 
 cognizable." Obscure despatches are commonly written 
 in answer to despatches from governors desirous of 
 escaping responsibility and fixing it on the Office; 
 and their object is to save the Office from responsi- 
 bility, by fixing it on the governors. The writing of 
 them has begotten a style peculiar to the Colonial 
 Office ; a style founded on that view of language which 
 supposes that it was given to us for the purpose of 
 concealing our thoughts ; the style which says as little 
 as possible by means of a great quantity of words. I 
 once heard two ex-governors, both of them men of 
 ability, who have since held very high appointments, 
 talk over the subject of Colonial-Office instructions. 
 One of them said, that he had often received long des- 
 patches, the meaning of which he could never make 
 out, though he read them over and over again. Well, 
 said the other, and what did you do with them? At 
 length, replied the first, I made a guess at the mean- 
 ing and acted accordingly. Like you, said the second, 
 I have often striven in vain to find out the meaning 
 of a despatch, and have ended with a guess ; but, un- 
 like you, I further conjectured that these obscure 
 directions were intended to get the Office out of a 
 scrape and me into it ; wherefore, instead of acting on 
 my guess, I did the reverse. It is only fair to state 
 that he had quarrelled with the Office and resigned 
 his governorship; but in speaking so disrespectfully 
 of his former masters, he differs from most other 
 governors, and resembles colonists in general, only by 
 the frank expression of his contempt and hatred. 
 Such feelings are indeed excited by two other 
 
SECRET DISPATCHES. 247 
 
 classes of instructions. I mean those which are con- 
 fidential or secret, and those in which words with 
 more than one meaning are studiously employed. 
 They sometimes differ materially from published in- 
 structions on the same subject. A flagrant instance 
 of this kind came to light during the New-Zealand 
 controversy ; and considering what a large proportion 
 of such cases must necessarily be buried in darkness, 
 the number of them that are known is dismally great. 
 Among " the shifts and means" by the practice of 
 which, says the author of The Statesman, " men in 
 office have their understandings abused and debased, 
 their sense of justice corrupted, their public spirit and 
 appreciation of public objects undermined" is the use 
 of words with a double meaning. The object is not, 
 and cannot be, anything but double-dealing : it is the 
 shift of the " safe man," who foresees a future con- 
 venience to his office in being able to give to official 
 language an interpretation different from its primd 
 facie meaning. Several tricks of this sort came out 
 in the course of the New-Zealand controversy. They 
 may be uncommon ; but enough have become public 
 to create an opinion on the subject even in this coun- 
 try : it was expressed in the House of Commons, when 
 cheers succeeded the proposal that the following words 
 of a New-Zealand savage, addressed to her Majesty's 
 representative in the colony, should be inscribed on 
 the Colonial Office, " Speak your words openly ; speak 
 as you mean to act; do not speak one thing, and 
 mean another." 
 
 The cheering took place in Lord Stanley's time. 
 Among the loudest in thus denouncing the habitual 
 trickery of the Colonial Office, was the present Colo- 
 
A COLONIAL-OFFICE CONSCIENCE. 
 
 iiial Minister ; but in his time certainly the department 
 has fully maintained its reputation for being addicted 
 to double-dealing. Indeed, the " smartness' 7 of the 
 genius loci is remarkably exemplified by Lord Grey, 
 who notwithstanding the high honour of his father's 
 son, has learned in the great house at the bottom of 
 Downing-street, first, to contend without a blush, that 
 it is perfectly fair and right to quote parts of dis- 
 patches, which taken without their context support 
 your own side of a question, and deliberately to sup- 
 press other parts which uphold the opposite side; 
 and secondly, to simulate in public, that he is 
 carrying into execution the plans of colonial reform 
 of which out of office he was the zealous advocate, 
 which his subordinates and his own want of practical 
 ability have prevented him from realizing, and of which, 
 therefore, he is in private and in truth as bitter a foe 
 as was ever renegade to the faith he had deserted. 
 
 It must be a Colonial- Office conscience that permits 
 recourse to such tricks. In Mr. Taylor's Statesman, 
 there is a chapter, which he says that he wrote with 
 " a trembling hand." It consists of an elaborate and 
 very ingenious pleading in favour of allowing states- 
 men to be guided by two consciences ; one for private, 
 and the other for public life ; one honest, the other as 
 dishonest as the statesman himself shall think proper. 
 In this chapter he says, " I estimate the consequences 
 of relaxing the law of truth in private life to show a 
 vast balance of evil ; and the consequence of relaxing 
 that law in public life to show a serious array of evil 
 certainly; but I hesitate to say a balance." * * * * 
 " Falsehood ceases to be falsehood when it is understood 
 on all hands that the truth is not expected to be 
 
OH, FOR A PASCAL! 249 
 
 spoken." * * * * U A statesman is engaged, cer- 
 tainly, in a field of action which is one of great 
 danger to truthfulness and sincerity. His conscience 
 walks, too, like the ghost of a conscience, in darkness 
 or twilight." * * * * " Upon the whole, therefore, I 
 come to the conclusion, that the cause of public 
 morality will be best served by moralists permitting to 
 statesmen, what statesmen must necessarily take and 
 exercise a free judgment, namely, though a most 
 responsible one, in the weighing of specific against 
 general evil, and in the perception of perfect and 
 imperfect analogies between public and private trans- 
 actions, in respect of the moral rules by which they 
 are to be governed." And in another chapter he says, 
 " it will be found to be better for the public interests 
 that a statesman should have some hardihood, than 
 much weak sensibility of conscience." Both freedom 
 of judgment in questions of oflicial morality, and 
 hardihood of conscience too! Bravo, Mr. Taylor! 
 Why should you blush, Lord Grey? Oh, for a Pascal 
 to write Lettres Provinciales about Colonial-Office 
 doctrine as given to the world by members of the 
 Colonial Office! 
 
 But the greater part of despatches never see the 
 lijrht, without being marked secret or confidential. 
 Whether any despatch, either from the Office to a 
 governor or from a governor to the Office, shall ever 
 be published either here or in the colonies, depends 
 altogether on the pleasure of the Office. The whole 
 correspondence, indeed, remains unseen except by 
 those who write it, and excepting the very small 
 proportion of it for which the Office gives special 
 directions. The colonies, therefore, are ruled by a 
 
250 PROPOSED STATISTICS. 
 
 legislative and executive power, which has an absolute 
 choice between making known and utterly concealing 
 all the grounds of its laws and orders. The portion 
 of them which it does not conceal, is of course very 
 small. If a return were made to the House of Commons 
 of all despatches written and received by the Colonial 
 Office during the last ten years, distinguishing the 
 published from the unpublished, I suspect that not 
 less than nine-tenths would appear in the latter 
 class; and of the remaining tenth it would turn out 
 that a large proportion had not been published till 
 they belonged to the past. The ill results of this part 
 of the system would form a separate and very impor- 
 tant chapter. 
 
 Another would be the very mischievous uncertainty 
 and delay of legislation by means of despatches 
 whether published or not. The best illustration of 
 this point would be a return for ten years of all 
 despatches received by or sent from the Colonial 
 Office, with the date of each, the date of its receipt, 
 date of the acknowledgment of its receipt, and the 
 date of any substantial answer to it ; together with an 
 enumeration of the despatches which have never been 
 substantially answered, and such a brief statement of 
 the topics of the same as would enable the House of 
 Commons to judge whether a substantial answer was 
 required. 
 
 But if such a return were deemed too complicated, 
 a statement of the mere number of despatches received 
 by the Colonial Office in one year, would tell a suffi- 
 cient tale. In the single year 1846, the Colonial 
 Office of Paris received from the single dependency of 
 Algeria, no less than 28,000 despatches, relating to 
 
NUMBER OF DISPATCHES. 251 
 
 civil, independently of military affairs; 538 a week, or 
 86 a day, not reckoning Sundays. At what rate do 
 our forty dependencies supply our Colonial Office with 
 despatches? The Algerian rate gives 1,120,000 a 
 year; 3,578 for every working day. Supposing, how- 
 ever, that each of our dependencies produces on the 
 average no more in a year than Algeria does in a 
 week, namely 538 per week, or 28,000 in a year, 
 which must be vastly below the true mark, there are 
 figures enough to assure us that a large proportion of 
 despatches from the colonies cannot by possibility be 
 substantially answered. But the most monstrous re- 
 turn in point of figures, and the most useful in point 
 of instruction, would be one which is indeed impracti- 
 cable ; namely, an account of the number of cases in a 
 year, in which something that ought to have been done 
 in the colonies was left undone because a dispatch 
 was not even written. 
 
 And, lastly, with respect to instructions, I have not 
 said a word about the public injury and private wrongs 
 inflicted on the colonists, by the most prompt execu- 
 tion of those which are written in ignorance or on 
 false information. This topic is too large for this 
 place ; but its absence for that reason will suggest re- 
 flections which may therefore be spared.* 
 
 * " Algeria is divided administratively into three zones : the po- 
 pulation of the first being chiefly European this is the civil territory 
 or /one; the second by Arabs and a few Europeans this is the 
 mixed territory; the third by Arabs only this is the Arab territory 
 'cettence. The administration of the first is the principal and 
 most serious; and is pronounced by all, and especially by the 
 Commission this year (1847) with the examination of affairs in 
 Algeria, to be defective, imperfect in its functions, complicated in its 
 system, slow in its working, making much ado about nothing, doing 
 little, and that little badly. The functionaries of whom it is com- 
 posrd are pronounced ignorant of the language, usages, and history 
 of the country, and unacquainted with the duties imposed upon 
 
252 ALGERIA. 
 
 them. Their proceedings instead of being rapid and simple, as so 
 necessary in a new colony, are ill-advised, ill-executed, and super- 
 eminently slow. The latter defect is chiefly attributable, perhaps, to 
 the fact that from the centralization of affairs in Paris, all the acts 
 must be referred to the head bureau there before the least move of 
 the most trivial nature can be effected. During the last year only, 
 above twenty-four thousand despatches were received from thence by 
 the " Administration civile," and above twenty-eight thousand sent 
 to Paris by this branch in Algiers. 
 
 " The immense number of functionaries appertaining to the corps 
 of civil administrators in Algeria is astonishing. At the present 
 period there are above two thousand; yet there is a cry that they 
 
 are insufficient." 
 
 * *#**## 
 
 " Another and great reason for the slow growth of the colony, is 
 the extreme tardiness with which the administrative forms requisite 
 to the establishment of emigrants are carried out. For instance, 
 though assignments of land are promised, yet a year or eighteen 
 months after application frequently elapses before the grantees are 
 put into possession. The majority of those arriving from the mother- 
 country having but very small capital, it in the intermediate period 
 disappears; they are compelled to devour it to keep body and soul 
 together; and when it is gone their assignment may be allotted to 
 them, with the parental advice, ' There, sit ye down, increase and 
 multiply:' but it comes too late; their only prospect is starvation; 
 and they are fortunate if sufficient remains to them to permit them 
 to shake the dust from off their feet and fly the inhospitable shore, 
 thus preventing others from arriving: for will they not return with 
 outcry and relations of their sufferings ? It is even a fact well known 
 to all, that men of capital, rich French proprietors, arriving in 
 Algeria under the auspices of the Minister of War, have remained as 
 long as five or six years before being able to obtain a promised con- 
 cession. Others again established provisionally upon a tract of land, 
 the assignment of which has been promised them, have built upon 
 it, cultivated portions of it, and otherwise fulfilled all required con- 
 ditions ; when at last the definite answer is given them the title to 
 it is refused ! Being able neither to alienate or to mortgage, they 
 have thus been brought to ruin." 
 
 " The generally desolate state of those poor emigrants who do be- 
 come established in Algeria is painful enough. The villages scattered 
 about the Shael or Massif of Algiers are, with one or two exceptions, 
 the type of desolation. Perched upon the most arid spots, distant 
 from water, there the poor tenants lie sweltering beneath sun and 
 sirocco, wondering, as their haggard eyes rove across vast tracts of 
 inexterminable palmetta and prickly bushes, what there is there ' to 
 increase and multiply' upon, as recommended." Narrative of a 
 Campaign against the Kabailes of Algeria : with the Mission of M. 
 Suchet to the Emir Abd-el-Kader for an excliange of prisoners. By 
 DAWSON BORRER, F.R.G.S. 
 
253 
 
 LETTER XXXVIII. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 DISALLOWANCE OF COLONIAL LAWS BY THE COLONIAL 
 
 OFFICE. LOT OF COLONIAL GOVERNORS. EFFECTS 
 
 OF OUR SYSTEM OF COLONIAL GOVERNMENT. COUN- 
 TERACTION OF THE SYSTEM BY THE VIS MEDICATR1X 
 NATURAE. PROPOSED ADDITION TO MR. MURRAY'S 
 COLONIAL LIBRARY. 
 
 WHEN at last a colonial law is made and promul- 
 gated, whether by a provincial parliament or a 
 governor with his council of nominees, it is still liable 
 to disallowance by the Colonial Office. Four evils in 
 particular are the result. In the first place, the 
 colonists suffer, during the time necessary for com- 
 munication with England, from a state of harassing 
 uncertainty and suspense with regard to the ultimate 
 validity of their laws. Secondly, the party or faction 
 in the colony, which has objected to the passing of any 
 law, seeks to thwart the successful party, and to gain 
 its own point, by means of secret influences and in- 
 trigues with the Colonial Office. Thirdly, whenever 
 the power of disallowance is exercised, whether honestly 
 by the Colonial Office, or, as sometimes happens, by 
 the Colonial Minister himself, for reasons which appear 
 
254 DISALLOWANCE OF LAWS. 
 
 sufficient to him, the veto is imposed, it must be 
 confessed, by persons much less qualified to judge on 
 the subject than those by whom the law was made, 
 and, in the case of the Colonial Minister himself, by a 
 person fully engaged by matters of far more pressing 
 importance to him. And, lastly, these three effects of 
 the reserved veto necessarily aggravate party animosity 
 in the colony, and tend to destroy that sentiment 
 of loyalty towards the empire which I have de- 
 scribed as a passion of British emigrants and their 
 children. The number of colonial laws which have 
 been disallowed during the last ten years, with a 
 brief statement of the nature of each, would form the 
 subject of another incredibly curious return to the 
 House of Commons. 
 
 Justice demands that we should rather pity the lot 
 of governors under this system, than blame them for 
 what the system produces. They are frequently 
 punished, and sometimes with the greatest injustice. 
 A governor of more than common ability is the most 
 likely to disregard or disobey instructions drawn up 
 in London, and so to get recalled. The best of 
 governors enters upon office very ignorant of things 
 and persons in the colony. If a representative con- 
 stitution enables him to discover the bent of the 
 colonial mind on matters which call for decision, he 
 has still to determine whether he will side with the 
 minority or the majority. If he sides with the 
 minority, he sets going that conflict between repre- 
 sentative institutions and a despotic administration of 
 them, which is the ordinary state of our representative 
 colonies; and, thenceforth, instead of governing, he 
 only lives in hot water. At length, perhaps, the con- 
 
LOT OF GOVERNORS. 255 
 
 flict of factions in the colony becomes so violent that 
 the House of Commons interferes; and then the 
 irovrrnor is recalled by the Colonial Office, which 
 hitherto, under the influence of some clique, or in- 
 dividual at home, has patted him on the back in his 
 quarrel with the majority. If he sides with the 
 majority, between whom and the bureaucracy at home 
 there is a strong natural aversion, the first good oppor- 
 tunity of recalling him is seldom neglected ; or, at all 
 events, his life is made uncomfortable, and his capacity 
 for governing much diminished, by the intrigues and 
 secret influences at home, which the colonial minority 
 brings to bear against him in Downing-street. In the 
 non -representative, or bureaucratic colonies, it is still 
 worse. There, no institution tells the governor what are 
 the wants and wishes of the colony. The factions which 
 surely exist among Englishmen wherever govern- 
 ment by party has not grown out of free institu- 
 tions freely administered, have been lying in wait for 
 him, with nets spread and traps prepared. In his 
 ignorant helplessness, he almost necessarily falls into 
 the hands of one or other of them. If he keeps them 
 off, and judges for himself, he is sure to make 
 terrible mistakes, partly from ignorance, and partly 
 because all the factions conspire to mislead and ruin 
 the governor who sets them all at defiance. This man 
 causes intolerable trouble to the Colonial Office, and is 
 soon advised to tender his resignation. A less self- 
 ivlying governor has no sooner made up his mind 
 to which faction he will abandon himself, than all 
 the others declare war against him; the local press 
 goads him ; the Colonial Office is beset with applica- 
 tions for his removal ; some part of the press at home 
 
256 LOT OF GOVERNORS. 
 
 is induced to attack him ; speeches are made against 
 him in Parliament; and if he is not recalled to stop 
 the hubbub, he at best leads a life of care and appre- 
 hension. What all governors suffer from the dis- 
 allowance of their acts by distant, ill-informed, and 
 irresponsible superiors, would form a long chapter. 
 Another might be filled with the troubles of governors, 
 in consequence of having to administer a government 
 without having the patronage of a government at 
 their disposal. Upon the whole, it may be questioned 
 whether the existence of any class of men is much 
 more uncomfortable than that of governors of British 
 colonies. Some few escape the common lot ; but they 
 generally do so by the practice of those " means and 
 shifts" which the Colonial Office itself is induced by 
 its weakness to adopt, and because their low ambition 
 is satisfied if they can manage to keep a good salary 
 and the title of Excellency without attempting to 
 govern. It follows, that even if the Colonial Office 
 selected its own servants, men having the spirit and 
 self-respect which accompany capacity for ruling, 
 would be loth to serve the office of governor, except 
 in the few cases where the importance of a colony 
 renders that office important, however uncomfortable. 
 Turning from particulars to the whole system as 
 displayed by its effects, one is surprised that it should 
 work at all. It produces much trouble here, and end- 
 less turmoil in the colonies. It disturbs secretaries of 
 state, worries all governors, and ruins some. It 
 irritates colonial assemblies, deprives them of their 
 just functions, and forces them into violent proceedings, 
 such as political impeachments, the stoppage of 
 supplies, and personal attacks on the local sovereign, 
 
EFFECTS OF TILE SYSTEM. 257 
 
 which have been unknown in this country since we 
 < -stiil dished responsible government for ourselves. It 
 subjects the bureaucratic colonies to an authority in 
 all that concerns their welfare, that is ignorantly and 
 secretly impelled, besides being secret in operation 
 and arbitrary as well as absolute. It breeds colonial 
 factions and demagogues. By its injustice and 
 oppressions, it begets the use of slavish means of self- 
 defence; hypocrisy, crafty intrigue, and moral assas- 
 sination of opponents. Thus, and by its false pre- 
 tences and foul practices, it almost banishes honour 
 from public life in the colonies, and greatly helps to 
 bring down the standard of private honour far below 
 that of the mother-country. It benumbs enterprise, 
 and forbids creative legislation, in societies whose 
 natural business is adventure and creation. It is 
 costly beyond any comparison with the municipal 
 system, though not burdensome to the colonists in the 
 same proportion, because, in the bureaucratic colonies to 
 some extent, this country pays for the misgovernment 
 which checks the growth of private wealth and public 
 income. Furthermore, the system, which as to all our 
 newest colonies we have substituted for the municipal, 
 in the complete form of the central-bureaucratic-spoiled, 
 robs the Englishman of what used to be deemed his 
 birthright. It thus deprives the emigrant, whatever 
 may be his talents for public business, of all opportu- 
 nity of exerting himself for the public good, of all the 
 motives of a laudable ambition, of all pursuits except 
 the making of money. It places him, whatever may 
 have been his station here, how much soever he may be 
 superior in education and property to the highest of 
 the officials, in a position of mortifying inferiority to 
 
258 HOW THE SYSTEM WORKS. 
 
 the lowest. To use a heedless expression of the 
 Quarterly Review, it renders the colonies u unfit abodes 
 for any but convicts, paupers, and desperate or needy 
 persons." It cures those who emigrate in spite of it, 
 of their maladie du pays. It is the one great impedi- 
 ment to the overflow of Britain's excessive capital and 
 labour into waste fields, which, if cultivated into new 
 markets, would increase the home field of employment 
 for capital and labour. It has placed colonization 
 itself amongst the lost arts, and is thus a negative 
 cause of that excessive competition of capital with 
 capital, and labour with labour, in a limited field of 
 employment for both, which is now the condition of 
 England and the difficulty of her statesmen. 
 
 But it works somehow. Yes, thanks to the vis 
 medicatrix naturae, which corrects the errors of men by 
 infusing some proportion of good into the greatest of 
 evils. The good principle through which our present 
 system of colonial government is worked at all, is that 
 which Adam Smith had in view, when, contemplating 
 the greatness of English municipal colonization in 
 America, produced as it was by individual exertions 
 without assistance from the government, he exclaimed, 
 Magna virum mater! and attributed all to the country 
 and the institutions which had formed the men capable 
 of so great a performance. Englishmen colonize in 
 spite of the Colonial Oifice and its system. English 
 colonists get on somehow, notwithstanding bad go- 
 vernment, or without government. English governors 
 do not quite forget the political lessons which every 
 Englishman that can read learns at home ; and their 
 subjects, being English, or of English origin, can bear 
 worse government without fainting; can resist and 
 
(<)NTRAST. 259 
 
 check it more effectually than the colonists of any 
 other nation. Public opinion here does now and then 
 punish the authors and perpetrators of great colonial 
 wrongs. Even the Colonial-Office bureaucracy, worse 
 though it is in one sense than a Prussian bureau, still, 
 being composed of Englishmen, and breathing the air 
 of England, is not so bad as a bureau of Prussians 
 would be if they were placed in the same false and 
 corrupting position. The system works indeed, but 
 by means of what is contrary to it : it works in spite 
 of its un-English self, by means of the English energy 
 which it depresses, of the self-reliance which it cannot 
 destroy, of the fortitude which resists it ; and finally 
 by means of the national institutions and sentiments 
 to which it is wholly antagonist. In a word, it is 
 worked by counteraction. 
 
 The contrast between the two systems under com- 
 parison, great as it is in every point of view, is in 
 nothing so remarkable as in this; that the one re- 
 quires counteraction to work at all, whilst the other 
 works well just in proportion as it is not counteracted, 
 but is left to operate by itself; just in proportion, that 
 is, as the municipal principle is adopted without ad- 
 mixture of the central. In the old English colonies 
 of America, the municipal principle was not completely 
 adopted in a single case; in some cases, the central 
 principle was to some extent mixed with it, even in 
 the form of government; and in all, the imperial 
 power, after granting local self-government more or 
 less complete, counteracted its own delegation of au- 
 thority, sometimes by withdrawing it altogether and 
 governing arbitrarily from the centre of the empire, 
 at others by violating its own grants, and ruling, or 
 
 s 2 
 
260 COUNTERACTION OF 
 
 attempting to rule, the colonists from a distance not- 
 withstanding their local rights. The history of those 
 colonies, accordingly, is, in a great measure, the his- 
 tory of many struggles between the dependencies and 
 the imperial power. What each side contended for, 
 was the exercise of local authority. The colonists, 
 though they suffered greatly in these contests, still, 
 being armed with their royal charters, assisted by the 
 law of England which at that time deemed self-govern- 
 ment the birthright of English colonists, and not a 
 little favoured by distance, obscurity, and civil con- 
 tests in the mother-country, generally carried their 
 point at last. Practically, therefore, and upon the 
 whole, these colonies enjoyed municipal government. 
 Some of them, for long consecutive periods, and all of 
 them at times, managed their own affairs without any 
 interference from home ; and a careful examination of 
 the progress of these communities from the hour of 
 their municipal birth down to that of their sovereign 
 independence, establishes by irresistible evidence two 
 things in particular; first, that whatever sufferings 
 they endured as respects government that in what- 
 ever respects their governments did not work smoothly 
 and beneficially for them as well as for the empire 
 the sole cause of the evil was some infringement of 
 the municipal principle ; and secondly, that an accu- 
 mulation of such acts on the part of the imperial 
 power, crowned at length by the attempt to tax the 
 colonists without the consent of their local assemblies, 
 was the sole cause of their revolt. These naked posi- 
 tions may have an air of exaggeration or rashness; 
 but I am intimately persuaded of their truth; and I 
 refer you to the principal source of my own convic- 
 tions. This is a modern work, scarcely known to the 
 
MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT. 261 
 
 public in consequence of its defects of arrangement 
 and style, but containing the best account of England's 
 colonial system of municipal governments; I mean 
 the late Mr. Grahame's History of the United States, 
 which, as it ends with the Declaration of Independence, 
 ought to have been entitled a history of English colo- 
 nization in North America.* This book also contains 
 most valuable proofs of the necessity of combining 
 efficient religious arrangements with good civil go- 
 vernment in order to colonize very successfully. The 
 author, a Scotch gentleman by birth, was a zealous 
 Republican, Protestant, and Voluntary, but also a 
 true gentleman at heart in his love of truth, his scru- 
 pulous fairness, and his singular tolerance of opinions 
 opposite to his own. He could not theorize. Neither 
 as to government nor religion does he attempt to esta- 
 blish the conclusions which his facts and his laborious 
 accuracy impress upon the speculative reader. 
 
 The view here taken of imperial counteractions of 
 the municipal principle, is supported by observing how 
 the proprietary charters worked. Mr. Grahame shows 
 very distinctly, that they worked well whenever the 
 grantee, whether an individual or a corporation, re- 
 sided in the colony, and was identified with the colo- 
 nists; and that they worked very ill indeed, nearly 
 always when the grantee resided in England. The 
 residence of the grantees in the colony was .j carrying 
 out of the municipal principle ; their residence here 
 gave effect, so far, to the principle of central or distant 
 government. Baltimore and Penn, and the joint- 
 
 * With this title, and re-written by a master of style as an abridg- 
 ment, this most instructive and entertaining work would be a capital 
 addition to Mr. Murray's Colonial Library ; for it would become a 
 household book in the colouies. 
 
262 PROPRIETARY GOVERNMENTS. 
 
 stock company of cabinet ministers who founded 
 Carolina, were kings, in fact, within their colonies. 
 During the periods when Penn or Baltimore resided 
 in his colony, the whole government was local or mu- 
 nicipal; whenever he resided in England, and always 
 in the case of Carolina, the kingly authority of the 
 colony was exercised, like that of the present Colonial 
 Office, ignorantly, more or less secretly, and from im- 
 pulses not colonial. I must repeat, that every dispute 
 between the colonists and their proprietary govern- 
 ments may be traced to the operation of the central 
 principle, through the non-residence of the chief au- 
 thority in local matters. In whatever point of view 
 the subject is examined, it will be seen that the muni- 
 cipal system suffers, as the central system is modified 
 and improved, in proportion as it is counteracted. 
 
 LETTER XXXIX. 
 From the Statesman. 
 
 MR. MOTHERCOUNTRY PROTESTS AGAINST THE ASSER- 
 TION, THAT MR. TAYLOR HAS AUTHORIZED THE BE- 
 LIEF, THAT HIS VIEWS OF STATESMANSHIP WERE 
 DERIVED FROM EXPERIENCE IN THE COLONIAL OFFICE. 
 
 TN the early part of our journey, I felt my way 
 carefully, unwilling to take a step without being- 
 con vinced of the soundness of the footing ; but lately 
 I have hurried along without seeing obstacles or 
 rotten places, impelled by a sort of wonder and indig- 
 
MK. MOTHERCOUNTRY'S WHINE. 263 
 
 nation. Since we got fairly into impediments of colo- 
 nization, I have not stopped you by uttering an ob- 
 jection or a doubt : and now, I can only say, Lead on ; 
 so bewildered am I by the multiplicity and strangeness 
 of the objects that have seemed to flit past me during 
 our last rush through a region of politics whose exist- 
 ence I had not dreamt of before. In plainer English, 
 1 want time for reflection, and am not in the humour 
 to trouble you with inquiries. 
 
 Neither does Mr. Mothercountry make any remarks 
 on your hideous portrait of his Office. When I showed 
 him your letters with all sorts of proper apologies, he 
 did not utter a word about colonial government, but 
 got angry, and talked of being himself unjustly as- 
 sailed ; of his long and laborious services ; and of his 
 trying position as being the butt of attacks from which 
 his subordination to others prevents him from defend- 
 ing himself. In short, he only whined about his own 
 hard lot, and made pathetic appeals to my compassion. 
 
 But he defends Mr. Taylor ; and what he says on 
 this point I must report. He indignantly denies that 
 we have Mr. Taylor's own authority for asserting that 
 his opinions, as communicated to the public in The 
 Statesman, are based on his experience in the Colonial 
 Office. He says that Mr. Taylor himself, in a work 
 published lately, has contradicted the assertion. Under- 
 stand, he does not object to your saying that Mr. 
 Taylor acquired his views of statesmanship in the 
 Colonial Office, but to your repeating the statement, 
 '//A /' Mr. Taylor, who alone can know how the fact is, 
 has deliberately contradicted it; he says that it is 
 shamefully unjust to quote Mr. Taylor's authority for 
 an ui-rtiun which Mr. Taylor declares to be untrue. 
 
264 
 
 LETTER XL. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 THE COLONIST SUSTAINS HIS PKOPOSITION THAT MR. 
 TAYLOR'S IDEAS OF STATESMANSHIP WERE FORMED 
 
 BY LONG EXPERIENCE IN THE COLONIAL OFFICE, 
 AND APPEALS TO MR. TAYLOR HIMSELF AS THE 
 BEST AUTHORITY ON THE QUESTION. 
 
 MR. TAYLOR has not contradicted the assertion, 
 the repetition of which annoys the whole Colonial 
 Office. In the Preface to his recent work, Notes from 
 Life, he says, u In the year 1836 ; I published a book 
 called the 4 Statesman/ a title much found fault with 
 at the time, and in truth not very judiciously chosen. 
 It contained the views and maxims respecting the 
 transaction of public business, which twelve years of 
 experience had suggested to me. But my experience 
 had been confined within the doors of an office; and 
 the book was wanting in that general interest which 
 might possibly have been felt in the results of a more 
 extensive and varied conversancy with public life. 
 Moreover, the sub-sarcastic vein in which certain 
 parts of it were written, was not very well understood ; 
 and what was meant for an exposure of some of the 
 world's ways was, I believe, very generally mistaken 
 
OFFICIAL EXPERIENCE. 265 
 
 for a recommendation of them. I advert, now, to 
 this book and its indifferent fortunes, because whatever 
 may have been its demerits, my present work must be 
 regarded as to some extent comprehended in the same 
 design, that, namely, of embodying in the form of 
 maxims and reflections the immediate results of an 
 attentive observation of life, of official life in the 
 former volume, of life at large in this." 
 
 This surely is not a contradiction but a confirmation 
 of my statement; fresh testimony by Mr. Taylor 
 himself to the truth of the assertion, that the Colonial 
 Office is the school in which he learned the art of 
 statesmanship. It shows indeed, that he may repent 
 of having communicated his Colonial-Office experience 
 to the public ; and that he is now anxious to remove 
 a public impression that he recommended the practices 
 and doctrines which he exposed. And what then? 
 Why, Mr. Taylor only joins others in condemning 
 those practices and doctrines; and in doing so, he 
 repeats his first assurances to the public, that, ac- 
 cording to his experience, they are the doctrines and 
 practices of the Colonial Office. I will extract his 
 first assurances from The Statesman : you will see that 
 from their very nature they do not admit of being 
 unsaid. 
 
 In the Preface to The Statesman, he alludes to u the 
 want in our literature of any coherent body of admi- 
 nistrative doctrine ;" and though he modestly disclaims 
 the slightest pretension to supplying the want, he goes 
 on to say, " the topics which I have treated are such 
 as experience, rather than inventive meditation, has 
 suggested to me. The engagements which have de- 
 prived me of literary leisure and a knowledge of books, 
 
266 OFFICIAL EXPERIENCE. 
 
 have, on the other hand, afforded me an extensive and 
 diversified conversancy with business: and I hope, 
 therefore, that I may claim from my readers some 
 indulgence for the little learning and for the desulto- 
 riness of these disquisitions, in consideration of the 
 value which they may be disposed to attach to com- 
 ments derived from practical observation" In his 
 Conclusion, he apologizes for a want of system in his 
 dissertations, and says, "if I had applied myself to 
 devise a system, or even a connected succession, I 
 must necessarily have written more from speculative 
 meditation, less from knowledge. What I knew prac- 
 tically, or by reflection flowing from circumstance, must 
 have been connected by what I might persuade myself 
 that I knew inventively, or by reflection flowing from 
 reflection. I am well aware of the weight and value 
 which is given to a work by a just and harmonious 
 incorporation of its parts, But I may be permitted 
 to say, that there is also a value currently and not 
 unduly attached to what men are prompted to think 
 concerning matters within their knowledge. Perceiving 
 that I was not in a condition to undertake such a 
 work as might combine both values, the alternative 
 which I have chosen is that of treating the topics 
 severally, as they were thrown up by the sundry sugges- 
 tions of experience. It is possible, indeed, that by 
 postponing my work to a future period, a further 
 accumulation of experience might have enabled me to 
 improve it." 
 
 Even if Mr. Taylor had been dishonest and bold 
 enough to unsay these assurances, the retractation 
 would have come too late. Is not that the case with 
 the colouring which he now gives to the contents of 
 
OFFICIAL EXPERIENCE. 267 
 
 his first book? For years he has allowed it to circu- 
 late as a body of administrative doctrine which he 
 seriously believed. The Statesman has been much 
 read in the colonies, and much used by colonial re- 
 formers here, as Pascal turned the books of the Jesuits 
 against their corporation, in exposing the political im- 
 morality and the anti-colonizing influences of the great 
 corporation which is the government of our colonial 
 empire. Mr. Taylor, his colleagues, and his superiors, 
 have been disturbed and annoyed by the uses made of 
 his book : and his denial now of the accuracy of the 
 sense in which the book has been read, deserves no 
 more weight than a plea of not guilty after confession 
 or boast of guilt has led to accusation. His too-late 
 apology for The Statesman almost contradicts itself, 
 by indicating that at the time of its publication 
 before its publication had troubled himself and his 
 Office he intended, not an " exposure," but a " re- 
 commendation" of the doctrines and practices which 
 colonial Pascals have supposed the book to recom- 
 mend. 
 
 But pray read the book for yourself. In doing so, 
 you will not fail to perceive, that its author's present 
 disclaimer of its title comes also too late, and there- 
 fore only confirms the belief to which that title led, 
 that in the Colonial Office, ideas of statesmanship are 
 limited to bureaucratic administration. The book is, 
 in fact, a picture of that sort of government which I 
 have called the central-bureaucratic T spoiled, by one of 
 the shrewdest and most thoughtful of its adminis- 
 trators. 
 
 If one official man ought to succeed another because 
 he closely resembles him, your Mr. Mothercountry 
 
268 SIR JAMES STEPHEN. 
 
 should be the permanent Under- Secretary for the 
 Colonies after Mr. Stephen, or chief of the tribe of 
 Mothercountry after him by whom the tribe was, if 
 not founded, at least raised to its present importance, 
 as the real arbiter of the destinies of our colonial em- 
 pire : for he exactly resembles Mr. (now Sir James) 
 Stephen, in treating exposures of the Office as personal 
 attacks on himself, and in complaining that his sub- 
 ordinate position prevents him from repelling them. 
 If anything happened to make our correspondence 
 public, he might probably, by whining about his own 
 services and miseries, induce the present and half-a- 
 dozen ex-Colonial Ministers to bepraise him in Par- 
 liament, as by far the most meritorious of mankind. 
 And then, in time perhaps, if our system of colonial 
 government were further brought into public hatred 
 by exposure, his sufferings, under the name of im- 
 measurable public services, might be rewarded by a 
 title and a seat in the Privy Council : for unquestion- 
 ably, the Right Honourable Sir James Stephen is in- 
 debted for his recent honours to the exertions of colo- 
 nial reformers. How it happens that holders and ex- 
 holders of the Colonial Seals can scarcely avoid osten- 
 tatiously patronising a subordinate in equal proportion 
 to his unpopularity, is a question that we may perhaps 
 examine some day: but at any rate, I shall have to 
 explain further on, by again adverting to Sir James 
 Stephen, that the nominal subordinates but real chiefs 
 of the Colonial Office have ample means of addressing 
 the public on their own behalf, and with all the more 
 effect perhaps because they do so anonymously. 
 
269 
 
 LETTER XLI. 
 From the Statesman, 
 
 MR. MOTHERCOUNTRY OBJECTS TO MUNICIPAL GOVERN- 
 MENT FOR COLONIES, ON THE GROUND OF ITS TEN- 
 DENCY TO DEMOCRACY, REPUBLICANISM, AND DISMEM- 
 BERMENT OF THE EMPIRE. 
 
 MR. MOTHERCOUNTRY is silent about Mr. 
 Taylor and The Statesman ; but he has rallied 
 in defence of our system of colonial government. 
 Addressing himself to my conservative predilections, 
 he says that your doctrines about municipal govern- 
 ment for colonies go straight towards democracy, 
 republicanism, colonial disaffection, and dismember- 
 ment of the empire. He has not hitherto denied that 
 municipal government would be best for the colonies ; 
 he seems to admit with Mr. Cornewall Lewis, that a 
 colony suffers numerous evils by being a dependency; 
 but he contends, agreeing again with Mr. Lewis, that 
 a colony municipally governed in your sense of the 
 words, would be practically independent. If, he 
 arirues, we were to set up this practical independence 
 throughout our colonial empire, we should soon wish 
 to pull it down again, because under it the colonies 
 would nourish democratic and republican ideas, and 
 
270 THE COLONIST A DESTRUCTIVE. 
 
 be apt to infect the mother-country with them. If 
 we attempted to undo our foolish work, then would 
 occur between the centre of the empire and each of 
 its merely nominal dependencies, a struggle for local 
 power like that which ended in the nominal as well as 
 real independence of the United States. In these 
 struggles, he says, kingly and aristocratic authority 
 would inevitably suffer ; republicanism and democracy 
 would get a broader and firmer footing in the world. 
 In short, you are a reckless Destructive. 
 
 This objection of Mr. Mothercountry's to local self- 
 government for colonies is so common, that I should 
 like to know at once what you have to say in answer 
 to it. 
 
271 
 
 LETTER XLII. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT HAS NO RELATION TO ONE 
 FORM OF GOVERNMENT MORE THAN ANY OTHER; BUT 
 IT IS THE SUREST MEANS OF PREVENTING THE DIS- 
 AFFECTION OF THE OUT-LYING PORTIONS OF AN EX- 
 TENSIVE EMPIRE, WHICH SURELY RESULTS FROM 
 
 CENTRAL- BUREAUCRATIC GOVERNMENT. THE ORIGINAL 
 
 MR. MOTHERCOUNTRY INTRODUCED. 
 
 MAXY indeed are they who believe, that the 
 municipal system of colonial government has a 
 tendency to promote democracy, republicanism, and 
 colonial disaffection ; but this opinion is sincerely held 
 by those alone who have never seriously examined the 
 subject. Between the municipal and republican prin- 
 ciples there is no connexion whatever. Is there a 
 country in the world where the monarchical principle 
 is more cherished than in Great Britain? Yet is 
 there no country in the world where the municipal 
 principle, as a delegation of authority for limited pur- 
 poses, has been so largely carried into effect. What 
 the form of government may be in a municipal depen- 
 dency, is a matter wholly independent of the municipal 
 character of the government. Municipal, applying 
 
272 MUNICIPAL NOTHING BUT LOCAL. 
 
 the word to colonies, signifies nothing but local. Pro- 
 vided the government of a colony is local, it may be 
 in form either monarchical or republican, aristocratic 
 or democratic, without being more or less municipal. 
 Penn and Baltimore were monarchs in fact within 
 their colonies, though constitutional monarchs enjoined 
 to rule by the help of representative institutions. The 
 municipal governments of Pennsylvania and Maryland 
 were virtually hereditary constitutional monarchies, 
 subordinate to the imperial monarchy. The constitu- 
 tion of Carolina was elaborately aristocratical. In 
 those of Massachusets, Connecticut and Ehode Island, 
 the democratic principle preponderated. In Canada, 
 which is a municipality, though until quite lately very 
 much counteracted, the government is in form a close 
 copy of the imperial government, allowing for the one 
 difference of a very democratic suffrage. If it were 
 made a perfect copy, as it easily might be without in 
 the least diminishing the subordination of the colony, 
 a municipal constitutional monarchy would exist by 
 the side of republics and a republican confederation of 
 them. It is my own deliberate opinion that a vice- 
 monarchy in Canada, precisely resembling the imperial 
 monarchy except in being subordinate to it, might be 
 established with the cordial approbation of the colo- 
 nists, and with the effect of vastly increasing their 
 prosperity by inducing very many Americans who 
 dislike republican institutions, to bring their wealth 
 into the British province, and become subjects of our 
 Queen. But this is almost a digression. Keturning 
 to the question, it will be useful to note that the con- 
 version of American municipal dependencies into re- 
 publican states, which is often attributed to the repub- 
 
A RULE WITHOUT EXCEPTIONS. 273 
 
 liean tendency of municipal institutions, may with 
 more reason be ascribed to those counteractions of the 
 municipal principle in America, by which the sovereigns 
 of England, acting generally in this respect indepen- 
 dently of their parliaments, and even to the last ex- 
 hibiting a personal animosity to their colonial subjects, 
 taiiirht the colonists to hate the very name of king. 
 That this is the more reasonable conclusion of the 
 two will appear to anybody who, with a view to the 
 present question, reads over again the Declaration of 
 American Independence. He would do well at the 
 same time to remember, that the Spanish colonies of 
 America have all turned into republics, although 
 perhaps because they were founded and governed on 
 the central-bureaucratic principle. 
 
 With respect to the disaffection of municipal depen- 
 dencies, facts are still more at variance with the theory. 
 One seeks in vain for a single instance of disaffection 
 in a municipal dependency of a great empire, except- 
 ing only through the operation of the central principle 
 in admixture or collision with the municipal. Local 
 self-government is so precious, that dependent com- 
 munities enjoying it have invariably reverenced the 
 imperial power to which they owed the blessing, and 
 which maintained them in possession of it. This is a 
 rule without exceptions. Examples of the rule are 
 furnished in abundance by modern as well as ancient 
 times. The municipalities of the Roman Empire were 
 its main stay. Was not the dependence on Rome of 
 its conquered provinces, the main cause of its down- 
 fall? The Channel Islands, which govern themselves 
 locally which are a capital example of municipal de- 
 pendency are devotedly attached to England. The 
 
274 DISTANT GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Tyrolese, with a local parliament, have proved their 
 attachment to the despotic House of Austria by their 
 heroic struggles against the power of Napoleon, and 
 again, lately, by receiving the Emperor with open 
 arms when he was driven from the metropolis of the 
 empire. The Basque provinces of Spain, with their 
 fueros, were the last to submit to a revolution which 
 deprived their legitimate sovereign of his throne. The 
 municipal colonies of England in America, notwith- 
 standing the unjust and oppressive infractions of their 
 municipal rights by a series of British monarchs, were 
 at all times prompt to take arms in any quarrel of the 
 mother-country with a foreign state. The Virginians, 
 in their appeals to Charles the Second against his 
 invasions of their municipal constitution, used to boast 
 that of all his subjects, they had been " the last to 
 renounce and the first to resume their allegiance" to 
 the Crown of England. In Canada, just now, disaf- 
 fection produced by errors of local administration on 
 the part of the central authority, has been converted 
 into loyalty by giving to the colonists the consequences, 
 in addition to the form, of local representation. The 
 disaffection, in some cases the hatred, of the imperial 
 power, which exists in other colonies at present, 
 though their weakness precludes them from manifest- 
 ing it by acts, is a product of the very reverse of mu- 
 nicipal government. Distant government in local 
 matters is so fatal to the interests, and so mortifying 
 to the pride of its subjects, that, in their hearts at 
 least, they can't help being disaffected. Does the 
 present world or history present a single example of a 
 community governed from a distance, whose loyalty to 
 the distant power may not be questioned? The United 
 
IMl'I-RIAL C'OXTKOL. 275 
 
 Kingdom itself exhibits in Scotland and Ireland the 
 loyalty of one people preserving their own laws, and 
 in practice almost ruled separately after formal incor- 
 poration with the empire; and the disaffection of 
 another, which is still in some measure ruled as a 
 dependency stripped by conquest of its local laws. In 
 all times, the main strength of a great empire has con- 
 sisted of the firmness with which, by means of the mu- 
 nicipal principle, it was rooted in the affections of its 
 subjects distant from the seat of empire : a universal 
 cause of weakness in an extensive dominion has been 
 the disaffection of the outlying portions, arising from 
 their misgovernment on the central principle. 
 
 But supposing it admitted that the municipal system 
 has no tendency to republicanism, and produces loyalty 
 rather than disaffection that it is the strongest 
 cement of an empire composed of divers commu- 
 nities yet the questions may be asked, Would you de- 
 prive the imperial power of all local control in the 
 colonies? w r ould you make them wholly independent 
 states within their own bounds, reserving only such 
 allegiance to the empire as would prevent them from 
 being independent, or foreign states? Certainly not. 
 On the contrary, I, for one, am of opinion, that if 
 colonization were systematically conducted with a 
 view to the advantage of the mother-country, the con- 
 trol of the imperial power ought to be much greater, 
 and the connexion between the colonies and the centre 
 far more intimate than either has ever yet been. I 
 regard the waste but partially-occupied territories 
 which this nation has acquired by costly efforts, as a 
 valuable national property, which we have every right 
 in justice, and are bound by every consideration of 
 
 T 2 
 
276 AMOUNT AND MANNER OF CONTROL. 
 
 prudence, to use for the greatest benefit of the people 
 of this country: and instead of leaving colonies to 
 take what form a thousand accidents may determine, 
 and to grow up as cast-aways till they are strong 
 enough to become enemies, I think that the imperial 
 power ought to mould them into the forms most 
 agreeable to itself, and to bind them to this kingdom 
 by indissoluble ties. 
 
 And first, as to control. Of real, effective, fruitful 
 control, there never has been half enough : there has 
 been far too much of a control unproductive of any 
 beneficial results to colony or mother-country; pro- 
 ductive of the very reverse of the proper objects of 
 control. As to the amount of control, I should go 
 beyond the most zealous advocate of the present 
 system: I should wholly differ with him as to the 
 manner. He recommends control, arbitrary, unde- 
 fined, irregular, capricious, and masked; I propose a 
 control according to law; that is, a control definite, 
 orderly, steady, above all seen and understood by the 
 subjects of it. The manner of control appears to me 
 to be of far more consequence than its nature or 
 amount. Very improper limitations of the local powers 
 of a colony, if they were fixed by law so that every 
 colonist should always know exactly what they were, 
 would be far preferable to the most proper limitations 
 imposed from time to time arbitrarily, irregularly, 
 and without warning or other promulgation. The 
 grand point for the colonies, as to government, is that 
 they should always know what they might lawfully 
 do, and what they might not. What the law per- 
 mitted or forbade them to do, would be a matter of 
 comparatively small importance. If they had a con- 
 
WHINE OF NAPOLEON. 277 
 
 istitutional law, they would accommodate themselves 
 to it : or, as it would be known at the seat of empire 
 as well as in the colonies, and its operation would be 
 visible, they might, if it were hurtful to them, get it 
 altered by the supreme power which had framed it. 
 I ask that the colonies should be governed, as a tres- 
 passer or vagrant is prosecuted in this country, that is 
 to say, " according to law ;" that they should be ruled 
 even according to the law-martial of a man-of-war 
 rather than left to the lawlessness of a pirate ship ; 
 that they should be governed by the imperial power 
 instead of being the sport of the chapter of ac- 
 cidents. Government according to law is govern- 
 ment : the other manner of government is nothing 
 but force ; and the highest authority on this point 
 the greatest incarnation of force that the world has 
 seen wondered and lamented at the incapacity of 
 force to create anything. This whine of the mighty 
 Xapoleon should never be forgotten by those who 
 meddle with the creative business of colonization. 
 
 I have now done with the principles of colonial 
 government. My next will contain the outline of a 
 plan of colonial government based on the foregoing 
 principles. But allow me, meanwhile, to suggest that 
 your careful perusal of the inclosed paper may greatly 
 serve the object of our correspondence. It contains a 
 view of that system of colonial government which 
 I have called the central-bureaucratic-spoiled, by a 
 hand which the charms of the writer's style will satisfy 
 you is not mine. I do not send you the little volume 
 from which it is extracted, entitled Responsible 
 Government for Colonies (which was published in 
 1840 as a reprint, with some additions, of a series of 
 
278 MR. MOTHERCOUNTRY. 
 
 articles that first appeared in the Colonial Gazette), 
 because that publication has been long out of print, 
 and I have been unable to obtain a copy of it except 
 on loan. The extracts, besides informing and enter- 
 taining you, will explain why, in proposing a cognomen 
 for your Downing- street acquaintance, I selected that 
 of " Mr. Mothercountry."* 
 
 * It was no secret before Mr. Charles Buller's death, that he wrote 
 the description of " Mr. Mothercountry of the Colonial Office," which 
 many a colonist has got by heart; but the fact is not mentioned in 
 the text, because it was not published till after that was written as 
 it now stands. I assume that now, when the public has lost its 
 favourite among the younger statesmen of our day, no apology is 
 required for reviving here one of the happiest productions of his 
 accomplished pen. 
 
279 
 
 " ME. MOTHERCOUNTRY, OF THE COLONIAL 
 OFFICE. 
 
 " IN preceding chapters we have endeavoured to show, that 
 that constant reference to the authorities in England, which 
 some persons call " responsibility to the mother-country," is 
 by no means necessary to insure the maintenance of a bene- 
 ficial colonial connexion. It is not necessary for this purpose 
 that the people or government of England should be con- 
 stantly interfering in the details of colonial business. It is 
 not desirable that we should regulate these matters according 
 to notions which cannot be half so correct as those of the 
 colonists themselves. But even if it were desirable, and if 
 we were convinced that a colony could never be well governed 
 except by the enlightened opinion, or the responsible ministers 
 of the mother-country, we should still be unconvinced of the 
 possibility of securing an effectual appeal to either. If the 
 public opinion of the British community, and the attention of 
 its legislature and ministry, could indeed be brought to bear 
 on each colonial question as it arises, and to give it the same 
 earnest consideration that it gives to any English question of 
 the same importance, the reference to this country would be 
 productive of no ill, but much good. But the theory of 
 responsibility errs in this, that the mother-country, to which 
 the reference is supposed to be made, never exercises any 
 judgment on the matter; and the decision which is pro- 
 nounced in its name, is given by the few individuals that 
 think it worth while to usurp its functions for the purpose. 
 
 " It is not in the nature of men to feel any very lively in- 
 terest in the affairs of those, of whom they know so little as 
 the people of this country do of their fellow- subjects in the 
 colonies : and the bitter experience of colonists has taught 
 
280 MB. MOTHERCOUNTRY 
 
 them how little their condition, and the circumstances which 
 influence it, are appreciated by the people of this country. 
 The social state, and the form of government in the colonies, 
 are both utterly foreign to the notions of Englishmen. We 
 comprehend neither: we know little of the events that have 
 passed in them : and the consequence is, that we understand 
 very nearly as little of what passes in the present day. The 
 newspaper of the morning announces in some out-of-the-way 
 corner, that some ship, which left some unknown spot, in some 
 distant corner of the world, some weeks or months before, has 
 brought perhaps a couple of months' files of colonial papers. 
 We are told that the governor had issued some order, upon a 
 matter of which the nature is utterly incomprehensible to us ; 
 or that the Assembly is " still" occupied with some dispute 
 with him, of the commencement of which we have never 
 heard. If, perchance, there is anything in this news which 
 interests us enough to make us read through the column of 
 the paper, hunt up the geographical and other points which 
 at first puzzle us, and look with impatience for the sequel of 
 the news, the odds are that we get nothing more on the sub- 
 ject for the next month ; and the first time our paper finds 
 room for another set of extracts from the colonial papers, the 
 matter about which we were interested has slipped out of our 
 memory, or some event of importance in home politics 
 absorbs all our attention. This is the normal state of our 
 ignorance on the subject, varied in the case of the most 
 active-minded by the half-information thus picked up, and 
 the prejudices consequently formed. When some event of 
 great importance suddenly rivets public attention on colonial 
 affairs, we come to the consideration of them with this general 
 ignorance and these misconceptions. Nothing but the news 
 of invasion or revolt gives the people at large a real interest 
 in the colonial news of the day. The events that prepare 
 such calamities, have been either unheeded or fostered by the 
 rash decisions which we have given in our inattentive mood. 
 
 " As the people judge, so do the representatives act in Par- 
 liament, A railway or a turnpike bill ordinarily interests 
 
OF THE COLONIAL OFFICE. 281 
 
 more members than any measure affecting the most vital in- 
 terests of our most important colonies. Some of them, it is 
 true, attract the notice of two or three members, who think 
 that local knowledge gives them the right to assume airs of 
 great wisdom respecting them. Some ignorant and pre- 
 sumptuous captain in the navy, some still more ignorant and 
 presumptuous colonel in the army, who have passed a year or 
 two in some harbour or garrison of the colony some retired 
 judge, whose knowledge of a community has been formed on 
 his experience of the criminals and suitors of his court some 
 ex-official, mixed up with colonial jobs and cliques some 
 merchant, who urges in the House whatever his partners in 
 the colony tell him is the right thing to promote the interests 
 or importance of the firm these, with occasionally some 
 gentleman whose more than usually extended tour has carried 
 him to some of our remote possessions, are the only persons, 
 not compelled by the duties of office or opposition, that take 
 what is called an interest in a colony. By some one or other 
 of these, four or five times in a session, questions are addressed 
 to the ministers, or returns required, or motions made. But 
 hardly any one else ever shares in this interest : and such a 
 notice of motion generally insures the House being counted 
 out whenever it comes on ! On some rare occasions the 
 party questions of the day are mixed up in some colonial 
 matter : the opposition come down to fight the battle of the 
 church, or education, or whatever else it may be, on colonial 
 ground ; and the mover is favoured with the unaccustomed 
 honour of an audience and a division. Sometimes the oppor- 
 tunity of wounding a ministry through the side of one of its 
 measures, or of a governor of its own party, occasions similar 
 manifestations of factious force and zeal : and to what mis- 
 chiefs such conduct gives rise we have had too much expe- 
 rience, in the rejection of the bill for the union of the two 
 Canadas in 1822, and still more recently in the disallowance 
 of Lord Durham's celebrated ordinances. The attention thus 
 given to a colony in these occasional gusts of party feeling, 
 is productive of so much ill, that it is far better for them that 
 
282 MR. MOTHERCOUNTRY 
 
 Parliament should preserve its usual apathy, and adopt, as it 
 usually does, whatever legislation the government of the day 
 may recommend. 
 
 " There are two modes in which the legislative measures, to 
 which the government wishes to get the sanction of parlia- 
 ment, are framed. Sometimes, though rarely, parliament 
 passes an act after the usual fashion of acts of parliament, 
 settling by positive enactments every detail of the course on 
 which it determines. Except, however, in the case of acts 
 settling the form of government in a colony, this is a lahour 
 which is rarely imposed on parliament : and experience shows 
 us how unwise it is to trust the details of such measures to 
 the chances of parliamentary attention. The Canada-Tenures 
 Act is a remarkable instance of this. No act was ever pro- 
 posed by government with more honest and sound intentions. 
 The purpose was good ; and had the bill been passed in the 
 shape in which it was prepared by Mr. James Stuart,* the 
 present chief-justice of Lower Canada, that purpose would 
 have been carried into effect, probably without any concomitant 
 evil. Unfortunately, however, Mr. Stuart quitted England 
 before the bill had passed. During its passage through par- 
 liament, one apparently harmless amendment was suggested 
 from one, and another from another quarter; some words 
 were omitted to please one, and others left out to conciliate 
 another. The result was, that this act, which was intended to 
 merely alter tenures, without affecting any existing interest, 
 assailed the vested rights of every married woman and child 
 in the province, gave the seigneurs the most unfair advantage 
 over their tenants, and, in fact, shook every title to land in 
 Lower Canada. 
 
 " But parliament in general disposes of the details of co- 
 lonial questions in a much more summary way. For some 
 time past, the impossibility of determining the details of a 
 colonial measure in the British Parliament has been so much 
 
 * Who was not an official sent out by the Colonial Office, but a native 
 of Canada, and as thorough a colonist as the province contains. Lord 
 Durham appointed him Chief- Justice of Quebec. 
 
OF THE COLONIAL OFFICE. 283 
 
 impressed upon the government, that the custom has been to 
 propose that the colonial acts of parliament should be simple 
 tfivntt of legislative powers to some ministerial authority 
 in this country; and they have in consequence simply enabled 
 the crown to legislate for the colonies by order in council. It 
 is thus that for nearly the last twenty years a great part of the 
 legislation of the West-India islands has been carried on ; and 
 the power of making laws has been taken equally from the 
 colonial and imperial legislatures, and transferred to the exe- 
 cutive government at home. Nor has parliament taken, in 
 colonial cases, the precautions for retaining a vigilant super- 
 vision of the use made of this power, which it has always 
 retained to itself whenever it has delegated similar authority 
 with respect to the mother-country. The poor-law commis- 
 sioners have the most extensive powers of legislation by 
 means of general rules: the judges of courts of common law 
 have very large powers of regulating the whole administration 
 of the common law by their rules and regulations. Yet in 
 these, as in many other cases of not quite equal importance, 
 the most effectual provisions are made for the utmost pub- 
 licity ; and it is necessary that all rules made under the dele- 
 gated authority should, to have permanent effect, be laid on 
 the table of both Houses. But no such precautions are taken 
 with respect to the colonies ; and the powers thus given to 
 orders in council are exercised without any publicity in this 
 country. 
 
 " Thus, from the general indifference of Parliament on 
 colonial questions, it exercises, in fact, hardly the slightest 
 efficient control over the administration or the making of laws 
 for the colonies. In nine cases out of ten, it merely registers 
 the edicts of the Colonial Office in Downing-street. It is 
 there, then, that nearly the whole public opinion which influ- 
 ences the conduct of affairs in the colonies, really exists. It 
 is there that the supremacy of the mother-country really re- 
 sides : and when we speak of that supremacy, and of the 
 responsibility of the colony to the mother-country, you may 
 to all practical intents consider as the mother-country the 
 
284 MR. MOTHERCOUNTRY 
 
 possessor of this supremacy the centre of this responsibility 
 the occupants of the large house that forms the end of that 
 cul-de-sac so well known by the name of Downing -street. 
 However colonists or others may talk of the Crown, the Par- 
 [ianient, and the public of the honour of the first, the wisdom 
 of the second, or the enlightened opinion of the last nor 
 Queen, nor Lords, nor Commons, nor the great public itself, 
 exercise any power, or will, or thought on the greater part 
 of colonial matters : and the appeal to the mother-country is, 
 in fact, an appeal to ' the Office.' 
 
 " But this does not sufficiently concentrate the mother- 
 country. It may, indeed, at first sight, be supposed that the 
 power of ' the Office' must be wielded by its head : that in 
 him at any rate we have generally one of the most eminent of 
 our public men, whose views on the various matters which 
 come under his cognizance, are shared by the cabinet of which 
 he is a member. We may fancy, therefore, that here, at least, 
 concentrated in a somewhat despotic, but at any rate in a very 
 responsible and dignified form, we have the real governing 
 power of the colonies, under the system which boasts of 
 making their governments responsible to the mother-country. 
 But this is a very erroneous supposition. This great officer 
 holds the most constantly shifting position on the shifting 
 scene of official life. Since April, 1827, ten different Secre- 
 taries of State have held the seals of the colonial department. 
 Each was brought into that office from business of a perfectly 
 different nature, and probably with hardly any experience in 
 colonial affairs. The new minister is at once called on to 
 enter on the consideration of questions of the greatest magni- 
 tude, and at the same time of some hundreds of questions of 
 mere detail, of no public interest, of unintelligible technicality, 
 involving local considerations with which he is wholly unac- 
 quainted, but at the same time requiring decision, and decision 
 at which it is not possible to arrive without considerable 
 labour. Perplexed with the vast variety of subjects thus 
 presented to him alike appalled by the important and un- 
 important matters forced on his attention every Secretary of 
 
OF THE COLONIAL OFFICE. 285 
 
 State is obliged at the outset to rely on the aid of some better 
 in formed member of his office. His Parliamentary Under- 
 rary is generally as new to the business as himself: and 
 even if they had not been brought in together, the tenure of 
 office by the Under- Secretary having on the average been 
 quite as short as that of the Secretary of State, he has never 
 during the period of his official career obtained sufficient 
 information, to make him independent of the aid on which he 
 must have been thrown at the outset. Thus we find both 
 these marked and responsible functionaries dependent on the 
 advice or guidance of another; and that other person must 
 of course be one of the permanent members of the office. 
 We do not pretend to say which of these persons it is, that in 
 fact directs the colonial policy of Britain. It may be, as a 
 great many persons think, the permanent Under-Secretary ; 
 it may be the chief, it may be some very subordinate clerk ; 
 it may be one of them that has most influence at one time, 
 and another at another ; it may be this gentleman as to one, 
 and that as to another question or set of questions : for here 
 we get beyond the region of real responsibility, and are 
 involved in the clouds of official mystery. That mother- 
 country which has been narrowed from the British isles into 
 the Parliament, from the Parliament into the executive 
 government, from the executive government into the Colonial 
 Office, is not to be sought in the apartments of the Secretary 
 of State, or his Parliamentary Under-Secretary. Where you 
 are to look for it, it is impossible to say. In some back room 
 whether in the attic, or in what story we know not you 
 will find all the mother-country which really exercises supre- 
 macy, and really maintains connexion with the vast and 
 widely-scattered colonies of Britain. We know not the name, 
 the history, or the functions of the individual, into the narrow 
 limits of whose person we find the mother-country shrunk. 
 Indeed, we may call him by the name, of which we have thus 
 shown him to be the rightful bearer ; and when we speak of 
 Mr. Mothercountry, the colonist will form a much more 
 accurate notion than heretofore of the authority by which he 
 is in reality ruled. 
 
286 ME. MOTHERCOUNTRY 
 
 " Of the individual thus bodily existing, but thus dimly 
 seen, we can of course give our readers none but the most 
 general description. We will not flatter the pride of our 
 colonial readers, by depicting this real arbiter of their destinies 
 as a person of lofty rank or of the first class among what we 
 call statesmen. He is probably a person who owes his present 
 position entirely to his own merits and long exertions. He 
 has worked his way through a long and laborious career of 
 official exertions ; and his ambition is limited to the office 
 that he holds, or to some higher grade of the permanent 
 offices under government. Probably married at an early age, 
 he has to support and educate a large family out of his scanty 
 though sure income. Once or twice a year he dines with his 
 principal ; perhaps as often with some friend in parliament 
 or high office. But the greater part of his days are passed 
 out of all reach of aristocratic society ; he has a modest home 
 in the outskirts of London, with an equally modest establish- 
 ment : and the colonist who is on his road to * the Office/ 
 little imagines that it is the real ruler of the colonies that he 
 sees walking over one of the bridges, or driving his one-horse 
 chay, or riding cheek by jowl with him on the top of the 
 short coach, as he comes into town of a morning. 
 
 " Mr. Mothercountry's whole heart is in the business of his 
 office. Not insensible to the knowledge or the charms of the 
 power which he possesses, habit and a sense of duty are 
 perhaps often the real motives of the unremitting exertions, 
 by which alone he retains it. For this is the real secret of 
 his influence. Long experience has made him thoroughly 
 conversant with every detail of his business ; and long habit 
 has made his business the main, perhaps with the exception 
 of his family, the sole source of his interest and enjoyment. 
 By day and by night, at office or at home, his labour is 
 constant. No pile of despatches, with their multifarious 
 enclosures, no red -taped heap of colonial grievances or squab- 
 bles, can scare his practised eye. He handles with unfaltering 
 hand the papers at which his superiors quail : and ere they 
 have waded through one half of them, he suggests the course, 
 
OF THE COLONIAL OFFICE. 287 
 
 which the previous measures dictated by himself compel the 
 government to adopt. He alone knows on what principles 
 the predecessors of the noble or right honourable Secretary 
 acted before : he alone, therefore, can point out the step which 
 in pursuance of the previous policy it is incumbent to take : 
 and the very advice, which it is thus rendered incumbent on 
 the present Secretary of State to take, produces results that 
 will give him as sure a hold on the next Secretary of State. 
 
 " But with all this real power, Mr. Mothercountry never 
 assumes the airs of dictation to his principal. Every change 
 of the head of the department, though really consolidating 
 his power, gives occasion for a kind of mutiny against it. 
 The new Secretary enters with some purpose of independence : 
 he has heard of Mr. Mothercountry's influence ; and he is 
 determined that he will act on his own head. He goes on for 
 a while on this plan ; but it is sure to be no long time ere 
 something comes before him for which he is obliged to refer 
 to Mr. Mothercountry : he is pleased with his ready, shrewd, 
 and unobtrusive advice : he applies to him on the next occa- 
 sion with more confidence : he finds that Mr. Mothercountry 
 takes a great deal of trouble off his hands ; and great men are 
 sure at last to fall under the dominion of any man that will 
 save them trouble. By degrees, he begins to think that there 
 are some things which it is better to leave altogether to Mr. 
 Mothercountry ; and as to all he soon finds it prudent to 
 take no step until he has heard what Mr. Mothercountry has 
 to say about it. If things go smooth, his confidence in Mr. 
 Mothercountry rises : if they go ill, his dependence on him 
 is only the more riveted, because it is Mr. Mothercountry 
 alone who can get him through the colonial contest or Parlia- 
 mentary scrape in which he has involved himself. The more 
 independent he has been at first, the more of these scrapes he 
 has probably got himself into ; and the more dependent he 
 consequently becomes in the long run. The power of Mr. 
 Mothercountry goes on increasing from secretary to secretary, 
 and from month to month of each secretary's tenure of office ; 
 and the more difficult the government of the colonies becomes, 
 
288 MB. MOTHERCOUNTRY 
 
 the more entirely it falls into the hands of the only men in 
 the public service who really know anything about colonial 
 affairs. 
 
 " This is perhaps the best result of such a system : and our 
 experience of the follies and presumption of the only Secretary 
 of State that ever undertook to act for himself, is a proof that, 
 under the present system, Mr. Mothercountry's management 
 is better than that of the gentlemen whom he generally gets 
 put over his head. But the system of intrusting absolute 
 power (for such it is) to one wholly irresponsible, is obviously 
 most faulty. Thus, however, are our colonies ruled: and such 
 is the authority to which is committed that last appeal from 
 the colonies themselves, which is dignified with all these 
 vague phrases about the power, the honour, the supremacy, 
 and the wisdom of the mother-country. 
 
 " We have described the secret and irresponsible, but steady 
 rule of Mr. Mothercountry, in whom we have personified the 
 permanent and unknown officials of the Colonial Office in 
 Downing-street, as very much better for our colonies than that 
 to which they would be subjected, were the perpetually- shifting 
 secretaries and under-secretaries of state really to pretend to 
 conduct affairs of which they understand nothing. It must not 
 be inferred from this, that we think it a really good system. It 
 has all the faults of an essentially arbitrary government, in 
 the hands of persons who have little personal interest in the 
 welfare of those over whom they rule who reside at a distance 
 from them who never have ocular experience of their con- 
 dition who are obliged to trust to second-hand and one-sided 
 information and who are exposed to the operation of all 
 those sinister influences, which prevail wherever publicity and 
 freedom are not established. In intelligence, activity, and 
 regard for the public interests, the permanent functionaries of 
 " the Office" may be superior to the temporary head that the 
 vicissitudes of party politics give them ; but they must neces- 
 sarily be inferior to those persons in the colony, in whose 
 hands the adoption of the true practice of responsible govern- 
 ment would vest the management of local affairs. 
 
OF THE COLONIAL OFFICE. 289 
 
 " A thorough knowledge of the internal economy of this 
 number of different communities, situated at the most 
 distant points of the globe, having the most diverse climates, 
 races, productions, forms of government, and degrees of 
 wealth and civilization, is necessarily one which the best- 
 employed experience of the longest life can never be supposed 
 to give. From his entrance into his office, the necessary 
 labours of the day have occupied almost the whole of Mr. 
 Mothercountry's time and thoughts ; and though we will give 
 him credit for having picked up such information as elemen- 
 tary books can give, it cannot very well be imagined that he 
 has learnt from books, newspapers, and oral information, all 
 that mass of particulars respecting manners, things, and 
 persons, that is requisite for forming in the mind a complete 
 picture of the social and political, the physical as well as the 
 moral condition of those numerous countries. It is in the 
 very nature of duties so laborious as his, that Mr. Mother- 
 country should be able to attend to little except to the ques- 
 tions presented for his decision by the parties contending in 
 the colonies, and should form his notion of their condition 
 from these rather than from more extended reading and 
 observation. Compelled to examine the complaints and 
 answers of the various parties, he gradually imbibes the idea 
 that the whole state of affairs is set forth in these statements 
 and counter-statements. He fixes his eye on the grievances 
 and squabbles that occupy the addresses of Assemblies, the 
 despatches of governors, and the disputes of officials; and 
 gets to fancy, naturally enough, that these are the matters on 
 which the mind of the colony is intent, and on which its 
 welfare depends. Hence the result is, that since, in colonies 
 as elsewhere, the real interests of the community are over- 
 looked in such disputes, Mr. Mothercountry has at his fingers' 
 ends, after a long devotion to the subject, nothing better than 
 a very complete knowledge of very immaterial incidents ; and 
 that when he fancies he knows all about a colony, he has, in 
 fact, only been diverting his attention from everything that is 
 worth knowing respecting it. Thus, while the question of 
 
 U 
 
290 ME. MOTHERCOUNTRY 
 
 contending races was gradually breaking up the whole social 
 system of Lower Canada, Mr. Mothercountry, unconscious of 
 the mischief, thought that he was restoring order and satisfac- 
 tion by well-reasoned despatches on points of prerogative and 
 precedent. Experience may give Mr. Mothercountry more 
 information respecting the whole mass of our colonies than 
 any other individual probably possesses. But it is, after all, a 
 very incomplete information, and one which does not prevent 
 his continually committing those gross blunders of which our 
 colonial history is the record. 
 
 " This is the necessary consequence of the variety and dis- 
 tance of Mr. Mothercountry's dominions. He has, in addition, 
 the faults of that permanent and irresponsible power, com- 
 bined with subordinate position, which we always perceive in 
 a government of bureaus and offices. It is a position which 
 engenders not a little conceit ; and in whatever form Mr. 
 Mothercountry appears even in that of the humblest clerk 
 you always find out that he thinks, that he and his associates 
 in ' the Office' are the only people in the world who under- 
 stand anything about the colonies. He knows his power too, 
 and is excessively jealous of any encroachment on or resistance 
 to it. It is a power, he well knows, which has its origin in the 
 indolence and ignorance of others : he fancies, therefore, that 
 it is assailed by any one who understands anything of the 
 colonies, or takes any interest in them ; and to all such people, 
 therefore, he has a mortal dislike. 
 
 " And though Mr. Mothercountry has none of a fine gen- 
 tleman's aversion to work, but on the contrary devotes his 
 whole energies to his business, he likes to get over his work 
 with ae little trouble as possible. It is his tendency, therefore, 
 to reduce his work as much as he can to a mere routine ; to 
 act on general rules, and to avoid every possible deviation 
 from them ; and thus to render the details of his daily task as 
 much a matter of habit as he well can. A hatred of innova- 
 tion is a distinguishing feature of his, as of the general official 
 character. Everything new gives trouble : to enter upon a 
 new course with respect to distant communities, is always 
 
OF THE COLONIAL OFFICE. 291 
 
 matter of danger and doubt, unless the step is founded upon 
 a more complete knowledge of the state of things than Mr. 
 Mothercountry can afford time to acquire. He is very much 
 afraid of being attacked in Parliament or the newspapers ; and 
 as it is almost always a sufficient answer for the great mass of 
 men. that you have done in any particular instance what had 
 usually been done hitherto, he likes always to have this answer 
 to give. Nor do the common motives to exertion act on him 
 to induce him to labour in the work of improvement. He 
 well knows that he shall have none of the glory of improve- 
 ments in which the public take an interest. The credit of 
 these is sure to be ascribed to the chief Secretary. It is but 
 human nature, then, that he should hate innovation, and dis- 
 courage every project of improvement. Those who have 
 suggested any improvement in the system existing in our 
 colonies, or proposed to found new colonies on a new prin- 
 ciple, know to what a complete science the officials of the 
 colonial department have brought their mode of repelling all 
 such invasions of their domain. 
 
 "But the worst of all Mr. Mothercountry's faults is his 
 necessary subjection to sinister interests and cabals. Where - 
 ever the public cease to take an interest in what is going on, 
 the reign of cliques and cabals is sure to extend : and when- 
 ever the actions of the government are not guided by public 
 opinion, they inevitably fall under the influence of some 
 sinister interest. Every one of our colonies has its own jobs, 
 its own monopolies, and its own little knots of bustling and 
 intriguing jobbers. These spare no pains to* get the ear of 
 Mr. Mothercountry. Backed by some strong mercantile, or 
 official, or parliamentary connexion, they press their views on 
 him ; relying partly on their better knowledge of the peculiar 
 subject on which they have so deep an interest, partly on the 
 fear they can inspire by the threat of an appeal to Parliament 
 or the press. Then, again, there are persons whose past 
 official position and party connexions enable them to bring a 
 strong party influence to bear on him. On one or two points 
 there has been excited a powerful interest, which has organized 
 
 u2 
 
292 MR. MOTHERCOUNTRY 
 
 itself into associations, represented by constituted bodies and 
 accredited officers, always ready to push their own views, and 
 able to excite a strong public feeling on their particular point, 
 if their representations should be neglected. While these 
 narrow views and partial interests have these active organs, 
 the colonial public and the interests of the colony have rarely 
 any, never equally efficient representatives A long experience 
 has taught Mr. Mothercountry, that without conciliating these 
 various juntas, he never can hope to govern quietly, but that 
 if he manage to get their concurrence, he runs little risk of 
 effectual opposition from either the British or colonial public. 
 His whole aim, therefore, necessarily is to conciliate all of 
 these bodies, or when their interests happen to run counter, 
 either to give each its turn, or to conciliate the most powerful. 
 One day, accordingly, we find him conciliating the knot of 
 merchants that enjoy the existing monopoly ; another day, 
 those who are exerting themselves for a freer trade ; at one 
 time he is holding out his hand to the West-India interest ; 
 another time he seems to be entirely under the influence of 
 the abolitionists. These are the sectional influences under 
 which such a government is sure to fall, owing to its freedom 
 from responsibility to a wide public opinion. 
 
 "The worst instance of the operation of these secret 
 influences on Mr. Mothercountry is to be found in the colonial 
 appointments. If he were left to himself, and could appoint 
 as he chose, he might doubtless job a little, but, on the whole, 
 he would probably pay some regard to competence in some of 
 his appointments. But the patronage of the Colonial Office 
 is the prey of every hungry department of our government. 
 On it the Horse Guards quarters its worn-out general officers 
 as governors : the Admiralty cribs its share ; and jobs which 
 even parliamentary rapacity would blush to ask from the 
 Treasury, are perpetrated with impunity in the silent realm 
 of Mr. Mothercountry. O'Connell, we are told, after very 
 bluntly informing Mr. Ruthven that he had committed a fraud 
 which would for ever unfit him for the society of gentlemen 
 at home, added, in perfect simplicity and kindness of heart, 
 
OF THE COLONIAL OFFICE. 293 
 
 that if he would comply with his wishes and cease to contest 
 Kildare, he might probably be able to get some appointment 
 for him in the colonies. 
 
 "It is, however, not only of the cliques and interests at 
 home that Mr. Mothercountry is thus placed under the influ- 
 ence. The same causes that render the action of small knots 
 of men operative on him in England, place him under the 
 same necessity of courting the good opinion and disarming 
 the hostility of every well-organized interest in the colonies. 
 Now, the strongest and most active interest in a colony is 
 always that of the little knot that governs it the family 
 compact, which Lord Durham has described as being the 
 necessary result of the irresponsible government of our 
 colonies. Creatures of the Colonial Office, as these compacts 
 are, they nevertheless manage to acquire a strength which 
 renders them very formidable to Mr. Mothercountry. Even 
 when he gets on bad terms with them, he never abandons the 
 hope of reconciliation with them, or the demeanour necessary 
 to insure it. But you will rarely find him quarrelling with 
 them. A despotic and irresponsible authority is always 
 obliged to govern by a small knot of men ; and these colonial 
 compacts are the natural agents of the compact at home. 
 Thus the mischiefs produced by irresponsibility in the colony, 
 are augmented and perpetuated by the responsibility to Mr. 
 Mothercountry. 
 
 " The working of the appeal to Mr. Mothercountry in fact 
 only adds to the amount of colonial misgovernment ; and 
 instead of obviating the mischiefs of the system pursued in 
 the colonies themselves, it only adds another element of 
 delay, obstruction, and inconsistency. Bad as is the govern- 
 ment of Turkish Pachas, the Porte never interferes except to 
 make matters worse ; and ill as the colonial compacts manage, 
 the appeal from them to Mr. Mothercountry only adds fresh 
 fuel to colonial irritation and individual grievance. His 
 ignorance of the real state of affairs in the colony, his habits 
 of routine, his dependence on the secret cliques and interests 
 at home, produce an invariable tendency on his part to stave 
 
294 MR. MOTHERCOUNTRY 
 
 off the decision of every question referred to him. Every 
 matter referred to him is sure to be referred back to the 
 colony ; and every successive answer to every fresh reference 
 only serves him to raise some new pretext for postponing his 
 decision. He is engaged in a perpetual struggle with the 
 colonial compacts, in which he and they have no object but 
 that of throwing on each other the responsibility of deciding. 
 With this view, he has perfected a complete art of irrelevant 
 and apparently purposeless correspondence, by which he 
 manages to spin out an affair until it either evaporates into 
 something absolutely insignificant, or until at any rate the 
 patience and interest of all parties concerned are completely 
 worn out. For this purpose, he has invented and brought to 
 considerable perfection a style peculiar to colonial despatches ; 
 a style in which the words of the English language are used 
 with a very admirable grace and facility, but at the same time 
 with an utter absence of meaning. In this singular style we 
 hope some day to give our readers a lesson ; but we need now 
 only observe that it is of great utility in enabling Mr. Mother- 
 country to keep up hopes of a decision, while he is leading 
 his reader further and further away from it. If any decision 
 is got, it is generally on some point that virtually leaves the 
 question at issue undecided. But sometimes even the sem- 
 blance of decision is omitted ; and the systematic postpone- 
 ment merges into the neglect of absolute oblivion. Thus it 
 has been known, that even reserved acts of colonial parlia- 
 ments have been poked away in one of Mr. Mothercountry's 
 pigeon-holes, and never brought out of it till the period in 
 which they could receive the necessary sanction had passed : 
 and in another instance, a colonist who inquired for a private 
 act, on which his whole property depended, was told that 
 instead of having received her Majesty's assent, it was no- 
 where to be found. 
 
 "But the appeal to Mr. Mothercountry in individual cases 
 is even more mischievous to the parties concerned. It is a 
 mere device in general for prolonging the tortures of the 
 unhappy victim, who, bandied about from colony to England, 
 

 OF THE COLONIAL OFFICE. 295 
 
 from Secretary to Secretary, from Under- Secretary to Under- 
 secretary, from clerk to clerk, wastes away hope and existence, 
 as a subject of Mr. Mothercountry's systematic procrastination. 
 " There are rooms in the Colonial Office, with old and 
 meagre furniture, book-cases crammed with colonial gazettes 
 and newspapers, tables covered with baize, and some old and 
 crazy chairs scattered about, in which those who have personal 
 applications to make, are doomed to wait until the interview 
 can be obtained. Here, if perchance you should some day be 
 forced to tarry, you will find strange, anxious-looking beings, 
 who pace to and fro in feverish impatience, or sit dejected at 
 the table, unable in the agitation of their thoughts to find any 
 occupation to while away their hours, and starting every time 
 that the door opens, in hopes that the messenger is come to 
 announce that their turn is arrived. These are men with 
 colonial grievances. The very messengers know them, their 
 business, and its hopelessness, and eye them with pity as they 
 bid them wait their long and habitual period of attendance. 
 No experienced eye can mistake their faces, once expressive 
 of health, and confidence, and energy, now worn by hopes 
 deferred, and the listlessness of prolonged dependence. One 
 is a recalled governor, boiling over with a sense of mortified 
 pride, and frustrated policy ; another, a judge, recalled for 
 daring to resist the compact of his colony; another, a mer- 
 chant, whose whole property has been destroyed by some job 
 or oversight ; another, the organ of the remonstrances of 
 some colonial parliament ; another, a widow struggling for 
 some pension, on which her hopes of existence hang ; and 
 perhaps another is a man whose project is under consideration. 
 Every one of these has passed hours in that dull but anxious 
 attendance, and knows every nook and corner of this scene of 
 his sufferings. The grievance originated probably long years 
 ago, and bandied about between colony and home, by letter or 
 by interview, has dragged on its existence thus far. One 
 comes to have an interview with the Chief Secretary ; one, who 
 has tried Chief and Under Secretaries in their turn, is now 
 doomed to waste his remonstrances on some clerk. One has 
 
296 MR. MOTHERCOUNTRY. 
 
 been waiting days to have his first interview ; another, weeks 
 to have his answer to his memorial ; another, months in ex- 
 pectation of the result of a reference to the colony ; and some 
 reckon the period of their suffering hy years. Some are 
 silent ; some utter aloud their hopes or fears, and pour out 
 their tale on their fellow-sufferers ; some endeavour to con- 
 ciliate by their meekness ; some give vent to their rage, when, 
 after hours of attendance, the messenger summons in their 
 stead some sleek contented-looking visitor, who has sent up 
 his name only the moment before, but whose importance as a 
 Member of Parliament, or of some powerful interest or society, 
 obtains him an instant interview. And if by chance you should 
 see one of them at last receive the long-desired summons, you 
 will be struck at the nervous reluctance with which he avails 
 himself of the permission. After a short conference, you will 
 generally see him return with disappointment stamped on his 
 brow, and, quitting the office, wend his lonely way home to 
 despair, or perhaps to return to his colony and rebel. These 
 chambers of woe are called tJie Sighing Rooms : and those 
 who recoil from the sight of human suffering, should shun 
 the ill-omened precincts." Responsible Government for Colo- 
 nies. London: James Ridgway. 1840. 
 
297 
 
 LETTER XLIIL 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 SKETCH OF A PLAN OF MUNICIPAL-FEDERATIVE GOVERN- 
 MENT FOR COLONIES; WITH AN EPISODE CONCERNING 
 
 SIR JAMES STEPHEN AND THE BIRTHRIGHT OF 
 EXGLISHMEX. 
 
 SIXCE it is the constitutional law of a colony, 
 whatever it may be, which necessarily forms the 
 ties by which the dependency is bound to the empire, 
 the subject of the imperial connexion is involved in the 
 question of what the constitutional law should be. 
 
 I assume that the municipal is the right principle 
 on which to frame a colonial constitution. The 
 colonists themselves should be authorized by express 
 delegation, to do within the colony whatever the 
 imperial power has no object in preventing, or in 
 regulating according to its own views. They should 
 be empowered, in the words of one of the old 
 charters (2nd Grant to Virginia, by James L, 1609), 
 "to make, ordain, and establish all manner of orders, 
 laws, directions, instructions, forms, and ceremonies 
 of government and magistracy, fit and necessary, for 
 and concerning the government of the said colony 
 and plantation; and the same at all times hereafter, 
 
298 COLONIAL CONSTITUTION. 
 
 to abrogate, revoke, or change, as they in their good 
 discretion shall think to be fittest for the good of the 
 adventurers and inhabitants there." But these words, 
 standing alone, would give unlimited local power. 
 The grant of power, therefore, should be accompanied 
 by conditions or restrictions concerning the matters 
 intended to be at all times subject to direct imperial 
 control. 
 
 Whilst reflecting on the frame-work of a colonial 
 constitution, I once imagined that it might be possible 
 to write down with precision, in two distinct classes, 
 the empowering and the conditional or restrictive 
 provisions of a charter, so that whatever the colonists 
 might do, and whatever they might not do, should be 
 fully expressed. But an attempt to proceed in this 
 way soon convinced me of its futility. It soon became 
 obvious, that volumes might be filled with a bare 
 statement of the things which the colonists might do, 
 and would after all be a very imperfect permissive 
 code. In beginning that idle attempt, I forgot the 
 suggestions of all experience. All experience as well 
 as reason suggests, that the empowering part of a 
 colonial charter should consist of a few plain, general, 
 and all-comprehensive terms. On the other hand, 
 reason and experience alike point out, that an opposite 
 course should be pursued in framing the restrictive 
 and regulating clauses of a charter. Whatever the 
 imperial power chooses that the colonists shall not do, 
 and whatever mode of doing any thing it chooses 
 to insist upon, should be very fully and parti- 
 cularly expressed. The best of the old charters was 
 most imperfect in this respect. All the charters, 
 for example, provided that local legislation should not 
 
MUNICIPAL CHARTER. 299 
 
 be " contrary" or " repugnant" to the laws of England. 
 What this meant, nobody has ever yet been able to 
 find out. If it was intended that the local laws 
 should not be different from those of England, the 
 limitation utterly contradicted the grant ; and it was, 
 besides, a very absurd provision, since the grant gave 
 power to " make any laws whatsoever," because the 
 colonists, from the great difference of their circum- 
 stances, were sure to need laws materially different 
 from those which suited the people of England. We 
 may conclude, therefore, that this was not the purpose 
 of the condition. Whatever its purpose was, the con- 
 dition itself was always inoperative from vagueness. 
 But that same vagueness gave it fatal effect as a 
 subject of dispute between the Crown and colonists. 
 The unavoidable disregard of this provision by the 
 colonists, furnished the Crown with pretexts for 
 accusing them of violating their charters, and with 
 pretexts for violating them itself. Any degree of 
 vagueness or obscurity in a restrictive provision 
 would necessarily be a source of discord, not only 
 between the Crown and the colonists, but between 
 parties in the colony who would inevitably put different 
 interpretations on words open to more than one. And 
 besides the discord, the whole subject matter of the 
 indefinite provision would be in a state of uncertainty 
 and precariousness ; the very state which is not 
 according to law. In drawing a municipal charter, 
 therefore, it should be a rule admitting of no exception, 
 to express restrictive provisions with such fulness 
 and particularity as to prevent all mistake or doubt 
 as to the nature and extent of the intended limitation. 
 For the same reason, the same rule should be strictly 
 
300 IMPERIAL CONTROL. 
 
 observed in defining the modus operandi of local 
 powers delegated to the colonists subject to the con- 
 dition of being exercised in a particular way. 
 
 The manner of granting comprises substance as well 
 as form; but the amount and character, or subject, of 
 limitations and special directions is a consideration 
 perfectly distinct from the manner of imposing them. 
 What are the proper subjects of limitations and special 
 directions? They may be divided into matters of 
 substance and matters of form. As an example of the 
 first, I would mention the disposal of waste lands ; a 
 function in the right exercise of which the imperial 
 power has the deepest interest. Of the second, the 
 form of the colonial legislature is a good example ; for 
 it is an object of the highest importance to the impe- 
 rial power, both as a means of promoting the emigra- 
 tion of valuable colonists, fit leaders and employers of 
 the poorer class of emigrants, and as a means of har- 
 monizing as far as possible the national character of 
 the colonists with that of the people of the mother- 
 country, that the creative institutions of the colony 
 should resemble those of the metropolis. If these 
 examples suifi.ce for exhibiting the nature of the sub- 
 jects as to which control by the imperial power should 
 be embodied in a colonial charter, this rule may be 
 deduced from them; that the subjects of imperial con- 
 trol should be those only, as to which the imperial 
 power has some object of its own to accomplish by 
 means of the control. 
 
 But for the application of this rule I pretend to lay 
 down no supplementary rule. This is a point upon 
 which opinions will necessarily differ. There are not 
 perhaps a dozen people who hold, or could be brought 
 
LIMITED SUFFRAGE. 301 
 
 to hold speculatively, the very same opinion with 
 rd to the matters as to which the imperial power 
 < >bjects of its own to serve by locally controlling a 
 colony. Practically most people would agree on this 
 question, if the question were made practical by a 
 Ministry having decided opinions on the question, and 
 proposing a measure founded upon them. Till that 
 shall happen (the supposed event, now more than ever, 
 appears far distant), any full definition of these par- 
 ticulars would only be a butt for the tribe of Mother- 
 country to shoot at. Instead, therefore, of attempting 
 to define completely what should be the subjects of 
 imperial control, I will only mention in general 
 terms a few that have occurred to myself. 
 
 The most important of them, of course, is the form 
 of the colonial legislature. In order to make it har- 
 monize with that of the mother-country, it should be 
 representative, aristocratic, and monarchical. 
 
 If I could please myself in this particular, the 
 electoral franchise should be so limited by a property 
 qualification, as to deprive the poorest immigrants 
 and settlers, which is another expression for the most 
 ignorant, of the superior influence in the legislature 
 which universal suffrage bestows on the most numerous 
 das* : for besides the ordinary objections to universal 
 suffrage for a people most of whom are very ignorant, 
 there are two others peculiarly applicable to new 
 countries; namely, the constant influx of strangers, 
 and the roving disposition of fresh colonists. 
 
 These reasons were urgently pressed upon Lord 
 ("in-y's notice whilst he was framing a constitution for 
 Xi_w Zealand. I inclose the copy of a letter which 
 some colonists who were in England addressed to him 
 
302 LORD GREY AND 
 
 at the time, and in which the objections to the universal 
 suffrage that he adopted, are fully set forth.* Of this 
 letter Lord Grey took no notice ; probably because its 
 objections to a universal suffrage tallied with some 
 contained in that letter of mine to Mr. Gladstone 
 which had blistered his jealous temper. But, however 
 this may be, other efforts were made to save New 
 Zealand from the evils, which it was known that he 
 intended to inflict on the colony by making universal 
 suffrage the basis of its constitutional law. Amongst 
 these one is so instructive, that I must trouble you 
 with a brief account of it. 
 
 After Lord Grey had been for some time engaged 
 by himself in attempting to make a constitution for 
 New Zealand, it became known that he had given up 
 the task, and handed it over to Mr. (now Sir James) 
 Stephen, who really framed the constitution that was 
 promulgated by Lord Grey, and destroyed by him 
 before it could get into operation. The colonists, 
 therefore, who had in vain protested against the suf- 
 frage by letter to Lord Grey, now induced a Director 
 of the New- Zealand Company, Mr. Aglionby, who 
 fully agreed with them upon this point, to obtain an 
 official interview with Mr. Stephen, and repeat their 
 objections. At first, the usually grave old chief of the 
 tribe of Mothercountry playfully quizzed Mr. Ag- 
 lionby, the English Radical, for objecting to an 
 unlimited suffrage : but when the objector, in the sim- 
 plicity of his honest heart, explained, that though he 
 approved of household suffrage for this country, there 
 are peculiar objections to it for a new colony viz., the 
 
 '* This letter, which very completely exposed, by anticipation, 
 the defects and vices of the last constitution bestowed by imperial 
 Britain on a colony, will be found in an Appendix. 
 
SIR JAMES STEPHEN. 303 
 
 constant influx of strangers and the roving disposition 
 of fresh colonists Mr. Stephen ceased joking, and de- 
 clared with remarkable earnestness and solemnity, that 
 his conscience would not allow him to have a hand in 
 depriving any of her Majesty's colonial subjects of their 
 birthright ! So a constitution was framed and pro- 
 mulgated, under which the party-character of a general 
 election in the colony might have been determined by 
 the arrival of a few shipfulls of Dorsetshire paupers 
 or Milesian-Irish peasants. This provision, however, 
 insured the early overthrow of the constitution by 
 Lord Grey himself. Of course Mr. Stephen had not 
 the slightest view to that result in standing up on this 
 occasion for that birthright of Englishmen, which has 
 been smothered almost out of memory by his long 
 administration of colonial affairs in the name of a 
 succession of Principal Secretaries of State. Never- 
 theless, it may be as well to note that Mr. Taylor 
 dedicates his exposure of the Jesuitical statesmanship 
 of the Colonial Office to Mr. Stephen, in the following 
 words : " To James Stephen, Esq., Under Secretary 
 of State for the colonies, as to the man within the 
 author's knowledge in whom the active and contem- 
 plative faculties most strongly meet, are inscribed 
 these disquisitions concerning the attributes of a 
 statesman.' 7 
 
 This episode is by way of answer to some questions 
 in your second letter. A property qualification in 
 land, its amount in extent or value being such that 
 few could possess it except permanent settlers having 
 a deep interest in the future well-being of the colony, 
 would yet, from the facility of obtaining landed pro- 
 perty in a new country by means only of industry 
 and steadiness, render the franchise attainable by the 
 
304 LOVE OF DISTINCTION. 
 
 steadier and more intelligent portion of the working 
 class : and I think it desirable that if there were any 
 property qualification for representatives, it should 
 not exceed that of voters, so that morally-qualified 
 members of the working class might take a direct part 
 in legislation. 
 
 With respect to a second legislative body, resem- 
 bling the British House of Lords, I think that the 
 resemblance should be real, not a mere sham of 
 resemblance as in Canada and others of the present 
 representative colonies. A second chamber composed 
 of mere nominees of the executive, holding their seats 
 for life, is an absurd and mischievous institution. It 
 provides, not for more legislative deliberation, but for 
 conflicts and impediments instead of legislation. As 
 far as I am aware, no feasible substitute for it has ever 
 been proposed. People who have never seriously 
 reflected for a moment on the founding or creative 
 attributes of colonization, laugh if one proposes that 
 the second chamber in a colony should be hereditary ; 
 yet many a one of them would give his ears to be a 
 hereditary legislator himself. When the late Lord Grey 
 was expected to advise a great increase of the peerage, 
 three hundred persons are said to have applied to him 
 for the distinction. Men do not forfeit their love of dis- 
 tinction by becoming colonists. It appears to me that 
 the progress of colonization would be vastly accelerated, 
 and the colonization itself immeasurably improved, if 
 the colonies, instead of affording no distinctions but 
 those which belong to bureaucracy and free-masonry, 
 held out to valuable immigrants the prospect of such 
 distinction as every young lawyer in this country, every 
 merchant and manufacturer when he sets out in trade, 
 every young officer in the army or navy, fancies that 
 
HEREDITARY DISTINCTION. 305 
 
 tin* sovereign may perchance bestow upon him some 
 day or other as the reward of great success in his 
 career. Those who smile at the suggestion, are 
 perhaps moved by the contrast between their own 
 sentiment of little respect for colonies, and of great 
 respect for the dignity which it is proposed to esta- 
 bli>h in those despised portions of the empire. But 
 })c this as it may, that "provident circumspection," 
 which the preamble of Baltimore's charter attributes 
 to the great colonizer, and which is the first quality 
 of a colonizing authority, would not reject my proposal 
 because it is most ridiculed by those who are least 
 acquainted with the whole subject. I propose, then, 
 that the second legislative body shall be hereditary, 
 but with a condition. The condition is, that an 
 inheriting member of the council should possess the 
 same property qualification as his predecessor. This 
 property qualification should be very high; such a 
 permanent landed property as would, upon the whole, 
 render the council a fair type of the class of settlers 
 having the greatest property interest in the well-being 
 of the colony. If a member of the council got rid of 
 his qualification, he should forfeit his seat. A good 
 system of registration would at all times make known 
 whether or not he continued to possess the qualifica- 
 tion. 
 
 The members of council should be appointed by the 
 chief executive magistrate of the colony, but only on 
 the advice of persons responsible, like cabinet ministers 
 here, to the representative body. For in order to 
 complete the resemblance of the provincial to the im- 
 perial constitution in order to constitute a harmo- 
 nious government, legislative and executive, instead 
 
 x 
 
306 KESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT. 
 
 of subjecting the colonists to the miseries of a "con- 
 stituted anarchy " it is indispensably requisite that 
 the head of the executive, being himself a third 
 branch of the legislature, with a veto upon all legis- 
 lative acts, and with every other attribute of the 
 sovereign at home, should be himself irresponsible to 
 the colonists by means of being surrounded by respon- 
 sible advisers. The British constitution, having grown 
 up by slow degrees, and never having been written, 
 contains no express provision to this effect; but the 
 custom is the hinge upon which our whole system of 
 government turns, the oil which gives smoothness to 
 the working of the whole machine. This is the part 
 of our constitution, which at the worst renders mo- 
 narchy a cheap and excellent substitute for the Presi- 
 dential Election, and which foreigners, notwithstanding 
 their numerous imitations of our fundamental law, are 
 still, and in but a few cases, only beginning to under- 
 stand. In order to give a colony the immediate benefit 
 of it, we cannot wait to let it grow from the seed as 
 it has grown here, but we must transplant a perfect 
 offshoot: we must write the provision down in the 
 colonial charter. I propose, therefore, to insert in the 
 charter two clauses, providing, first, that no act of the 
 head of the executive shall be valid unless performed 
 on the advice of an executive council; and secondly, 
 that members of the executive council shall be re- 
 mo veable, or rather removed ipso facto, by an address 
 to the head of the executive from the representative 
 branch of the legislature praying for their removal. 
 
 The chief magistracy, or head of the executive and 
 third branch of the legislature, remains to be provided : 
 and here it is, I think, necessary to establish a wide 
 difference between the colonial and imperial constitu- 
 
COLONIAL SOVEREIGN. 307 
 
 tions. The imperial sovereign is a person as well as 
 an institution, and we reverence the one as much as 
 we value the other. To transplant a complete off- 
 shoot of the whole is, therefore, simply impossible. 
 The nearest approach to doing so would be by the 
 erection of Canada, for example, into an independent 
 monarchy, and filling its throne with a child of the 
 British Sovereign. But the colonies are intended to 
 be subordinate to the empire ; and though it would, 
 I think, be wise to make the younger branches of our 
 royal family, whose social position here is anything 
 but agreeable, subordinate sovereigns of the more im- 
 portant colonies, yet subordination requires that the 
 colonial chief magistrate should be appointed and 
 removeable by the imperial. I am sure, however, 
 that he ought to be appointed like an English judge, 
 quam diti bene gesserit, so as not to be removable ex- 
 cept for proved misconduct. If he were removeable 
 by address to the Crown from both Houses of Parlia- 
 ment, imperial objects would be sufficiently guarded ; 
 and in order to guard the colony against such uncon- 
 stitutional violences and follies on the part of the chief 
 magistrate as provoke revolutionary proceedings by 
 the people in order to give the colonists an equivalent 
 for the memory of expulsion from the throne and of a 
 royal scaffold in order that the head of the executive 
 in the colony should not violate with impunity the 
 provision binding him to act according to the advice 
 of a responsible executive council a petition to the 
 Crown from both branches of the colonial legislature 
 for the removal of the local chief-magistrate, should 
 be declared in the charter to be of the same force as 
 addresses from both Houses of Parliament. And it 
 
 x 2 
 
308 MEANS OF ALTERING A 
 
 appears by no means incompatible with colonial sub- 
 ordination, that the colonies should be allowed some 
 voice in even the selection of their governors. 
 
 As the circumstances of a colony are open to greater, 
 more frequent, and more sudden fluctuations than 
 those of an old country, frequent elections of the 
 representative body should be guaranteed by the 
 charter. 
 
 I omit minor provisions, such as a guarantee for 
 frequent meetings of the legislature, the numbers of 
 such legislative bodies, and the modes of proroguing 
 and dissolving the provincial parliament. But there 
 remains to be stated a provision of the highest im- 
 portance. 
 
 In order to retain for the imperial power the most 
 complete general control over the colony, the colonial 
 constitution, instead of being granted immutably and 
 in perpetuity, as our old municipal charters were, 
 should, in the charter itself, be declared liable to revo- 
 cation or alteration by the Crown upon address from 
 both Houses of Parliament. 
 
 But in order to guard against the unavoidable in- 
 difference of Parliament to colonial questions, and 
 their proneness to adopt any colonial suggestion of 
 the Ministry of the day ; which body again is always 
 disposed to adopt without examining any suggestion 
 of the Colonial Minister; who, lastly, must generally 
 take his ideas from the nameless members of his Office 
 in order, that is, to prevent Mr. Mothercountry from 
 meddling with colonial constitutions I think it would 
 be most useful to erect some tribunal open to the 
 public, presided over by a high legal functionary, and 
 moved by barristers-at-law, to which should be sub- 
 
COLONIAL CONSTITUTION. 309 
 
 mitted the grounds on which the Ministry of the day 
 proposed to revoke or alter a colonial constitution : 
 and unless such tribunal decided that the grounds 
 were sufficient, the question should not be submitted 
 at all to the decision of Parliament. This tribunal 
 would be an improvement on the Supreme Court of 
 the United States, which determines questions of dif- 
 ference between the State and Federal governments; 
 for however a change in the American constitution 
 may at any time be required^ it can only be brought 
 about by the operation of a cumbrous elective ma- 
 chinery which has never yet been called into action. 
 To the proposed English tribunal, other questions 
 between the colony and the mother-country might be 
 submitted, before being submitted to Parliament, 
 besides that of an alteration in the fundamental law 
 of the colony : and thus all such questions, instead of 
 being determined arbitrarily and in secret, or left un- 
 settled, by the irresponsible clerks of the Colonial Office, 
 would be brought by the parties to it the Crown on 
 one side, the Colony on the other, either having the 
 right to initiate a cause before an open court, where 
 it would be argued by practised advocates, viewed by 
 the judge in all its aspects, and finally decided in the 
 face of the public according to law. 
 
 Colonists and colonial reformers at home have pro- 
 posed that every colony should have a representative 
 in the British House of Commons. The object of the 
 Miirirestion is most desirable, but, I think, not attainable 
 by that means. The object is to bestow on every colony 
 the great advantage of being able to hold legitimate 
 communication with the imperial public and govern- 
 ment. It is not supposed that the vote of a colonial 
 
310 COLONIAL AGENTS. 
 
 member of the House of Commons would serve any good 
 purpose, but that if he were a member of the imperial 
 legislature, the imperial public and government would 
 listen to him as the special representative of the colony ; 
 would never come to a decision concerning the colony 
 without hearing what he had to say about it; and 
 would give their attention to suggestions originating 
 with himself. And all this is probably true. But 
 might he not be quite as effectually the representative 
 of the colony at home, without being in Parliament? 
 If he might, the whole advantage for the colony would 
 be secured, without having recourse to a measure, 
 which really is open to very serious objections, and 
 still more opposed to some of John Bull's probably 
 unconquerable prejudices. 
 
 By recurring to the colonizing wisdom of our an- 
 cestors, we shall discover a simple, effectual, and 
 unobjectionable means of attaining the object in view. 
 Under the municipal authority vested in them by our 
 old colonial charters, the old colonies used to appoint 
 "Agents" to reside in England, and to serve as a 
 medium of communication between the colonial and 
 imperial governments. Benjamin Franklin was agent 
 for Pennsylvania, Mr. Eoebuck for the House of 
 Assembly of Lower Canada, and the late Mr. Burge 
 for Jamaica. What a cost in money, trouble, and 
 shame, the empire might have saved, if the imperial 
 government had lent a favourable ear to these dis- 
 tinguished representatives of colonies ! But the valu- 
 able institution of colonial representatives at home, 
 has gradually fallen into discredit and practical disuse 
 since the Colonial Office was instituted; and it exists 
 now, for the most part, with no effect but that of 
 
REPRESENTATIVES AT HOME. 311 
 
 adding a few sinecures to the patronage of the Colonial 
 Office. For the Colonial Office, having got to be the 
 ival government of the colonies, virtually appoints the 
 colonial agents who purport to be accredited to it by 
 the colonies! 
 
 Supposing the government of the colony to be 
 really municipal, it would itself appoint its Agent. If 
 it were the organ of the portion of the colonists having 
 the greatest interest in the colony's well-doing, it 
 would select for Agent or Resident in England one of 
 the most respectable and capable of the colonists. 
 Such a person, so accredited to the imperial govern- 
 ment, would be a personage here, and would have 
 weight accordingly with our government and public. 
 He would keep the colony informed of matters at home, 
 with which it behoved the colonists to be acquainted; 
 and he might powerfully forward the interests of both 
 colony and mother-country, by helping to promote the 
 emigration of capital and labour : for in this branch 
 of colonization, there is no more urgent want than 
 some authority residing in the mother-country, but 
 identified with and responsible to the colonists. 
 
 The Agents (Representatives seems a better title) 
 would, of course, be appointed and removeable by the 
 governor of the colony on the advice of his responsible 
 council of ministers, and paid by the colony. 
 
 If the ancient institution of colonial agency at home 
 were thus revived and improved, as it might easily be, 
 the effect would be to add another powerful tie to the 
 connexion between the colony and the mother-country. 
 To some extent a Representative would have the 
 functions of the representatives of the States of 
 America in the United- States Congress. Our system 
 
312 RESTRICTIONS. 
 
 of colonial government, viewed as a whole, would be 
 federative as well as municipal; 
 
 Recurring to the charter of colonial government, 
 this should declare that the legislative and executive 
 government prescribed by it should have unlimited 
 power within the colony, " excepting only, as is by 
 these presents otherwise provided and directed." The 
 old charters generally, after giving the local govern- 
 ment power to make any laws whatsoever, with some 
 specified exceptions, went on to grant certain other 
 powers, such as that of erecting judicatories, or em- 
 ploying a militia. After the main grant, such pro- 
 visions would be mere surplusage and encumbrance, 
 as they obviously are in the old charters. The de- 
 liberate omission, however, of all particulars from the 
 granting portion of the charter, renders it the more 
 necessary to be very careful in setting down the ex- 
 ceptions. 
 
 The exceptions which occur to me at present, are, 
 
 I. Whatever relates to the employment, command, 
 and discipline of her Majesty's forces, by land and sea, 
 within the colony at all times ; and, during war time, 
 in case of any attack upon the colony, the command 
 of the local militia and marine. 
 
 II. Whatever relates to intercourse on public 
 matters with the servants of any foreign power within 
 the colony, such as a consul or the captain of a man- 
 of-war, for the management of which the Governor 
 alone should have a special commission from the 
 Crown. 
 
 III. The functions of the post-office, so far as 
 relates to the transmission of letters to and from the 
 colony, which should be conducted by the British 
 
RESTRICTIONS. 313 
 
 master-General. The publication of two reports 
 on the post-office of Canada from a commission 
 appointed by Lord Sydenham, which were transmitted 
 to the Colonial Office by Sir Charles Bagot, would, 
 by itself, satisfy public opinion here, that the internal 
 post-office of a colony ought to be a business of the 
 local government, as it was under the old charters. 
 Indeed, the abuses of the local post-office in every 
 colony under pretended imperial management, are 
 perfectly monstrous; and it seems impossible to 
 prevent abuses, when distance, and the necessary 
 indifference of the British public with respect to post- 
 office management in a colony, put responsibility out 
 of the question. Moreover, the patronage of the local 
 post-office, the best that exists in a new country, is 
 an essential means to the well-working of a local 
 constitutional government. 
 
 IV. The most important exception is that of direc- 
 tions in the charter for the disposal of waste land, and 
 of the proceeds of its purchase-money, by the local 
 government. But this last subject, which is that of 
 colonization independently of government, will have 
 our exclusive attention after a few reflections, in my 
 next letter, on the probable operation of the proposed 
 system of municipal-federative government for colonies, 
 as a substitute for the central-bureaucratic-spoiled. 
 
314 
 
 LETTER XLIV. 
 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 
 
 SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE PROBABLE OPERATION OF 
 MUNICIPAL-FEDERATIVE GOVERNMENT FOR COLONIES, 
 AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR THE CENTRAL-BUREAUCRATIC- 
 SPOILED. A GRAND REFORM OF THE COLONIAL OFFICE. 
 
 ALLOW me to begin this letter with a request and 
 a warning. 
 
 I beg of you to understand, that the plan of 
 colonial government set forth in my last is intended 
 for a mere outline, and that I am conscious of its 
 being very imperfect as such. A complete plan, with 
 all the reasons for each provision, would be the proper 
 subject of a Report by a Parliamentary Commission 
 expressly charged with the framing of a plan. The 
 framing of a complete plan is not the proper business 
 of any individual: it is the duty of a Ministry, 
 supposing always that a British Ministry could be 
 induced to form definite ideas with respect to the 
 true principles of colonial government. Be pleased, 
 therefore, to consider my rough skeleton of a plan as 
 designed to be little more than an illustration of my 
 own view of those principles. 
 
 In the next place, I venture urgently to recommend, 
 
A TIME FOR ALL THINGS. 315 
 
 that you abstain from propounding to the House of 
 Commons anything like a plan intended to be com- 
 plete. The time for doing that is yet far off, and 
 may perhaps never come. If you did it prematurely, 
 you would make enemies but no friends; you would 
 incur the hostility of the whole tribe of Mothercountry, 
 without having brought public opinion up to the mark 
 of enabling you to brush aside their selfish objections 
 and malicious cavils. You would besides, startle the 
 ignorant whose name is Legion, bore the indifferent 
 who are still more numerous, and perhaps see the 
 House counted out in an early stage of your intended 
 exposition. There is a time for all things; and I 
 repeat, the time for action in this matter has not yet 
 arrived, except as regards the agitation of principles 
 and the promotion of inquiry. 
 
 Recurring to the principles which my sketch of a 
 plan is intended to illustrate, I would now beg of you 
 to consider how some such plan would operate hi 
 removing the political impediments and affording 
 encouragement to colonization. 
 
 The office of governor would be so much more 
 respectable, its tenure so much more secure (for gene- 
 rally it would be a life-tenure, and often, if the colo- 
 nists had a voice in the selection of governors, prac- 
 tically a tenure descending from father to son), and the 
 position of reigning, but not ruling, so much more com- 
 fortable, than the lot of governors can be under the 
 present system, that men of consequence and perhaps 
 high reputation would be candidates for the office of 
 subordinate sovereign. The provisions for meeting 
 cases of extreme misconduct on the part of governors, 
 a iv rather provisions against their occurrence; for 
 
316 WHAT A CHANGE! 
 
 assuredly, without some such means as those suggested 
 for making the governor irresponsible, but his advisers 
 responsible to the colonists, it is hardly possible that 
 a resemblance of the British constitution should be 
 for any long time administered, in a colony less for- 
 midable than Canada is now, without producing dis- 
 cord. I conclude, therefore, that British colonial 
 governors, besides possessing such personal importance 
 and character, as would induce the colonists cheer- 
 fully to treat them as subordinate sovereigns, would 
 be under the necessity, as the imperial sovereign is, 
 of either reigning constitutionally or ceasing to reign. 
 What a change ! 
 
 The governors not attempting to govern any more 
 than her Majesty does, and the Colonial Office not 
 meddling with local affairs except in matters reserved 
 for imperial administration, the great bulk of the 
 public functionaries in the colony would be colonists, 
 settlers, people not without any interest, but with the 
 greatest interest in the welfare of the colony; and 
 offices in the colony, as well as seats in the colonial 
 legislature, would generally be filled by colonists of 
 some distinction and known aptitude. The colony 
 would be governed with a view to its advantage. The 
 colonists themselves would have the power to spread 
 government into even the remotest settlements, by 
 means of instituting a system of municipalities subor- 
 dinate to their own. The whole field of colonial 
 ambition would be open to colonists. So surely, I 
 cannot help thinking, a very superior class of people 
 would be induced to emigrate. If this last effect of a 
 good colonial constitution took place, most of the 
 enumerated impediments to colonization would disap- 
 
COLONIAL PARTIES. 317 
 
 There would be an end of the low standard of 
 colonial morals and manners. The self-restraints 
 which belong to civilization, would be substituted for 
 the barbarous licence of colonial life : for the sense of 
 honour may be transplanted like the habit of crime ; 
 and even without a specific plan of religious provi- 
 sions, the supposed change in the character of our 
 emigration would by itself make some provision for 
 the restraints of religion as well as for those of honour. 
 And lastly, colonial party-politics would no longer 
 revolt emigrants of the better class, because free 
 government by party, with a suffrage not democratic, 
 would take the place of constituted democracy in 
 some colonies, and constituted anarchy in the others. 
 But there would still be hostile parties in a colony : 
 yes, parties instead of factions: for every colony 
 would have its " ins" and its u outs,' 7 and would be 
 governed as we are as every free community must 
 be in the present state of the human mind by the 
 emulation and rivalries, the bidding against each 
 other for public favour, of the party in power and 
 the party in opposition. Government by party, with 
 all its passions and corruptions, is the price that a 
 free country pays for freedom. But the colonies 
 would be free communities : their internal differences, 
 their very blunders, and their methods of correcting 
 them, would be all their own : and the colonists who 
 possessed capacity for public business the Pitts and 
 Foxes, the Broughams and Lyndhursts, the Peels and 
 IJussells of a colony, with their respective adherents 
 would govern by turns far better on the whole, we 
 may be sure, than it would be possible for any other 
 set of beings on earth to govern that particular 
 community. 
 
318 SAVTNG OF COST. 
 
 But let us suppose that the colonies were worse 
 governed by their own leading men than by the 
 Mothercountry tribe : even then, though the present 
 impediments to colonization would not be removed 
 but somewhat aggravated, still the imperial govern- 
 ment and people would be gainers. Judging from 
 ample experience and from a moment's reflection on 
 the nature of the British race, the government of 
 colonists by themselves, however bad it might seem to 
 us, would not seem bad to them : they would like it 
 and be very proud of it, just as on the whole we 
 Britons at home like and are proud of our government, 
 though it is often very bad in the eyes of philosophers 
 and other nations. The colonists, making their own 
 laws, imposing their own taxes, and appointing their 
 own functionaries, would be pleased with their govern- 
 ment, as every man is pleased with his own horse that 
 he bought or bred according to his own judgment : 
 for colonists would not be human, still less of the 
 British temper, if they were not always pretty well 
 satisfied with themselves and their own doings. Thus 
 the mother-country would, at the worst, be spared 
 the annoyance and shame of colonial discontent, and 
 complaint, and disaffection. The Canadian rebellions 
 and the present state of government or rather rebellion- 
 at-heart in many of our colonies, could not have 
 occurred under the proposed system. And finally, 
 we should be spared the whole cost of colonial 
 government as distinguished from colonial empire: 
 for, of course, if the colonists governed themselves 
 locally as respects legislation, taxation, and appoint- 
 ing to office, they must themselves pay for their 
 local establishments. Nor would they object to this : 
 
THE COLONIAL OFFICE. 319 
 
 on the contrary, they would prefer it. I see that 
 Lord Grey has recently proposed, that the salary of 
 governors which is now paid by the colony, shall be 
 paid by England : for what purpose ? with what effect 
 but that of increasing the power of the tribe of 
 Mothercountry. Under our old municipal system, 
 the colonists deemed it a privilege to raise the money 
 for their own government, because they found that it 
 enabled them to object with more reason to a meddling 
 with their local affairs by officials in England. So, in 
 our day, the obligation on colonies to defray the whole 
 cost of their internal government, would be one security 
 for the preservation of their municipal independence, 
 and would therefore be considered rather a benefit 
 than a burthen. Nor would any pecuniary burthen 
 be imposed upon them : on the contrary, they would 
 have less to pay than at present : for by nothing is 
 municipal more distinguished from central govern- 
 ment, than by its superior cheapness. Under the old 
 English municipal system, thirteen important colonies 
 obtained more government in each of them, than is 
 bestowed on all our present colonies together. Their 
 population nearly equalled that of all our present 
 colonies. Their thirteen very complete and satisfy- 
 ing governments cost altogether about one hundred 
 thousand pounds a year! a memorable proof, says 
 Adam Smith, of the little cost at which colonies may 
 be not only governed but well governed. 
 
 But what would become of the Colonial Office, if 
 all the colonies were placed on a footing of govern- 
 ment like that which makes the Channel Islands as 
 devotedly attached to the Crown of England as we 
 are here at home? It might remain to misgovern 
 
320 A GRAND REFORM, 
 
 the dependencies, which are not colonies : only in that 
 case, we should have to change its name. But even 
 its name might be preserved, if its functions, as 
 respects the true colonies, were denned to be the 
 administration of those colonial matters only, which 
 our system of municipal government specifically re- 
 served for imperial administration. In the exercise of 
 these functions, as they would be such as concerned 
 the imperial government and public only, it would be 
 made responsible like our own government, through 
 being watched and kept in order by the public opinion 
 of this country. Obviously, moreover, it would be a 
 separate department of the imperial government, for 
 administering executively the federative relations be- 
 tween the mother-country and the colonies, which, on 
 behalf of the colonies, would be administered by the 
 proposed colonial Representatives at home. But its 
 legislative power over the colonies would, of course, 
 be wholly abolished. Downing-street would undergo 
 a grand reform. Is there anybody not belonging to 
 the Office, and not being one of its interested hangers- 
 on, who thinks that it ought to be preserved as it is ? 
 If I had room and it were worth while, I would place 
 before you the views of the question of reforming the 
 Colonial Office, which were eagerly expressed by its 
 present Parliamentary organs, just before they were 
 trapped and tamed by the original Mr. Mothercountry. 
 It seems almost needless to mention, that under the 
 proposed reform of colonial government, or anything 
 like it, the practice of colonizing with convicts wear- 
 ing chains on their legs, and still more that of pouring 
 criminals into our colonies with pardons in their 
 pockets, would altogether cease, and would only be 
 
CLOSE OF THE SUBJECT. 321 
 
 remembered by us with a blush for having ever per- 
 mitted such abominations. 
 
 But even if, by these or any other and better means 
 (and I am far from clinging to my own plan as the 
 best), we succeeded in making the colonies not only 
 habitable for the better order of emigrants, but 
 places in which that class might enjoy, in addition 
 to the natural charms of colonization, both those 
 which arise from the gratification of pride and am- 
 bition, and those which belong to the creative 
 business of legislating for new communities, there 
 would still remain the economical impediment of 
 scarcity of labour for hire. We must now pro- 
 ceed, therefore, to the causes of that impediment, 
 and the means of removing them. I am in hopes of 
 being able to satisfy you, that measures which would 
 put an end to scarcity of labour for hire in the colo- 
 nies, would also give a great impulse to the progress 
 of colonization. If it should prove so, the mother- 
 country is deeply interested, politically and socially, 
 in this question of colonial economy. 
 
322 
 
 LETTER XLV. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 THE COLONIST, BY A SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF 
 SLAVERY, TRACES SCARCITY OF LABOUR IN NEW 
 COUNTRIES TO ITS SOURCE IN THE CHEAPNESS OF 
 LAND. 
 
 IT is strange that it should never have come into 
 the head of philosopher or philanthropist to ascer- 
 tain the causes of the revival of slavery by all the 
 nations of modern Europe which have engaged in 
 colonization. Political economists were hound to 
 make this inquiry; for without it their science is 
 incomplete at the very foundation: for slavery is a 
 question of labour, " the original purchase of all 
 things." 
 
 Philanthropists, however, have treated it as a moral 
 and religious question, attributing slavery at all times 
 and places, but especially in modern times and in 
 America, to the wickedness of the human heart. So 
 universal, indeed, is the doctrine, that we find it in 
 the most improbable of places; in the latest and 
 wisest of treatises on political economy, whose author 
 speaks of "the infernal spirit of the slave-master." 
 The infernal spirit of Abraham and Joshua ; of Socrates 
 
CAUSES OF SLAVERY. 323 
 
 :m<l Plato; of Cicero and Seneca; of Alfred the Great; 
 of Las ( 'a sis, who laid the foundation of negro slavery 
 in America; of Baltimore, Penn, and Washington! 
 These names alone show that the spirit of the slave- 
 master is not that love of oppression and cruelty, 
 which the exercise of unlimited power over his fellow- 
 creatures is apt to beget in man : that infernal spirit 
 is. and not universally, a mere effect of keeping slaves. 
 The universal spirit of the slave-master is his motive; 
 the state of mind that induces him to keep slaves ; the 
 spirit which, operating on individuals and commu- 
 nities, has ever been the immediate cause of slavery. 
 It is not a wicked or infernal spirit. Neither com- 
 munities nor individuals keep slaves in order to 
 indulge in oppression and cruelty. Those British 
 colonies and they are many which would get 
 slaves to-morrow if we would let them, are not more 
 wicked than we are : ihey are only placed in circum- 
 stances which induce s to long for the possession of 
 slaves notwithstanding the objections to it. These 
 circumstances, by producing the state of mind in 
 which slavery becomes desirable for masters, have 
 ever been the originating cause of slavery. 
 
 They are not moral, but economical circumstances : 
 they relate not to vice and virtue, but to production. 
 They are the circumstances, in which one man finds 
 it difficult or impossible to get other men to work 
 under his direction for wages. They are the circum- 
 stances, referring to a former letter, which stand in the 
 way of combination and constancy of labour, and 
 which all civilized nations, in a certain stage of their 
 advance from barbarism, have endeavoured to coun- 
 teract, and have in some measure counteracted, by 
 
 Y2 
 
JCAiji 
 
 324 SLAVERY A MAKESHIFT 
 
 means of some kind of slavery. Hitherto in this 
 world, labour has never been employed on any con- 
 siderable scale, with constancy and in combination, 
 except by one or other of two means; either by 
 hiring, or by slavery of some kind. What the prin- 
 ciple of association may do in the production of 
 wealth, and for the labouring classes, without either 
 slavery or hiring, remains to be seen ; but at present 
 we cannot rely upon it. Recurring, therefore, to 
 hiring and slavery as the only known means of 
 rendering industry very productive, let us now con- 
 sider what relation these two social arrangements bear 
 to each other. 
 
 Slavery is evidently a make-shift for hiring ; a pro- 
 ceeding to which recourse is had, only when hiring is 
 impossible or difficult. Slave labour is on the whole 
 much more costly than the labour of hired freemen ; 
 and slavery is also full of moral and political evils, 
 from which the method of hired labour is exempt. 
 Slavery, therefore, is not preferred to the method of 
 hiring: the method of hiring would be preferred if 
 there were a choice : but when slavery is adopted, there 
 is no choice: it is adopted because at the time and 
 under the circumstances there is no other way of 
 getting labourers to work Avith constancy and in com- 
 bination. What, then, are the circumstances under 
 which this happens? 
 
 It happens wherever population is scanty in pro- 
 portion to land. Slavery, except in some mild form, 
 as the fading continuation of a habit, and with some 
 advantage to the nominal slaves but real dependents, 
 whom at least it sheltered from the evils of competition, 
 has been confined to countries of a scanty population, 
 
FOR HIRED LABOUR. 325 
 
 has never existed in very populous countries, and has 
 gradually ceased in the countries whose population 
 gradually increased to the point of density. And the 
 reason is plain enough. Property in land is the object 
 of one of the strongest and most general of human 
 desires. Excluding the owners of land, in whom the 
 desire is gratified, few indeed are those who do not 
 long to call a piece of the earth their own. Land- 
 owners and persons who would be glad to be land- 
 owners, comprise the bulk of mankind. In populous 
 countries, the desire to own land is not easily gratified, 
 because the land is scarce and dear : the plentifulness 
 and cheapness of land in thinly-peopled countries 
 enables almost everybody who wishes it to become a 
 landowner. In thinly -peopled countries, accordingly, 
 the great majority of free people are landowners who 
 cultivate their own land ; and labour for hire is neces- 
 sarily scarce: in densely-peopled countries, on the 
 contrary, the great majority of the people cannot 
 obtain land, and there is plenty of labour for hire. 
 Of plentifulness of labour for hire, the cause is dear- 
 ness of land : cheapness of land is the cause of scarcity 
 of labour for hire. 
 
 Test these conclusions by reference to universal 
 history. Abraham, the slave-master, said unto Lot, 
 who was another, " is not the whole land before thee?" 
 The ancient Greeks were themselves colonists, the 
 occupiers of a new territory, in which for a time every 
 freeman could obtain as much land as he desired : for 
 a time they needed slaves ; and the custom of slavery 
 was established. They sent forth colonies, which con- 
 sisted in part of slaves, removed to a waste territory 
 for the express purpose of cultivating it with constancy 
 
326 IMPORTED LABOUR 
 
 and combination of labour. The Romans, in the 
 earlier stages of their history, were robbers of land, 
 and had more than they could cultivate without slaves : 
 it was partly by means of slavery, that they at last 
 grew to be so populous at Rome as no longer to need 
 slavery, but to ask for an agrarian law. The Roman 
 world was indeed so devastated by wars, that except 
 at the seat of empire, population never perhaps 
 attained the proportion to land in which real slavery 
 naturally disappears. The serfdom of the middle- 
 ages was for all Europe, what it is for Poland and 
 Russia still, a kind of slavery required by the small 
 proportion of people to land; a substitute for hired 
 labour, which gradually expired with the increase of 
 population, as it will expire in Poland and Russia 
 when land shall, in those countries, become as scarce 
 and dear as it became in England some time after the 
 Conquest. Next comes the institution of slavery in 
 America by the colonies of nations which had abolished 
 serfdom at home ; colonies in whose history, whether 
 we read it in Raynal, or Edwards, or Grahame, we 
 find the effect and the cause invariably close together ; 
 the slavery in various forms of bondage, growing out 
 of superabundance of land. 
 
 The operation of superabundance of land in causing 
 a scarcity of free labour and a desire for slaves, is very 
 distinctly seen in a process by which modern colonists 
 always have endeavoured to obtain free labour. Free 
 labour, when it can be got and kept in a colony, is so 
 much more productive than forced, that the colonial 
 capitalist is always ready to pay for it, in the form of 
 wages, more than slave labour would cost, and far 
 more than the usual rate of wages in an old country. 
 It is perfectly worth his while to pay, besides these 
 
CANNOT BE KEPT. 327 
 
 high wages, the cost of the passage of free labour from 
 the old country to the colony. Innumerable are the 
 cases in which a colonial capitalist has done this, con- 
 fident of the prudence of the outlay. It was com- 
 monly done by the founders of our early colonies in 
 America, and has been done by many capitalists in 
 Canada, South Africa, the Australias, and New Zealand. 
 To do this appears such a natural, suitable, easy way 
 of obtaining labour for hire, that every emigrant 
 capitalist thinks of doing it; and thousands (I speak 
 within compass) have tried the experiment. It is an 
 experiment which always fails: if it always or 
 generally succeeded, scarcity of labour for hire would 
 not be a colonial evil. I have never missed the oppor- 
 tunity of tracing one of these experiments to its 
 results ; and I assure you that I have never been able 
 to discover a single case of success. The invariable 
 failure is produced by the impossibility of keeping the 
 labour, for the passage of which to the colony the 
 capitalist has paid : and it happens as follows. 
 
 Under this voluntary method of importing labour, 
 all capitalists do not pay alike : some pay ; some do 
 not. Those who do not pay for the importation of 
 labour, can afford to pay for the use of it more than 
 those who pay for the importation. These non-im- 
 porting capitalists, therefore, offer to the newly-arrived 
 labourers higher wages than the employer who im- 
 ported them has engaged or can afford to pay. The 
 offer of higher wages is a temptation which poor emi- 
 grants are incapable of resisting. When the non- 
 importing capitalist is not rogue enough to make the 
 offer to the labourers whom his neighbour has im- 
 portx-d. >till the labourers know that such higher 
 can be obtained from persons who have not 
 
328 CHEAPNESS OF LAND 
 
 imported labourers : they quit the service of their 
 importer, and, being now out of employment, are 
 engaged by somebody who can afford to pay the 
 higher wages. The importer, I repeat, never keeps 
 the labour which he has imported. 
 
 Nor does the non-importing capitalist keep it long. 
 With these high wages, the imported labourers soon 
 save the means of acquiring and cultivating land. In 
 every colony, land is so cheap that emigrant labourers 
 who save at all, are soon able to establish themselves 
 as landowners, working on their own account; and 
 this, most of them do as soon as possible. If the land 
 of the colony were of limited extent, a great impor- 
 tation of people would raise its price, and compel 
 some people to work for wages; but the land of 
 colonies is practically of unlimited extent. The im- 
 migration of labour, therefore, has no effect on the 
 supply in the market: yes, it has an effect; it in- 
 creases the demand without increasing the supply, 
 and therefore renders the demand more intense : for 
 the great bulk of imported labourers become land- 
 owners anxious to obtain labour for hire. The more 
 labourers are imported, the greater becomes, after 
 a while, the scarcity of labour in proportion to the 
 demand : and at the bottom of the whole mischief is 
 the cheapness of land. 
 
 It was cheapness of land that caused Las Casas 
 (the Clarkson or Wilberforce of his time as respects 
 the Ked Indians of America) to invent the African 
 slave trade. It was the cheapness of land that 
 brought African slaves to Antigua and Barbadoes; 
 and it is a comparative dearness of land, arising from 
 the increase of population in those small islands, 
 
THE CAUSE OF SLAVERY. 329 
 
 which has made them an exception from the general 
 rule of West-Indian impoverishment in consequence of 
 the abolition of slavery before land was made dear. 
 It was cheapness of land that caused the introduction 
 of negro slaves into Virginia, and produced the 
 various forms of bondage practised by all the old 
 English colonies in America. It is cheapness of land 
 in Brazil, Porto Rico, and Cuba, which causes our 
 African squadron, and not only prevents it from 
 serving its purpose, but causes it to be a means of 
 aggravating the horrors of the African slave trade. 
 
 The cause is always the same, in form as well as in 
 substance : the effect takes various forms. Amongst 
 the effects, there is the prodigious importance of Irish 
 labour to the United States the extreme " con- 
 venience of the nuisance" of an immigration of people 
 whose position as aliens, and whose want of ambition 
 and thrift, commonly prevent them from acquiring 
 land, however cheap it may be; there is the oft- 
 repeated prayer of our West-India planters (not 
 residing in Barbadoes or Antigua) to the imperial 
 government, for some plan for establishing a great 
 emigration of free labour from Africa to the West 
 Indies; there is the regret of New South Wales at 
 the stoppage of convict emigration to that colony; 
 there are the petitions which several colonies have 
 addressed to the home government, praying for con- 
 vict emigration : and, lastly, there is the whole batch 
 of economical colonial evils, which I have before de- 
 scribed under the head of scarcity of labour for hire, 
 and which operate as one of the most formidable im- 
 pediments to the emigration of the most valuable class 
 of settlers. 
 
330 FEWER VICTIMS OF DELUSION. 
 
 If all the political impediments to colonization were 
 removed, this economical one would still be sufficient 
 to prevent the emigration of capitalists or capital on 
 any great scale. Indeed, so long as it shall last, no con- 
 siderable capitalists will emigrate, hoping to prosper, 
 except under a delusion which will be dissipated by six 
 months' experience in the colony : and this delusion, in 
 consequence of the increasing spread of true informa- 
 tion about colonial life, is likely to have fewer victims 
 than heretofore. I am looking forward to almost a stop- 
 page of emigration as respects all but the very needy 
 or desperate classes ; provided always, however, that the 
 cause of scarcity of labour in the colonies cannot by 
 any means be removed, and prevented from returning. 
 My own notion of the means by which the scarcity 
 of labour might be effectually removed and prevented 
 from returning, must now be explained. 
 
331 
 
 LETTER XLVI. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 THE COLONIST SUGGESTS THE MEANS BY WHICH LAND 
 MIGHT BE MADE DEAR ENOUGH TO PREVENT A 
 SCARCITY OF LABOUR FOR HIRE. 
 
 SOME land in colonies is as dear as the dearest land 
 in old countries. In Wall Street, and the lower 
 part of Broadway, New York, land is even dearer than 
 in Lombard-street and Cornhill, London; the reason 
 being that the part of New York which has become 
 the centre of the commerce of that great city, is a 
 narrow point of land hemmed in on three sides by 
 water, so that although commerce in New York is 
 less, the competition for room at the centre of com- 
 merce is greater than in London. So in various parts 
 of every colony, there is land which fetches a high 
 price, because it is of limited extent. In new countries, 
 nearly as in old, land in the centre of a city, in every 
 part of a town, or in the immediate vicinity of towns, 
 or of good roads, is of limited extent. It is land 
 enjoying certain advantages of position ; and as such 
 land is no more unlimited in America or Australia 
 than in England, it is, as in England, the subject of 
 competition, and fetches a price measured by the 
 
332 THE CHEAPEST LAND. 
 
 degree of competition for it. But this land is not 
 that of which the cheapness produces scarcity of 
 labour in new countries : it is land so dear as to be 
 either out of the reach of the working- classes, or for 
 them less desirable at its price than land for which 
 there is little or no competition. This last is the land 
 by means of obtaining which labourers become land- 
 owners: it may be called indifferently the lowest- 
 priced land, the cheapest land, or land of the mini- 
 mum price. I beg you to bear in mind, that only the 
 cheapest land in a colony, is that whose price aifects 
 the labour market. 
 
 The price of this land, as of all bare land, and of 
 everything else which it costs nothing to produce, 
 depends of course on the relation between the demand 
 and the supply. In colonies, where wages are so high 
 that everybody may soon acquire the means of pur- 
 chasing land, the demand is according to population ; 
 the supply consists of the quantity of the cheapest 
 land open to purchasers. By augmenting the popu- 
 lation or diminishing the quantity of land, the price 
 would be raised : it would be lowered by augmenting 
 the quantity of land or diminishing the population. 
 Now, over the proportion which these two shall bear 
 to each other, the state or government possesses an 
 absolute control. The amount of population indeed 
 does not depend on the government ; but the quantity 
 of land does; and thus the government has control 
 over the proportion which land bears to population, 
 or population to land. In the very beginning of a 
 colony, all the land necessarily belongs to the govern- 
 ment or is under its jurisdiction ; and it is the govern- 
 ment, which suddenly or by degrees makes all the 
 
PROFUSION OF GRANTING. 333 
 
 land private property, by disposing of it to individuals. 
 The government may employ a profuse or a niggard 
 hand; that is, it may bestow much or little on the 
 colonists in proportion to their numbers. In West 
 Australia, for example, the government allowed the 
 first 2000 settlers to appropriate about 3,000,000 
 acres; whilst in South Australia, with a population 
 now amounting to 40,000, less, I believe, than 500,000 
 acres have become private property : in one case, 2000 
 people got as much land as the counties of Middlesex, 
 Essex, Suffolk, Hertford, and Cambridge; in the 
 other, 40,000 people got only as much land as the 
 county of Cambridge: the bestowing disposition of 
 the government was a hundred and nineteen times 
 stronger, and the proportion of private land to 
 people a hundred and nineteen times greater, in the 
 one case than in the other. The history of colo- 
 nization abounds with like examples of the control 
 exercised by government over the proportion between 
 land and people. 
 
 It has been said above, that government may dispose 
 of land with a niggard hand. Do not suppose that 
 any colonizing government has ever done so. All 
 colonizing governments have done just the reverse, 
 by disposing of land with a profuse hand. The 
 greediness of colonists has been equal to the profusion 
 of the governments. The colonists, full of the ideas 
 about land which possess people in old countries 
 emigrating indeed because at home the cheapest land 
 had got or was getting to be scarce and precious 
 could never obtain too much land for the satisfaction 
 of their desires: and the governments, universally 
 down to the other day, seemed to have looked upon 
 
334 GRANTING AND SELLING. 
 
 waste land as a useless property of the state, only fit 
 to be squandered in satisfying the greedy desires of 
 colonists. Throughout what may be termed the colo- 
 nial world, therefore, allowing however for a few ex- 
 ceptions in which a colony has grown to be as densely 
 peopled as an old country, there has at all times existed 
 a proportion between land and people, which almost 
 prevented competition for the cheapest land, and 
 enabled every colonist to obtain some land either for 
 nothing or for a price little more than nominal. What- 
 ever may have been the price of the dearest land in a 
 colony, the price of the cheapest has never, with the 
 above exceptions, been sufficient to prevent labourers 
 from turning into landowners after a very brief term 
 of hired service. 
 
 There are two modes in which the government dis- 
 poses of waste land ; either by gift or sale. Gift, or 
 grant, as it is called, has been the most common mode. 
 Until lately, the British government always disposed 
 of land by grant. The United States, soon after they 
 became independent, adopted the plan of selling, to 
 which, with the exception of some extensive grants, 
 they have since adhered. About seventeen years ago, 
 our government substituted throughout the colonies 
 the plan of selling for that of granting. 
 
 The plan of granting may be said to involve un- 
 avoidably an extreme profusion in the disposal of 
 land. When the land can be got for nothing, every- 
 body wants as much of it as he can possibly get ; and 
 the government, of course deeming the land of no 
 value, or it would not part with it for nothing, is 
 prone to indulge the greedy desires of individuals by 
 a process so very easy to the government as that of 
 
GREEDINESS FOR LAND. 335 
 
 saying " take what you please." Under this plan, 
 therefore, the quantity of land granted has always 
 been so very abundant in proportion to population, 
 that it may be said to have been supplied, like air or 
 water, in unlimited quantities; that is, not in any 
 proportion to the market-demand for land, but so as 
 to prevent such a demand. In many cases, the go- 
 vernment made a practice of giving land to people of 
 the labouring class, when of course there was no 
 market-demand for land except in advantageous posi- 
 tions, and the cheapest land was so cheap as to bear 
 no price at all. Even when grants were not made 
 directly to the class of labourers, the profusion with 
 which they were made to other classes, caused the 
 cheapest land to be "dirt cheap," and indirectly 
 bestowed land upon labourers for almost nothing: 
 practically, under this system of profusion, the go- 
 vernment exercised no control over the proportion 
 between land and people. 
 
 Even if the government should intend to carry out 
 the plan in such a manner as to prevent scarcity of 
 labour by making the cheapest land somewhat dear, 
 or difficult of acquisition, it would not be able to 
 accomplish the object by that means. The purpose 
 of the government would be defeated by the nature of 
 things. So long as land was to be obtained for no- 
 thing, the greediness of individuals to obtain it would 
 be irresistible by the government, even for a single 
 year. Supposing that the government resisted for a 
 while, and so made the cheapest land comparatively 
 dear, the greediness to obtain for nothing land bearing 
 a price (for in the supposed case all land would have 
 a market value) would overcome the resistance of the 
 
336 OFFICIAL FAVOURITISM 
 
 firmest government, and again knock down the price 
 of the cheapest land. But further, supposing that the 
 government did resist the importunity for grants of 
 valuable land, by what means could it regulate the 
 supply so as to maintain the most beneficial propor- 
 tion between land and people ? How would it know 
 from time to time what quantities of land ought to be 
 granted? How could it estimate the different effects 
 on the markets of land and labour of granting this or 
 that quantity? These questions show that the plan 
 of granting is devoid of regulating power; that it is 
 incompatible with the indispensable employment of a 
 measure of supply. And lastly, there is an objection 
 to the plan of granting, which is very strong without 
 an effectual restriction of the quantity, but would be 
 stronger with it. However profusely land may be 
 granted, some of it acquires in time a value depending 
 on advantages of position : and this consideration ex- 
 plains why people are so greedy to obtain land for 
 nothing, even though at the time of being obtained it 
 has no market value. This consideration also shows 
 that under the plan of granting, however profusely, 
 the government has the opportunity, and the strongest 
 temptation, to favour its friends, to practise favou- 
 ritism and official jobbing in the disposal of land. 
 There is no instance of a colonizing government that 
 was able to resist this temptation. Official favouritism 
 and jobbing in the disposal of land by grant, consti- 
 tute one of the most prominent and ugliest features 
 of colonial history: and they have been one of the 
 most effectual impediments to colonization, by pro- 
 ducing an immense crop of disappointments, jealousies, 
 envies, and irritations. But if favouritism and jobbing 
 
AND JOBBING IN LAND. 337 
 
 in the disposal of waste land made the colonists hate 
 each other and their government when the quantity 
 granted was practically without limit, what would 
 happen if the quantity were so restricted as to render 
 all the land granted immediately valuable? The go- 
 vernment would be more than ever tempted to favour 
 its friends; the officials more than ever tempted to 
 favour themselves and their connexions ; the friends of 
 government and the connexions of officials greedier of 
 land than was ever known ; and the whole colony in an 
 uproar of disaffection to its government. This is the 
 last objection to the plan of granting. It was by 
 placing all these objections before Lord Howick in 
 1831, that the colonizing theorists of 1830 put an 
 end to the plan of granting waste land throughout 
 our colonies. 
 
338 
 
 LETTER XL VII. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 IN ORDER THAT THE PRICE OF WASTE LAND SHOULD 
 ACCOMPLISH ITS OBJECTS, IT MUST BE SUFFICIENT 
 FOR THE PURPOSE. HITHERTO THE PRICE HAS BEEN 
 EVERYWHERE INSUFFICIENT. 
 
 plan of selling contains within itself an effec- 
 tual regulator of the quantity disposed of. This 
 is the price which the government requires for new land. 
 This price may indeed be so low, as not to operate as 
 a restriction at all. This happened in Canada when 
 the plan of selling was first adopted there, and when 
 the price required by the government hardly amounted 
 to more, or may even have amounted to less, upon 
 small purchases, than the fees of office previously 
 required for grants. The first price of public land in 
 Tasmania was 6s. an acre : the cost of a Tasmanian 
 grant in two cases with which I happen to be ac- 
 quainted, was 58. for 50 acres, and nearly WQl. for 
 70 acres. In the colonies generally, I believe, ex- 
 cepting as to large purchases, a grant used to cost 
 more than the price which was afterwards required 
 by the government when it substituted selling for 
 granting. So low a price as this has no influence on 
 
THE SUFFICIENT PRICK. 
 
 tlu* market-value of the cheapest land, no effect on the 
 supply of labour for hire. The mere putting of a 
 price, therefore, on all new land may accomplish none 
 of the objects in view. In order to accomplish them, 
 the price must be sufficient for that purpose. But 
 the price may be low or high as the government 
 pleases: it is a variable force, completely under the 
 control of government. In founding a colony, the 
 price might be so low as to render the quantity of 
 land appropriated by settlers practically unlimited: 
 it might be high enough to occasion a proportion 
 between land and people similar to that of old coun- 
 tries, in which case, if this very high price did not 
 prevent emigration, the cheapest land in the colony 
 might be as dear, and the superabundance of labourers 
 as deplorable as in England: or it might be a just 
 medium between the two, occasioning neither super- 
 abundance of people nor superabundance of land, but 
 so limiting the quantity of land, as to give the cheapest 
 land a market value that would have the effect of com- 
 pelling labourers to work some considerable time for 
 wages before they could become landowners. A price 
 that did less than this, would be insufficient ; one that 
 did more, would be excessive : the price that would do 
 this and no more, is the proper price. I am used to 
 call it the sufficient price. 
 
 The sufficient price has never yet been adopted by 
 a colonizing government. The government of the 
 United Status, whose sole object in disposing of new 
 land by sale instead of grant, was to hinder official 
 favouritism and jobbing, has never required a higher 
 price than two dollars an acre; and for a long while 
 pa-t. its price has been only one dollar and a quarter 
 
 z 2 
 
340 PRICE OF WASTE LAND. 
 
 an acre. In our colonies, the price has varied from five 
 to forty shillings. That these prices are insufficient for 
 the purpose in view, is shown by facts, and may be 
 made plainer by a supposed case. 
 
 The facts consist of the economical impediments to 
 colonization which I have described before, and which 
 have been as vigorous under the plan of selling as 
 under that of granting. The substitution by the 
 United States of selling for granting has not in the 
 least diminished the value of negro slaves, or the 
 necessity in the free states of relying for the conduct 
 of works requiring much constancy and combination 
 of labour, on a vast immigration of such natural slaves 
 as the poorest Irish. The scarcity of labour in our 
 colonies has been as great and injurious since, as it 
 was before, the imposition of a price on new land. In 
 all our colonies, notwithstanding the price put on new 
 land, the cheapest land has been so cheap that the 
 poorest class (for in a colony nobody is quite poor) 
 could readily obtain land of their own: in all the 
 colonies they have done this ; and everywhere accord- 
 ingly labour for hire has been so scarce, that it was 
 dangerous, often fatal, for the capitalist to engage in 
 any work requiring the constant employment of many 
 pairs of hands. 
 
 I must here explain, however, that in most of our 
 colonies, the price would have been inoperative if it 
 had been ten times as high as it was. In Canada and 
 New South Wales, for example, land had been granted 
 with such reckless profusion before the plan of selling 
 was adopted, that if this plan had even, by means of 
 an enormous price, put an end to the acquisition of 
 new land, it would still have had no effect on the land 
 
PRICE OF WASTE LAND. 341 
 
 and labour markets. The quantity of land in proportion 
 to people was already so great as to occasion practi- 
 cally an unlimited supply, whilst the demand could 
 only increase by the slow progress of births and 
 immigration. In these two colonies, therefore, as in 
 others where the plan of granting was once profusely 
 carried into effect, the cheapest land has been as cheap 
 since, as it was before the imposition of a price on 
 new land ; and in each of these colonies, a price on new 
 land, however high it might be, would remain inope- 
 rative for ages to come. In such colonies, the mere 
 putting of a price on new land only operates as a 
 restriction on the use of newly-discovered spots highly 
 favourable for settlement, and as a tax upon coloniza- 
 tion; the very last sort of tax that a colonizing 
 government would think of imposing. 
 
 How a price on new land might be rendered bene- 
 ficially operative in colonies where the quantity of 
 private land is already excessive, is a point to be 
 considered presently. Here I would remark, that 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 Zea- 
 land. 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 con- 
 veying 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 
 
342 DISCOVERY OF LIEBIG. 
 
 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 ; but I 
 proceed to the supposed case, which I think serves to 
 illustrate this subject better than the small stock of 
 not very conclusive facts, which are furnished by the 
 brief and bungling trial in practice of the plan of 
 imposing a price on waste land with a view to the 
 greatest productiveness of colonial industry. Sup- 
 pose, then, that Liebig should discover a process by 
 which the water of the sea might be converted into 
 fertile land, at a cost of, let us say forty shillings an 
 acre. Suppose, further, that the state did not mo- 
 nopolize the exercise of this art, but allowed a free 
 trade in it. Immense capitals would be invested 
 in this trade. The quantity of sea converted into 
 land would be as much as there was a prospect of 
 being able to sell for the cost of production and a 
 profit besides. A remunerating price would not 
 exceed fifty shillings an acre ; that is, forty to cover 
 outlay, and ten for profit. At this price, fertile land 
 might be obtained in unlimited quantities. In this 
 country, including the new territory, the price of the 
 cheapest land would not exceed fifty shillings an acre. 
 Population might increase as fast as it could, but the 
 price of the cheapest land would not rise. Some of 
 the cheapest would become dear, and even the dearest, 
 in consequence of competition for it when the progress 
 of settlement had conferred on it certain advantages 
 of position : but there would always be plenty of land 
 on sale at the price of fifty shillings. Call on your 
 imagination to conceive what would happen. Is it 
 
A SET OF CURSES. 343 
 
 not clear that pauperism, as that arises from super- 
 it bundance of people in proportion to land, would 
 entirely disappear? The demand for labour in the 
 cultivation of the new land would draw away all 
 superfluous hands from the old parts of the country ; 
 and we should be no more troubled with pauperism 
 in England than they are in colonies. Wages in 
 England would be as high as in America. But these 
 blessings would be accompanied, or rather succeeded, 
 by a set of curses. The passion for owning land, 
 which belongs to human nature, which is latent when 
 there is no opportunity of gratifying it, but surely 
 breaks out in the majority of people whenever it can 
 be easily gratified, would become as active here as it 
 is in America and other colonial parts of the world : 
 for with a colonial rate of wages, and with fertile land 
 always on sale at the price of fifty shillings an acre, 
 every man who desired it might easily gratify the 
 longing to become a landowner. The utmost effect 
 of such a price as fifty shillings an acre, would be to 
 compel the labourer to work for wages a little longer 
 than if he could get land for nothing. But this 
 would not prevent a scarcity of labour for hire nearly 
 reat as that which takes place in America. It 
 follows that not instantly, but very soon after getting 
 rid of pauperism, and seeing our labouring classes as 
 well off as those classes are in America, we should 
 l>-i:in to complain of scarcity of labour for hire. How 
 quickly and perfectly we should find out the value of 
 combination and constancy of labour! In a little 
 while, how glad we should be to divert the stream of 
 poor Irish emigration from America to England : that 
 is, provided the Irish, being able to get new land for 
 
344 NEGRO SLAVES FOR ENGLAND. 
 
 fifty shillings an acre close at home, would come to 
 England as aliens and natural slaves; which they 
 would not. We should, ere long, I suspect, unless 
 our climate were an objection to it, begin to hanker 
 after negro slavery. We should certainly, in order 
 to get large public works performed at all, keep our 
 own convicts at home. We should be, as it were, 
 colonists, continually suffering all sorts of inconvenience 
 and discomfort from the scarcity of labour for hire. 
 But we should find out quickly enough, in the case 
 supposed, that scarcity of labour for hire is caused by 
 cheapness of land. With the exception of the small 
 proportion of the people who in the case supposed 
 would be labourers for hire, every man would be 
 palpably interested in making land dearer : even the 
 labourers would have the same interest, though it 
 would be a little more remote, and therefore, perhaps, 
 much less obvious. In all probability, therefore, 
 we should pass a law for making land dearer. This 
 would be the easiest thing in the world to do. It 
 would be done by putting a price upon new land over 
 and above the cost of production. This price would 
 be a mere tax, a useless, and therefore hurtful impedi- 
 ment to the acquisition of new land, unless, along 
 with the cost of production, it were high enough for 
 its only legitimate purpose. In the colonies, there is 
 no cost of production. There, the whole good effect 
 must be produced by a price imposed by government, 
 or not produced at all. The supposed case, as I have 
 stated it, must contain some grave errors of reasoning, 
 if fifty shillings would be a sufficient price to require 
 for new land in the colonies. 
 
345 
 
 LETTER XLVIII. 
 From the Statesman. 
 
 MR. MOTHERCOUNTRY TAUXTS THE COLONIST WITH 
 BEING UNABLE TO SAY WHAT WOULD BE THE SUF- 
 FICIENT PRICE FOR NEW LAND. 
 
 I AM beginning to understand your plan of colo- 
 nization as respects the disposal of land; but a 
 difficulty has been suggested to me by rny Mr. Mother- 
 country, which I hasten to communicate to you. He 
 says, that though you have been preaching for years 
 about the sufficient price, you have never ventured to 
 say what it ought to be. He says, that you have been 
 frequently asked to mention what you deem the suf- 
 ficient price, but that you have carefully avoided 
 answering the question. He says that you fight shy 
 of the question ; that it puzzles you ; that in truth you 
 know not how to answer it; and that your silence 
 on this point shows (I beg your pardon for even com- 
 municating the offensive inference), that you know 
 your theory to be impracticable: for, he adds, what 
 becomes of all the fine arguments for a sufficient 
 price, if nobody, not even the author of the theory, 
 can tell us what is the sufficient price? He referred 
 7 lie to an article in the Edinburgh Review for July, 
 
346 ARGUMENTUM AD HOMINEM. 
 
 1840, for proof that your theory is wanting in the 
 scientific precision which you attribute to it. 
 
 I dare say you have heard all this before ; but even 
 so, the repetition of it now will recal the subject to 
 your mind at the fittest stage of our inquiry: for, 
 obviously, our next step is to determine the sufficient 
 price. I am curious to see how you will reply to Mr. 
 Mothercountry's argumentum ad hominem. 
 
 LETTER XLIX. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 THE COLONIST EEPLIES TO ME. MOTHERCOUNTRY'S TAUNT, 
 INDICATES THE ELEMENTS OF A CALCULATION FOR 
 GETTING AT THE SUFFICIENT PRICE, AND REFERS TO 
 MR. STEPHEN AND THE EDINBURGH REVIEW. 
 
 TT is quite true that I have been frequently and 
 tauntingly required to mention what I deem the 
 sufficient price. But I have hitherto avoided falling 
 into the trap, which that demand upon me really is. 
 I might have named a price, and stuck to it without 
 giving reasons : in other words, I might have practised 
 a Colonial- Office " shift" by " deciding categorically, 
 so as not to expose the superficiality in propounding 
 the reasons" : or I might have named a price, and 
 attempted to justify the decision by reasons : but in the 
 one case, your Mr. Mothercountry would have been en- 
 titled to call me a charlatan, and in the other a goose. 
 For there is no price that would be suitable for the 
 
THE SUFFICIENT PRICE. 347 
 
 colonies generally : the price must needs vary accord- 
 ing to peculiar natural and other circumstances in 
 each colony : and in order to determine the price for 
 any colony, practical proceedings of a tentative or 
 experimental nature are indispensable. If so, what a 
 mess I should have got into, had I responded to the 
 taunting call of Mr. Mothercountry and his allies ! 
 
 That it is so becomes very plain, when one considers 
 what are the elements of a calculation made with a 
 view of determining the sufficient price for any colony. 
 There is but one object of a price; 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 question is, what price 
 would have that one effect ? That must depend, first, 
 on what is meant by " too soon" ; or on the proper 
 duration of the term of the labourer's employment for 
 hire ; which again must depend on the rate of the in- 
 crease of population in the colony, especially by 
 means of immigration, which would determine when 
 the place of a labourer, turning into a landowner, 
 would be filled by another labourer : and the rate of 
 labour-emigration again must depend on the popularity 
 of the colony at home, and on the distance between the 
 mother-country and the colony, or the cost of passage 
 for labouring people. Secondly, what price would 
 have the desired effect, must depend on the rate of 
 wages and cost of living in the colony; since accord- 
 ing to these would be the labourer's power of saving 
 tin- requisite capital for turning into a landowner: in 
 proportion to the rate of wages and the cost of living, 
 would the requisite capital be saved in a longer or a 
 
348 A COAT FOR MANKIND. 
 
 shorter time. It depends, thirdly, on the soil and 
 climate of the colony, which would determine the 
 quantity of land required (on the average) by a 
 labourer in order to set himself up as a landowner : if 
 the soil and climate were unfavourable to production, 
 he would require more acres; if it were favourable, 
 fewer acres would serve his purpose : in Trinidad, for 
 example, 10 acres would support him well; in South 
 Africa or New South Wales, he might require 50 or 
 100 acres. But the variability in our wide colonial 
 empire, not only of soil and climate, but of all the 
 circumstances on which a sufficient price would 
 depend, is so obvious, that no examples of it are 
 needed. It follows of course that different colonies, 
 and sometimes different groups of similar colonies, 
 would require different prices. To name a price for 
 all the colonies, would be as absurd as to fix the size 
 of a coat for mankind. 
 
 " But at least," I hear your Mr. Mothercountry 
 say, u name a price for some particular colony ; a price 
 founded on the elements of calculation which you 
 have stated." I could do that certainly for some 
 colony with which I happen to be particularly well 
 acquainted; but I should do it doubtingly and with 
 hesitation: for in truth the elements of calculation 
 are so many and so complicated in their various rela- 
 tions to each other, that in depending on them exclu- 
 sively there would be the utmost liability to error. A 
 very complete and familiar knowledge of them in each 
 case would be a useful general guide, would throw 
 valuable light on the question, would serve to inform 
 the legislator how far his theory and his practice were 
 consistent or otherwise: but in the main he must 
 
LIEBIG AGAIN*. 349 
 
 rely, and if he had common sagacity he might solely 
 and safely rely, upon no very elaborate calculation, 
 but on experience, or the facts before his face. He 
 could always tell whether or not labour for hire was 
 too scarce or too plentiful in the colony. If it were 
 too plentiful, he would know that the price of new land 
 was too high ; that is, more than sufficient : if it were 
 hurtfully scarce, he would know that the price was 
 too low, or not sufficient. About which the labour 
 WM< whether too plentiful or too scarce no legisla- 
 ture, hardly any individual, could be in doubt; so 
 plain to the dullest eye would be the facts by which 
 to determine that question. If the lawgiver saw that 
 the labour was scarce and the price too low, he would 
 raise the price : if he saw that labour was superabun- 
 dant and the price too high, he would lower the price : 
 if he saw that labour was neither scarce nor super- 
 abundant, he would not alter the price, because he 
 would see that it was neither too high nor too low, 
 but sufficient. Recurring to the supposed discovery of 
 Liebig, the legislature of this country would always 
 be able to judge whether new land was supplied too 
 fast, or not fast enough, or at the rate of a happy 
 medium between excess and deficiency. The evidence 
 on which the legislature would form its judgment, would 
 be all the facts which show whether labour is scarce, 
 or superabundant, or neither one nor the other. 
 Whether here or in a colony, these facts are so very 
 manifest, and so unerring as indications, that a wrong 
 conclusion from them would be hardly possible. Only, 
 of course, I am supposing that the legislature of the 
 colony would possess an intimate knowledge of the 
 colony, and would be deeply interested in coming to 
 
350 LOWERING THE PRICE. 
 
 a right judgment : a Downing- street legislature judg- 
 ing for the distant colonies, or a distant colonial legis- 
 lature judging for us, would indeed, notwithstanding 
 the patent nature of the guiding facts, be apt to make 
 terrible mistakes. 
 
 The raising or lowering of the price according to 
 the evidence of a necessity for either step, is what I 
 called just now a tentative or experimental proceed- 
 ing. In either case, the legislature would have to 
 wait and see whether the alteration produced the de- 
 sired effect. But there is an objection to lowering 
 the price, which makes it desirable, that the legislature, 
 in trying its experiments, should begin with a price 
 obviously too low, and should raise the price by care- 
 ful degrees so as to run little risk of ever making it 
 too high. The objection to ever lowering the price 
 is, that whenever this was done, some of those who 
 had purchased at the higher price, would complain 
 that they had been made to pay more than their suc- 
 cessors, and more than was necessary. It would be 
 by no means certain that they really had paid more 
 than was necessary at the time of their purchase : for 
 the circumstances of the colony at that time might 
 have required that price, for the greatest good of those 
 purchasers as well as of the whole colony. Nor, if 
 new circumstances required a lower price such a 
 circumstance, for example, as a great spontaneous 
 and unexpected immigration of labour into the colony, 
 which suddenly and greatly increased the proportion 
 of people to appropriated land would these earlier 
 purchasers at the higher price suffer any injustice 
 from a lowering of the price. They might suffer hard- 
 ship, but no injustice. If the higher price had been 
 
VALUE EN TIPPER ARY. 351 
 
 kept up so long after it became too high, as to confer 
 on land the monopoly value which arises from scarcity, 
 then, when the price of new land was lowered, the 
 general value of appropriated land would decline; 
 and the amount of its fall would be so much loss 
 to all landowners. This would be a hardship : but, 
 for two reasons, it would not be an injustice. All 
 landowners would have purchased with a full know- 
 ledge of the wish and intention of the legislature to 
 lower the price whenever population should be super- 
 abundant, or if, after a trial, it should appear too high : 
 nobody would have been deceived or misled: and 
 secondly, the monopoly value of land which had been 
 created by keeping up too high a price, though a 
 benefit to the landowner, would be a benefit, which as 
 accruing to him against the will of the legislature 
 and contrary to his own expectations when he pur- 
 chased, and as being a wrong to the community 
 at large, ought justly to be taken from him as soon 
 as possible. Injustice, therefore, there would be 
 none hi lowering the price. I have said, that the 
 scarcity-value conferred on land by too high a 
 price, would be a benefit to the landowner; but this 
 was only said for argument's sake: for in truth, a 
 colony in which appropriated land was kept at a scar- 
 city value, would be a most unpopular colony in the 
 mother-country; and its landowners would miss the 
 benefits enjoyed by the landowners of a colony into 
 which there pours a constant stream of capital as well 
 people. The landowners, in the supposed case, 
 would obtain a scarcity -value for their land, similar to 
 that which takes place in Tipperary; but they would 
 miss a position-value, so to speak, like that which 
 
352 MR. JAMES 'STEPHEN AND 
 
 occurs in Lancashire : they would lose more than they 
 would gain. Upon the whole, therefore, it appears 
 to me, that purchasers at a higher price would suffer 
 neither injustice nor hardship by a lowering of the 
 price when this step became expedient for the good of 
 the whole colony. But in consideration of our prone- 
 ness to be jealous and envious of our neighbours, I 
 would guard, if possible, against even the appearance 
 of giving an advantage to the later purchaser. I 
 think, therefore, that the colonizing legislature ought 
 to begin with a price clearly too low, and to raise the 
 price by degrees with a cautious but resolute hand. 
 
 If your Mr. Mothercountry should say that a system 
 which requires, in at least one of its processes, the exer- 
 cise of much caution and resolution, is not a self-ad- 
 justing system, but one liable to be deranged by human 
 infirmity, and therefore one not to be relied upon, I 
 would answer, nobody has ever attributed to it that 
 magical property of being able to work itself without 
 legislative or administrative care, which its official 
 opponents, in order to decry it, have represented that 
 its advocates claimed for it. The article in the Edin- 
 burgh Review was written by a gentleman, then a clerk 
 in the Colonial Office, and a friend of Mr. Stephen's, the 
 permanent Under- Secretary. Mr. Stephen's influence 
 with that eminent journal has been used to prevent 
 the circulation of favourable views of the theory, as 
 well as to circulate hostile views. Two habitual con- 
 tributors to the Review offered to its editor, the late 
 Professor Napier, at different times, and without each 
 other's knowledge or mine, two articles, of which the 
 object was to explain and recommend the theory; but 
 he declined to insert either, on the ground, in the one 
 
THE EDINBURGH REVIEW. 353 
 
 of having pledged the Review to the opinions of 
 Mr. Stephen's friend; and, in the other, of his unwil- 
 lingness to displease Mr. Stephen. To save trouble, 
 in case you should mention this to your Mr. Mother- 
 coin it ly, I add that though Professor Xapier is no 
 more, the two gentlemen in question are alive, and in 
 full recollection of the facts. 
 
 Thus, you see, the whining of colonial Downing- 
 MTK-t. about being debarred from communication 
 with the public, is not founded in fact. No other 
 public department has better, nay equal, means of 
 using the anonymous press for defence and attack. I 
 alm<t wish now, that this peculiarity of the Colonial 
 Office had been described under the head of govern- 
 ment. 
 
 LETTER L. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 SELLING WASTE LAND BY AUCTION WITH A VIEW TO 
 OBTAINING THE SUFFICIENT PRICE BY MEANS OF 
 COMPETITION, IS EITHER A FOOLISH CONCEIT OR A 
 FALSE PRETENCE. 
 
 IT has been imagined that the sufficient price might 
 be obtained by means of competition, if new land 
 were offered for sale by auction at a low upset price. 
 1 am at a loss to conceive how this notion could be 
 entertained by a reasonable mind. If the quantity of 
 land were practically unlimited, there would be no 
 competition, except for spots possessing some advan- 
 tage of position; and spots of land for which there 
 
 A A 
 
354 A FOOLISH CONCEIT 
 
 would be competition, are just those for which the 
 poorest class of buyers, or the labourers, would not 
 bid : they would buy only that land for which there 
 was no competition, and which, therefore, they would 
 obtain at the upset price. It follows, that unless the 
 quantity of land offered for sale were limited, it would 
 be necessary, under a system of sales by auction, to 
 make the upset price a sufficient price : the necessity 
 of determining a sufficient price would be just the 
 same as if the land were sold at a fixed uniform price 
 without auction. Unquestionably, if the quantity of 
 land offered for sale were sufficiently limited, there 
 would be competition for all new land ; and the lowest 
 price obtained would exceed the upset price in pro- 
 portion to the degree of limitation. But in order to 
 obtain this result, the government must needs deter- 
 mine what degree of limitation would produce enough 
 competition to make the lowest selling price a suffi- 
 cient price. The sufficient price would still be deter- 
 mined by the government, but by means of a suffi- 
 cient limitation of the quantity offered for sale. By 
 limiting the quantity, as has been shown before, the 
 government might determine the price of the cheapest 
 land in the colony, without putting any price on new 
 land, or under the plan of granting. The govern- 
 ment, that is, might do this provided limitation of 
 quantity were practically susceptible of being made a 
 regulator of price. But practically, as has been ex- 
 plained before, limitation of quantity could not be 
 used by the government as an efficient regulator of 
 price; and again, if it were so used, its operation 
 would be wholly independent of selling by auction, 
 since if there were no auction, but the land given for 
 
OR FALSE PRETENCE. 355 
 
 nothing, the lowest price of land in the colony would 
 be sufficient if the limitation of the quantity of 
 granted land were sufficient. Selling by auction, 
 indeed, may serve other purposes than that of deter- 
 mining the sufficient price by means of competition ; 
 but when employed for this purpose, which it cannot 
 serve, it is a self-delusion or a cheat ; a fancied means 
 of doing what it cannot do, or a make-believe of doing 
 what is not done. In the United States, they sell by 
 auction; but the quantity offered for sale being prac- 
 tically unlimited, the upset price is the usual selling 
 price. In our colonies, very great prices have been 
 obtained by means of selling at auction certain spots, 
 which were supposed likely to enjoy, ere long, great 
 advantages of position: but the obtaining of these 
 great prices for some land had not the slightest effect 
 on the lowest price of land in the colony : that did 
 not exceed the lowest price at which land could be 
 obtained at the auction sales; namely, the upset 
 price. I must not omit, however, to mention that 
 one or two cases have happened in which the lowest 
 price obtained by auction considerably exceeded the 
 upset price. The result was brought about by offer- 
 ing for sale less land than was wanted by buyers at 
 that time and place : some competition for all the land 
 was really produced, but solely by means of limiting 
 the quantity offered for sale. In these cases, how- 
 ever, great evils arose from the attempt of the govern- 
 ment to determine prices by limitation of quantity. 
 The accidental or arbitrary limitation was not, and 
 could not have been, continued; and when a less 
 limitation took place when more land was afterwards 
 offered for sale than was wanted by intending buyers 
 
 AA2 
 
356 CONCEIT OK PKETENCE. 
 
 at the time and place the lowest price of land fell ; 
 and the buyers at the first sales discovered that the 
 government had induced them to pay a price higher 
 than that which others now paid, or for which they 
 could now sell their land. These cases, in which 
 auction did produce competition for all the land put 
 up to sale, exemplify the inadequacy and unsuitable- 
 ness of competition produced by limitation of quantity 
 as a means of getting at the sufficient price. The 
 experience furnished by the United States and our 
 colonies, agrees with the reasoning which shows, that 
 selling by auction for the alleged purpose of obtain- 
 ing the sufficient price, is either a foolish conceit or a 
 false pretence. 
 
 By looking to the papers that your Mr. Mother- 
 country sent to you at an early stage of our corre- 
 spondence, with the passages marked which exhibit 
 colonial hostility to what he called my u scheme," you 
 * will find that the colonists, especially in New South 
 Wales, bitterly complain of the plan of selling public 
 land by auction. Their objections to it are identical 
 with mine, as you will see by my next letter. 
 
357 
 
 LETTER LI. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 FURTHER OBJECTIONS TO THE PLAN OF SELLING WASTE 
 LAND BY AUCTION. ADVANTAGES OF A FIXED UNI- 
 FORM PRICE. 
 
 nPHERE are seven other and very grave objections 
 
 to the plan of selling by auction. 
 1. Auction fails altogether in its object unless, by 
 means of competition, it produces for some land a 
 higher price than the upset price. Supposing the 
 upset price to be a sufficient price as regards scarcity 
 of labour, then all that auction produces above that 
 price, is so much capital unnecessarily taken from the 
 settlers. If, by means of the upset price, care is taken 
 that nobody obtains land for less than the sufficient 
 price, then all excess above that price is a useless and 
 mischievous tax on colonization. More than the suffi- 
 cient price, the government never ought to obtain by 
 any means. When, further, the government does ob- 
 tain by means of competition at auction more than 
 the sufficient price, the excess is the profit on his in- 
 vcMrncnt which the settler would have made if he had 
 bought at the upset price: and the government, in- 
 stead of letting this profit go into the pocket of the 
 
358 OBJECTIONS TO AUCTION. 
 
 settler sooner or later after the sale, puts it into its 
 own pocket at the time of the sale. Now, one of the 
 greatest encouragements of colonization is the pros- 
 pect which the settler has of making a profit by his 
 investment in the purchase of land. First, then, by 
 unnecessarily diminishing the capital of the settler 
 even before he begins to settle, and, secondly, by de- 
 priving him of the prospect of enjoying himself the 
 benefit of future competition for his land, the govern- 
 ment, when it effectually sells by auction, very effec- 
 tually discourages the emigration of capitalists and im- 
 pedes the progress of colonization. 
 
 2. In order that auction should be effectual, time 
 must be given for the growth of competition : a sale 
 by auction, whether in this country or in a colony, 
 would be absurd without ample notice by advertise- 
 ment. Intending purchasers, therefore, must wait 
 some time for the announced day of sale. But for 
 settlers, and especially for new emigrants, all waiting 
 is full of mischief, being the parent of idleness, inert- 
 ness, and despondency; often of hard-drinking, to 
 drown the care of suspense and hope delayed. No 
 tongue can tell what injury this waiting for a sale by 
 auction has inflicted on settlers in our newest colonies. 
 
 3. As well before as after the government has de- 
 clared its intention of laying a district open to pur- 
 chase, intending purchasers take great pains, and incur 
 no little trouble and cost, in selecting the spots of 
 land, which, for some reason or other, generally on 
 account of their peculiar suitableness to the settlers' 
 purpose, they prefer to other spots. When the sale 
 takes place, therefore, many an intending purchaser is 
 bent on obtaining a particular lot or lots. This at 
 
OBJECTIONS TO AUCTION. 359 
 
 least would always happen if the land were not sold by 
 auction. For when it is sold by auction, the intend- 
 ing purchaser of a particular lot is apt to be outbid 
 ad his means. When this happens (and nothing 
 is more common), the settler does not realize his choice 
 at all : the time, and exertion, and money which he has 
 spent on selection, are thrown away: and he has to 
 iv{> -at the process, with very likely the same result 
 over again. At last, perhaps, the settler is deprived 
 of all freedom of choice, being compelled to take land 
 which he does not prefer, or to which he has strong 
 objections. I suspect that this occurs in even a majo- 
 rity of cases. How the probability, or only, the risk 
 of it, must discourage the attendance of intending 
 purchasers at auction sales, is sufficiently obvious. 
 
 4. In his anxiety to obtain the land on which his 
 heart is set, the settler is apt to bid beyond his means ; 
 and when the lot is knocked down to him, he is 
 incapable of using it. The impoverishment of the 
 settler by means of obtaining the lot which he has 
 selected, is a common occurrence: the utter ruin of 
 settlers by this means is not very uncommon. 
 
 5. Under the auction plan, the honest industrious 
 settler is liable to be plundered by jobbing and roguery 
 of various sorts. The official surveyors, by means of 
 information obtained whilst they were making the sur- 
 vey, have it in their power to job ; and under our system 
 of colonial government, official surveyors are capable of 
 jobbing in the very souls of their parents and children. 
 Officials of all sorts who can obtain from the surveyors' 
 reports superior information as to the varying qualities 
 of the land, can job if they please, and do job most 
 wofully. The speculating capitalist can job, by means 
 
360 OBJECTIONS TO AUCTION. 
 
 of his command of money. The bond fide settler, the 
 man ready and anxious to lay out his money in land 
 and improvements upon it, has to buy off these harpies. 
 Often, when his means are insufficient for that purpose, 
 they sell him the land on credit at an exorbitant price, 
 and ruin him by means of the heavy interest. In 
 America, the inherent evils of mere jobbing at the 
 auction sales are moderated by an occasional adminis- 
 tration of Lynch law : a speculator who attends the 
 sale for the mere purpose of harassing and so robbing 
 the good settler, runs some risk of being shot ; besides, 
 in America, where the great quantity of land always 
 offered for sale prevents competition save for peculiarly 
 eligible spots, the inherent evils of jobbing at auction 
 sales are less than in our colonies. There, the quantity 
 having been generally limited with an express view to 
 competition, and the auction plan not having lasted 
 long enough to suggest the employment of Lynch law, 
 mere jobbing in public land at the auction sales has 
 been a cruel oppression of the settler class. 
 
 6. Competition at auction-sales gives rise to un- 
 neighbourly and vindictive feelings among the settlers. 
 The man who is partially ruined by a neighbour's 
 running him up at a sale, never forgets the injury, and 
 his children inherit the rancour so occasioned. The 
 auction sales in our colonies have produced a large 
 stock of envious and revengeful passions in many a 
 neighbourhood, where, colonization being the business 
 of the people, feelings of kindness and a disposition to 
 help one's neighbour would be sedulously encouraged 
 by a really colonizing government. 
 
 7. And lastly, the plan of auction is very unpopular 
 in the colonies, excepting of course amongst the harpy 
 
THE AMERICAN HELP. 361 
 
 class, who by means of it prey on the class of true 
 colonists. To the class of true colonists it is invariably 
 and grievously hurtful. They continually and loudly 
 complain of it; and the maintenance of it in spite of 
 their complaints is a most offensive and tyrannical 
 exercise of the despotic authority by which our 
 colonies are governed. 
 
 Continually for years, these reasons against auction 
 have been pressed on the notice of the Colonial Office, 
 and especially of the present Colonial Minister, but 
 without the least effect ; or rather, I should say, with 
 only a bad effect. For Lord Grey, who is the parent 
 of the auction nuisance in our colonies, loves it as a 
 mother does her rickety child, all the more when its 
 deformities are pointed out. His affection for it has 
 at length become so strong, that arguments against it 
 put him into a rage; and to all such arguments he 
 virtually replies, never by counter-arguments, if any 
 such there are, but by expressions of sulky obstinacy 
 which remind one of the American help's answer to 
 the bell " the more you ring, the more I won't come." 
 And such things can be, because, unavoidably, there 
 is no public in this country that cares about the 
 colonies. 
 
 The mode of selling to which auction has been pre- 
 ferred, is that of allowing settlers to take land at 
 pleasure on paying a fixed uniform price, which should 
 of course be the sufficient price. The price being 
 sufficient, fixed, and uniform, the settler would pay to 
 the government the purchase money of as many acres 
 as he wanted, and would take the land without further 
 ado. He would pay the sufficient price, but no more. 
 He would retain for use the whole of his capital, 
 
362 FIXED AND UNIFORM PRICE. 
 
 except the indispensable price of his land. Whatever 
 increased value future competition might put upon his 
 land, would belong to him. Land-buying in other 
 words emigration and settlement would thus be 
 greatly promoted. The settler would not be kept 
 waiting an hour for anything, after having chosen the 
 spot of land he would best like to acquire. He would 
 realize his own choice, without being injured or 
 harassed, or even frightened by jobbing speculators. 
 Nothing would happen to disturb his kindly feelings 
 towards his neighbour ; and he would not, for anything 
 in the mode of selling public land, hate his government. 
 The plan of a fixed and uniform price, is free from all 
 the objections to auction. 
 
 You will ask how, with a fixed and uniform price, 
 competition between two or more settlers for the same 
 piece of land, would be determined. By letting first 
 come be first served. The man who first paid his pur- 
 chase-money into the land-office and designated the spot 
 of his choice, would get that spot, though a hundred 
 men should afterwards apply for it. The hundred 
 would be told that it was already sold. But two or 
 more men might apply for the same spot at the same 
 time : yes, possibly in the abstract, but really almost 
 never, if, as clearly ought to be the case, the quan- 
 tity of land always open to purchasers were so ample 
 as to be practically unlimited. Now and then, how- 
 ever, such a thing might happen as two or more men 
 entering the land-office at the same moment and apply- 
 ing for the same spot. On the occurrence of this rare 
 event, the competition would be determined by letting 
 the applicants draw lots for the preference. This mode 
 of determining the competition is so simple and so per- 
 
SINGLE-SPEECH HAMILTON. 363 
 
 * 
 
 iectly fair, that nobody could mistake its operation, or 
 tl-L'l that it had done him the least injustice,. But there 
 are objectors, official advocates of auction, with Lord 
 Grey at their head, who say that drawing lots for the 
 preference would be a lottery, and would promote a 
 spirit of gambling amongst purchasers. The reply is, 
 first, that the occasion for drawing lots would scarcely 
 ever happen; secondly, that even if it happened fre- 
 quently, it would not operate like a lottery, because the 
 necessity of having recourse to it would occur acci- 
 dentally, without design on the part of the competitors, 
 and the competition would not last five minutes; 
 thirdly, that if a gambling spirit were promoted by the 
 frequent drawing of lots among competitors for the 
 same piece of land at the same moment, the evil would 
 be incalculably less than that of all the villanies and 
 cruelties of the auction, which is the only possible alter- 
 native of the fixed price. But in practice, I repeat, the 
 drawing of lots would hardly ever occur; and when it 
 did, it would be wanting in those properties of a 
 lottery which cultivate the gambling spirit. The 
 lottery argument against a fixed price is of that class, 
 which Single-speech Hamilton advises us to employ 
 when we want to give an odious appearance to the 
 proposal of our adversary. 
 
 I must point out, however, that although, as a rule, 
 tw<> people would hardly ever apply for the same bit 
 of land at the same moment, exceptional occasions do 
 arise in which the drawing of lots does partake in 
 some measure of the gambling character of a lottery. 
 This happens when a considerable number of people 
 are about to emigrate for the purpose of planting a 
 new settlement, and when they pay here a fixed price 
 
364 DRAWING OF LOTS. 
 
 
 
 per acre for land that they have not seen. They pay 
 not for land, but for a right to take land when they 
 reach the colony. In the exercise of this right, it 
 would be impossible to adopt the principle of first 
 come first served; because all the purchasers have 
 already come; they are all present together; and 
 every one of them wishes to have first choice in the 
 selection of land. An order of choice, therefore, must 
 be determined somehow. For the right to choose 
 pieces of land, out of a quantity which the purchaser 
 has not yet seen, experience has proved, as a moment's 
 reflection would suggest, that people cannot be in- 
 duced to bid against each other at auction: either 
 they will not buy at all, or they will only pay a price 
 not exceeding what they believe will be the value of 
 the least valuable spot of the land to be hereafter dis- 
 tributed amongst them. This must necessarily be a 
 known, fixed, and uniform price. When they have 
 paid this price, the question arises, who is to choose 
 first, who second, and so on ? If anybody knows how 
 this question can be determined with perfect fairness 
 to all parties, except by letting the purchasers draw 
 lots for priority of choice, he has discovered what has 
 escaped the earnest research of many ingenious minds. 
 According to our present knowledge, we must either 
 use this method of determining priority of choice, or 
 we must renounce the practice a practice which has 
 founded South Australia and four Settlements in New 
 Zealand of founding settlements by means of selling 
 land in this country to the first body of intending 
 colonists. That in such case the drawing of lots is a 
 kind of lottery, is obvious ; but it is a lottery without 
 blanks, however high the prizes may be ; and finally, 
 
A u WOMAN'S REASON." 365 
 
 so far as there is evil in it, it is like many other cases 
 in which priorities are determined by lot, or, like most 
 of the steps which man takes with a view to good 
 iv suits, an imperfect means of doing what could not 
 be done with as little admixture of evil, or perhaps at 
 all, by any other means. This, I suppose is the view 
 of the subject taken by the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 who. as president of the new Association for founding 
 a settlement in New Zealand, has given his high 
 moral sanction to the plan of drawing lots in cases of 
 necessity. 
 
 LETTER LIL 
 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 LORD GREY'S CONFUSION or IDEAS RESPECTING THE 
 
 OBJECTS WITH WHICH A PRICE SHOULD BE REQUIRED 
 FOR NEW LAND. ANOTHER OBJECTION TO A UNIFORM 
 PRICE FOR WASTE LAND, WITH THE COLONIST'S AN- 
 SWER TO IT. 
 
 uniformity of a fixed price has been objected 
 to, on several grounds. 
 First, says Lord Grey, as land is of different qua- 
 with respect to fertility and the probability of 
 future advantages of position, it ought to fetch dif- 
 ferent prices. Why " ought" ? The only reason given 
 is the "woman's reason" " Because it ought." What 
 does "ought" mean in this case? Do we owe any 
 duty to the land, that commands us to make it fetch 
 different prices because it varies in quality? Is there 
 
366 IGNORANCE ABOUT COLONIES. 
 
 any person to whom we owe this duty? Verily, if we 
 were selling land in this country either our own land 
 for ourselves, or somebody else's land for him, or 
 crown land for the public we should be bound to 
 obtain the highest possible price, and of course to re- 
 quire a higher price for the more valuable portions. 
 But that is because in this country, all the land being 
 appropriated, the sole object in selling always is to 
 get the highest price : whereas in a colony, under the 
 circumstances in question, the object would be only 
 to get the sufficient price; and it would be an impor- 
 tant object to avoid taking more than that out of any 
 buyer's pocket. Confusion of ideas is at the bottom 
 of all these notions about the expediency of auction, 
 or some other way of getting a price for colonial waste 
 land in proportion to its present or probable value. 
 The totally different circumstances of the colony and 
 the old country the totally different objects with 
 which landed property is sold here and would be sold 
 there are so confounded in Lord Grey's mind, that 
 he unconsciously applies old-country rules to the colo- 
 nial question. His " ought" really means that selling 
 land for its market value is the only mode of selling 
 land, as respects both objects and means, to which his 
 mind is accustomed, and which he is able to compre- 
 hend. With equal truth, a predecessor of his might 
 have written to the Governor of Upper Canada, " I 
 send you water casks for the fleet on Ontario, because 
 my familiar ideas on the subjects of fleets and water 
 assure me that all water which bears a fleet must be 
 salt." On further reflection, it is rather to ignorance 
 about the colonies to the absence of colonial ideas at 
 the Colonial Office than to official confusion of colo- 
 
ANOTHER OBJECTION. 367 
 
 nial and old-country ideas, that such unhappy mis- 
 takes would be most justly attributed. 
 
 The second objection to a uniform price is, that if 
 the price were sufficient, land of very inferior quality, 
 as respects either fertility or position, would not be 
 bought at all. Certainly it would not be bought if it 
 were so inferior as to be, according to the market 
 value of the cheapest land in the colony, worth less 
 than the sufficient price. But the inferiority of posi- 
 tion would not last long. The progress of settlement 
 around and beyond such neglected spots, would soon 
 confer advantages of position upon them. Roads 
 would be made near or through them. Population 
 and the average value of land would increase around 
 them. In time, unless they were so sterile by nature 
 as to be what we term here land not worth reclaim- 
 ing, new facilities of improving them of conveying 
 all sorts of things between them and the town and 
 the increased value of all land in their neighbourhood, 
 would make them worth the sufficient price; and 
 then they would be bought. Meanwhile, they would 
 be used for pasturage : for, as I shall explain presently, 
 it is contrary to the principle of a sufficient price for 
 freehold land, to put any price upon the use of land 
 for pasturage only. But if these spots were so sterile 
 and so out of the way, like the barren tops of moun- 
 tains, as not to be worth cultivating under any cir- 
 cumstjinces, they would never be sold, but always 
 ii>rd, if fit even for that, as runs for cattle and sheep 
 during the time of year when some grass will grow 
 almost everywhere except on bare rock. If they were 
 not even fit for that, they would never be used at all. 
 And what then? Why, these barren, out-of-the-way 
 
368 OBJECTION CONTINUED. 
 
 spots would only resemble similar spots in old coun- 
 tries, which nature has condemned to uselessness for 
 ages. To perpetual uselessness, nature has probably 
 not condemned a morsel of the earth's surface. But 
 now, observe that the time at which land of inferior 
 fertility and position increased in value, would come 
 very much sooner, and the degree of increased value 
 for the worst of such land would be much greater, 
 under a plan of colonization which made labour plen- 
 tiful, than under the usual scarcity of labour. Roads 
 would come sooner and be more numerous ; the cost 
 of reclaiming waste land would be less, not in conse- 
 quence of lower wages (for wages might be higher 
 with than without the more productive employment 
 of labour), but in consequence of the greater power 
 of combined and constant labour ; and the proportion 
 of non-agricultural classes to the agricultural class 
 or, in other words, the number of local customers 
 for the sellers of landed produce would be very 
 much greater than it is now in any colony. Upon 
 the whole, then, it seems probable that if no land 
 could be got for less than the sufficient price, inferior 
 land would become worth that price sooner than, with 
 scarcity of labour, it becomes worth cultivating at all. 
 If so, this objection to a uniform price is converted 
 into a recommendation : and if not, it is still not a 
 valid objection to the uniform price as part of a 
 system, except on the unreasonable supposition that 
 inferior land would probably be cultivated sooner 
 under a system which makes the cheapest land worth 
 at market hardly anything, than under one which 
 would make all appropriated land worth at least the 
 sufficient price. 
 
369 
 
 LETTER LIII. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 WITH A SUFFICIENT PRICE FOR NEW LAND, PROFITS 
 AND WAGES WOULD BE HIGHER, AND EXPORTS 
 GREATER, THAN WITHOUT IT. 
 
 SOME probable effects of the sufficient price must 
 be briefly noticed, before I come to two of them 
 which demand particular explanation. 
 
 At first sight, it appears that wages would be lower 
 and profits higher than when land was superabundant 
 and labour scarce, because, of the whole produce of 
 capital and labour, the capitalist would pay less to the 
 labourer and keep more for himself: a greater com- 
 petition for employment amongst the labourers, no 
 longer able to acquire land with great facility, would 
 bring down wages and raise profits. And this would 
 really happen if the productiveness of industry re- 
 mained unaltered. But, really, inasmuch as the 
 productiveness of industry would be increased (to 
 what extent one cannot tell, because what the energetic 
 and intelligent, as well as combined and constant 
 labour of freemen can do with the virgin soils of a 
 new country has never yet been tried) ; inasmuch as 
 the produce to be divided between the capitalist and 
 
 B B 
 
370 INCREASED PRODUCTION. 
 
 the labourer would be greater, both parties might 
 obtain more than when that produce was less. At all 
 events, there would be far more to divide. If the 
 competition of labourers for employment enabled the 
 capitalist to keep the whole increase for himself, the 
 labourers would be dissatisfied, and the colony would 
 become unpopular with the labouring class at home ; 
 when it would be seen that the competition of labourers 
 in this colony was too great, and the price of new land 
 more than sufficient. The produce being greater, it 
 would always be for the advantage of capitalists and 
 the whole colony, that such a share of the increase 
 should go to the labourer, as would keep the colony 
 popular with the labouring class at home ; and this 
 would always be secured, by taking care that the 
 competition of labourers for employment was never 
 too great ; in other words, that the price of new land 
 was never more than sufficient. 
 
 The produce of industry being greater in consequence 
 of the new facilities for combining labour, dividing 
 employments, and carrying on works which require 
 long time for their completion, everybody in the colony 
 would be richer : and the colony being able to export 
 and import more, would be a better customer of the 
 mother-country. 
 
 Nevertheless, I suppose you to ask, although the 
 sufficient price prevented labourers from too soon 
 turning into landowners, how would enough labourers 
 be obtained? The sufficient price does not provide 
 for immigration of labour. If the colony could depend 
 for labour upon nothing but the increase of people by 
 births on the spot, it would be requisite to make the 
 sufficient price of land high enough to keep wages 
 
RAPID COLONIZATION. 371 
 
 down to an old-country rate, and to prevent most 
 labourers from ever becoming landowners. A colony 
 so near to England as Canada, might obtain labourers 
 by the immigration of poor people at their own cost ; 
 but what would become of the more distant colonies, 
 South Africa, the four Australias, Tasmania, and New 
 Zealand? In the latter places, the colonization, or 
 gradual settlement of the waste, would be of a good 
 sort, but would be extremely slow. The sufficient 
 price alone, provides only for civilized, not for rapid 
 colonization. 
 
 I answer, that the sufficient price, by itself, would 
 provide for a more rapid colonization than has ever 
 been seen in the world. So bold an assertion requires 
 careful proof. This rapidity of colonization in conse- 
 quence of the sufficient price is the first of those effects 
 of the sufficient price which demand particular expla- 
 nation. I must, however, reserve it for another letter. 
 
 BB 2 
 
372 
 
 LETTER LIT. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 WITH A SUFFICIENT PRICE FOR WASTE LAND, CAPI- 
 TALISTS WOULD OBTAIN LABOUR BY MEANS OF 
 PAYING FOR THE EMIGRATION OF POOR PEOPLE. 
 
 rPHE price being sufficient to prevent labourers 
 from turning into landowners too soon, it 
 would now be worth the while of capitalists to pro- 
 cure labour from the mother-country at their own cost ; 
 it would u pay" emigrating capitalists to take out 
 labourers along with them. And why? Because, 
 now, all labourers being under the necessity of re- 
 maining labourers for some years, it would be possible, 
 and not difficult, for capitalists to enforce contracts 
 for labour made in the mother-country. Referring 
 to a former letter, the temptation of the labourer to 
 quit the employer who had brought him to the colony, 
 would be no longer irresistible. With the very high 
 rate of wages that the importing employer of labour 
 could afford to pay, provided he could keep the labour 
 he imported, the cost of the labourer's passage would 
 be, as the saying is, a mere flea-bite ; an entity hardly 
 worth taking into the calculation of his outgoings and 
 incomings. The difference between the wages that 
 
FREE LABOUR TRADE. 373 
 
 the importing and the non-importing capitalist could 
 afford to pay, would be so slight as to be without 
 practical effect. The importing capitalist would be 
 able, without feeling it, to pay the same wages as the 
 non-importing capitalist, and would be better able to 
 keep the labourers he imported, by treating them with 
 kindness and consideration for their human pride as 
 well as their physical wants, than the other would be 
 to entice them away by the promise of such treatment. 
 In most cases, therefore, the non-importing capitalist 
 would become an importing one : when it had become 
 to keep imported labour, the motives for import- 
 ing labour, instead of enticing it away from one's 
 neighbour who had imported it, would be strong 
 enough, in the great majority of instances, to abolish 
 the temptation to this kind of robbery : and if some 
 would-be robbers remained, they would be prevented 
 by the frowns of society from doing so great a wrong 
 t<> their neighbour for so small a gain to themselves. 
 Upon the whole, therefore, I think that the induce- 
 ments to the importation of labour by capitalists 
 would be as great as they are in Brazil and Cuba; 
 perhaps greater, if we consider the superiority of free 
 to slave labour, as respects the power of production. 
 At the least, there would be a great deal of induce- 
 ment of the same kind, in regard to the paying by 
 capitalists for the passage of labourers, as that which, 
 if no impediments were put in the way of its opera- 
 tions, would probably, land continuing dirt cheap and 
 labour for hire almost unknown in America, convey a 
 million of negro slaves from Africa to America in the 
 course of every year. If free imported labour could 
 be kept in our colonies, I can see no limit to the 
 
374 ECONOMICAL ATTRACTION. 
 
 probable amount of labour-emigration by means of 
 the payment of the labourer's passage by his future 
 employer. For the importers of labour, in the case 
 supposed, would be not only capitalists within the 
 colony, but capitalists emigrating to the colony, who, 
 feeling that they should be able to enforce in the 
 colony a contract for labour made at home, would 
 take along with them the labour which they expected 
 to require, and would send for more if more should 
 be required: and assuredly, the economical attrac- 
 tion of being able to keep labour for hire in the colo- 
 nies, would (provided always the political evils were 
 removed) lead to an emigration of capitalists and 
 capital, to the extent of which it would be difficult to 
 assign a probable limit. If labourers and capitalists 
 poured into the colony at the rate which seems 
 probable under the circumstances supposed, coloniza- 
 tion would be very rapid as well as good in kind, or 
 civilized : and the sole cause of the whole improve- 
 ment would be the sufficient price. 
 
375 
 
 LETTER LV. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 THE SUFFICIENT PRICE PRODUCES MONEY INCIDENTALLY. 
 WHAT SHOULD BE DONE WITH THE PURCHASE- 
 MONEY OF NEW LAND ? SEVERAL EFFECTS OF USING 
 THE PURCHASE-MONEY AS A FUND FOR DEFRAYING 
 THE COST OF EMIGRATION. 
 
 I PROCEED to the second effect of the sufficient 
 price, which requires particular explanation. 
 
 The sufficient price would bring money into the colo- 
 nial exchequer. If it were in full operation throughout 
 our colonies, it would produce a vast deal of money ; 
 for the sale of waste land in the United States at a 
 price little more than nominal (4s. l\d. an acre) pro- 
 duces about a million sterling a year, and has pro- 
 duced, in one year of unusual speculation, as much as 
 four mill ions, or more than the whole annual expen- 
 diture of the federal government at that time. The 
 question arises then,, what should be done with the 
 money produced by the sufficient price ? And in the 
 whole art of colonization, there is no question of more 
 importance. 
 
 The putting of money into the colonial exchequer 
 would not have been designed by the government. 
 
376 SHARPEST TEST OF THE THEORY. 
 
 The getting of money by the government would be 
 a result of selling land instead of giving it away : but 
 as the only object of selling instead of giving is one 
 totally distinct from that of producing revenue 
 namely, to prevent labourers from turning into land- 
 owners too soon the pecuniary result would be un- 
 intended, one might almost say unexpected. So com- 
 pletely is production of revenue a mere incident of the 
 price of land, that the price ought to be imposed, if 
 it ought to be imposed under any circumstances, even 
 though the purchase-money were thrown away. This 
 last proposition is the sharpest test to which the theory 
 of a sufficient price can be submitted ; but if it will 
 not stand this test if the proposition is not true 
 the theory is false. Assuming it not to be false, the 
 money arising from the sale of land is a fund raised 
 without a purpose, unavoidably, incidentally, almost 
 accidentally. It is a fund, therefore, without a desti- 
 nation. There would be no undertaking, no tacit 
 obligation even, on the part of the government to 
 dispose of the fund in any particular way. It is an 
 unappropriated fund, which the state or government 
 may dispose of as it pleases without injustice to any- 
 body. If the fund were applied to paying off the 
 public debt of the empire, nobody could complain of 
 injustice, because every colony as a whole, and the 
 buyers of land in particular, would still enjoy all the 
 intended and expected benefits of the imposition of a 
 sufficient price upon new land: if the fund were 
 thrown into the sea as it accrued, there would still be 
 no injustice, and no reason against producing the fund 
 in that way. 
 
 If this reasoning is correct, the government would 
 
AN EMIGRATION-FUND. 377 
 
 be at liberty to cast about for the most beneficial 
 mode of disposing of the fund. Upon that point, I do 
 not pretend to offer an opinion : but if the object were 
 the utmost possible increase of the population, wealth, 
 and greatness of our empire, then I can have no doubt 
 that the revenue accruing from the sale of waste land, 
 would be called an emigration-fund, and be expended 
 in conveying poor people of the labouring class from 
 the mother-country to the colonies. Let us see what 
 would be the principal effects of that disposition of the 
 purchase-money of waste land. 
 
 1. It would no longer be desirable for colonial or 
 emigrating capitalists to lay out money directly in 
 taking labour to the colony; but they would do so 
 indirectly when, by purchasing land, they contributed 
 to the emigration-fund. They would see, more dis- 
 tinctly than if the purchase-money of land were not 
 an emigration fund, that in paying the sufficient price 
 for land they purchased labour as well as land; they 
 would pay the sufficient price more cheerfully; and 
 the working of the plan of colonization would be better 
 understood, and the plan itself more popular, both in 
 the colonies and in the mother-country: points of 
 great importance with a view to getting into quick and 
 full operation a system so novel, and so much at 
 variance with common ideas about the disposal of 
 waste land in colonies. 
 
 2. If the price were sufficient, even though the 
 purchase-money should be thrown away, there would 
 always be in the colony a supply of labour correspond- 
 ing with the demand ; but if the immigration of labour 
 were only spontaneous, the progress of colonization 
 how much soever faster than if new land were too cheap 
 
378 EMIGRATION-FUND. 
 
 and the capitalist had no motive for directly import- 
 ing labour, would be slower than if every purchase 
 of land necessarily brought labour into the colony. 
 Colonization would be improved both in kind and pace 
 by imposing the sufficient price ; but its pace would be 
 prodigiously accelerated by using the purchase-money 
 as an emigration-fund. If the emigration-fund were 
 judiciously expended, emigrating capitalists would be 
 allowed to take out with them, free of cost, such 
 labourers as they might expect to require in the 
 colony. They would have indeed, when they bought 
 waste land in the colony, to contribute to the emigra- 
 tion-fund; but as their land would bear a market 
 value equal at least to what they paid for it, they 
 would really get the labour for nothing. This, and 
 the opportunity of selecting the labour here, would 
 induce many a capitalist to emigrate who might not 
 otherwise think of doing so. I am speaking now, as 
 much from experience as from reason, having been 
 convinced, even by very imperfect and much-impeded 
 experiments in the founding of South Australia and 
 New Zealand, that the class of emigrating capitalists 
 set a high value on the opportunity of engaging 
 labourers here and taking them out free of cost. In 
 this way, then, both capitalists and labourers would 
 go to the colony, in greater numbers than if the pur- 
 chase-money were not used as an emigration-fund; 
 but in how much greater numbers, experience telleth 
 not, and would only tell when the whole system was 
 in real and full operation after the political impedi- 
 ments to colonization had been removed. 
 
 3. But some notion of what would then be the rate 
 of colonization, may be formed by observing another 
 
EMIGRATION-FUND. 379 
 
 effect of turning purchase-money into emigration-fund. 
 Every sale of land would produce a corresponding 
 amount of immigration. Emigrants would pour into 
 the colony at a rate of which there has been no ex- 
 ample in the settlement of new countries. Some idea 
 of what that rate would be when the plan was in 
 full operation, may be formed by comparing what took 
 place in South Australia, Australia Felix, and the 
 New- Zealand Company's Settlements, with what has 
 happened when colonies were founded without an 
 emigration-fund. Although in the cases mentioned, 
 the price of land was by no means sufficient, the 
 amount of immigration in proportion to appropriated 
 land was, to speak much within compass, twenty times 
 greater than in any case where spontaneous emigra- 
 tion was alone relied upon for peopling the colony. I 
 should not wonder to see it fifty times greater under the 
 whole plan, not thwarted, but sustained by authority. 
 4. But whatever might be the amount of emigra- 
 tion caused by using the purchase-money of land as a 
 fund for taking poor people to the colony, it would 
 cause a different proportion between land and people 
 from that which would take place if the purchase- 
 money were any otherwise employed: the proportion 
 of population to appropriated land would be very 
 much greater in the one case than in the other. From 
 this it follows, that the price of waste land, which 
 would be only sufficient if the purchase-money were 
 not used for emigration, would be excessive if it were 
 so used. Suppose that without an emigration-fund, 
 bl. per acre proved the sufficient price ; that is, neither 
 too much nor too little. But that means neither too 
 much nor too little for a certain proportion of people 
 
380 EMIGRATION-FUND. 
 
 to land, emigration not being promoted by a public 
 fund. Now apply the emigration-fund. So many 
 more people go to the colony, that the proportion 
 of people to land is greatly increased. The price 
 of 5. was just sufficient for the old proportion : it is 
 excessive under the new proportion. If under the 
 old proportion, it just prevented labourers from be- 
 coming landowners too soon, under the new one it 
 would prevent them from doing so soon enough. By 
 causing an excessive proportion of people to land, it 
 would bring down wages, do a wrong to the labouring 
 emigrants, and render the colony unpopular with that 
 class at home. Then would be seen a necessity for 
 altering the price; for lowering it from what just 
 sufficed without an emigration-fund, to what would 
 just suffice with one. The general conclusion is, that 
 a less price would be sufficient if the purchase-money 
 were, than if it were not devoted to emigration. 
 
 With an emigration-fund, therefore, the new land 
 would be cheaper; and the cheaper waste land is in 
 a colony, provided it is dear enough to prevent a mis- 
 chievous scarcity of labour, the more are people of all 
 classes at home induced to select that colony for their 
 future home. The emigration-fund, besides enabling 
 poor people to go to the colony, and attracting capi- 
 talists by enabling them to take labourers along with 
 them, would provide for all classes the attraction of 
 cheaper land than if there were no emigration-fund. 
 Altogether, the effect of devoting the purchase-money 
 of land to emigration, would be to accelerate im- 
 mensely the rate of colonization, and to augment 
 more quickly than by any other disposition of the fund, 
 the population, wealth, and greatness of the empire. 
 
GROUNDWORK OF THE SYSTEM. 381 
 
 5. A particular effect of devoting the purchase- 
 money to emigration remains to be noticed ; and a very 
 pleasing effect it would be. The term of the labourer's 
 service for hire would be shorter; the time when he 
 might turn into a landowner with advantage to the 
 whole colony, would come sooner. Suppose 61. were 
 the sufficient price without an emigration-fund, and 
 2L with one. With new land at 5/. an acre, the 
 emigrant labourers might, always on the average, 
 have to work ten years for wages before they could 
 buy enough land to set up upon as masters : with new 
 land at 21. an acre, they could become landowners 
 and masters at the end of four years. These figures 
 are entirely hypothetical ; and what the real difference 
 would prove to be I do not pretend to say ; but mani- 
 festly it would be very considerable. It is a differ- 
 ence which should be strongly impressed on the mind 
 of the colonizing legislator; for a perception of it 
 teaches that the devotion of the purchase-money to 
 emigration, besides being the disposition of the land- 
 fund most conducive to the increase of population and 
 imperial wealth and greatness, would powerfully tend 
 to render the whole system popular with the working 
 classes, and, in particular, to prevent them from ob- 
 jecting to the groundwork of the system, which is the 
 sufficient price. 
 
382 
 
 LETTER LVI. 
 From the Statesman. 
 
 ME. MOTHEKCOUNTRY OBJECTS TO THE SUFFICIENT" PRICE, 
 THAT IT WOULD PUT A STOP TO THE SALE OF WASTE 
 LAND. 
 
 I HAVE a pleasure in being able to inform you, 
 that your plan of land-selling and emigration is 
 now as clear to me, as it was lately involved in a sort 
 of mysterious obscurity. Now, at least, I understand 
 it. I see too, that my Mr. Mothercountry, upon whom 
 I can make no impression by repeating your exposition 
 of the plan, has never understood it. And no won- 
 der ; for it is plain that he has never tried to under- 
 stand it, and is still unwilling to be taught. On this 
 subject, he is a striking example of the proverb about 
 wilful deafness. 
 
 However, amongst the foolish objections which he 
 makes to the plan, and which I was able to dispose of 
 myself, there is one which I was incapable of meeting. 
 You shall have it in his own words, so far at least as 
 I am now able to avoid falling into your manner of 
 writing on this subject. He said: " Admitting, as I 
 am far from doing, that the plan would work in a 
 colony founded according to it, it is wholly inappli- 
 
CHEAP LAND FOR EVER! 383 
 
 cable to the present colonies; and after the turmoil 
 occasioned by these amateur colonizers in the South- 
 Australian and New-Zealand affairs, we are not likely 
 to let them get up any more colonies. In a colony 
 already established, the plan could not work, because 
 the only effect of the ' sufficient price ' would be to 
 put a complete stop to the sale of waste land. It 
 would have this effect, because in all these colonies, 
 for years and years to come, land already appropriated 
 will be extremely cheap. My own opinion is (and I 
 hold the faith in common with Adam Smith, and all 
 other economists who wrote before this new light 
 broke upon the world), that land in a colony ought 
 to be extremely cheap; the cheaper the better: but 
 be that as it may, to sell dear land in a colony where 
 there is plenty of cheap land, would be simply im- 
 possible. An effect of the old plan of colonizing 
 (which I think a good effect produced by a good 
 plan) is to make it impossible, that the new plan 
 should have any effect but that of completely prevent- 
 ing further colonization. In most of the colonies, not 
 an acre would be sold for ages at this nonsensical 
 sufficient price. This scheme of a sufficient price, 
 take it at the best, is an impracticable theory. Allow 
 me to say, that I am surprised to see a person of your 
 understanding waste his time on such a whimsey." 
 
384 
 
 LETTER LYII. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 THE COLONIST EXAMINES MR. MOTHERCOUNTRY'S PRO- 
 POSITION, THAT THE SUFFICIENT PRICE WOULD PUT 
 
 A STOP TO SALES OF LAND. SUGGESTION OF LOANS 
 
 FOR EMIGRATION TO BE RAISED ON THE SECURITY 
 OF FUTURE SALES. 
 
 YOUR Mr. Mothercountry's objection would show, 
 that he understands the sufficient price better 
 than you have been led to suppose. I could explain 
 the state of his mind on the subject ; but it is not 
 worth while. On one point I quite agree with him. 
 The Colonial Office will easily prevent the foundation 
 of any more colonies. Amongst those who, of late 
 years, have tormented the Colonial Office by found- 
 ing colonies, there is not one that could be persuaded 
 to take part in another enterprise of the kind; so 
 effectually has the Colonial Office, by tormenting 
 them in its turn, disgusted them with such work. 
 As most of them are public men of more or less 
 mark, or topping London merchants, their dread of 
 having anything to do with the Colonial Office has so 
 far become a general feeling, that I can only wonder 
 at the recent formation of a society for planting a 
 
SALES AT ALL EVENTS. 385 
 
 fresh settlement in New Zealand. The time, how- 
 ever, is not distant when these latest amateurs of 
 colonization will be as sick of the pursuit as the 
 others have long been. But this is becoming a 
 digression. 
 
 In his objection to the sufficient price, your Mr. Mo- 
 thercountry is both right and wrong in supposing, that 
 no public land at all would be sold in the case which he 
 puts. Xo public land would be sold to people of the 
 labouring class ; none to anybody whose object was to 
 get land as cheap as possible. But however high the 
 price of public land, and however great the excess of 
 appropriated land, there would be spots in the unap- 
 propriated territory enjoying, or likely to enjoy, pe- 
 culiar advantages of position, which speculators would 
 buy with a view to selling their land again. I allude 
 to such spots as the mouths of rivers, the shores of 
 harbours, and other good natural sites of towns, 
 which it might " pay" to buy, even though the dis- 
 trict surrounding them were only used for pasturage 
 or lumbering, and remained for some time unappro- 
 priated. By degrees, a certain town population 
 growing in these spots, the land in their immediate 
 vicinity would acquire a position- value above the 
 sufficient price, and would be sold accordingly. In 
 a like manner, if a good road were made through the 
 wilderness, between a harbour and one of these spots 
 in the interior, much of the land on both sides of the 
 road would acquire a position- value above the suffi- 
 cient price, and would then be sold. Again, in various 
 spots throughout an unappropriated pastoral district, 
 sh< ( p and cattle farmers would be glad to buy, at 
 almost any price, enough ground for a homestead and 
 
 c c 
 
386 POSITION-VALUE. 
 
 some cultivation around it. I perceive many other 
 cases in which public land would be sold, notwith- 
 standing that its price was higher than the price of 
 the cheapest appropriated land; but these examples 
 suffice for exhibiting the principle of such sales. The 
 principle is, that position-value would not be affected 
 by the sufficient price, but would be just the same, 
 wherever it occurred, whether the sufficient price 
 were high or low. This value would generally ex- 
 ceed the highest conceivable sufficient price; and 
 whenever it did, the land would be bought at the 
 sufficient price, whatever that might be. I am inclined 
 to think, that although the sufficient price was high 
 enough to prevent the sale of any land not enjoying a 
 value of position, position-value would continually 
 spread into and along the nearest boundaries of unap- 
 propriated districts ; and that thus considerable sales 
 of public land would take place, and a considerable 
 emigration-fund would be obtained, notwithstanding 
 the great cheapness of the cheapest appropriated land. 
 In some colonies, such as New Zealand, where the 
 quantity of appropriated land is not yet monstrously 
 excessive, an emigration-fund would soon accrue ; and 
 the outlay of the emigration -fund, by pouring people 
 into the colony, would soon raise the value of the 
 cheapest private land to an equality with the price of 
 public land. So far, then, I think Mr. Mothercountry 
 in the wrong. 
 
 On the other hand, I fully agree with him, that 
 where private land is monstrously superabundant, the 
 sufficient price would, for a long while, stop the sale 
 of all public land not possessing or acquiring a posi- 
 tion-value. But, as he ought to have told you, I 
 
SALES ANTICIPATED. 387 
 
 have always been aware of this difficulty, and have 
 suggested various means of overcoming it. 
 
 The first suggestion is, that future sales should be 
 anticipated, by the raising of loans on the security of 
 such sales; and that the money should be laid out on 
 emigration. This would be useful in the case of a 
 new settlement, because the first emigrants might be 
 loath to pay the sufficient price until the spot was in 
 some measure peopled : it is indispensable, with the 
 view of bestowing the advantages of the whole plan 
 on a colony, where the old practice of granting land 
 with profusion has made the cheapest land extremely 
 cheap. In the case of a neiv settlement, if the 
 government peopled its land first, and sold it after- 
 wards, it wouH sell it more readily than if it sold it 
 first and peopled it afterwards. In the case of an old 
 colony, where private land was extremely superabun- 
 dant, the anticipation of future sales of public land, 
 by raising money for emigration on that security, 
 would alter the proportion of people to land in the 
 appropriated territory, according to the scale on which 
 this mode of proceeding was adopted. If enough 
 people were thus conveyed to the appropriated terri- 
 tory to raise the price of the cheapest land there up 
 to the price of public land, this part of the colony 
 would be as well supplied with labour for hire, as it 
 would have been originally if it had been founded on 
 the plan of a sufficient price employed as an emi- 
 gration-fund. But then, objectors have said, future 
 sales of public land being anticipated, when these sales 
 took place, the purchase-money, instead of being de- 
 voted to emigration, must be employed in paying off 
 the loans ; and for this part of the colony there would 
 
 c c 2 
 
388 MOKE EMIGRATION-FUND. 
 
 be no emigration-fund. Truly; but, in that case, 
 either an emigration-fund would not then be needed, 
 or there would be a perfect equivalent for one as 
 respects the goodness at least of the colonization. At 
 a certain stage in the course of colonizing a waste 
 country, and long before all the waste land is disposed 
 of, it becomes most inexpedient to introduce more 
 people from the mother-country ; quite necessary to 
 keep the remaining waste for the purposes of the 
 colonial population, now very numerous and always 
 rapidly increasing by births and spontaneous emigra- 
 tion. From that time forth, of course, the purchase- 
 money of public land would first go to pay off the 
 previous loans for emigration, and then form part of 
 the general colonial revenue. But if this stage were 
 not yet reached if an emigration-fund were needed, 
 but could not be got then it would be necessary, 
 from that time forth, to go on settling the wilderness 
 without an emigration-fund, and to raise the price of 
 public land up to what would be sufficient, the pur- 
 chase-money not being devoted to emigration. In 
 either case, the principle of the sufficient price would 
 be maintained ; scarcity of labour would be prevented. 
 This result, however, would not be obtained in the 
 earlier stage of colonization, unless the scale of bor- 
 rowing for emigration, on the security of future sales, 
 were sufficient to supply in the appropriated territory 
 whatever might be the demand for labour. On pri- 
 vate land, the sufficient price would not be imposed 
 by law. Therefore, until emigration raised the price 
 of the cheapest private land up to that of public land, 
 emigrant labourers would be able to obtain land for 
 less than the sufficient price : and in this case, there 
 
EVIL PREVENTED. 389 
 
 might be a scarcity of labour, but not if emigration 
 were on a great enough scale to put a labourer in the 
 place of him who had become a landowner too soon. 
 With emigration, indeed, proceeding and promised as 
 to the future on this scale, few would be the owners 
 of land who would be induced to part with an acre of 
 their property for less than the price of public land. 
 The future sales of public land being sufficiently an- 
 ticipated, the future value of private land would be, 
 as it were, sufficiently anticipated likewise, by the un- 
 willingness of the owners to sell for less than a price 
 which at no distant day they would feel sure of obtain- 
 ing. If so (but all, I repeat, would depend on the 
 scale of emigration, actual and provided for), there 
 would never be a vacuum in the labour-market for 
 emigration to fill up : the evil would be prevented by 
 the certainty of a remedy being at hand in case of 
 need. 
 
390 
 
 LETTER LVIII. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 SUGGESTION OF A FURTHER MEANS FOR ENABLING THE 
 SUFFICIENT PRICE OF PUBLIC LAND TO WORK WELL 
 IN COLONIES WHERE PRIVATE LAND IS GREATLY 
 SUPERABUNDANT AND VERY CHEAP. 
 
 BUT now let us suppose the case (which is that 
 put by Mr. Mothercountry) of a colony in which 
 land was greatly superabundant, but nothing at all 
 was done to remedy the past profusion of the govern- 
 ment in granting land. In this case, the putting of 
 a price on new land would do good to nobody. The 
 price whatever its amount, would not be " sufficient" 
 for the only legitimate end of putting any price on 
 mere waste. In this case, then, the putting of a pre- 
 tended sufficient price on new land is a useless impe- 
 diment to the further appropriation of land in pecu- 
 liarly eligible spots as these are discovered, a foolish 
 check to colonizing enterprise, and a mischievous 
 deduction from the capital of the pioneers of settle- 
 ment. But this, which has been here supposed, is 
 exactly what we do in New South Wales and some 
 other colonies. In these actual cases, the price of 
 public land, as an alleged means of doing some good, 
 
THE PRICE OF PRIVATE LAND. 391 
 
 is a pretence or a delusion : the design of it is a pre- 
 tence; the result of it is a delusion; the reality is 
 nothing but a taxing of colonization for revenue. Do 
 me the favour to ask Mr. Mothercountry if he knows 
 of a worse species of taxation for colonies. 
 
 But it is easy to conceive another case, in which 
 the government should be really desirous of giving 
 full effect to the whole plan, but want means to pour 
 into the colony enough people to raise the price of the 
 cheapest private land up to the price of public land. 
 The inability would consist of the want of a sufficient 
 emigration-fund. The future sales of public land 
 would not be deemed by capitalists a security valuable 
 enough to warrant the advance on loan of all the 
 money required. In this case, the cheapest private 
 land being too cheap, labourers taken to the colony 
 would too soon turn into landowners; and their place 
 in the labour market would not be immediately filled 
 by other emigrants. There might exist all the evils 
 of scarcity of labour, notwithstanding a high price 
 for public land, and some emigration by means of 
 loans raised on the security of future sales. 
 
 If I have made the nature of the evil clear, you 
 will readily perceive what kind of remedy would be 
 appropriate. The object is to raise the price of the 
 cheapest private, up to that of public land. With 
 this view, numerous modes of proceeding have been 
 suggested. Amongst these is, what they call in 
 America, a " wild-land tax." This is a tax upon 
 private land because it remains waste; a species of 
 fine imposed on the owner for being a dog in the 
 manger; for neither using his land nor selling it to 
 somebody who would use it. This tax makes effectual 
 
392 AN APPARENT TAX 
 
 war upon the nuisance of unoccupied, in the midst of 
 occupied private land; but it tends to lower instead 
 of raising the price of land, by forbidding landowners 
 to wait before they sell for an expected time of higher 
 prices. This tax, therefore, is most inapplicable to 
 the object now in view. 
 
 Another tax proposed with a view to that object, is 
 one intended to have the effect of preventing owners 
 of private land from selling at less than the price of 
 public land. This would be a tax upon private sales 
 below the public price, sufficient in amount, in each 
 case respectively, to raise the buying price up to the 
 public price. If, for example, the public price were 
 21. an acre, and the land were sold at I/., the buyer 
 would have to pay 11. more to the government, paying 
 in all 21. ; that is, the public price. In two different 
 ways, this tax would conduce to the end contemplated. 
 First, it would prevent emigrant labourers from getting 
 land too soon : secondly, it would provide an additional 
 security on which to raise loans for emigration. In 
 theory, this tax is unobjectionable: the effect of it 
 would be to apply to private land after mischievously- 
 excessive appropriation, the whole principle of a 
 sufficient price and loans for emigration as applied to 
 waste land before appropriation. But I fear that this 
 tax would not work in practice : it would, I think, be 
 too easily evaded; for though government can pre- 
 vent people from putting a value on something, less 
 than the real one, by taking the thing off their hands 
 at their own false valuation (as is done with respect 
 to imported goods liable to ad valorem duty on 
 importation}, still I do not see how, in the supposed 
 case, the buyer and the seller could be hindered from 
 
ON SALES OF PRIVATE LAND. 393 
 
 conspiring to pretend, that the price at which they 
 dealt was equal to the price of public land though 
 really far below it : and whenever they succeeded in 
 making this pretence pass as a reality, they would 
 evade the tax. The facility of evasion would be great ; 
 the temptation strong; not to mention the roguery 
 which the practice of evasion would involve and render 
 customary. 
 
 We are driven, therefore, to a kind of taxation 
 which would neither be liable to evasion, nor so perfectly 
 fitted to the object in view. This is a tax on all sales 
 of private land acquired before the institution of the 
 sufficient price for public land; and the devotion of 
 the proceeds of the tax to emigration, either directly 
 in defraying the cost of passage for labouring people, 
 or indirectly as an additional security on which to 
 raise emigration-loans. The tax might be either ad 
 r<il"rem ; so much per cent., that is, upon the purchase- 
 money of every sale : or it might be, what would much 
 better agree with the object of the tax, a uniform sum 
 per acre equal to the acreable price of public land. 
 Thus if the price of public land were 2/., the purchaser 
 of 100 acres of private land, at whatever price, would 
 have to pay 200. to the government as a contribution 
 to the emigration-fund. It would be requisite to 
 make the purchaser liable, because the seller, having 
 jot his money, might evade the tax; whereas the 
 purchaser could be made to pay the tax or forfeit the 
 land. Or rather, probably, the best mode of levying 
 the tax would be a good system of registration, under 
 which payment of the tax would be a condition of 
 valid title. Whatever the mode, however, of prevent- 
 ing evasion of the tax, when due, the imposition of 
 
394 INCREASED VALUE OF 
 
 this tax on the first sale of any land after the law 
 came into force (but of course not on any subsequent 
 sale of that land) would be to put the sufficient price 
 upon all the land of the colony, with this only differ- 
 ence between public and private land, that in one case 
 the price would be paid before, and in the other, 
 sooner or later, after appropriation. 
 
 I see one way, and only one, in which this tax could 
 be evaded. Labourers wishing to get land, but unable 
 or unwilling to pay the tax in addition to the purchase- 
 money, might induce proprietors to let land to them 
 on so long a lease as to make the tenure equal in 
 value to freehold, or at all events on such a tenure as 
 would serve the labourer's purpose. It would there- 
 fore be requisite to impose the tax upon lettings as 
 well as sales. When, after a day fixed by the law, 
 land was let, the lessee, or landlord, or rather the land, 
 would become liable for the tax. A provision in the 
 registration for invalidating lettings in respect of 
 which the tax was not paid, would prevent evasion of 
 this part of the measure. 
 
 I have called this measure a tax on sales and lettings, 
 but have done so only for the sake of facility of expo- 
 sition. It would not really be a tax, because one 
 effect of the whole plan of colonization, an essential 
 part of which this measure is, would be, supposing the 
 payments on sales and lettings of private land to be an 
 additional security for emigration-loans, to increase 
 the value of all private land by at least as much as 
 the amount of the tax. Indeed, ere long, the rapid 
 pouring of people into the colony which would be 
 possible with the double security for emigration-loans, 
 must render the tax a mere trifle in comparison with 
 
ALL PRIVATE LAND. 395 
 
 the new value which it would help to confer imme- 
 diately on private land. But, there is one case of 
 hardship which might happen in the meanwhile, and 
 which should be guarded against. The whole system 
 being in operation, most owners would not be sellers 
 or letters, but tenacious holders of their landed pro- 
 perty ; waiters for the great and general rise in the value 
 of land, which they would see to be approaching. But 
 some few would be unable to wait : their circumstances 
 would command, and yet the tax might forbid them 
 to sell or let. In order comprehensively and effec- 
 tually to guard against such cases of hardship, the 
 government might give notice before the whole law of 
 colonization came into force, that it would purchase at 
 a valuation any land which anybody wished to sell in 
 that way. A time must of course be fixed, after 
 which the government would no longer do this. As 
 the valuation in every case would be according to the 
 very low value of the land at the time, excluding all 
 allowance for prospective value, no landowners, I 
 repeat, except those who at that particular time were 
 under a necessity of selling, would offer their land to 
 the government. These, I am persuaded, would be 
 very few. Whatever land came into the hands of 
 government under this part of the law, would be resold 
 as soon as a price was offered for it equal to a sum 
 composed of the price which the government had paid, 
 of all the expenses incurred, and of the tax on sales. 
 Such a price would be offered before long. If it were 
 deemed unadvisable or impossible that the government 
 should be out of its money so long, then the law 
 might provide that the government, instead of paying 
 for the land at the time of buying it, should engage to 
 
396 AN OFFICIAL TASK. 
 
 pay interest on the price till the land should be sold 
 again, and then to pay the principal. This engage- 
 ment of the government would be as valuable to the 
 seller, if it were made transferable like an Exchequer 
 Bill, as the purchase-money in hand. 
 
 I am much afraid that you must be growing tired 
 of these doctrinal particulars. 
 
 LETTER LIX. 
 From the Statesman. 
 
 THE STATESMAN TELLS OF MB. MOTHERCOUNTRY ? S IN- 
 TENTION TO MAKE THE COMMISSIONERS OF COLONIAL 
 LAND AND EMIGRATION WRITE OBJECTIONS TO THE 
 SUFFICIENT PRICE FOR WASTE LAND. 
 
 AS decidedly as common prudence will allow me to 
 express an opinion on a question so new to me, I 
 think you have shown that the extreme cheapness of 
 private land in some colonies is not, even as respects 
 those colonies only, a valid objection to the sufficient 
 price for public land. But Mr. Mothercountry still 
 objects to it. He does not offer specific objections to 
 your plan for remedying the evils of superabundant 
 private land, but merely says that it is absurd. When 
 I pressed for his reasons, he proposed to write to me 
 on the subject; and I have accepted his offer. I 
 gathered, that his intention is to set the Colonial Land 
 and Emigration Commissioners the task of objecting 
 to the latter part of your scheme ; and as they ought 
 to be masters of a subject which it is their especial 
 
THEORY AND PRACTICE. 397 
 
 function to understand thoroughly, I wish to keep 
 my own opinions on it unsettled till after seeing what 
 tlu-y may have to say. If I get anything from them 
 that appears worth sending to you, you shall have it 
 without delay. 
 
 Do not suppose that I am tired of your " doctrinal 
 particulars." On the contrary, I feel obliged to you 
 for taking the trouble to furnish me with them; for I 
 wi>h to understand the subject thoroughly, not to get 
 a superficial smattering of it. I imagine, however, 
 that we are near the end. 
 
 LETTER LX. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 THE COLONIST ANTICIPATES THE PROBABLE WRITING 
 OF THE COMMISSIONERS. 
 
 rFHEORETICALLY, indeed, it is the especial func- 
 tion of the Colonial Land and Emigration Com- 
 mi>sioners to be masters of the subject which their 
 title expresses ; but practically they have very different 
 functions. Of these, one which the Colonial Office 
 frequently imposes on them, is that of picking holes 
 in a suggestion about colonization, which the Office 
 dislikes per se, or dislikes being troubled with. By 
 much practice they have become skilful in this sort of 
 official business, and really do it very well. You 
 may expect, therefore, some cleverish special-pleading 
 against " saddling colonies with debt," " taxing the 
 feeble resources of young societies," and " giving an 
 
398 A "GOOD HATER." 
 
 unhealthy stimulus to emigration." As these gentle- 
 men always have an eye to their chief's predilections 
 and antipathies, they may also throw in an argument 
 for " spontaneous" emigration, of which Lord Grey has 
 been very fond ever since certain elaborate and im- 
 practicable schemes of his own for promoting what he 
 now calls " forced" emigration, all broke down. But 
 they will not, partly because they dare not, examine 
 the question candidly with a view of throwing light 
 upon it. They dare not, because, in the first place, 
 though their office is in Park- street, they are, from the 
 very nature of the commission, mere clerks of colonial 
 Downing- street ; and secondly, because, whilst the 
 " good hater," whose helpless subordinates these Com- 
 missioners are at present, hates nothing more than a 
 suggestion of mine, his irascible and vindictive temper 
 makes those who are at his mercy, and who know 
 him, tremble at the thought of his displeasure. 
 
 I hope indeed that we are not far from the end; 
 but several matters remain to be explained, because 
 they are really essential conditions of the well- working 
 of the plan of colonization as here laid down. Nay, 
 as such, they are rather parts of the plan. 
 
399 
 
 LETTER LXI. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 THE NECESSITY OF PERFECT LIBERTY OF APPROPRIATION 
 AT THE SUFFICIENT PRICE. LIBERTY OF APPROPRI- 
 ATION DEPENDENT ON AMPLE AND ACCURATE SUR- 
 VEYS. ACTUAL SURVEYING IN THE COLONIES. 
 
 AT the sufficient price, there should be the most 
 complete liberty of acquiring private property in 
 public land : for any restriction of this liberty would 
 be tantamount to a restriction of the quantity of land 
 open to purchase, and would be a difficulty, over and 
 above the sufficient price, placed in the way of a 
 labourer desirous to become a landowner. If the price 
 were really sufficient, any further restriction would 
 be an oppression of the labouring class. Though not 
 so oppressive to the other classes, it would be very 
 unjust and very impolitic as respects them also; 
 since if the government professed to allow the utmost 
 liberty of appropriation on the one condition of paying 
 the sufficient price, any further restriction, not abso- 
 lutely unavoidable, would be a wrong, and the com- 
 pletion of a fraud, towards every purchaser. If the 
 further restriction were irregular and uncertain in its 
 force, every man would be put out in his calculations ; 
 
400 PERFECT LIBERTY 
 
 nobody would be able to regulate his proceedings by 
 his knowledge of the law : the system, instead of being 
 administered according to law, would be subject to 
 arbitrary and perhaps mysterious derangement, like 
 our present political government of the colonies. 
 
 A price which would be sufficient with perfect 
 liberty of appropriation, must be both excessive and 
 insufficient without that liberty. If the price by itself 
 were restriction enough, then a restriction of the 
 quantity besides would be like adding to the price for 
 some purchasers and diminishing it for others. If the 
 quantity were so restricted as to occasion competition, 
 one with another among intending purchasers, there 
 would be a scramble for the land ; and though nobody 
 would pay more than the fixed price, those who were 
 not so fortunate as to get land from the government, 
 would have to buy from the others at an enhanced 
 price ; or they would have to go without land : and in 
 either case, the lucky or perhaps favoured purchasers 
 from the government would really obtain land pos- 
 sessing at the time a competition-value over and above 
 its cost, which would be the same thing for them as 
 getting land for less than the price of public land. 
 The price, therefore, at which people obtained public 
 land, would virtually be, in some cases more, in some 
 less, than the price required by the government as 
 being neither more nor less than sufficient. This 
 counteraction of the principle of the sufficient price 
 would be a serious evil, but not the only one. In 
 addition to it, in the case supposed of competition pro- 
 duced by a restriction of quantity, there would be a 
 frequent selection of the same spot by many purchasers, 
 and a drawing of lots for the preference ; much merely 
 
OF APPROPRIATION. 401 
 
 speculative investment ; plenty of waiting ; and plenty 
 of bad blood amongst neighbours. There would be ? 
 in short, though in a mitigated degree, all the evils 
 which attend upon restricting the quantity of land with 
 a view to competition, and then selling by auction. 
 
 It seems at first sight, that nothing would be easier 
 than to establish a perfect liberty of appropriation. 
 The government, apparently, would only have to tell 
 every purchaser to go and pick the land he liked best, 
 >on as the purchase-money was paid. But what 
 is it that he would have to pick out of? A great 
 wilderness, about which, until it was duly surveyed, 
 nobody could possess the requisite knowledge for 
 picking well. Suppose, however, though it must be 
 merely for the sake of illustration, that purchasers 
 generally could find out without a proper survey, 
 where the best land was ; where this or that natural 
 circumstance existed that suited their respective 
 objects ; where the land was most heavily timbered, 
 whore clear of timber, where alluvial, where light; 
 where water abounded, and was scarce ; what was the 
 course of streams ; where mill-sites and fords occurred ; 
 the probable line of future roads; and so forth ad 
 infinitum : suppose all this, if you can conceive what 
 is manifestly impossible, and even then what would 
 happen ? The explorer, having chosen his spot, could 
 not describe its boundaries to the government; in 
 most cases, he could not even tell the government 
 where the spot was ; for without a map, he could not 
 say it is here or there. Without a map, all he could 
 say is, it is somewhere where I have been, but where- 
 abouts the spot is I cannot tell, except that it is near 
 a river, and not far from some hills. 
 
 D D 
 
402 EXTENT, COMPLETENESS, AND 
 
 On looking twice, therefore, at this subject, it be- 
 comes plain that in order to let the purchaser choose 
 his land with a sufficient knowledge of the country, 
 and further in order to let him point out his choice to 
 the government and obtain a properly descriptive title, 
 a good map, the result of a careful survey, is indis- 
 pensable. Waste land not surveyed, is not land open 
 to purchasers, any more than unpicked cotton or 
 unthrashed corn is fit for market. 
 
 It follows, that if the sufficient price were intended 
 to be the only restriction as to quantity, and that, as 
 to choice within the quantity open to purchasers, there 
 was to be no restriction, the whole plan could not work 
 even decently without ample surveys. The surveys 
 should, at least, be so extensive as to prevent any one 
 from being compelled to take inferior land when there 
 was superior land within reach. Except in countries 
 of immense extdfct, the surveys should extend over the 
 whole colony: and at any rate, for all colonies, a very 
 large extent of the waste adjoining every settlement 
 should at all times be kept surveyed, in order that so 
 wide a liberty of choice should at all times exist. 
 
 I hardly know which is of the most consequence ; 
 extent, or completeness and accuracy of survey. 
 Whatever the extent, the whole affair would be in a 
 mess without completeness and accuracy. Without 
 completeness that is^unless all the natural features 
 of the country, and all sorts of information about its 
 varied soils and natural productions, were laid down 
 on the map purchasers would choose in ignorance, 
 would often make bad selections, and would justly 
 reproach the government with having misled them. 
 Without accuracy, all kinds of confusion would arise 
 
ACCURACY OF SURVEYS. 403 
 
 in settling, or rather in pretending to settle, the 
 boundaries of selections; and as the land increased in 
 value (which* under the operation of the whole system 
 it would do almost as soon as it was bought), there 
 would be boundless and endless litigation amongst 
 purchasers, and between purchasers and the govern,- 
 ment. 
 
 The evils above described as being sure to arise 
 from insufficiency, incompleteness, and inaccuracy of 
 survey, though presented to you hypothetically, are 
 wretched facts in all our colonies more or less ; and in 
 some of the colonies, the whole mischief is so great as 
 to be hardly credible by those who have not witnessed 
 it. For an ample description of it in one case, I would 
 refer you to Lord Durham's Report, and the evidence, 
 in one of its appendices (B), on which his picture of 
 surveys in Canada was founded. If you should take 
 the trouble to examine it, you will agree with me that 
 the whole system, or rather slovenly practice, of 
 public surveying in Canada was at that time really 
 abominable. It is not much better now. In several 
 other colonies, it is as bad as it ever was in Canada. 
 In hardly any colony is it better than very mistaken 
 in theory, defective in practice, and most extravagant 
 in cost. In the United States alone, the government 
 has seriously thought about this matter, and done 
 what it conceived to be best and cheapest. But the 
 plan of that government is unsuited to open countries, 
 where artificial marks on the ground are soon ob- 
 literated ; and it also has the effect of circumscribing 
 freedom of choice within limits that would be too 
 narrow if public land cost the sufficient price. In 
 the one or two of our colonies where public surveying 
 
 D D 2 
 
404 IMPROVEMENT OF SURVEYING. 
 
 has been best managed, it is far behind that of the 
 United States in efficiency and accuracy; and in no 
 one British colony has a system been adopted, that 
 would allow a sufficient price to work half as well as 
 if the surveys were sufficient in extent, complete, 
 accurate, and cheap. How they might be made all 
 this, is a question upon which I am ready to enter if 
 you please ; though I think you may as well spare 
 yourself the trouble of examining it whilst our system 
 of colonial government shall remain as it is, and those 
 who administer it be jealously adverse to every pro- 
 posal of improvement. If, however, you do not in- 
 vestigate this subject now, I must beg of you to take 
 for granted, that a vast improvement of colonial sur- 
 veying would not be difficult, and to remember that 
 without it the plan of a sufficient price with its appen- 
 dages cannot work well. 
 
405 
 
 LETTER LXII. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 PROPOSED SELECTION OF EMIGRANTS, WITH A VIEW OF 
 MAKING THE EMIGRATION-FUND AS POTENT AS POS- 
 SIBLE. MORAL ADVANTAGES OF SUCH A SELECTION. 
 
 TTTHEN it was first proposed to sell waste land 
 instead of granting it, and to use the purchase- 
 money as an emigration-fund, the further proposal 
 was made, that the money should be expended hi 
 paying for the passage of labouring people only, and 
 that in the selection of such people for a passage 
 wholly or partially cost free, a preference should 
 always be given to young married couples, or to 
 young people of the marriageable age hi an equal 
 proportion of the sexes. The latter suggestion was 
 founded on certain considerations which I will now 
 mention. 
 
 1. The emigration-fund ought to be laid out so as 
 to take away from the old country, and introduce into 
 the colonies, the greatest possible amount of popula- 
 tion and labour ; in such a manner that, as an emigra- 
 tion-fund, it should have the maximum of effect both 
 on the colonies and the mother-country. 
 
 2. If the object were to procure at the least cost 
 
406 SELECTION OF EMIGRANTS. 
 
 the greatest amount of labour for immediate employ- 
 ment in the colonies, it would appear at first sight 
 that the emigrants ought to be, all of them, in the 
 prime of life. But it is only at first sight that this 
 can appear ; because on reflection it is seen, that two 
 men having to perform, each for himself, all the offices 
 that women of the labouring class usually perform for 
 men to cook their own victuals, to mend their own 
 clothes, to make their own beds, to play the woman's 
 part at home as well as the man's part in the field or 
 workshop to divide their labour between household 
 cares and the work of production would produce less 
 than one man giving the whole of his time to the work 
 of production. This is a case which illustrates the 
 advantages of combination of labour for division of 
 employments. If the two men combined their labour, 
 and so divided their employments one occupying 
 himself solely with household cares for both, and the 
 other with earning wages for both then might the 
 produce of their united labour be equal to that of one 
 married man; but, speaking generally, it would not 
 be more. In new colonies, men have often made this 
 unnatural arrangement; and to some extent they do 
 so now in colonies where there are many more men 
 than women. We need not stop to look at the moral 
 evils of an excess of males. In an economical view 
 only, it seems plain that poor emigrants taken to a 
 colony by the purchase-money of waste land, ought 
 to be men and women in equal numbers; and, if 
 married, so much the better. 
 
 3. If they were old people, their labour would be 
 of little value to the colony; not only because it 
 would soon be at an end, but also because it would 
 
CHILDREN AS EMIGRANTS. 407 
 
 be weak, and because after middle age few workmen 
 can readily turn their hands to employments different 
 from those to which they are accustomed. In order 
 that poor emigrants taken to a colony should be as 
 valuable as possible, they ought to be young people, 
 whose powers of labour would last as long as possible, 
 and who could readily turn their hands to new em- 
 ployments. 
 
 4. But are there any objections to a mixture of 
 children? To this there are four principal objections, 
 besides others. First, if the children were the 
 offspring of grown-up emigrants, it follows that those 
 parents could not be of the best age; that if old 
 enough to have children, they would be too old to 
 come under the description of the most valuable 
 labourers. Secondly, children are less fit than old 
 people to undergo the confinement and other troubles 
 of a long sea voyage. Of this you may convince 
 yourself by visiting a ship fall of emigrants at Graves- 
 end, bound to New York. You will find those who 
 are parents, and especially the mothers, troubled and 
 anxious, fearful of accidents to their children, restless, 
 starting at every noise ; if paupers, glad to see their 
 little ones stuffing themselves with the ship's rations, 
 dainties to them, poor things ! who have plenty to eat 
 for the first time in their lives ; if paupers, looking 
 l>ark without affection, and to the future with glad- 
 some hope, but, being parents, with apprehension 
 lest, in the distant land of promise, the children should 
 suffer more than they have endured at home. You 
 will see the children, if of the pauper class, delighted 
 at meal-times, smiling with greasy lips, their eyes 
 sparkling over the butcher's meat, but at other times 
 
408 NATURAL TIME OF MARRIAGE 
 
 sick of the confinement, tired of having nothing to do, 
 wanting a play -place, always in the way, driven from 
 pillar to post, and exposed to serious accidents. Those 
 poor emigrants, on the contrary, who are neither 
 parents nor children young men and women without 
 any incumbrance you will find quite at their ease, 
 enjoying the luxury of idleness, pleased with the 
 novelty of their situation, in a state of pleasurable 
 excitement, glorying in the prospect of independence, 
 thanking God that they are still without children, and, 
 if you should know how to make them speak out, 
 delighted to talk about the new country, in which, as 
 they have heard, children are not a burthen but a 
 blessing. Thirdly, when children first reach a colony, 
 they necessarily encumber somebody. They cannot 
 for some time be of any use as labourers : they cannot 
 produce wealth wherewith to attract, convey, and 
 employ other labourers. To whatever extent, then, the 
 emigration -fund should be laid out in removing children 
 instead of grown-up people, the value received by 
 mother-country and colony would be less than might 
 be. By taking none but very young grown-up 
 persons, the maximum of value would be obtained 
 for any given outlay. 
 
 5. The greatest quantity of labour would be 
 obtained more easily than a less quantity. The natural 
 time of marriage is a time of change, when two persons, 
 just united for life, must nearlySffseek a new home. 
 The natural time of marriage, too, is one when the 
 mind is most disposed to hope, to ambition, to engaging 
 in undertakings which require decision and energy 
 of purpose. Marriage, besides, produces greater 
 anxiety for the future, and a very strong desire to be 
 
ONLY A PREFERENCE. 409 
 
 off in the world for the sake of expected off- 
 spring. Of what class are composed those numerous 
 >tivams of emigrants, which flow continually from 
 the Eastern to the outside of the Western states of 
 America, by channels, until lately rougher and 
 longer than the sea-way from England to America? 
 X i- it her of single men, nor of old people, nor of middle- 
 jiirrd people dragging children along with them, but, for 
 the most part, of young couples, seeking a new home, 
 fondly encouraging each other, strong in health and 
 spirits, not driven from birth-place by the fear of 
 want, "but attracted to a new place by motives of 
 ambition for themselves and for children to come. 
 This then is the class of people, that could be most 
 easily attracted to a colony by high wages and better 
 prospects. The class which it is most expedient to 
 select, would be the most easily persuaded to avail 
 themselves of a preference in their favour. 
 
 6. A preference in favour of the best class is all 
 that the law should declare. For there might not 
 exist in the old country a sufficient number of the 
 most valuable class of labouring emigrants to supply 
 the colonial demand for labour. Suppose, for example, 
 that the United States determined to lay out the 
 annual proceeds of their waste-land fund, which on 
 the average exceeds 1,000,000/., in providing a passage 
 t< >r poor young couples from Ireland to America. This 
 outlay, the passage of each person costing 4/., would 
 provide for the annual emigration of 125,000 couples. 
 But in Ireland there are not so many as 125,000 
 couples, or 250,000 individuals, born in the same year 
 and grown up. As the constant emigration of all, or 
 may be half, the couples who every year reach the age 
 
410 PROBABLE EFFECTS OF 
 
 of marriage, must very soon depopulate any country, 
 we may be sure that a portion only of this class will 
 ever be disposed to emigrate. Whenever a number 
 sufficient to meet the colonial demand for labour 
 should not be disposed to emigrate, it would be neces- 
 sary to offer a passage to couples older or younger by 
 one, two, or three years, but always giving a prefer- 
 ence to those who were nearest to the marriageable age. 
 At all times, in short, the administrators of the emi- 
 gration-fund could only give a preference to the most 
 eligible applicants at the time. 
 
 7. Supposing all the people taken to a colony with 
 the purchase-money of waste land, to be young men 
 and women in equal numbers, let us see what the effect 
 would be on the colonial population. At the end of 
 twenty years after the foundation of Virginia, the 
 number of colonists was about 1800, though the 
 number of emigrants had been nearly 20,000. This 
 rapid decrease of population was owing in some 
 measure to the miserable state of things that existed 
 in Virginia before the colony was enriched by the 
 introduction of slave-labour; but it was in no small 
 degree owing to this ; that of the 20,000 emigrants, 
 only a very few were females. As there was hardly 
 any increase of people by births in the colony, the 
 local population would at all events have been less at 
 the end of twenty years, than the number of emigrants 
 during that period. In New South Wales, it has 
 never been difficult for the poorest class to maintain a 
 family : yet until young couples were for the first time 
 taken to that colony about sixteen years ago, its 
 population was nothing like as great as the number of 
 emigrants. Of those emigrants (they were mostly 
 
THE PROPOSED SELECTION. 411 
 
 nmvicts), by far the greater number were men; and 
 of the handful of women, many were past the age of 
 child-bearing. Had they consisted of men and women 
 in equal proportions, but of the middle age, the number 
 of emigrants might still have exceeded the colonial 
 population ; but if they had consisted of young couples 
 just arrived at the age of marriage, the population of 
 the colony would have advanced with surprising 
 rapidity. I once reckoned that at the time in question, 
 the population of the colony would have been 500,000 
 instead of its actual amount, 50,000 ; that the increase 
 of people, and, we may add, the rate of colonization, 
 would have been ten times greater than they were, 
 with the same outlay in emigration. At that time, the 
 proportion of young people in New South Wales was 
 very small : in the supposed case, it would have been 
 much greater than it has ever been in any human 
 society. According, of course, to this large proportion 
 of young people would have been the prospect of 
 future increase. If all the people who have removed 
 from Europe and Africa to America, had been young 
 couples just arrived at the marriageable age, slavery 
 in North America must have long since died a natural 
 death : no part of North America, perhaps no part of 
 South America, would now be open to colonization. 
 
 8. In any colony, the immediate effect of selecting 
 young couples for emigration, would be to diminish 
 in a curious degree the cost of adding to the colonial 
 population. The passage of young couples would not 
 cost more than that of all classes mixed; but the 
 young couples would take to the colony the greatest 
 possible germ of future increase. In fact, the settlers 
 of New South Wales who in a few years made that 
 
412 SELECTION OF SHEEP. 
 
 colony swarm with sheep, did not import lambs or 
 old sheep ; still less did they import a large propor- 
 tion of rams. They imported altogether a very small 
 number of sheep, compared with the vast number 
 they soon possessed. Their object was the production 
 in the colony of the greatest number of sheep by the 
 importation of the smallest number, or, in other 
 words, at the least cost : and this object they accom-, 
 plished by selecting for importation those animals 
 only, which, on account of their sex and age, were fit 
 to produce the greatest number of young in the 
 shortest time. If emigrants were selected on the 
 same principle, the appropriated land, it is evident, 
 would become as valuable as it could ever be, much 
 sooner than if the emigrants were a mixture of 
 people of all ages. In the former case, not only would 
 all the emigrants be of the most valuable class as 
 labourers, but they would be of the class fit to pro- 
 duce the most rapid increase of people in the colony, 
 and so to confer on new land as soon as possible 
 the value that depends on position. The buyer of 
 new land, therefore, would have his purchase-money 
 laid out for him in the way most conducive to a de- 
 mand for accommodation-land and building-ground; 
 in the way that would serve him most. And some- 
 thing else would now from this selection of emigrants, 
 which it is very needful to observe. The emigration- 
 fund being so much more potent in its operation, 
 any given outlay would have a greater effect on the 
 colonial proportion of land to people. With the selec- 
 tion, the labour-market would be more largely sup- 
 plied than without it : a shorter term of labour for 
 hire by the emigrants would suffice for the greatest 
 
A GREAT NURSERY. 413 
 
 productiveness of industry: a lower price of public 
 land would be sufficient. And yet both of the proposed 
 securities on which to borrow money for emigration, 
 would be more valuable : notwithstanding the lower 
 price for public land and the -lower tax on private 
 sales and lettings, the means of paying off the emigra- 
 tion-loans would be obtained much sooner than with- 
 out this selection of emigrants. With the selection, 
 it would be more easy, as well as in many ways more 
 advantageous, to get the whole plan into full work, 
 even in colonies where land is the most superabundant. 
 9. The moral advantages of such a selection of 
 emigrants would not be few. If the emigrants were 
 married (as they all ought to be, and as by rejecting 
 unmarried applicants, it would be easy to take care 
 that they should be), each female would have a special 
 protector from the moment of her departure frAn 
 home. No man would have an excuse for dissolute 
 habits. All the evils which in colonization have so 
 often sprung from a disproportion between the sexes, 
 and which are still very serious in several colonies, 
 would be completely averted. Every pair of emi- 
 grants would have the strongest motives for industry, 
 steadiness, and thrift. In a colony thus peopled, there 
 would be hardly any single men or single women: 
 nearly the whole population would consist of married 
 men and women, boys and girls, and children. For 
 many years the proportion of children to grown-up 
 people would be greater than ever took place since 
 Shem, Ham, and Japhet were surrounded by their 
 little ones. The colony would be an immense nursery, 
 and, all being at ease, would present a finer oppor- 
 tunity than has ever occurred for trying what may 
 
414 MANAGEMENT OF 
 
 be done for society by really educating the common 
 people. 
 
 The selection and conveyance of poor emigrants 
 obtaining a passage to the colonies by means of the 
 purchase-money of waste land, is the part of the plan 
 of the theorists of 1830, which in practice has been 
 attended with the least disappointment. The example 
 of something like a careful administration of this part 
 of the theory was set by the South Australian Com- 
 missioners, who were zealously assisted by two of the 
 framers of the theory in starting this new kind of 
 emigration. By following the example thus set, the 
 New-Zealand Company and the Colonial Office Com- 
 missioners in Park-street have brought about a re- 
 volution in the character, at least, of long-sea emigra- 
 tion for the poorer classes. A voyage of 16,000 
 miles is now made by a shipful of poor emigrants, 
 with a lower rate of mortality amongst them during 
 the voyage, than the average rate of mortality in the 
 class formed by the families of our peerage. In most 
 of the ships, the number of passengers is greater at 
 the end than at the beginning of the voyage. The 
 Southern colonies have received by this means, a class 
 of labouring emigrants incomparably superior in point 
 of usefulness to the old-fashioned ship-loads of 
 sho veiled-out paupers. The nearer equality of the 
 sexes in this emigration has produced the good moral 
 results that were expected from it, or rather averted the 
 very bad moral results that had flowed from inequality 
 between the sexes in all previous emigration : and the 
 colonies to which this selected emigration has been 
 directed, have received an amount of the germ of 
 increased population, of which, in proportion to the 
 
EMIGRATION. 415 
 
 number of emigrants, there has been no previous 
 example. Altogether, what has been done, establishes 
 the infinite superiority of systematic emigration to 
 that " spontaneous" scramble which Lord Grey now 
 applauds, and which, often afflicting Canada with 
 malignant fever, necessitates a lazaretto on the St. 
 Lawrence, as if, says Lord Durham, British emigrants 
 came from the home of the plague. 
 
 But the administration of the emigration-fund of 
 colonies is still, I believe, open to great improvements. 
 The selection of emigrants has never been as good as 
 it might be. The South- Australian Commissioners 
 were new to their work, and neither personally in- 
 terested in it nor responsible to anybody. The New- 
 Zealand Company was for years rather a company for 
 disturbing the Colonial Office and usefully agitating 
 colonial questions of principle, than for colonizing; 
 and now it is only a company for trying in vain to 
 colonize. The Commissioners in Park-street have not 
 been of a class, to whom much personal intercourse 
 with poor emigrants could be agreeable (and without 
 close personal intercourse between the poorest emi- 
 grants and the highest executive authority in this 
 matter, it is impossible that the business should be 
 very well done) ; they have been in no measure respon- 
 sible to the colonies whose funds they expended, and 
 which were alone much interested in watching their 
 proceedings; their official house, in Westminster, 
 seems poked as if on purpose out of the way of 
 shipping business and emigrant resort ; and they have 
 naturally fallen into a practice, which must be ex- 
 tremely convenient to them, of getting their emigra- 
 tion business done by contract and by men of busi- 
 
416 SUM OF MISMANAGEMENT. 
 
 ness. But the main business of the contractors is to 
 make as much as they can by their contracts. So we 
 hear of emigrant ships bound to Adelaide or Port 
 Philip, receiving a few English passengers in London, 
 and filling up with the most wretched Irish at Ply- 
 mouth, whom the contractor finds it " pay" to bring 
 from Cork on purpose to fill up with, because, as 
 respects food and accommodation during the voyage, 
 there are no passengers that cost so little as the Irish 
 poor, or are so easily imposed upon by the captain who 
 represents the contractor. This case of defrauding 
 the colonies by sending them inferior labour for their 
 money which pays for superior, indicates that it does 
 not stand alone as to mismanagement. In all parts of 
 this administration, all the administrators have mis- 
 managed a little. There has been a little waste of pre- 
 cious funds, a little neglect here and there, a little 
 overlooked deviation from rules, a little imposition of 
 " false character" upon the examiners of applications 
 for a passage, and, I rather think, not a little jobbing 
 in accommodating friends or persons of influence with 
 a free passage to the colonies for emigrants whom 
 they wanted to shovel out. The sum of mismanage- 
 ment is considerable. It would have been greater 
 but for a sort of rivalry between companies and com- 
 missioners, which led them to watch each other, but 
 which has now ceased; and it can only be surely 
 guarded against in future, by a plain, unmistakeable, 
 immutable law of emigration, with provisions for ren- 
 dering its administrators in some measure responsible 
 to the colonies, which alone can be sufficiently in- 
 terested in the good administration of the law to 
 furnish the safeguard of a vigilant public opinion con- 
 stantly attending to particulars. 
 
417 
 
 LKTTKR LX1II. 
 From the Statesman. 
 
 AN IMPORTANT OBJECTION TO THE COLONIST'S WHOLE 
 PLAN OF COLONIZATION APART FROM GOVERNMENT. 
 
 AFTER a long conversation yesterday with my Mr. 
 Mothercountry, I am under the necessity of re- 
 porting two objections of his, the force of which I 
 could not help admitting at the time : but as you have 
 before enabled me to recall similar admissions, so I 
 trust that you may now put me in the way of silencing 
 the objector. It would be satisfactory to stop his 
 mouth this time; for these two, he says, are his last 
 objections; and to me they certainly appear rather 
 formidable. You shall have them one at a time. 
 
 The first of them, however, relates only to those 
 countries which are not covered with a dense forest 
 like Canada, but in which there is abundance of open 
 land, covered with natural pasturage for sheep and 
 cattle, such as New South Wales. Here, says my 
 prompter, the sufficient price would have a most 
 injurious effect: it would prevent the use of the 
 natural pasturage. In open countries, where food for 
 animals is produced in abundance without cost, pas- 
 toral occupations are the principal source of individual 
 
 E E 
 
418 TAXING THE FISHERIES. 
 
 and public wealth. What nature produces in these 
 countries, the inhabitants find it worth while to use, 
 by keeping vast numbers of cattle, horses, and sheep : 
 but if you compelled every one, before he could use 
 natural pasturage, to pay for it a " sufficient price " 
 per acre, you would, in fact, forbid him to use it : for 
 the use of pasturage, when it costs nothing, only just 
 remunerates the capitalist ; and if you added to his 
 outlay a considerable price for every acre used, he 
 could not carry on his business without loss. By im- 
 posing the sufficient price on all land in pastoral 
 countries, you would destroy their principal branch of 
 industry and source of wealth. You might as well 
 propose to make the fishermen of Newfoundland pay 
 a sufficient price per acre for the use of their cod 
 banks. 
 
 LETTER LXIV. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 THE COLONIST FIRST ADMITS, AND THEN ANSWERS 
 THE OBJECTION. 
 
 I AGREE with every syllable of the objection to a 
 sufficient price for the use of natural pasturage. 
 Indeed, I claim the argument as my own ; for it has 
 been taken, almost verbatim, from some anonymous 
 writing of mine. But then, your prompter and I 
 direct the argument against totally different objects. 
 He directs it against me as the proposer of a price for 
 natural pasturage, which I am not ; I direct it against 
 
TAXATION OF PASTURAGE. 419 
 
 his Office, which really is the imposer of a price on 
 natural pasturage, notwithstanding this conclusive 
 argument against the proceeding. The theorists of 
 1830 never thought of compelling settlers to pay for 
 the use of natural pasturage. According to their 
 theory, it is the extreme cheapness, not of natural 
 pasturage, but of land for cultivation, which occasions 
 scarcity of labour for hire. Labourers could not be- 
 come landowners by using natural pasturage. The 
 use of it requires, in order to be profitable, the em- 
 ployment of a considerable capital, of numerous ser- 
 vants, and of very superior skill: it is a business 
 requiring from the outset much combination of labour 
 for division of employments, and the unremitting 
 constancy of the combined labour: it is a business 
 altogether unsuitable to the common labourer or small 
 capitalist. Whether, therefore, the use of natural 
 pasturage were cheap or dear, the labourer would 
 either sooner or later cease to work for wages; the 
 term of his working for wages would in either case 
 depend, not at all on the cost of natural pasturage, 
 but wholly on the price of freehold land. It is 
 for this alone for the sort of property in land 
 which a labourer would require in order to cease 
 working for hire, and to set up for himself as a com- 
 petitor with his former employers in the labour-market 
 that the theorists of 1830 have ever proposed a 
 sufficient price. According to their view of the 
 matter, the words "a sufficient price for the use of 
 natural ]>a>turage" are unmeaning or nonsensical. 
 
 \< vci-tln less, between abundance of natural pas- 
 tura-jv and the sufficient price for freehold land, there 
 is a close and important relation. The abundance of 
 
 E E 2 
 
420 WOOL-GRAZIERS OF NEW SOUTH WALES 
 
 natural pasturage in a colony is, like the existence of 
 valuable mines or prolific fishing-banks, a source of 
 wealth supplied by nature, but which can only be 
 turned to great account by means of placing com- 
 binable and constant labour at the disposal of the 
 capitalist. In colonies, therefore, to which nature has 
 given this advantage, it is more than usually desirable 
 that the property in land which converts the hired 
 labourer into a landowner, should be dear enough to 
 prevent a great scarcity of labour for hire ; and that 
 all those measures for promoting labour-emigration, of 
 which the sufficient price is the basis, should receive 
 their utmost development. But if the abundance of 
 natural pasturage thus furnishes an additional reason 
 for working out completely, and on the greatest possible 
 scale, the principle of a sufficient price for freehold 
 land, what shall we say of the policy of the Colonial 
 Office and its official instruments in the colonies, 
 who put a price upon the use of natural pasturage 
 for no purpose but that of getting money out 
 of the settlers? The prosperity of New South 
 Wales, for example, is wholly dependent on the use 
 of vast tracts of natural pasturage. With labour as 
 dear, and as scarce at whatever price, as it is in New 
 South Wales, the production of fine wool at a cost 
 not involving loss, would be utterly impossible with- 
 out the aid of nature in supplying the sheep with 
 food. The wool-growers of New South Wales, there- 
 fore, who formerly got the use of pasturage for no- 
 thing, must still get it or be ruined. As they have 
 no choice between getting it and being ruined, their 
 government, being despotic, can make them pay for 
 it as much as they can afford to pay. Short of paying 
 
CRUELLY TAXED. 421 
 
 more than they can afford more, that is, than their 
 occupation would leave after replacing capital with 
 some profit they cannot help paying whatever their 
 government chooses to require. This absolute neces- 
 sity of paying in order to preserve the staple business 
 of the colony, renders the putting of a price on the 
 use of natural pasturage a remarkably facile and plea- 
 sant sort of taxation: facile and pleasant, that is, for 
 the officials of a government which has no sympathy 
 with its subjects. As regards the subjects, this is a 
 most unwise and oppressive tax ; unwise, as it is a tax 
 on the article of primest necessity in Xew- South- Wales 
 life ; oppressive, as it was imposed and is maintained in 
 spite of every kind of complaint and opposition from 
 the colonists. And this is what Lord Grey calls, 
 perhaps believes to be, carrying out the plan of the 
 theorists of 1830. 
 
 According to the principles of their theory, the 
 natural pasturages of a colony, which nature has freely 
 given, the colonists should use without let or hindrance 
 of any kind from their government: and, moreover, 
 their government ought to afford them eveiy facility 
 in its power for making the most of that natural 
 advantage. It behoves the government, therefore, to 
 frame a set of laws for the disposal of the natural 
 pasturage in New South Wales or Xew Zealand; 
 laws which should provide facilities instead of obstacles. 
 Such laws would establish a perfect liberty of choice 
 by the flockmasters themselves, together with certainty 
 and stability in the whole proceeding. The laws of 
 our pastoral colonies on this subject (if laws those 
 " Regulations" may be termed, which have been 
 trained by the passions of Lord Grey, or by the joint 
 
422 THE RULE OF CONTRARIES. 
 
 wisdom of some fine gentleman in Park-street, and 
 some " Excellency" captains on the spot), would 
 almost seem to have been designed to check colonial 
 prosperity by means of direct obstacles, and of giving 
 to the whole process a character of uncertainty and 
 instability. This, of course, was not really the aim 
 of these bureaucratic labours : but such is the result 
 of ignorance and carelessness in the mode of imposing 
 on the pastoral colonies the most objectionable of taxes. 
 Lest all this should not enable you to silence your Mr. 
 Mothercountry as respects his baseless pasturage 
 objection to the sufficient price, I will place a fact at 
 your disposal for that purpose. When Lord Grey, 
 soon after he became Colonial Minister, was framing 
 some regulations for the disposal of about 180,000,000 
 acres of pasturage in New South Wales (the area 
 is more than three times that of Great Britain), 
 he consulted on the question of the best mode of pro- 
 ceeding, two gentlemen, who, in my opinion, possess 
 between them more completely than any other two 
 men I could name, the theoretical knowledge and the 
 practical Australian experience for giving useful 
 advice on the subject. Before telling him their opinion, 
 they consulted me ; and we three perfectly agreed, I 
 think, on all the main points. He took their advice 
 by the rigid rule of contraries! As they are both 
 known friends of mine, this may be another of the 
 cases in which Lord Grey's fear of being prompted by 
 me has been the motive of his legislation for the colo- 
 nies. But if so (and if you can find any other rea- 
 sonable explanation of his conduct in this matter, I 
 withdraw my supposition), to what strange influences 
 does our system of colonial government subject the 
 destiny of the most important of our colonies ! 
 
423 
 
 LETTER LXV. 
 From the Statesman. 
 
 THK STATESMAN'S MR. MOTHERCOUNTBY MAKES HIS LAST 
 
 OBJECTION. 
 
 1SEXD the second of my Mr. Mother-country's last 
 objections, without waiting for your answer to 
 the first. 
 
 Supposing (I will state the objection as if it were 
 my own) that the whole plan were established by law 
 the sufficient price, with perfect liberty of appro- 
 priation as to locality, and, wherever they were needed, 
 the two securities for emigration-loans still the plan 
 would not work: or rather, the more completely it 
 wa- established by law, the more surely would the 
 law be evaded, and the plan break down in practice. 
 In proportion as all private land was made dear, by 
 means of the sufficient price for public land and of 
 the operation of the emigration-loans in filling the 
 eoloiiy with people, would be the desire of the poorest 
 t la-s to evade the law. Seeing the market- value of 
 all private land greatly increased for a tune at least, 
 their desire for owning land would be stronger than 
 ever; and as the gratification of that desire would be 
 impeded by the price of public land, and the tax for 
 
424 SQUATTING TRIUMPHANT. 
 
 emigration on private land, they would endeavour to 
 obtain cheap land in spite of the law. By " squat- 
 ting" that is, settling on public land without a title 
 they could obtain land for nothing : there would be 
 a lawless appropriation of the public land on the old 
 terms virtually of a free grant. If the government 
 attempted to enforce the law by ousting squatters 
 from their locations, there would be a struggle be- 
 tween the government and the squatters ; and in this 
 contest, the squatters would beat the government. No 
 colonial government has been able to prevent squat- 
 ting. What is called " the squatting interest " in a 
 colony, becomes so strong after a time, that it always 
 triumphs over a colonial government. More stringent 
 laws, increased penalties, even British regiments, 
 might be applied without effect. But if, even as 
 things are now, the squatter invariably beats the go- 
 vernment, he would do so more easily and surely 
 under the proposed system, because, under it, people 
 would be more tempted to squat, squatters more nu- 
 merous, the squatters' outcry against the law louder, 
 the disturbance of the colony greater, the trouble of 
 the Colonial Office more intolerable, and the final con- 
 cession by the government of a good title to the 
 squatters, more than ever probable: the motives for 
 squatting, and the probability of the ultimate victory 
 of squatters over the law, would be so much stronger 
 than these are now, that the law would inevitably be 
 set aside: your plan contains within itself a sure 
 cause of failure. 
 
 Since the above was written, your answer to the 
 pasturage objection has come to hand, and been con- 
 
SOME TRUTH WITHHELD. 425 
 
 
 
 (I to our partner in these discussions. I will not 
 U'll you how he received it, except by saying, that if 
 you wish to oblige me, you will send just such another 
 to his squatting objection. 
 
 LETTER LXVI. 
 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 MR. MOTHERCOUNTRY'S LAST OBJECTION ANSWERED. 
 
 JT^HE second answer must necessarily resemble the 
 first, in at least taking the form of an endeavour 
 to turn the tables upon my critic : for he leaves me 
 no choice but to do that or succumb. This is an 
 irresistible mode of assailing when you are in the 
 right, but dangerous when you have no case. I sus- 
 pect that our Mr. Mothercountry is less cautious than 
 most of the tribe. 
 
 It is all true, what he says about squatting in 
 times past ; quite true, also, that if a higher market 
 value were conferred on all private land in colonies, 
 and a sufficient price were required for all public 
 land, one motive for squatting would be stronger: 
 but both these propositions together express only 
 part of the truth. I will endeavour to supply that 
 part of it which has been withheld. 
 
 So far as my knowledge extends, no colonial govern- 
 ment ever seriously attempted to prevent squatting 
 by discouraging it: all colonial governments have 
 encouraged it in various ways. A very effectual way 
 
426 SQUATTING NECESSARY. 
 
 of encouraging it was by readily letting every body 
 of squatters gain their point ; for, of course, the gain- 
 ing of their point by one body greatly encouraged 
 other bodies to attempt a similar victory over the law. 
 In most colonies, it got to be a common and sound 
 opinion, that somehow or other, by hook or by crook, 
 sooner or later, the man who occupied some public 
 land without leave from the government, would ob- 
 tain possession of it by a good title. One can hardly 
 conceive a greater encouragement to the practice. 
 The practice was thus encouraged by colonial govern- 
 ments, because they have all deemed waste land a 
 public property not worth taking any heed about, 
 because it was the least troublesome course for them, 
 and because public opinion in the colonies has ap- 
 proved of the course which the governments found 
 most pleasant for themselves. Public opinion was in 
 favour of letting the squatter conquer the law, because 
 the expense, and trouble, and delay of obtaining a 
 legal grant were practically so great, except for a 
 favoured few, that squatting was another word for 
 colonization; and of that, naturally, colonial opinion 
 was in favour. I would refer you for information on 
 this point to the appendix to Lord Durham's Report, 
 marked B. When you shall have read the evidence 
 it contains about the difficulties of obtaining a legal 
 grant in Canada, and the squatting occasioned by 
 those difficulties, you will more readily understand 
 why public opinion in colonies should be in favour of 
 the squatter. But colonial public opinion favours 
 the squatter for other reasons. Whenever a colonial 
 government, either from idleness, or caprice, or want 
 of surveys, withholds a fertile district from would-be 
 
SUCCESS TO THE SQUATTERS ! 427 
 
 sett UTS upon it, whether as cultivators or stock- 
 holders, it induces public opinion to approve of that 
 district being occupied by squatters rather than not 
 occupied at all. At this moment, for example, a 
 large portion of New Zealand is in the course of being 
 occupied by squatters, because, by all sorts of mis- 
 management and neglect, the land is withheld from 
 occupation according to law. The greater part of 
 New Zealand must be either colonized in this way or 
 not colonized at all; and thus even the warmest 
 friends of systematic colonization, including the 
 sufficient-price theorists, can neither blame these 
 occupiers of land without leave from the government, 
 nor wish that their proceedings should be stopped. 
 It is better to subdue and replenish the earth by 
 squatting, than to leave it a desert. Considering the 
 operation of our present colonial policy, if policy it 
 may be termed, as regards getting legal possession of 
 waste land in the colonies, it is well for us that our 
 colonial people have the hardihood and enterprise to 
 colonize independently of their government. For my 
 part, I heartily wish them success, for the reasons 
 which induced Lord Durham to befriend the squatters 
 in Canada on an enormous scale, and which will be 
 found in the aforesaid Appendix to his Report. 
 
 But we are supposing thus far the continuance of 
 the ]>re>ent slovenly and neglectful practices with 
 regard to the disposal of waste land. Let us now 
 suppose that there were a good law of colonization, 
 including perfect liberty of appropriation at the suffi- 
 cient price, together with the best provisions for the 
 due administration of the law. All the motives of the 
 xjuatter would begone, >ave one. The poorer settler 
 
428 SQUATTING ABOLISHED. 
 
 might still wish, might wish more strongly than 
 before, to obtain waste land for nothing: but this 
 mere money motive, is, I believe, the weakest of the 
 squatter's motives, under present circumstances ; and 
 in the supposed case, it would be effectually outweighed 
 by a new set of counter motives. The waste land of 
 the colony would be deemed a most valuable public 
 property, and would be cared for accordingly by the 
 government : thus the contemplating squatter, instead 
 of hoping to overcome the law, would expect the 
 defeat of an attempt against it. Land in unlimited 
 quantities, and with perfect liberty of choice as to the 
 locality, would be obtainable with perfect ease at the 
 sufficient price: thus the inducements to squatting 
 now furnished by the great difficulty of obtaining a 
 legal title to land in the most eligible spots, would be 
 at an end : and public opinion, instead of encouraging 
 the squatter, would help the law in deterring or 
 punishing him. The public property would be guarded 
 from invasion like that of individuals ; and in pastoral 
 countries, moreover, the whole of it, long before it 
 was sold at the sufficient price, would be legally 
 occupied by individuals who would help to defend it 
 against the squatter. On the whole, I am persuaded, 
 after much inquiry and reflection on the subject, that 
 under a good and responsibly-administered law of 
 colonization, colonial squatting would be as rare as 
 the invasion of private estates is in this country. 
 
420 
 
 LETTER LXVII. 
 From the Statesman. 
 
 MR. MOTIIERCOTJNTRY ONCE MORE OBJECTS TO THE SUF- 
 FICIENT PRICE, AS BEING LIKELY TO FORCE AN IN- 
 JURIOUS CONCENTRATION OF THE SETTLERS. 
 
 ll/TR, MOTHERCOUXTRY is furious, and objects 
 again, but " positively" for the last time. 
 He says that your sufficient price would have the 
 effect of " concentrating" the settlers injuriously, or 
 preventing their useful " dispersion" over the waste 
 as owners of the most fertile spots. He contends that 
 you want to produce a density of colonial population 
 by squeezing the colonists into a narrow space; and 
 that though it might be for the advantage of the colo- 
 nists if they were less dispersed, your plan of prevent- 
 ing them, by means of a high price for new land, from 
 appropriating the most fertile spots where they like 
 best^ would be a mischievous restriction on the exer- 
 cise of their own judgment in a matter of which they 
 must be the best judges. He calls the sufficient price 
 an iron boundary of settlement, which is intended to 
 I > iv vent colonists from using land outside of a district 
 not yet appropriated and used. He argues, with, I 
 must say, an appearance of being in the right, that 
 
430 ME. MOTHERCOUNTRY CHUCKLES. 
 
 the productiveness of industry would be mischievously 
 affected, if settlers were compelled to use land of in- 
 ferior quality inside a given district, when there was 
 land outside the boundary of a superior quality : and 
 he has proved to me by ample evidence, that in several 
 colonies, loud complaint is made of the restrictive 
 operation on the choice of the best spots for settlement, 
 of the mode of selling waste land instead of granting 
 it. I am wholly unable to answer this objection. 
 You are doubtless aware of it. Yet, looking back to 
 your letters, I find that you have never once used the 
 words " concentration" and " dispersion." When I 
 mentioned this to Mr. Mothercountry, he chuckled, 
 and said that he was not surprised at your avoiding 
 the weakest point of your scheme. Pray enable me 
 to confound him if you can. 
 
 LETTER LXVIIL 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 THE COLONIST ANSWERS MR. MOTHERCOUNTRY ON THE 
 
 SUBJECT OF 
 OF SETTLERS. 
 
 u 
 
 I 
 
 DELIBERATELY avoided using the words 
 " concentration " and " dispersion." I did so in 
 order to avoid leading you into a misconception, into 
 which the too unguarded use of those words by me on 
 former occasions has led many colonists and some 
 people at home. But I had no intention of wholly 
 avoiding the subject as a weak point. I only wished, 
 
A MAN'S OWN BUSINESS. 431 
 
 by postponing all notice of it till the theory of the 
 sufficient price was developed, to be able to enter on 
 this question of concentration and dispersion with the 
 least possible risk of being misunderstood. 
 
 I entirely admit so much of Mr. Mothercountry's 
 objection as alleges, that, with respect to the choice of 
 land for settlement, the settlers must be the best 
 judges. Not only must they be the best judges in a 
 matter that so deeply concerns their own interests, 
 but it is impossible that anybody should be able to 
 judge for them in this matter without falling into 
 great mistakes and doing them great injury. New 
 land is wanted for an infinite variety of purposes, 
 amongst which let us note agriculture, pasturage, 
 lumbering, mining, quarrying, the erection of mills, 
 and the formation of villages and towns. These 
 various purposes are contemplated by an equal variety 
 of settlers or companies of settlers. There is no 
 business more entirely a man's own business, than that 
 of a settler picking new land for his own purpose ; 
 and the truism of our time, that in matters of private 
 business the parties interested are sure to judge better 
 than any government can judge for them, is an error, 
 if the best of governments could determine as well as 
 the settler himself the quality and position of land 
 the most suitable to his objects. He is deeply in- 
 terested in making the best possible choice. He alone 
 can know precisely what the objects are for which he 
 wants the land. The government choosing for him, 
 either a particular lot of land, or the district in which 
 he should be allowed to choose for himself, would 
 have no private interest in choosing well; and the 
 private interest of the officials employed by the 
 
432 LAISSEZ-FAIRE. 
 
 government would be to save themselves trouble by 
 choosing carelessly. In most cases, they would be 
 utterly ignorant of the purposes for which new land 
 was in demand. Their highest object as officials 
 (except in those rare instances where love of duty is 
 as strong a motive as self-interest), would be to per- 
 form their duty so as to avoid reproach; and this 
 motive is notoriously weak in comparison with self- 
 interest. But indeed they could not by any means 
 avoid reproach. For supposing (though but for argu- 
 ment's sake) that the surveyor-general of a colony, in 
 marking out districts to be opened to purchasers, made 
 an absolutely perfect selection with a view to the pur- 
 chasers' interest, the intending purchasers would not 
 think so. Every man is fond of his own judgment, 
 especially in matters which deeply concern himself. 
 If the government said to intending purchasers, Take 
 your land hereabouts, they would reply, No, we wish 
 to take it thereabouts : they would reproach the sur- 
 veyor-general with having opened a bad district to 
 settlers, and left a good one closed against them. And 
 again, even if they were not dissatisfied at the moment 
 of taking their land, it is certain that if they failed as 
 settlers, and from whatever cause, they would lay the 
 blame of their failure upon the government, com- 
 plaining that if they had been allowed to take land 
 where they liked best, their undertaking would un- 
 doubtedly have prospered. For all these reasons 
 (and more might be urged), I would if possible open 
 the whole of the waste land of a colony to intending 
 purchasers : and I hereby declare, that as perfect a 
 liberty of choice for settlers as the nature of things 
 in each case would allow, is an essential condition of 
 the well- working of the sufficient price. 
 
MISCHIEVOUS DISPERSION. 433 
 
 To such practically unlimited liberty of choice, the 
 objection has been urged, that the settlers would dis- 
 perse themselves too much. They would, it has been 
 said, wander about the waste portions of the colony, 
 and plant themselves here and there in out-of-the-way 
 spots, where, being distant from a market, and from 
 all that pertains to civilization, they would fall into 
 a state of barbarism: instead of acquiring wealth as 
 all colonists ought to do, the settlers would only raise 
 enough produce for their own rude subsistence; and 
 the colony, instead of exporting and importing largely, 
 would be poor and stagnant, like West Australia, for 
 example, where the first settlers were allowed to plant 
 themselves as they liked best, and did, being under 
 2,000 in number, spread themselves over an extent of 
 land as great as two or three counties of Norfolk : in 
 a word, there would be mischievous dispersion. 
 
 But mischievous to whom? Mischievous, if at all, 
 to the settlers themselves. The supposition then is, 
 that the settlers would injure themselves in conse- 
 quence of not knowing what was for their own advan- 
 tage. Would the government be likely to know that 
 better than the settlers ? But let us see how the facts 
 stand. There are plenty of cases in which mischievous 
 dispersion has taken place, but not one, to my know- 
 ledge, in which the great bulk of settlers had a choice 
 between dispersion and concentration. In the found- 
 ing of West Australia, there was no choice. In dis- 
 posing 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 princi- 
 
 K K 
 
434 THE DOG IN THE MANGER. 
 
 pality 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 neigh- 
 bours, 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 set- 
 tlers, though superficially or acreably less, was as mis- 
 chievous 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 impo- 
 verishing dispersion, arising from one and the same 
 cause. 
 
 The cause appears at first sight to have been the 
 unlimited liberty of the settlers' choice in the selection 
 of their land. But a second glance at the subject 
 shows the first impression to have been erroneous. 
 When the dog was in the manger, the cow had to go 
 without hay, or pick up what rubbish she could else- 
 where. Only the first grantee at Swan River had a 
 real liberty of choice as to locality : the second had 
 less liberty, the third still less, and so on. At last, 
 
DOGS IN THE MANGER. 43,5 
 
 when a dozen people had appropriated enough land for 
 the support of millions, nobody else had any liberty at 
 all : the whole of the land suitable for settlers at the 
 time was gone, and held by a handful of people, 
 veritable dogs in the manger, who could not use their 
 property, and yet would not part with it, because, 
 coming from an old country where land has both a 
 scarcity and position value, they deemed it worth more 
 than anybody would think of paying for it under the 
 circumstance of the vast extent of private land in pro- 
 portion to population. The same thing has occurred 
 everywhere more or less. In Canada, I am sure it is 
 speaking within compass to say, the great bulk of private 
 land was first obtained by people who could not use it 
 on account of its extent, and yet would not part with it 
 to real settlers : and I think it probable that in that 
 colony at this time, more than half the private pro- 
 perty in land is thus placed as the hay was by the 
 dog in the manger. Ample evidence on this point, 
 with respect to all the British American colonies, will 
 be found in Lord Durham's Report and its appendices, 
 especially in Appendix B. But if an inquiry con- 
 cerning the disposal of waste land, like that which 
 Lord Durham instituted in Canada, Xew Brunswick, 
 and Xova Scotia, had been extended to our other 
 colonies, we should have ample proof that in all of 
 them, a small proportion of the settlers have been 
 allowed to act the part of the dog in the manger 
 towards the others, towards fresh emigrants, and 
 towards post* rity. The placing of immense quantities 
 of waste land in such a state of private property as 
 prevents it from being used as keeps it always waste 
 land has been the universal vice of colonial govern - 
 
 F F 2 
 
436 BIGGEST DOG IN THE MANGER. 
 
 ments acting under instructions from Downing-street. 
 The result occurs, whether the land is granted in 
 quantities exceeding the grantees' means of using the 
 land, or is sold at a price so low as to encourage 
 absentee ownership : but of course when the price is 
 more than nominal, the evil of a great excess of 
 private land beyond colonial means of reclaiming it 
 from a state of waste, is very much mitigated. In 
 those colonies, therefore, where land has only been 
 obtainable by purchase, which are only South Aus- 
 tralia, Australia Felix, and the New-Zealand Com- 
 pany's Settlements, the proportion of dog-in-the- 
 manger '^ land is comparatively small. 
 
 But hitherto I have alluded only to individuals or 
 private companies, whom an error of government 
 constitutes dogs in the manger. Besides these, there 
 is in all the colonies, as well when land is granted as 
 when it is sold, a great dog in the manger, which does 
 more mischief than all the little ones put together. 
 This is the government itself. Everywhere in the 
 colonies, the government makes " reserves " of waste 
 land. It marks out places in the wilderness, some- 
 times small sections, sometimes great districts, gene- 
 rally both, and proclaims that there the acquisition of 
 land is not permitted, and settlement is forbidden. 
 Such were the Clergy Eeserves in Canada, being 
 sections of a hundred acres each, marked out in all 
 parts of the province wherever land was obtainable 
 by grant, and in the proportion to private grants of 
 one in eleven. To these were added, in the same 
 proportion, Crown Reserves, being sections of a 
 hundred acres each, which the government condemned 
 to perpetual waste. As the clergy could not use their 
 
" RESERVES" OF WASTE LAND. 437 
 
 land and Avere not permitted to sell it, their reserves, 
 like those of the crown, were permanent deserts inter- 
 spersed amongst the settlers, in the proportion, reckon- 
 ing both kinds of reserve, of one desert for five and 
 a half occupied sections. But these reserves, mis- 
 chirv< >us as they Avere, had a less dispersing effect, than 
 has the reservation by government of large tracts of 
 waste land, which is a common practice in all the 
 colonies. The land is " reserved " from grant or 
 sale that is, from occupation and settlement at the 
 mere pleasure of the officials, who are wholly irre- 
 sponsible to the colonists, from a variety of motives, 
 sometimes really public, but oftener capricious, fan- 
 tastical, or corrupt, never justifiable. The governor, 
 a naval captain whose only knowledge of colonies has 
 been acquired by visiting their harbours in a man-of- 
 war, fancies that this or that spot will make a fine 
 township "by and by;" so it is reserved "for the 
 present." The Colonial Secretary or the Private Secre- 
 tary thinks that in such a settlement, the colonists ought 
 to be " discouraged" from spreading to the east or west, 
 because it will be more for their advantage to spread 
 northward or southward: so individual judgment is 
 controlled, and colonization forcibly diverted from its 
 natural course, by a great " reserve" in the "improper" 
 direction. The officials of the Land Office have 
 friends, or perhaps secret partners, who would like to 
 acquire this or that spot by purchase, but not at pre- 
 sent : either their funds are not ready, or they would 
 like to keep their money for use at colonial interest 
 till the spread of colonization beyond the coveted spot 
 shall have given it a position-value, when by means 
 of the rogueries of the auction system, or some other 
 
438 FORCED DISPERSION. 
 
 mode of benefiting by official favour, they hope to 
 get it for less than its value : so it is " reserved" for 
 their convenience and profit. The only real public 
 motive for reserving land is the deficiency of surveys. 
 But this is rather an excuse than a motive. In the 
 name of this excuse, immense "reserves" by the 
 government condemn a large proportion of the waste 
 in every colony to long- continued barrenness, and 
 cruelly interfere with the settler's liberty of choice as 
 to locality. Reserves from the want of surveys are 
 perhaps the most mischievous of all, because the area 
 over which they, operate is greater than that of all the 
 other reserves combined. 
 
 The evils occasioned by all these modes of circum- 
 scribing the choice of settlers as to locality, ought to 
 have been mentioned under the head of impediments 
 to colonization; for of these impediments, they con- 
 stitute perhaps the most effectual. The dispersion of 
 the settlers which they forcibly occasion, is the main 
 cause of the difficulties of communication for which 
 colonies are remarkable, and of the many barbarizing 
 circumstances, economical, social, and political, which 
 these difficulties occasion. For one representation of 
 the whole mischief, I would again refer you to Lord 
 Durham's Report and its Appendix B. 
 
 But even here, enough of the case has been ex- 
 hibited, to furnish us with the means of confounding 
 our Mr. Mothercountry. According to the whole 
 plan of colonization which I am developing, there 
 would indeed be no liberty of appropriation for the 
 dogs, small or great; but there would be absolute 
 liberty for the cows, and because all the dogs would 
 be effectually kept out of the manger. Dispersion or 
 
LIBERTY OF CHOICE. 439 
 
 concentration is a question of locality alone. As to 
 locality, all the restrictions on the choice of bond fide 
 settlers, which occur through the operations of private 
 dogs in the manger, would be prevented by the suffi- 
 cient price, because that would deter every man from 
 acquiring more land than he could use ; and the re- 
 strictions now imposed by government would be 
 removed, by abolishing all sorts of "reserves," in- 
 cluding those occurring from deficiency of surveys. 
 The only restriction on liberty of choice would be the 
 sufficient price; but that would apply to quantity 
 alone, not at all to locality : and that restriction as to 
 quantity, not to dwell here on its other merits, would 
 itself be a means of promoting the utmost liberty as 
 to locality. 
 
 LETTER LXIX. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 BY WHAT AUTHORITY SHOULD BE ADMINISTERED AN 
 IMPERIAL POLICY OF COLONIZATION APART FROM 
 GOVERNMENT? 
 
 HPHE time has now come for settling, if we can 
 agree about it, to what authority the administra- 
 tion of a good law of colonization ought to be en- 
 trusted. My own opinion is, that the colony would 
 perform this function better than the mother-country 
 could. If that is not your opinion likewise, pray let 
 me know what meaning you on this occasion attach 
 to the words " the mother-country." On the assump- 
 tion that, as respects the administration of colonial 
 
440 AN IMPERIAL POLICY 
 
 authority, "the mother-country" signifies the Mr. 
 Mothercountry of the Colonial Gazette, I propose, that 
 if ever the imperial legislature should see fit to frame 
 a good law of colonization, the administration of such 
 law should be confided to the local governments of 
 the colonies. Such a law would lay down general 
 rules for the disposal of waste land and the promotion 
 of emigration. These general rules would be embodied 
 in the colonial charters of government before pro- 
 posed, in the form of stipulations or directions by 
 which the local government would be bound in carry- 
 ing on the work of colonization. Thus, in a matter 
 which is of great general moment to the empire, the 
 imperial government would establish an imperial 
 policy ; but instead of attempting, what it could not 
 perform well, the particular execution of this policy 
 in every colony, it would confide that task of executive 
 details to the parties most deeply, immediately, and 
 unremittingly interested in its best possible perform- 
 ance: that is, for each colony separately, to the 
 responsible municipal government of that colony alone. 
 It may seem to you, that there is part of such a 
 policy which a colonial government could not admi- 
 nister well ; namely, the selection of poor emigrants in 
 this country. I once inclined to that opinion myself, 
 but have changed my mind by attending to the sug- 
 gestions of experience. If the colonial government 
 pledged itself from time to time to pay a sufficient 
 amount of passage-money for each of a certain 
 number of labouring emigrants landed in the colony 
 in good health, and approved of by the colonial 
 governments as respects age, sex, previous occupation, 
 and established character at home, the selection and 
 
EXECUTED BY THE COLONY. 441 
 
 carrying out of labouring emigrants would become an 
 important business amongst the shipowners of this 
 country, and could be conducted by means of con- 
 tracts between the local governments and such ship- 
 owners, in the framing of which absolute securities 
 might be taken, on the principle of " no cure no pay," 
 t lint every object of the colony should be accom- 
 pli -lied. The proposed colonial representatives at 
 home might afford valuable assistance in this part of 
 the work of colonization. But I must not be led 
 into details here ; for the meeting of Parliament ap- 
 proaches. I will therefore close this part of our sub- 
 ject with two general propositions : 1st, if the imperial 
 government bestowed good municipal constitutions on 
 the colonies, but did not care to form a good law of 
 colonization apart from government, the colonies and 
 the empire would gain by handing over to the colonies 
 the whole business, both legislative and executive, of 
 disposing of waste land and promoting emigration: 
 2nd, if there were no good law of colonization, nor any 
 municipal system of government for the colonies 
 either, then, since the whole of colonization as it is 
 would continue, neither colonies nor empire need care 
 by whose hands the economical part of it was admi- 
 nistered. 
 
442 
 
 LETTER LXX. 
 From the Statesman. 
 
 THE STATESMAN DESCRIBES A SCENE WITH ME. MOTHER- 
 COUNTRY, AND ANNOUNCES THAT THE PROJECT OF 
 ACTION IN PARLIAMENT ON THE SUBJECT OE COLO- 
 NIZATION IS ABANDONED. 
 
 pONSIDERING our Mr. Mothercountry's dispo- 
 V^ sition to construe arguments which he dislikes, 
 into attacks upon himself or the Office that he reveres, 
 I have not thought it worth while to repeat to him 
 your answer to his very last objection; though I must 
 confess that the temptation was strong upon me to 
 humble him a little. I longed to do so the more per- 
 haps, because, having exhausted his stock of criticism 
 on your proposals, he has now taken to boasting of 
 the grandness of our present colonization under the 
 management of Downing-street. Yesterday, he came 
 here to dinner, and met two of those friends of mine, 
 who, I informed you at the opening of our corre- 
 spondence, induced me to study the subject of it with 
 your assistance, and who lately joined a party of 
 visitors congregated here for the purpose of talking 
 over the prospects of the coming session. Addressing 
 himself to these colonial reformers, who had however 
 
LORD GREY'S BOASTING. 443 
 
 excited him by uttering some of their opinions, he 
 ridiculed the notion that colonization is one of the 
 arte* pwlibr. and even claimed for our own time a 
 great superiority to the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 centuries. He contrasted Australia as it is, with 
 North America as it was before the war of independ- 
 ence. At that time, said he, no city in the American 
 colonies, after two centuries of colonization, had a 
 population equal to that of Sydney at present; that 
 is, sixty years after its foundation. The imports and 
 exports of the Australasian group, after only sixty 
 years colonization, exceed those of all English North 
 America at the time of the tea-riots at Boston. Within 
 the last >ixteen or seventeen years, we have sent out 
 120,000 emigrants to Australasia. Between 1837 and 
 1847, we actually doubled the population of New 
 South Wales. And all this has been accomplished 
 without cost to the mother-country ; for the passage 
 of this great number of poor emigrants was paid for 
 with funds derived from carrying into effect a new 
 principle of colonization, according to which waste 
 land in the colonies is sold instead of being given 
 away, and the purchase-money is used as an emigra- 
 tion-fund. 
 
 Here, one of my friends could bear it no longer, 
 but interposed by telling him, that he was only re- 
 peating a speech which Lord Grey delivered at the 
 close of last session in the House of Lords, and which 
 ha- just been published as a pamphlet by Ridgway. 
 The pamphlet was produced; for my friend had 
 brought a copy with him amongst other papers re- 
 lating to our contemplated movement in the House of 
 Commons. What passed further it would be useless 
 to report, with two exceptions. 
 
444 LORD GREY'S BOASTING. 
 
 First, Mr. Mothercountry's vaunting about coloni- 
 zation in Australasia under the Colonial Office, was 
 changed into whining about himself and his poor 
 Office, when we pointed out to him that the popula- 
 tion of the whole Australasian group, after sixty years 
 from the foundation of Sydney, amounts, as you have 
 observed, to no more than that of the town of Glasgow ; 
 that his grand town of Sydney was created by convict 
 labour conveyed to the antipodes at an enormous cost 
 to the mother-country, and by a vast expenditure of 
 British money in maintaining convict, including mili- 
 tary, establishments on the spot ; and that the greatness 
 of the Australasian export and import trade is due, in 
 no measure to the superiority of modern colonization 
 under bureaucratic management, but principally to 
 the beneficence of nature in providing our colonists at 
 the antipodes with natural pasturages, which the 
 Colonial Office taxes as if it deemed the advantage 
 too great for colonists to enjoy undiminished. 
 
 Secondly, I reminded him of his statement to me 
 soon after he came to reside in this neighbourhood, 
 that Lord Grey gives you credit for having invented 
 the " new principle" of colonization of whose effects 
 he had just been boasting ; and then I begged him to 
 observe that Lord Grey, in his pamphlet speech, which 
 mainly consists of bragging about the great effects of 
 that principle in Australasia, claims all the merit to 
 the Colonial Office and himself, just as if the principle 
 had been discovered by them, and nobody but they 
 had had any part in giving effect to it. The resem- 
 blance between what he had just been doing himself 
 and Lord Grey's proceeding, evidently struck him: 
 perhaps he heard one of my friends whisper to me 
 
PROJECT ABANDONED. 445 
 
 whilst he looked at him, mutato nomine de te fabula 
 namatur : at all events, I thought he would have wept 
 with vexation, such strange grimaces did he make, 
 and o-ulping noises in his throat. But let us change 
 the theme. 
 
 I wish that the one which must now be presented 
 to you, were as pleasant as it is truly disagreeable to 
 me, not to say painful. After much consultation with 
 my friends, after showing them our correspondence, 
 after using every argument that I can think of to in- 
 duce them to fulfil their purpose of bringing the whole 
 subject of colonization before the House of Commons 
 early in the ensuing session, I have now the mortifi- 
 cation of being told by them (for in fact it comes to 
 this), that they see insuperable obstacles to the con- 
 templated proceeding. It would be idle to tell you 
 all that has past between us ; but I must just indicate 
 the nature of the " difficulties" which they consider 
 insurmountable. One of these would-be reformers of 
 our colonial system thinks, that public opinion is not 
 yet ripe enough for action in Parliament. " But 
 action in Parliament," said I, "is the best way of 
 ripening public opinion." The reply was, that the 
 state of parties is unfavourable to the movement: 
 some party collision might ensue, when a fusion or 
 amalgamation of parties resulting in a strong govern- 
 ment composed of the best men in all the now broken- 
 up parties, is the object of sensible politicians. An- 
 other objector hinted at family connexions, and a per- 
 sonal friendship, that indisposed him to join in any 
 course at which Lord Grey was likely to take offence. 
 Then somebody remarked, that a real exposition in the 
 House of ( Commons of our system of colonial govern- 
 
iTY 
 
 446 LIONS IN THE PATH. 
 
 ment, if it did not speedily bring about a thorough 
 reform, would probably produce great commotion in 
 the colonies, and entail on the mother-country an in- 
 crease of expense for military and naval purposes, at 
 the very moment when the tide of popular opinion has 
 just strongly set in for economy. There were more 
 objections; but I may state them all under one de- 
 scription ; that of " lions in the path ;" little lions and 
 big; in some paths several. My friends " admitted," 
 and u perceived," and " wished" with me ; thought the 
 object excellent ; and deemed success probable, because, 
 whilst great benefit to this nation and the empire must 
 result from colonial reform, no " interest" would be 
 opposed to it except only the despotic-helpless Colonial 
 Office. But with all this clear seeing and positive 
 opinion, my friends would not stir a step : anything 
 but action. Thus all my trouble is lost, and, what 
 vexes me far more, all yours. 
 
 I have thought about moving by myself; but in 
 this path, I, too, see one lion very distinctly, and 
 several looming in the distance. The thought of a 
 probable disagreement with my friends, in consequence 
 of separating from them and leaving them behind in 
 this matter, is very discouraging. Neither can I fear- 
 lessly incur the risk of engaging alone in a contest 
 with general prejudice based on ignorance, and the 
 still more formidable indifference of public men and 
 the great public itself to every sort of colonial question. 
 Oh, that I had the self-reliance which something appears 
 to have banished from public life since 1846 ! I almost 
 long for a good stock of vulgar impudence. Just now, 
 at any rate, I wish I were out of Parliament. 
 
447 
 
 LETTER LXXI. 
 From the Colonist. 
 
 THE COLONIST CLOSES THE CORRESPONDENCE, AND 
 ALLUDES TO SEVERAL TOPICS WHICH WOULD HAVE 
 BEEN PURSUED IF IT HAD CONTINUED. 
 
 AM less annoyed than you seem to have expected ; 
 
 for practice makes perfect even in bearing dis- 
 appointments. And, as another proverb says, good 
 cometh out of evil : our correspondence has exhausted 
 me, and I am glad to rest. 
 
 If your friends had persevered in their intention, I 
 should have wished to trouble you with some further 
 
 : vat ions on points which, though hitherto left 
 unnoticed because I wished to pursue with as little 
 disturbance as possible the order of inquiry laid down 
 by yourself, would yet be of practical importance if 
 Parliament took up our subject in earnest. As a 
 better time may come, it seems well that I should 
 just mention the topics, which would have occupied 
 
 ral letters if our correspondence had continued. 
 They shall be stated briefly ; and in the mere notes of 
 them which I intend to follow, no care will be taken 
 either to observe order or to explain anything. If 
 
448 UNHANDLED TOPICS. 
 
 ever our correspondence should be renewed at your 
 instance, you may expect to receive letters contain- 
 ing: 
 
 I. 
 
 A plan of colonization (not emigration) exclusively 
 applicable to that portion of Ireland, in which the 
 bulk of the people is still Irish and Roman Catholic ; 
 a plan expressly framed with a view to the political 
 condition, the social peculiarities, and the fervent 
 nationality, of the Milesian-Irish race in Ireland. 
 
 With respect to this scheme, however, upon which 
 great pains have been bestowed in the hope of making 
 it a real, practicable, and effectual, because radical, 
 measure, for serving the most miserable nation on the 
 face of the earth, there exists what you may deem a 
 lion in my path. " Circumstances" would prevent me, 
 even if our correspondence proceeded now, from com- 
 municating this plan to you at present ; perhaps from 
 ever communicating it to you at all : and I am " not 
 at liberty" now to say more on the subject.* 
 
 II. 
 
 Some notions of a plan, both for securing ample 
 religious and educational provisions in British colonies, 
 
 * Amongst these circumstances are the facts, that the plan of 
 Irish colonization in question was framed conjointly by Mr. Charles 
 Buller, another gentleman, and myself; and that during a visit 
 which Mr. Buller paid me in France shortly before his death, for the 
 purpose of re-considering and perfecting the scheme, we determined 
 that no particulars of it should be mentioned in this book, which 
 was then nearly ready for the press, but that, if the state of politics 
 favoured the attempt, he should endeavour to make what we hoped 
 might prove a better use of the plan in another way. In the Ap- 
 pendix No. I., will be found a further statement concerning the 
 purpose which was frustrated by his death. 
 
IXHANDLED TOPICS. 449 
 
 and for causing religious differences, which are at pre- 
 sent as inevitable as the return of daylight in the 
 morning, to aid in promoting colonization, as they 
 indubitably promoted it in the early settlement of 
 North America by England. In this scheme, the 
 principle of "religious equality before the law" is 
 strictly adhered to; but for that very reason, and also 
 because colonization is the business in hand, the 
 Church of England would spread faster and on a 
 greater scale than the others, in proportion to the 
 greater number and greater wealth of her members, 
 instead of lagging behind them as she does now. I 
 am bound to add, that my notions on this subject were 
 not originally formed in my own mind, but, for the 
 most part, suggested to me by Dr. Hinds. 
 
 III. 
 
 A plan of colonization for the West Indies. In 
 this scheme, the economical principles of colonization 
 set forth in our correspondence are observed with 
 respect to public land, private land, and emigration- 
 fund; but Africa is the country from which it is 
 proposed that the emigration of labour should be 
 attracted: and there are some provisions for causing 
 the civilization of negroes in the West Indies to 
 
 o 
 
 have some good effect on the barbarism of Africa. If 
 this scheme answered its purpose, free-labour in the 
 \\V>t Indies would produce intertropical commodities 
 at less cost than slave-labour anywhere, and would of 
 course, free trade prevailing, drive slave-grown pro- 
 duce out of the markets of the world. It is a scheme 
 for wounding slavery and the African slave-trade at 
 their roots. 
 
450 UNHANDLED TOPICS. 
 
 IV. 
 
 A brief history of convict colonization by England. 
 
 Under this head, I should endeavour to show how 
 convict emigration, besides making honest people in 
 all ranks ashamed to emigrate, operates as an impedi- 
 ment to the emigration of valuable settlers, by giving, 
 in one group of our colonies, a base jail-like character 
 to colonial society, and a brutal jailer-like character 
 to colonial government. 
 
 A curious branch of this subject, though not strictly 
 pertaining to colonization, would be the successful 
 counteraction of our missions to the heathen in Poly- 
 nesia, by the " Devil's Missionaries" whom we spread 
 all over that part of the world. 
 
 V. 
 
 Some suggestions, the aim of which is, to make 
 colonizing companies seated in the mother-country, 
 very effective instruments of the state in promoting 
 the emigration of capital and labour, because properly- 
 empowered and properly -restrained instruments. 
 
 VI. 
 
 A suggestion, the object of which is, to enable any 
 " gentleman" father wishing to make his son a colo- 
 nist, to prepare him, by suitable teaching and disci- 
 pline, for succeeding in a colonial career, instead of, 
 as now commonly happens, sending him away so well 
 qualified for failure, as to run great risk of losing his 
 money, his principles, his character, and his peace of 
 mind. 
 
UNHANDLED TOPICS. 451 
 
 VII. 
 
 A particular account (but this would be written at 
 leisure for amusement) of Mr. Taylor's experience of 
 the Colonial Office during twelve years. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Some account of my own experience of the Colonial 
 Office during twenty years. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 GG 2 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 No. I. 
 
 [As time passed on after Mr. Charles Buller's speech 
 on colonization in 1843, he was reproached, as well by 
 friends as by persons who differed from him in party 
 politics (for he had no enemies), with being incon- 
 sistent, and with neglecting a self-imposed task, by 
 disappointing that public hope of his future usefulness 
 as a Colonizing statesman, tojffmch his successful 
 effort in 1843 had given occasion. If he had lived 
 another year, his own conduct would probably have 
 vindicated his reputation from this censure. But as 
 he is gone, the duty now devolves upon his friends. 
 Xone of them, as it happens, possesses so good means 
 as myself of performing this duty ; and therefore I un- 
 dertake it. 
 
 To some extent, his premature death from mere 
 delicacy of physical organization accounts for his 
 apparent neglect of a public question which he had 
 appropriated, and of his own fame. He was not 
 really indifferent to either; but he was ever incapable 
 of exerting his rare intellectual faculties without 
 injury to his bodily health, and was often, for months 
 together, incapacitated by bodily weakness from 
 greatly exerting them at all. Thus, from 1843 to 
 1846, his physical strength was often over-tasked by 
 his labours in the New-Zealand controversy : but his 
 exertions during that period were far from being fruit- 
 
454 APPENDIX. 
 
 less ; for he was the life and soul of the discussions 
 upon colonial policy which grew out of the New- Zea- 
 land case, and which mainly produced the actual dis- 
 position of the public mind towards a reform of our 
 whole colonial system. All this took place when his 
 party was in opposition. 
 
 In 1846, he accepted the nearly sinecure office of 
 Judge Advocate General, but only on a distinct under- 
 standing with Lord Grey, that his duty in the House 
 of Commons should be to follow up there, in co-ope- 
 ration with Mr. Hawes, the exertions for colonial re- 
 form and improved colonization, which they three had 
 made together in opposition. But this arrangement, 
 which was semi-officially announced, and in the reality 
 of which Mr. Buller firmly believed, was totally disre- 
 garded by Lord Grey. The new minister was not in 
 office a month, before he embraced views of colonial 
 policy opposite to those which he had previously en- 
 tertained, and which Mr. Buller continued to hold. 
 By this most unexpected turn of events, Mr. Buller 
 was placed in a position of extreme irksomeness. Pre- 
 cluded by his subordinate position in the Government 
 from taking a course of his own in Parliament, and 
 supposed to be in close agreement with Lord Grey, he 
 was held responsible for measures, and for neglect, of 
 which he cordially disapproved. From this thraldom 
 he only escaped by becoming President of the Poor 
 Law Commission, at the close of 1847. Soon after 
 that event, I received a letter from him, from which 
 an extract follows : 
 
 "London, 15th December, 1847. 
 
 " I am much delighted, my dear Wakefield, by once more 
 seeing your handwriting, and by your friendly congratula- 
 tions on an appointment at which many of my friends look 
 
APPENDIX. 455 
 
 blank. Anything, as you say, was better than a sinecure, 
 with a pretence of work in which I had no share. And my 
 firm belief is, that the administration of thePoor-Law is a 
 matter in which good is to be done, and honour acquired. 
 ( 'ircurastances favour a reasonable administration of the law : 
 and there is a general disposition to let any one who will 
 undertake it in a proper spirit, succeed. And if I do succeed, 
 no one will ever again say I am a mere talker with no 
 qualities for business. I incur responsibility, I know : but 
 sweat and risk are the purchase-money of every palm worth 
 wearing. **#***; and I feel rejoiced to find your 
 judgment in favour of the step I have taken. 
 
 " Nothing pleases me so much as your seeing in this an 
 opening for a renewal of our colonizing co-operation." 
 
 The colonizing co-operation was renewed. In 
 April, 1848, Mr. Buller came to see me at Reigate, 
 for the purpose of discussing the question, whether 
 an} thing could be attempted, with a fair prospect of 
 success, for reviving the public interest in coloniza- 
 tion which had died away during the previous two 
 \< ars. He was the more anxious that we should de- 
 termine this question in the affirmative, because his 
 brief experience of Poor-Law administration had im- 
 -ed him with a fear, that unless colonization (not 
 shovelling out of paupers by mere emigration) were 
 undertaken systematically, the poor-rates would ere 
 long attain under the new law, their maximum under 
 the old ; an anticipation that is now all but realized. 
 But we decided the question in the negative. One of 
 the grounds of this decision was the expediency, in 
 our united opinion, of waiting till after the publica- 
 tion of the present volume. 
 
 On the 3rd of October last, however, when I was in 
 France, oniraged in completing the preparation of this 
 volume for the press, I received a letter from Mr. 
 Buller, in which he proposed to pay me a visit, and 
 
456 APPENDIX. 
 
 said, " Not only do I want to see you on general 
 politics, but I have a particular project to discuss with 
 you ; and I am anxious to do so, because you can lend 
 me the most valuable assistance, and, I think, realize 
 a great idea." The u particular project " and the 
 u great idea " were the project of a set of remedial 
 measures for Ireland, with some views as to the means 
 of inducing Parliament to adopt them. One of this 
 set of measures was to be a plan of colonization for 
 the Irish part of Ireland, or for the special use and 
 benefit of the Milesian-Irish race, who never colonize, 
 but only emigrate miserably. 
 
 The subject of such a plan had been matter of fre- 
 quent discussion before, between Mr. Buller and me; 
 and our opinions upon it agreed. But since those 
 discussions, I had had the advantage of frequently 
 discussing the subject with a gentleman intimately 
 acquainted with Ireland, with Irish emigration, with 
 the state of Irish emigrants in the countries to which 
 they resort, and with the principles of colonization 
 and colonial government set forth in this volume : 
 and with his most valuable assistance, I had formed 
 notions about colonization for Milesian Ireland, which, 
 when Mr. Buller came to see me, were already put in 
 writing for insertion amongst the foregoing pages. 
 This new plan, Mr. Buller fully examined with me, 
 and in the end adopted its leading features. But we 
 then agreed further, that the plan would stand a 
 better chance of being soon adopted by Parliament, 
 if it were not published in my book : and we parted 
 on the understanding, that as soon as the book was 
 published, after passing through his hands for critical 
 revision on its way to the printer, he should make 
 
APPENDIX. 457 
 
 such use of the plan as we might then deem most expe- 
 dient. 1 1 i< sudden death frustrated our whole purpose : 
 but as I resolved to make no change in the book in 
 consequence- of that event, the plan is still in my desk. 
 More might be said about Mr. Buller's lively and 
 practical interest, after he ceased to be Judge 
 Advocate General, in the subject which he had 
 previously illustrated with such admirable ability; 
 but the above explanation suffices for establishing the 
 fact, and doing justice to his fame as a colonizing 
 statesman.] 
 
 SPEECH OF CHARLES BULLER, ESQ., M.P. 
 
 IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, 
 
 On Tuesday, April 6, 1843, 
 
 ON SYSTEMATIC COLONIZATION. 
 
 SIR, I cannot enter upon the subject which I have under- 
 taken to bring before the House to-night, without asking its 
 indulgence on the ground of the unfeignedly painful con- 
 sciousness which I have of my very small personal claim to 
 attention, and of my utter inability to do justice to the 
 magnitude of my subject. It would be most unjust to the 
 House were I to allow it to be supposed that the grave and 
 difficult nature of the question which I propose to bring 
 before it, and its w r ant of connexion with party feelings and 
 party interests, will at all indispose it to yield me its kind 
 and patient attention. I must say, in justice to the present 
 House of Commons, with the majority of which I have 
 seldom the happiness of voting, that, however I may deplore 
 the violence of party spirit to which we occasionally give 
 way, I never sat in any parliament which has shown itself 
 so conscious of the deteriorating character of our party 
 strifes, and so desirous to make amends for its indulgence in 
 them by every now and then giving a calm attention to 
 matters of public concern, beyond and above the low domain 
 of party. If it were not so, indeed, we should be culpable 
 
458 SPEECH OF CHARLES BULLEK, ESQ., M.P., 
 
 beyond our predecessors. For these, in truth, are times in 
 which the most thoughtless can hardly fail, every now and 
 then, to have a suspicion that the events that are passing 
 around us, and in which we bear a part, involve consequences 
 of wider scope and greater moment than the interests of 
 political rivalry. Amid the very clash and tumult of party 
 strife in which we, like those who have gone before us, are 
 too apt to concentrate our energies and thoughts, we cannot 
 help being, every now and then, conscious of such heavings 
 of the soil on which we tread as to compel us to believe that 
 around us are fearful agencies at work that threaten the 
 solidity of the very framework of society. We have of 
 late had warning enough of the necessity of looking to the 
 material condition of the country, from the existence of 
 distress of an unusual extent, duration, and severity. Owing, 
 too, to inquiries which we never had the wisdom or the 
 boldness to make before, we are now in possession of a 
 fearful knowledge of the moral and intellectual state of the 
 great masses of our people. And from such events as the 
 disturbances of last year, we know well what effects physical 
 distress and moral neglect have combined to produce in the 
 temper of the masses, and how terrible is the risk to w 7 hich 
 we are exposed from this settled, though happily as yet 
 undisciplined disaffection ? With such matters as these 
 fresh in our memories, and reflected in our apprehensions, 
 we should, indeed, be possessed by some judicial madness 
 were we to take no thought of the condition of the people, 
 or to dismiss from our consideration any scheme suggested 
 with a view of bettering it, until we had proved their 
 insufficiency, or exhausted their efficacy. 
 
 I do not believe, however, that there ever took place in 
 the house a debate calculated to fill the public mind with 
 such despair as that which was raised by my noble friend 
 the member for Sunderland, when he brought forward his 
 motion on the distress of the country, in a speech showing 
 so accurate and comprehensive a knowledge of the state of 
 the country, and so wise an appreciation of the immediate 
 remedy, that I cannot but regret that he has left me anything 
 to do which might legitimately have been made a part of his 
 remedial plan. For what was the result of that debate ? 
 An universal agreement as to the existence, and even the 
 intensity of the mischief an entire disagreement as to the 
 remedies proposed. No one ventured on that occasion to 
 deny the fact of very severe distress ; but, at the same time, 
 whatever measure was proposed for the relief of it was nega- 
 tived by a majority which proposed no remedy of its own. 
 
ON SYSTEMATIC COLONIZATION. 459 
 
 The view which I take of the existing evil, and of the 
 appropriate remedy, would so much more be obscured than 
 strengthened by any exaggeration, that I must guard myself 
 against being supposed to represent the difficulties of the 
 country as either unparalleled or desperate. It admits of 
 no doubt, that even after so long and severe a distress as 
 that which has for some years hung over every class and 
 interest in the empire, we are actually a richer people, with 
 more of accumulated wealth, more of the capital of future 
 commerce, than we ever possessed at a former period. But 
 still, without any exaggeration without believing that our 
 resources are less than they used to be without desponding 
 for the future, it cannot be denied that this is a period in 
 which wealth, though actually greater, is growing at a less 
 rapid rate than before that it is a period of depression and 
 stagnation that a smaller amount of useful and profitable 
 enterprises are being carried on now than five or six years 
 ago that there is less employment for capital, and that 
 business brings in smaller profits that there are more 
 people out of employment, and that the wages of those who 
 are employed are less than they used to be. The great 
 increase of poor-rates within the last year or two, owing to 
 no disposition to relax the administration of the law, is an 
 unequivocal proof of suffering in the labouring class ; and 
 the falling off of the revenue from customs, excise, stamps, 
 and taxes, furnishes as undeniable evidence of a diminution 
 of the comforts of the people ; and though there is not the 
 slightest ground for fearing ruin as a nation, there is evidently 
 an amount of individual suffering, so wide and so severe, 
 that we cannot contemplate its existence without pain, nor 
 its prolonged duration without alarm. There is no denying 
 that the present distress is not that of any simple class 
 interest, or branch of industry. It can therefore be the result 
 of no partial cause. And it has lasted so long, that there is 
 no ground for attributing it to temporary causes, or hoping 
 that it may cease when they shall have ceased to operate. 
 
 I do not deny the influence of temporary causes in pro- 
 ducing the present very severe distress. I admit, with 
 gentlemen opposite, that successive bad harvests, wars, 
 unsettled commercial relations, the monetary and commercial 
 derangements of other countries, particularly the United 
 States, and an undue impulse to speculation, together with 
 the consequent disastrous reaction, have undoubtedly com- 
 bined to disturb our commerce ; and I think it impossible to 
 deny that, had these causes not been in operation, the 
 distress which we lament would have been different in 
 
460 SPEECH OF CHARLES BULLER, ESQ., M.P., 
 
 character and in intensity. But, on the other hand, I do 
 not think that it has been shown that the operation of these 
 temporary causes can be taken as a satisfactory solution of 
 the whole of our distress. I think it clear that, besides 
 these, there have been at work more permanent causes of 
 distress; and that, in fact, the temporary causes are but 
 forms in which the permanent evils of our state have ex- 
 hibited themselves. 
 
 For instance, much of the distress has been ascribed to 
 over-projjujction. It has been asserted that during the 
 entire period of distress, with falling prices and markets 
 becoming, day by day, flatter and flatter, this insane energy 
 of over-production went on building more mills, multiplying 
 fresh powers of machinery, and adding fresh heaps to the 
 pre-existing accumulations of unsaleable wares. To a 
 certain extent there is, I fear, too much reason to admit this 
 account of the history of our trade, and to believe that even 
 after the long period of distress which we have gone through, 
 it is too probable that instead of relief being afforded in 
 the most obvious manner namely, by IOW T prices having 
 diminished production, and the supply of our goods having, 
 therefore, been reduced to an equality with the demand, 
 production having, in fact, gone on under the pressure of 
 low prices, the supply of many kinds of goods is now almost, 
 if not quite, as redundant as ever. But I cannot understand 
 how this can be regarded as a full explanation of the origin 
 of the distress. The alleged over-production may have laid 
 the foundation for a greater future distress ; but I cannot 
 conceive how it can be made out, under the circumstances 
 in which it occurred, that distress would have been avoided, 
 had over-production not taken place. Can it be alleged 
 that, during this period of over-production, capital or labour 
 were withdrawn from their ordinary occupations ? Did any 
 trade or enterprise of any kind suffer from the diversion of 
 capital into channels in which more than ordinary profits 
 were expected ? Was the over-production carried on by 
 means of capital borrowed from foreigners ? Were the 
 labourers taken from the fields, or the ordinary business of 
 trade, to work in the cotton-mills ? Or were foreign labourers 
 imported into this country to supply the scarcity of English 
 hands ? Why, it is notorious that, during the last two or 
 three years, we were lending money to the foreigner; that 
 there has been a considerable emigration of labourers ; that 
 after all this, and all the over-production of which you speak, 
 there never was so much money lying idle ; and that our 
 
ON SYSTEMATIC COLONIZATION. 461 
 
 workhouses were getting crowded with able-bodied men, 
 who could not get employment. If the mills, of which so 
 much complaint is made, had not been kept in activity, the 
 money which was required to work them would have been 
 brought into a previously over-crowded money market; and 
 the labourers whom they employed would have been so 
 many more inmates of the workhouses. Is it not clear, then, 
 that the over-production which is spoken of, however it may 
 possibly aggravate future distress, has, in fact, only given a 
 precarious, may be, ultimately, a mischievous employment ; 
 but still an employment which would not otherwise have 
 1 xcii afforded to English capital and labour? If there had 
 been no over-production, there would have been distress 
 different, perhaps, in form and in results but still distress ; 
 for there would have been an additional amount of capital and 
 labour unemployed. Your temporary cause, in this instance, 
 instead of solving the whole problem, points us merely to 
 permanent causes, which must be comprehended and removed 
 ere we can hope to remove the sufferings of the people. 
 
 That you cannot explain the existing distress by tem- 
 porary causes alone, is evident from the state of things in 
 another country, in which these causes have operated in an 
 even greater degree than here, without producing anything 
 like the suffering which has been felt here. Whatever 
 shocks our trade has experienced during the last few years, 
 no one can compare them for severity with those which have 
 been felt in the United States. Since 1836, the history of 
 the trade of the United States has consisted of a series of 
 crises, with intervals of stagnation. " I doubt," says Mr. 
 Everett, in the wise and feeling answer which he recently 
 made to a deputation of holders of Slave Stock ; " I doubt 
 if, in the history of the world, in so short a period, such a 
 transition has been made from a state of high prosperity to 
 one of general distress, as in the United States, within the 
 last six years." And yet, has there been there any of what 
 liould call distress among the quiet traders and artisans ? 
 of any inability to employ capital with ordinary profit ? Or 
 any general want of employment for labour? Of any great 
 depression of wages ? Or anything which we should call 
 the extreme of destitution. Have even the unscrupulous 
 demagogues of their hustings or their press ventured to 
 <1< M-ribe such sad scenes as those which official inspection 
 has shown to have been but too frequent at Bolton and 
 Stnrkport? Have you heard in that country of human 
 
462 SPEECH OF CHARLES BULLEH, ESQ., M.P., 
 
 beings living huddled together in defiance of comfort, of 
 shame, and of health, in garrets and in cellars, and in the 
 same novels with their pigs ? Have you heard of large and 
 sudden calls on the bounty of individuals, of parishes, or of 
 the government ? Of workhouses crowded ? Of even the 
 gaol resorted to for shelter and maintenance ? Of human 
 beings prevented from actually dying of starvation in the 
 open streets, or of others allowed to expire from inanition in 
 the obscurity of their own dwelling-places ? The plain fact 
 is, that though hundreds of enterprises have failed, and 
 enormous amounts of capital have been sacrificed, and credit 
 has been paralysed, and hundreds that were wealthy at 
 sunrise have been beggars ere the same sun was set, and 
 thousands have been suddenly deprived of the work and 
 wages of the day before, yet capital and labour have never 
 failed to find immediate employment in that boundless field. 
 That fearful storm has passed over the United States, leaving 
 marks of tremendous havoc on its credit and wealth and 
 progress ; but the condition of the masses has never been 
 substantially affected. How comes it that these temporary 
 causes, which produce so frightful an amount of distress in 
 England, do not, when acting with double and treble violence 
 in the United States, produce a tithe of the suffering ? Does 
 it not show that in this country the real mischief lies deep, 
 and is ever at work? And that the temporary causes to 
 which you ascribe temporary distress are of such fearful 
 efficacy only because they aggravate the effects of causes 
 permanently depressing the condition of the people. 
 
 I think, Sir, that we cannot contemplate the condition of 
 this country without coming to the conclusion that there is a 
 permanent cause of suffering in theconstant accumulation 
 of capital, and the constant increase ofpopulation within 
 the same restricted field of employ mentrj Every year adds 
 its profits to the amount of capital previously accumulated ; 
 and certainly leaves the population considerably larger at 
 its close than it was at its commencement. /^This fresh 
 amount both of capital and population have to be employed.; 
 and if no further space for their employment be provided, 
 they must compete for a share of the previous amount of 
 profits and wagesrYThe tendency of this cause to reduce 
 both profits and Wa"ges is undoubtedly counteracted by what 
 has fortunately been the still greater tendency of increased 
 demand from foreign countries, of discoveries of fresh pro- 
 ducts of nature, and of improvements in various processes 
 of art, especially in agriculture, to enlarge the field of 
 
ON SYSTKMATIC COLONIZATION. 4<i:i 
 
 employment; so that, in fact, the condition of the great mass 
 of our countrymen has, as regards mere physical circum- 
 stances, indisputably gone on improving from century to 
 century since the Norman conquest. But it is as indisputable 
 that this enlargement of the field of employment, though in 
 the long run greater, is not so steady as the growth of capital 
 and population; and that during the intervals that elapse 
 ere fresh employment is found, competition, in a restricted 
 field, oftentimes reduces both wages and profits, and occa- 
 sions periods of distress. 
 
 In this country, since the peace, there has been an immense 
 accumulation of capital, of which great part has, no doubt, 
 been turned to excellent account in extending our trade and 
 manufactures ; in improving our agriculture ; in covering the 
 country with public works and private dwellings ; and in 
 bringing within reach of the humblest of our people comforts 
 which formerly only the wealthy could command. But, over 
 and above this, there has been a further accumulation of 
 capital for which no profitable employment could be found ; 
 and which has consequently been thrown away in the most 
 unsafe investments lent to every government that chose to 
 ask us for loans sunk in South American mine?, or fooled 
 away in the bubble speculations of the day. In loans to 
 foreign countries, I have heard that a sum so large has been 
 sunk that I fear to repeat it ; and of this a great part may be 
 regarded as absolutely lost, owing to the dishonesty of the 
 debtor states. Such speculations are the inevitable result 
 of an accumulation of capital, which there are no means of 
 investing with profit; and of course the failure of such 
 speculations narrows the field of employment still more, by 
 producing a general unwillingness to embark even in safe 
 enterprises.^JWe are now in one of those periods of stagna- 
 tion of trade, while millions by which it could be profitably 
 carried on are lying idle in the coffers of our capitalists. 
 The general complaint is, that no man can find a safe, ancT 
 at the same time profitable investment for money ; that the 
 rate of interest on private security is lower than it was ever 
 known ; that the price of public securities keeps rising not 
 because the country is prosperous but because the universal 
 stagnation and want of confidence prevent men from in- 
 vesting their savings in any other way ; that the profits of 
 business also are very low ; and that every kind of business 
 is more and more passing into the hands of great capitalists, 
 because they can afford, on their large amounts, to be con- 
 tent with a rate of profit, at which the smaller capital would 
 
464 SPEECH 
 
 not produce a livelihood. This state of things is the result 
 of having more capital than you can employ with profit; and 
 
 Cthe cry of distress to which it gives rise will continue as long 
 as capital continues to accumulate in a restricted field. 
 
 No one will question the fact that there is a most severe 
 competition among labourers : that from the highest to the 
 lowest occupation of human industry, almost every one is 
 habitually overstocked ; that in all there is the utmost diffi- 
 culty of getting employment ; and that the gains of some, if 
 not all of every class, are diminished by the competition of 
 redundant labour. The liberal professions are more over- 
 stocked than any others. Gentlemen of the first station and 
 fortune find a difficulty in knowing what to do with their 
 younger sons ; and you hear every day of the sons of gentle- 
 men entering into occupations from which their pride in 
 former times debarred. Among the middle classes you hear 
 the same complaints. There is the same intense competition 
 amongst tradesmen, and notoriously a most severe com- 
 petition amongst farmers. And the competition of educated 
 men is nothing in comparison with the severity of that com- 
 petition which exists amongst educated women, who are, 
 unhappily, compelled to maintain themselves by their own 
 exertions in that very limited range of employments in which 
 our manners allow them to engage. 
 
 The extent of the competition for employment among 
 those who have nothing to depend upon but mere manual 
 labour unhappily admits of easy and certain proof, by a 
 reference to the broad and indisputable conclusions forced 
 on us by statistical accounts. Since 1810 more than six 
 millions have been added to the population of Great Britain ; 
 and for all this additional population agriculture has not 
 supplied any, or hardly any, additional employment. Yet 
 the condition of our agricultural labourers is anything but 
 such as we could wish. In the course of the violent recrimi- 
 nation which anti-corn-law lecturers and farmers' friends 
 have been lately carrying on, we have heard fearful accounts 
 of the deplorable physical condition of the agricultural 
 labourers their low wages, their wretched habitations, their 
 scanty food, bad clothing, and want of fuel. On the other 
 hand, we have had held up to us the habitual privations to 
 which the labourers in various trades and manufactures are 
 subject. The perpetual strikes in various trades the long- 
 continued misery of such a class as the hand-loom weavers 
 then the dreadful facts laid open by the inquiries put in 
 motion by the Poor Law Commissioners and by the noble 
 
ON SYSTEMATIC COLONIZATION. 465 
 
 lord the member for Dorsetshire (Lord Ashley), respecting 
 the unremitting and unwholesome labour carried on in many 
 trades the wretched poverty, precarious existence, and 
 mental abasement of vast bodies of our artisans above all, 
 the miserable and degrading occupations to which a large 
 portion of our population is condemned to resort, are proofs 
 of a constant pressure of the population employed in trades 
 and manufactures upon the means of subsistence which they 
 afford. Look at the accounts of thousands of men, women, 
 and children congregated together without any regard to 
 decency or comfort in noisome sites and wretched hovels 
 of those who wear out their lives in the darkness of coal and 
 iron mines, doing what is commonly considered the work of 
 brutes, in a moral and intellectual state hardly raised above 
 that of the mere animal of the shirt-makers, who get ten- 
 pence for making a dozen shirts ; and of the 15,000 milliners 
 in this metropolis, habitually working for the scantiest wages, 
 in close rooms, always for 13 or 14 hours a day, sometimes 
 for days and nights together, 9 out of 10 losing their health 
 in the occupation, and scores of them falling victims to con- 
 sumption, or rendered incurably blind whenever a court 
 mourning, or any festivity of particular magnitude tasks their 
 powers more than usual. These are all consequences of the 
 one leading fact, that every year that rolls over our heads 
 brings an addition of 300,000 to the population of Great 
 Britain, and that unless in proportion to the increase of 
 population there is a simultaneous increase of employment 
 unless fresh work be found for as many pair of hands as 
 there are fresh mouths to feed, the condition of our popula- 
 tion must sink, and there must be acute suffering. In Ireland 
 the condition of the people is at all times more uneasy ; in 
 any crisis, their sufferings infinitely more horrible. Can this 
 be wondered at, when we know, on the highest official 
 authority, that in that part of the United Kingdom there are 
 more than 2,000,000 of persons always in distress for 30 
 weeks in the year from want of employment ? 
 
 It is this constant swelling of population and capital up 
 to the very brim of the cup that is the permanent cause of 
 uneasiness and danger in this country : and this that makes 
 the ordinary vicissitudes of commerce fraught with such in- 
 tense misery to our population. When our condition in 
 ordinary times is that of just having employed sufficient for 
 our capital and population, any check to the necessary in- 
 crease of employment, much more any defalcation of the 
 ordinary sources, must be attended with absolute destitution 
 
 H H 
 
466 SPEECH OF CHARLES BULLER, ESQ., M.P., 
 
 to that large proportion of our people who can save nothing 
 from their daily earnings, and who, if they chance to lose 
 their present occupation, can find no other to turn to. Con- 
 trast this with the state of America. I dare say some gen- 
 tlemen may smile when I remind them of Mr. Dickens's 
 account of the factory girls at Lowell, and their joint-stock 
 pianoforte, and their circulating library, and the " Lowell 
 Offering" to which they contributed the effusions of their 
 fancy. But he must be heartless indeed who would feel no 
 other emotions than those of ridicule, when he contrasts with 
 the condition of our poor operatives the degree of education, 
 the leisure, and the pecuniary means which are indicated 
 by the possibility of having such amusements. Why, of all 
 these Lowell girls there is hardly one that, besides all her 
 actual comforts, has not saved more or less of money, and 
 who, if the factory were to fail and be broken up to-morrow, 
 and its 20,000 workpeople discharged at an hour's notice, 
 would not be able to fall back on those savings, and would 
 not either find immediate employment, or, as they are 
 generally daughters of respectable farmers, or rather 
 yeomen, be able to return to a comfortable home, from 
 which her parents had very reluctantly spared her assistance 
 in domestic labours. But when such failures happen in this 
 country, the blow must, from the necessity of the case, fall 
 for the most part on labourers, who have saved little or 
 nothing, find no new employment open to them, and, if they 
 return home, do so only to share want with their families, or 
 to bring that family with themselves on the parish. Hence 
 that extreme misery which follows in this country on any 
 sudden cessation of a particular employment ; for instance, 
 the horrible destitution in the highlands, to which our atten- 
 tion was called two or three years since by the honourable 
 member for Inverness-shire, and which arose from the sub- 
 stitution of barilla for kelp in our manufactures, and the 
 sudden stoppage of the herring fishery. Hence comes that 
 intense suffering which presses on particular localities when 
 the course of events changes the sites of particular trades, 
 as when the silk manufacture moved from Spitalfields to the 
 north, or the woollen manufactures passed from Wiltshire 
 and Somersetshire to Yorkshire. Hence the temporary 
 sufferings that ensue to large classes of labourers and 
 artisans when some change of fashion, or other accident, 
 deprives them even for awhile of the usual demand for their 
 labour ; and hence the more permanent and entire distress 
 envelopes those whose particular employment is every now 
 
<>N SYSTEMATIC COLONIZATION. 4()7 
 
 and then superseded by some invention of machinery most 
 ust -t'ul to the public at large, but utterly ruinous to those 
 whom it displaces. And hence it is that causes which hardly 
 ext-n -ise a visible effect on the labouring population of the 
 I nitcd States, involve large bodies of ours in the most in- 
 tense suffering. There the labour and capital which are 
 displaced from one employment find every other deficient 
 in both, and are immediately absorbed in them, to the great 
 advantage of the community. Here they are thrown back 
 upon other employments all previously overstocked, and 
 h.-mjr dead weights on the productive industry of the country. 
 And the same considerations will enable us to account for 
 die perplexing and contradictory phenomena of our present 
 condition, and show us how it happens that we hear a cry 
 of stagnation of business, of want of employment, and ex- 
 treme destitution throughout the industrious classes, at the 
 same time that we see around us the most incontestable 
 evidences of vast wealth rapidly augmenting : how it is that 
 in this country there are seen side by side, in fearful and 
 unnatural contrast, the greatest amount of opulence, and the 
 most appalling mass of misery how it is that the people of 
 this country appear, when contemplated at one and the 
 same time, from different points of view, to be the richest 
 and the neediest people in the world. 
 
 When I speak of distress and suffering among the indus- 
 trious classes of this country, I must guard against being 
 supposed to mean that I regard their physical condition as 
 worse than it used to be. Taking the condition of the whole 
 people of Great Britain for periods of eight or ten years at a 
 time, I feel little doubt that, as far as external causes go, 
 they are, on the whole, better off than they used to be. But 
 even these assertions of a general improvement in the ex- 
 ternal condition of the people must be qualified by the 
 admission, that there appears to be a class positively more, 
 though comparatively less, numerous, which suffers fearfully, 
 and that the rear of the community, in the present day, 
 is to lag further behind, both morally and physically, 
 than it used to do of old. I doubt whether there ever before 
 was in this country such a mass of such intense physical 
 suffering and moral degradation as is to be found in this 
 metropolis, in the cellars and garrets of Liverpool and Man- 
 chester, and in the yet more wretched alleys of Glasgow ; 
 and I have very little doubt that there never before prevailed, 
 Mn any portion of our population, vice so habitual and so 
 gross *as is there to be found. The general comfort of the 
 
 H H ^ 
 
468 SPEECH OF CHARLES BULLER, ESQ., M.P., 
 
 great body is increased ; but so also is the misery of the 
 most wretched. We witness constantly more of the extreme 
 of suffering ; we have a positively larger number of the dan- 
 gerous classes in the country. I cannot but think, too, that 
 the condition of the productive classes is more precarious 
 than it used to be, and that great bodies of them run more 
 frequent risk of sudden and total destitution than they used 
 to do. It is obvious that this must be a consequence of 
 that extreme subdivision of employment which is one of the 
 results of increasing civilization. The more you confine the 
 workman to one particular process or occupation, the more 
 exposed you are to the sudden and complete displacement 
 of the persons so employed by some improvement or change 
 of fashion, or other cause that dispenses with their services. 
 But it is a perfectly different kind of change in our working 
 people which induces me to regard the occurrence of periods 
 of extreme distress as both far more afflicting to themselves 
 and dangerous to others, than it used to be. What matters 
 it that the scourge be no heavier, or even that it be some- 
 what lighter, if the back of the sufferer be more sensitive ? 
 and what avails it that the external condition of our people 
 is somewhat improved, if they feel the less evils which they 
 have to bear now more acutely than they used to feel the 
 greater which they submitted to once ? That they do so is 
 obvious to any one who listens to them ; that they must do 
 so is in the very nature of things. For, whatever may be the 
 increase of enjoyments among our people, it is obvious that 
 the standard of comfort has increased much more rapidly. 
 Every class, when in full employment, commands a far greater 
 amount of enjoyments than it used, and consequently every 
 member of that class is accustomed to regard as necessary 
 to a comfortable existence to consider as a kind of rights, 
 what his predecessor would have looked upon as luxuries, 
 which nothing but singular good luck could place in his way. 
 Each class is now cognizant of the habits of those which are 
 above it, and the appetites of the poor are constantly 
 sharpened by seeing the enjoyments of the rich paraded 
 before them. And, as the enjoyments of the prosperous, so 
 are the sufferings of the distressed, better known to all than 
 they used to be. The horrible details given in the reports 
 to which I have had occasion to refer reveal certainly no 
 worse state of things than has for ages been going on in 
 crowded cities, in poor villages, in unwholesome factories, 
 and in the bowels of the earth. On the contrary, it seems* 
 clear, from the unvarying testimony of all witnesses, that, in 
 
ON SYSTEMATIC COLONIZATION. 469 
 
 almost every particular, bad as these things are, they were 
 worse formerly. But then, formerly no one knew of them. 
 Now, zealous humanity, now statesman-like courage, that 
 does not shrink from investigating and exposing the full 
 extent of our social ills, in order to ascertain the extent of 
 the remedy that must be provided, searches out the unknown 
 misery, drags suffering and degradation from their hiding- 
 places, and harrows up the public mind with a knowledge of 
 the disorders to which we used to shut our eyes. Thus, the 
 very improvements that have taken place make lesser dis- 
 tresses more intolerable than greater used to be ; the general 
 elevation of the standard of comfort makes each man feel 
 privations to which he would have been insensible before. 
 The increase of information respecting passing events 
 diffuses over the entire mass a sense of sufferings which 
 were formerly felt by few but the actual sufferers ; and the 
 irritation thus created is heightened by the contrast of 
 luxuries, which wealth never could command before, and by 
 a disparity between the ease of the rich and the want of the 
 poor, such as no previous state of things ever presented. 
 
 It is idle, then, when we are discussing distress to make 
 it a matter of statistical comparison between the present and 
 other days, and to think we disprove the reasonableness of 
 complaint, by showing that men used to complain less, when 
 they had less of the external means of enjoyment. Men do 
 not regulate their feelings by such comparisons. It is by 
 what they feel that you must measure the extent of their 
 suffering; and if they now feel more acutely than they did 
 the pressure of such occasional distress as has always been 
 their lot, we must be more than ever on our guard to better 
 the general condition of the people, and to prevent the 
 occurrence of these periods of extreme suffering. If hu- 
 manity did not induce us to do our utmost for this object, a 
 mere politic view of our own interests would compel us: for 
 depend upon it that the people of this country will not bear 
 what they used ; and that every one of these periods of dis- 
 tress is fraught with increasingly dangerous effects on the 
 popular temper, and with increasing peril to the interests of 
 property and order. And if you mean to keep government 
 or society together in this country, you must do something 
 to render the condition of the people less uneasy and pre- 
 carious than it now is. 
 
 I speak plainly, because nothing but harm seems to me 
 to result from the habit whirh we have of concealing the 
 apprehensions, which no man of reflection can contemplate 
 
470 SPEECH OF CHARLES BULLEK, ESQ., M.P., 
 
 the future without entertaining. We are beginning to know 
 something of our own people ; and can we contemplate the 
 state of things laid open to us, without wonder that we have 
 stood so long with safety on this volcanic soil ? Does any 
 one suppose that we can tread it safely for ever ? I need 
 not detail to you the dangerous doctrines that circulate 
 among the people, or the wild visions of political and social 
 change which form the creed of millions. Such creeds are 
 ever engendered by partial knowledge acting on general 
 ignorance. Circulating undisturbed among the masses, they 
 start forth into action only when distress arrays those masses 
 in disaffection to the law. It should be the business of a 
 wise and benevolent government to dispel such evil disposi- 
 tions by enlightening its people, and diffusing among them 
 the influence of religion and knowledge; but it should also 
 be its care to prevent the existence of that distress, which 
 irritates the existing ignorance of the people. While, there- 
 fore, I go heartily along with the noble lord, the member 
 for Dorsetshire, and others, who grapple with the general 
 ignorance as the giant evil that oppresses the country; 
 while I feel convinced that never again can the government 
 of this country rest securely on any other support than that 
 afforded by the general diffusion of sound instruction among 
 the subjects; and while I look to ^education as the great 
 remedy on which we must rely for removing the evils of our 
 condition, I still say that simultaneous with our efforts for 
 this purpose must be some efforts to/etter the physical 
 condition of the people?/ Without relieving them from the 
 pressure of want and^tne undue toil, which is now often 
 required from them, you will in vain proffer the blessings of 
 a higher moral state to those who can give no thought to 
 anything but the supply of their physical wants. You will 
 always be liable to have your most benevolent and sagacious 
 plans thwarted by some outbreak, of which -the watchword 
 shall be, like the simple and expressive cry of the insurgents 
 of last summer " A fair day's wages for a fair day's work." 
 This must be secured to honest industry ere there can be 
 contentment among the people, or any basis for operations 
 directed to their moral good. This you must secure for 
 them, let me tell you, if you wish to retain your own great 
 advantages of position and property : if you mean to up- 
 hold and transmit to your children those institutions through 
 which you have enjoyed at once the blessings of freedom 
 and order: if you hope to escape the tremendous wrath of< 
 a people whom force will vainly attempt to restrain, when 
 
ON SYSTEMATIC COLONIZATION. 471 
 
 they have utterly lost all reliance on your power or inclina- 
 tion to care for their well-being. Some improvement of 
 their condition you must secure for the people, and you 
 must secure it before long. But that you will never do 
 until, by laying open a wider field of employment, you can 
 
 | succeed in diminishing that terrible competition of capital 
 with capital and labour with labour, which is the permanent 
 
 I cause of distress. 
 
 It is with this view that I propose that you should investi- 
 gate the efficacy of colonization, as a remedy against the 
 distress of the country. I say as a remedy, because I do 
 not bring it forward as a panacea as the only, as an in- 
 fallible remedy for every ill but as one among many 
 remedies, which would be valuable, even if they could not 
 go the length of entirely removing distress, provided they 
 enable us to render its recurrence less frequent, its opera- 
 tion less intense, and its pressure less severe. I say dis- 
 tinctly, that you will not effect your purpose of permanently 
 and fully bettering the condition of the people, unless you 
 apply a variety of remedies directed to the various disorders 
 of their present state. But confining myself to the econo- 
 mical evil that arises solely from that one cause, of which I 
 have laboured to describe the operation, namely, the com- 
 petition both of capital and labour in a restrictive field, I 
 propose colonization as a means of remedying that evil, by 
 enlarging the field of employment. With other remedies of 
 an economical nature, that have many advocates in this 
 house and in the country, I come into no collision ; because 
 the mode in which they propose to attack the evil is not that 
 of enlarging the field of employment. Some gentlemen 
 urge the relaxation of the new poor law as a measure of 
 justice to the labouring class; while others, with the same 
 view, insist on a rigid execution of its provisions. But the 
 question of the administration of the poor law is obviously a 
 question relating merely to the distribution of the existing 
 produce of the country, and can have no direct connexion 
 with that of increasing its amount. Another remedy was 
 proposed, the other night, which is certainly more akin in 
 character to the one that I urge namely, the allotment of 
 small pieces of land among the labouring class. But this I 
 shall not now discuss, because the matter was disposed of 
 the other night by an apparently general concurrence in 
 what I regard as the sound view of the allotment system ; 
 and that is, that it may be made of great utility to a large 
 portion of the labouring class, if had recourse to only as a 
 
472 SPEECH OF CHARLES BULLER, ESQ., M.P., 
 
 means of supplying additional comforts and occasional in- 
 dependence to labourers, whose main reliance is on wages ; 
 but that it would entail the greatest curse on our labouring 
 population, if they were ever brought to regard the cultiva- 
 tion of small allotments as their principal means of sub- 
 sistence. 
 
 There is, however, one remedy suggested for the relief of 
 distress, which proposes to effect its end in the same manner 
 as that which I advocate namely, by opening a wider field 
 of employment to the labour and capital of the country. 
 This it is proposd to do by freely admitting the produce of 
 foreign countries; supporting our labourers by all the addi- 
 ytional supplies of food which we can draw from abroad; and 
 T exchanging for that food and other produce the manufactures 
 j wrought by the labourers who subsist on that imported food. 
 * Sir, in the principles and objects of the friends of free trade 
 I fully concur. I not only think that we ought to do what 
 they propose, but I am ready to admit that the first and 
 most simple and most effectual mode of enlarging the field 
 of employment is by trading on the freest terms with all the 
 existing markets in the world. I propose colonization as 
 subsidiary to free trade ; as an additional mode of carrying 
 out the same principles, and attaining the same object. You 
 advocates of free trade wish to bring food to the people. 
 I suggest to you at the same time to take your people to the 
 food. You wish to get fresh markets by removing the 
 barriers which now keep you from those that exist through- 
 out the world. I call upon you, in addition, to get fresh 
 markets, by calling them into existence in parts of the world 
 which might be made to teem with valuable customers. 
 You represent free trade as no merely temporary relief for 
 the distresses of our actual population, but as furnishing 
 outlets of continually extending commerce to the labour of 
 our population, whatever its increase may be. In these 
 anticipations I fully concur ; and I would carry out the same 
 principle, and attempt to make yet more use of these blessed 
 results, by also planting population and capital in the vast 
 untenanted regions of our colonies; and calling into exist- 
 ence markets, which, like those now in being, would go on 
 continually extending the means of employing an increasing 
 population at home. 
 
 I must not, therefore, be understood to propose coloni- 
 zation as a substitute for free trade. I do not vaunt its 
 efficacy as superior ; indeed I admit that its effect in ex- 
 tending employment must be slower. But, on the other 
 
ON SYSTEMATIC COLONIZATION. 473 
 
 hand, it will probably be surer; and will be liable to no 
 such interruptions from the caprice of others, as trade with 
 foreign nations must always be subject to. I grant that the 
 restrictive policy of other nations is, in great measure, to be 
 ascribed to the influence of our example; and I am inclined 
 to concur in the hope that the relaxation of our commercial 
 system will be the signal for freedom of trade in many other 
 countries. But still we are not sure how soon this effect 
 may be produced; how long an experience may be required 
 to convince our neighbours of the injurious operation of 
 monopoly ; or how soon or how often the policy of protec- 
 tion may reappear in some shape or other, whether finding 
 favour with the fantastic minds of statesmen, or the capricious 
 feelings of nations, or dictated by political views totally inde- 
 pendent of merely economical considerations. But of the 
 legislation of your own colonies of the fiscal policy of the 
 different portions of your own empire you can always 
 make sure, and may rely upon being met by no hostile 
 tariffs on their part. The commerce of the world is nar- 
 rowed now not only by our own legislation, but by that of 
 other powers ; the influence of restrictive views is extending 
 and acquiring strength among them. Within the last few 
 years no less than eight hostile tariffs have been passed 
 against us, more or less narrowing the demand for our 
 manufactures. I say, then, that in the present day the re- 
 strictive policy of other nations must enter into our con- 
 sideration as an element, and no unimportant element, of 
 commercial policy; and, though I advise you to set the 
 example of free trade to others, and extend your intercourse 
 with them to the very utmost, still at the same time take 
 care to be continually creating and enlarging those markets 
 which are under the control of no legislation but your own. 
 Show the world that, if the game of restriction is to be played, 
 no country can play it with such effect and such impunity as 
 Great Britain, which, from the outlying portions of her 
 mighty empire, can command the riches of every zone, and 
 v soil, and every sea, that the earth contains ; and can 
 draw, with unstinted measure, the means of every luxury 
 and the material of every manufacture that the combined 
 extent of other realms can supply. This we have done, or 
 can do, by placing our own people in different portions of 
 our own dominions ; secure that, while they remain subjects 
 of the same empire, no hostile tariff can by possibility ex- 
 clude us from their markets ; and equally secure that, when- 
 ever they shall have outgrown the state of colonial depend- 
 
474 SPEECH OF CHARLES BULLER, ESQ., M.P., 
 
 ence, and nominally or practically asserted, as they will do, 
 a right to legislate for themselves, our hold on their markets 
 will be retained by that taste for our manufactures which 
 must result from long habit, and by that similarity of customs 
 and wants which kindred nations are sure to have. Under 
 these impressions I direct your attention to colonization as 
 a means, I should say not merely of relieving distress, but 
 of preventing its recurrence, by augmenting the resources 
 of the empire and the employment of the people. The 
 suggestion of this remedy appears to be the simple result of 
 the view of the evil, which I have described as the perma- 
 nent cause of distress in this country. Here we have capital 
 that can obtain no profitable employment ; labour equally 
 kept out from employment by the competition of labour 
 sufficient for the existing demand; and an utter inability to 
 find any fresh employment in which that unemployed capital 
 can be turned to account by setting that unemployed 
 labour in motion. In your colonies, on the other hand, you 
 have vast tracts of the most fertile land wanting only capital 
 and labour to cover them with abundant harvests ; and, from 
 want of that capital and labour, wasting their productive 
 energies in nourishing weeds, or, at best, in giving shelter 
 and sustenance to beasts. When I ask you to colonize, 
 what do I ask you to do but to carry the superfluity of one 
 part of our country to repair the deficiency of the other : to 
 cultivate the desert by applying to it the means that lie idle 
 here : in one simple word, to convey the plough to the 
 field, the workman to his work, the hungry to his food ? 
 
 This, Sir, is the view that common sense suggests of the 
 primary benefits of colonization. When Abraham found 
 that the land could not support both him and Lot, " because 
 their substance was so great," his simple proposal was that 
 they should separate, and one take the right hand and the 
 other the left. The same view, as well as the sad necessities 
 of civil strife, prompted the Greeks and Phoenicians to colo- 
 nize. When the youth of the city could find no land to 
 cultivate in the narrow precincts of its territory, they banded 
 together, crossed the sea, established themselves in some 
 vacant haven, and thus at length studded the shores of the 
 Mediterranean with cities and civilization. And in later 
 times this has been the simple and obvious view that the 
 pressure of population on the means of subsistence has 
 suggested to the advocates of emigration in this country. A 
 vast number of persons capable of working can find no em- 
 ployment here. Their competition beats down wages ; but, 
 
ON SYSTEMATIC COLONIZATION. 475 
 
 when waives have been reduced to the utmost, there are still 
 superfluous labourers, who can get no employment, and who 
 must either starve or depend on charity. A number of the 
 latter are induced to emigrate, and are established in Canada 
 or Australia, at the cost, at the outside, of one year's sub- 
 sistence in the workhouse. By their absence, the poor-rate 
 is immediately relieved : if the emigration be sufficiently ex- 
 tensive, the due relation between employment and labour is 
 restored, and the wages of those who remain at home are 
 raised, while at the same time the emigrant exchanges a life 
 of precarious dependence and squalid misery for plenty and 
 ease in his new home. If this were all the good that could 
 result from the change, it would still be a great gain. I 
 know that it would require a great effort to remove so large 
 a proportion of our population as materially to affect the 
 labour-market. At the end of every year, the population of 
 Great Britain is at least 300,000 more than it was at the 
 beginning. With the best imaginable selection of emigrants, 
 you would have to take out at least 200,000 persons every 
 year, in order to keep your population stationary ; and even 
 such an emigration would not be sufficient, because the mo- 
 mentary withdrawal of labour would give an impulse to 
 population, and ere long supply the vacuum thus created. 
 Still, even with these limited results in view, I should say it 
 would be most desirable that emigration should be carried 
 on, on a large scale, were it only that \ve might at any rate 
 turn a large number of our people from wretched paupers 
 into thriving colonists; that we might enable them to trans- 
 mit those blessings to a posterity which they could not rear 
 at home ; and that the mere temporary relief which is, I 
 admit, all that could result from a sudden reduction of num- 
 bers might be made use of for a breathing-time, in which 
 other remedies for the condition of the people might be ap- 
 plied with better chance of success than it would be possible 
 to expect under the actual pressure of redundant numbers. 
 
 But the whole, nay the main advantage of colonization, is 
 not secured by that mere removal of the labourer from the 
 crowded mother country, which is all that has been gene- 
 rally implied by the term emigration. His absence is only 
 the first relief which he affords you. You take him hence 
 to place him on a fertile soil, from which a very small 
 amount of his labour will suffice to raise the food which he 
 wants. He soon finds that by applying his spare time :md 
 energies to raising additional food, or some article of trade 
 or material of manufacture, he can obtain that which he can 
 
476 SPEECH OF CHARLES BULLER, ESQ., M.P., 
 
 exchange for luxuries of which he never dreamed at home. 
 He raises some article of export, and appears in your market 
 as a customer. He who a few years ago added nothing to 
 the wealth of the country, but, receiving all from charity, 
 simply deducted the amount of food and clothing necessary 
 for existence and decency from the general stock of the 
 community he, by being conveyed to a new country, not 
 only ceases to trench upon the labour of others, but comes, 
 after providing his own food, to purchase from you a better 
 quality and larger quantity of the clothing and other manu- 
 factures which he used to take as a dole, and to give employ- 
 ment and offer food to those on whose energies he was a 
 burden before. Imagine in some village a couple of young 
 married men, of whom one has been brought ur3 as a weaver, 
 and the other as a farm-labourer, but both of whom are un- 
 able to get work. Both are in the workhouse ; and the 
 spade of the one and the loom of the other, are equally idle. 
 For the maintenance of these two men and their families, 
 the parish is probably taxed to the amount of 40/. a year. 
 The farm-labourer and his family get a passage to Australia 
 or Canada ; perhaps the other farm-labourers of the parish 
 were immediately able to make a better bargain with their 
 master, and get somewhat better wages ; but, at any rate, 
 the parish gains 20/. a year by being relieved from one of 
 the two pauper families. The emigrant gets good employ- 
 ment; after providing himself with food in abundance, he 
 finds that he has therewithal to buy him a good coat, instead 
 of the smock-frock he used to wear, and to supply his chil- 
 dren with decent clothing, instead of letting them run about 
 in rags. He sends home an order for a good quantity of 
 broad cloth ; and this order actually sets the loom of his 
 fellow-pauper to work, and takes him, or helps to take him, 
 out of the workhouse. Thus the emigration of one man re- 
 lieves the parish of two paupers, and furnishes employment 
 not only for one man, but for two men. 
 
 It seems a paradox to assert that removing a portion of 
 your population enables a country to support more inha- 
 bitants than it could before; and that the place of every 
 man who quits his country because he cannot get a subsist- 
 ence, may speedily be filled up by another whom that very 
 removal will enable to subsist there in comfort. But the 
 assertion is as true as it is strange. Nay, the history of 
 colonies will show that this theoretical inference suggests 
 results which fall inconceivably short of the wonders which 
 have been realized in fact ; and that we may fairly say that 
 
ON SYSTEMATIC COLONIZATION. 477 
 
 the emigration of Englishmen to our colonies has, in the 
 course of time, enabled hundreds to exist in comfort for 
 every one who was formerly compelled to quit his country. 
 
 The settlement of the United States was originally effected 
 by a few handsful of Europeans. Deducting those who 
 perished in the hardships of early settlement, and those who 
 were not of an age or kind to add to the population, the 
 original stock of European emigrants, from whom the pre- 
 sent population of the United States are derived, must have 
 been a very small number. This fraction has now swelled 
 to no less a number than thirteen or fourteen millions of 
 white people. If the United States had never been settled, 
 and our emigrants had stayed at home, do you think it pos- 
 sible that the population ,of the United Kingdom would have 
 been larger by thirteen or fourteen millions than it now is ? 
 that we should have had and maintained in as good a 
 state as now forty millions of people within these islands ? 
 Is there any reason for supposing that we should now have 
 had any additional means of supporting the addition of the 
 original emigrants ? Nay, is it not absolutely certain that 
 without colonizing the United States, we should not at this 
 moment have been able to maintain anything like the popu- 
 lation which at present finds subsistence within the limits of 
 the United Kingdom ? How large a portion of that popula- 
 tion depends on the trade with the United States, which 
 constitutes one-sixth of our whole external trade ? Without 
 that trade, what would have been the size, and wealth, and 
 population of Manchester, and Liverpool, and Glasgow, and 
 Sheffield, and Leeds, and Birmingham, and Wolverhampton 
 in fact, of all our great manufacturing districts ? What 
 would have been the relative condition of those agricultural 
 districts, whose industry is kept in employment by the de- 
 mand of that manufacturing population? What that of this 
 metropolis, so much of the expenditure of which may in- 
 directly be traced to the wealth created by the American 
 trade ? In fact, what would have been the wealth and popu- 
 lation of this country had the United States never been 
 peopled? Considering all the circumstances to which I 
 have adverted, I think it will be admitted that it is no 
 exaggeration to say that, taking the United Kingdom and 
 the United States alone, the fact of colonizing that single 
 country has at least doubled the numbers and wealth of the 
 English race. And can it be doubted that if, at the various 
 periods in which the colonization of the United States was 
 effected, an equal number of persons had gone to some other 
 
478 SPEECH OF CHARLES BULLER, ESQ., M.P., 
 
 vacant territory, as extensive as the peopled portion of the 
 United States and many more than such a number, be it 
 observed, perished in abortive attempts at settlement in 
 America I say if such a number had so settled elsewhere, 
 is there any reason to doubt that another great nation of our 
 race, as populous, as wealthy as the United States, might 
 have been in existence, might have added another eight 
 millions to our export trade, and might have supported a 
 second Lancashire in full activity and prosperity in our 
 island ? 
 
 See, then, what colonization has done even when carried 
 on without vigour, purpose, system, or constancy on the 
 part of the mother- country ; and judge what would be its 
 results, and with what rapidity they might be attained, if 
 you were to colonize with system and vigour. They are 
 results not to be measured by the relief given to the labour- 
 market or the poor-rate ; but vast as the consequences im- 
 plied in the founding of great commercial empires, capable 
 of maintaining millions of our population by creating a 
 demand for their labour. When I propose colonization, I 
 think it wholly unnecessary to enter into nice calculations of 
 the exact number of persons whom it is necessary to with- 
 draw annually, in order, as they say, to keep down popula- 
 tion ; because, as I have attempted to show, the numbers 
 withdrawn from us measure but a very small portion of the 
 good of colonization, which mainly consists in the demand 
 created for our labour and capital by the people in our 
 colonies ; and which benefits us not in those merely whom 
 it takes away, but in those whom it enables to exist here in 
 comfort. I look to the great, the perfectly incalculable 
 extension of trade which colonization has produced, and 
 which, with all the certainty of calculation from experience, 
 it may be expected to produce again. And such ground for 
 expecting such results will surely justify my regarding it as 
 that remedy for the present causes of our distress which is at 
 once the most efficacious, and the most completely at our 
 command. 
 
 I have directed your attention to the United States alone 
 the greatest colony, it is true, the world ever saw, but by 
 no means the only proof of my assertion of the immense ex- 
 tension given to trade by planting settlers on new and 
 ample fields. Compare the trade which we have with the 
 countries of the Old World with that which we have with the 
 colonial countries, and see how vast is the proportion which 
 we carry on with the latter. I hold in my hand some calcu- 
 
ON SYSTEMATIC COLONIZATION. 479 
 
 lations from the returns laid before the house respecting the 
 trade and shipping of this country. The first is a statement 
 of the declared value of British and Irish produce and manu- 
 factures exported from the United Kingdom in 1840, distin- 
 guishing the exports to old countries from those to our own 
 possessions, and countries that have been colonies. I find 
 that the total amount of these exports is to foreign coun- 
 tries 22,026,3 4 1/, while that to our own possessions, and to 
 countries which still belong to other powers, or have recently 
 been colonies, amounts to no less than 28,680,0897., or nearly 
 as four to three. Take the employment given to our shipping, 
 and you will find the results very remarkable , for while the 
 amount of British tonnage employed in the trade with foreign 
 countries appears, from a similarly constructed table which 
 I hold in my hand, to be 1,584,512 tons, that employed in 
 trade with our foreign possessions and the colonial countries 
 amounts to 1,709,319 tons. With respect to shipping, in- 
 deed, the result is more remarkable if we confine ourselves 
 merely to our own colonies, for it appears that the trade of 
 the three great groups of colonies alone those of North 
 America, the West Indies, and Australia employed in 1840, 
 1,031,837 tons, or nearly one-third of the whole British 
 tonnage cleared outwards. 
 
 I mention these results merely to show the great positive 
 amount of our present dependence on colonial trade. I 
 know that I must be careful what inferences 1 draw from 
 these facts. I am liable to be met by the answer, that all 
 this difference between our intercourse with the two kinds of 
 countries arises, not from any greater capacity of demand in 
 colonial countries, but from the artificial restrictions that 
 misdirected legislation has placed on the natural course of 
 trade ; that we have excluded foreign goods, and foreign 
 countries have excluded our manufactures ; while our 
 colonies, on the contrary, have been compelled to take our 
 manufactures and use our shipping. To a certain degree, 
 no doubt, there is truth in this reply; and it cannot be 
 doubted that our own folly has been the main cause of 
 restricting the demand for our manufactures among foreign 
 countries. But I think when you come to look more 
 minutely into the details of the two kinds of trade, you will 
 find that there is more than even legislative tricks can 
 account for. 
 
 I will take two great classes of countries, the first being 
 the whole of the independent nations of Europe, and the 
 second those which can properly be called colonial countries. 
 
480 SPEECH OF CHARLES BULLER, ESQ., M.P., 
 
 From the latter class I exclude altogether the East Indies, 
 and Java and Sumatra, because, in fact, they are old settled 
 countries, under European dominion the Channel and 
 Ionian Islands, because, although British possessions, they 
 are not colonies Mexico and Guatemala, because the 
 greater part of their population is the old Indian population 
 Western Africa, which forms an important head in the 
 returns, because, in fact, it relates to a trade, not with 
 European colonists, but with the Negro nations of Africa 
 and Texas, and New Zealand, simply because no return of 
 the exports to those countries is to be got. I have taken 
 down the population of the different countries of each class 
 which enter into my list, the amount of export of British 
 produce to each, and the amount of that produce which falls 
 to the share of each inhabitant of each country. I find that 
 the following European nations Russia, France, Austria, 
 Prussia, the rest of Germany, Cracow, Denmark, Sweden, 
 Norway, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Hol- 
 land, and Greece, contain altogether a population of 
 211,130,000 ; and annually import of our goods to the value 
 of 21,000,OOOZ. On the other hand, our own colonies of St. 
 Helena, the Cape, Mauritius, Australia, the West Indies, and 
 British North America the emancipated colonies, including 
 the United States, Hayti, Brazil, Peru, Chili, and those on 
 the La Plata, together with the nominal colony, but really 
 independent island of Cuba, contain a total population of 
 rather more than 36,000,000; and the exports of them 
 amount to rather more than the exports to all the European 
 states specified above, with their population of about six 
 times as many. The average consumption of each inhabitant 
 of the colonial countries is no less than 125. a head, while 
 that of the European countries is only 2s. a head. I grant 
 that this proportion is very much swelled by our own 
 colonies, of whose trade there is a kind of monopoly. Still, 
 putting our own possessions out of the question, I find that 
 the average consumption of our produce throughout what I 
 have classed as colonial countries is not less than 7s. 3d. per 
 head, being more than three and a half times as great as the 
 average consumption of the European states, which is, as I 
 said, 2s. a head. The greatest consumption of our goods in 
 the whole world is that of no less than IOL Ws. a head in 
 the Australian colonies the part of our empire in w r hich 
 the greatest amount of fertile land is open to the settler ; in 
 which there has of late been, in proportion to its population, 
 the greatest fund derived from the sale of public lands ; and 
 
ON SYSTEMATIC COLONIZATION. 481 
 
 into which there has been the greatest proportional immigra- 
 tion. This trade, which took less than 400,0007. worth of 
 our goods in 1831, took more than two millions' worth in 
 1840, being increased fivefold in nine years ; and it disposes 
 of more of our goods than does the whole of our trade with 
 Russia, with its population of 56,000,000, consuming only 
 per head seven pennyworth of our goods. The comparison 
 is curious in some other respects. Spain takes of our goods 
 9d. per head for her population ; our worst customer among 
 her old colonies, Columbia, takes four times as large a pro- 
 portion; whilst her colony of Cuba takes no less than 
 II. 4s. 4d. per head, being at the rate of more than thirty 
 times as much as Spain. Our civilized neighbours in France 
 take to the amount of Is. 4d. per head ; while Hayti, com- 
 posed of the liberated negro slaves of that same France 
 Hayti, which it is the fashion to represent as become a 
 wilderness of Negro barbarism and sloth, takes 5s. 4d. per 
 head, being four times the rate of consumption in France. 
 
 But I think, Sir, that I may spare myself and the House 
 the trouble of any further proof of the advantage of colonies 
 an advantage secured by no jealous and selfish monopoly 
 of their trade, but resulting from mere freedom of intercourse 
 with nations whose kindred origin makes them desire, whose 
 fertile soil enables them to purchase, our commodities. I 
 think I need use no further argument to show that when the 
 cause of mischief here is the confinement of capital and 
 labour within the narrow limits of the present field of em- 
 ployment, the most obvious and easy remedy is to let both 
 flow over and fertilize the rich unoccupied soil of our 
 dominions. Had our colonies been joined to the United 
 Kingdom, had it happened that instead of our conquering 
 or discovering Canada or Australia, when we did, continents 
 as vast and as rich had risen out of the sea close to the 
 Land's End, or the west coast of Ireland who can doubt 
 that we should have taken no great time to discuss the theory 
 of colonization ; but that the unemployed capital and labour 
 would speedily and roughly have settled the question by 
 taking possession of the unoccupied soil ? Suppose that 
 instead of actually touching our island, this imaginary region 
 had been separated from it by a strait as wide as the Menai 
 Strait ; who can doubt that, in order to facilitate its cultiva- 
 tion, government would have undertaken to bridge over that 
 strait at various points? Instead of such a strait, the 
 Atlantic and Pacific roll between us and our colonies ; and 
 the question is, as you cannot bridge over the ocean, will 
 
 I I 
 
482 SPEECH OF CHARLES BULLER, ESQ., M.P., 
 
 you think it worth your while to secure the great blessings 
 of colonization by making arrangements for providing capital 
 and labour with a free, cheap, and ready access to the fields 
 in which they can be productively employed ? This is the 
 practical question to be solved. Few will dispute that colo- 
 nization, when once effected, produces such benefits as I 
 have described. But the real question is, what outlay will 
 be requisite in order to put us in the way of receiving these 
 benefits ? And is the object, good as no one will deny it to 
 be, worth the price we shall have to pay for it ? 
 
 With the estimate I have formed of the almost boundless 
 extent of good to be anticipated from the foundation of 
 colonies, I should be prepared to say that it would be well 
 worth while, if necessary, to devote large funds to the pro- 
 motion of extensive and systematic colonization. I should 
 not hesitate to propose a large grant of public money for the 
 purpose, did I not think that the most efficient mode of 
 colonization is that which can be carried on without any 
 expense to the mother-country. Capital and labour are 
 both redundant here, and both wanted in the colonies. 
 Labour, without capital, would effect but little in the colony ; 
 and capital can effect nothing unless it carries out labour 
 with it. In the United States, where there is a general 
 diffusion of moderate means, capital is found in conjunction 
 with labour; and the simple process of emigration is, that 
 the labourer moves off to the Far West, carrying with him 
 the means of stocking his farm. Here, where the labouring 
 class possesses no property, few of the labourers who desire 
 to emigrate can pay for their own passage ; or if they can 
 scrape together enough for that purpose, they arrive in the 
 colony paupers, without the means of cultivating and stock- 
 ing farms. The capitalist would willingly pay for their 
 conveyance, did they, in the first place, consist of the kind 
 of persons who would be useful in a colony ; and, secondly, 
 had he any security for their labour when he had got them 
 to the colony. But those whom distress urges to offer 
 themselves as emigrants are oftentimes men past their full 
 work, often men debilitated by disease, and still more, often 
 men so worn to one particular process as to be totally unfit 
 to exercise, and unable to learn the employments suited to 
 their life in a colony ; and all generally want to carry with 
 them a still greater number of women and children, of all 
 ages, requiring care, instead of adding to the stock of 
 labourers. And then the system that used to prevail in 
 
ON SYSTEMATIC COLONIZATION. 483 
 
 our colonies was fatal to all working for wages. Land was 
 to be obtained so easily, that no one would think of tilling 
 the land of another when he could get as much as he chose 
 for himself. Labourers, as fast as they arrive in the colony, 
 were enabled to acquire farms for themselves ; and the 
 consequence was, that the capitalist, having no security either 
 for the services of the man whom he might carry out, or for 
 a supply of labour from the general body of labourers in 
 the colony, would do nothing at all in the way of taking out 
 emigrants. 
 
 By the operation of these causes, emigration used to go on 
 in a most unsatisfactory manner ; and the great purposes of 
 colonization were in no respect attained. Numbers, it is 
 true, emigrated ; some who went to the United States, where 
 they could get work for wages, did well. But the emigration 
 produced no effect on the labour-market; it notoriously did 
 not even relieve the poor-rates ; comparatively little of it 
 went to our colonies ; very much of that little was of a kind 
 to be of little service in colonial labour ; and being unaccom- 
 panied by capital, often produced only extreme suffering to 
 the emigrants, and a great dislike to emigration here. I 
 think it may be truly said that this emigration, large in 
 amount as it was, did very little for the colonies, and little 
 indeed for any body, except in as far as it added to the 
 wealth of the United States, whom the influx of Irish 
 labourers enabled to construct those great public works 
 which have given so amazing a stimulus to their prosperity. 
 On the whole, emigration promised to be of little service 
 until Mr. Wakefield promulgated the theory of colonization 
 which goes by his name ; and suggested two simple ex- 
 
 rdients which would at once counteract all the evils which 
 have been describing, by attracting capital as well as 
 carrying labour to the colonies. These suggestions consisted 
 in putting a stop to the gratuitous disposal of the waste 
 lands of the colonies, and selling them at a certain uniform 
 price, of which the proceeds were to be expended in carrying 
 out emigrants, and in making a selection of young persons 
 of both sexes out of those who were desirous of being so 
 assisted to emigrate. It was quite obvious that such 
 selection of emigrants would relieve this country of the 
 greatest amount of actual competition in the labour-market, 
 and also of those most likely to contribute to the increase 
 of population ; while it would remove to the colonies, at the 
 least possible expense, the persons whose labour would be 
 most likely to be useful, and who would be most likely to 
 
 i i 2 
 
484 SPEECH OF CHARLES BULLER, ESQ., M.P., 
 
 make continual addition to their deficient population. It 
 was equally obvious, that, under the system of selling lands, 
 the labourers thus arriving in the colony would be unable 
 to get land of their own until they had acquired the means 
 of purchasing it ; that they would have, therefore, to work 
 for wages ; that, therefore, the capitalist, if he paid for their 
 passage out, might count on their labour, and they as con- 
 fidently on employment ; that capitalists would, therefore, 
 be tempted to purchase, being sure that their purchase- 
 money would provide them with that labour which is their 
 first necessary ; and that thus you might count on getting 
 from the sale of lands the means of carrying on a large and 
 constant emigration in the mode adapted to confer the 
 greatest amount of benefit on the colonies. 
 
 I may now speak of Mr. Wakefield's system of emigration 
 as one of which the great principles the sale of colonial 
 land, the expenditure of the proceeds in carrying out la- 
 bourers, and the selection of the labourers from the young 
 of both sexes, have received the sanction of the best, as well 
 as the most general opinion. This was not done, certainly, 
 until after a long and uphill fight, in which it was a hard 
 matter to conquer the apathy, the ignorance, and the pre- 
 judices of the public; and harder still to make any impres- 
 sion on the unimpressionable minds of men in office. But, 
 fortunately, the system in question found, from the first, 
 most able advocates among some of the most distinguished 
 writers out-of-doors, as well as among some of the ablest 
 members of this House; among whom I must name with 
 particular respect my honourable friend the member for 
 Sheffield (Mr. Henry George Ward), who, four years ago, 
 brought this question before the house, in a speech which I 
 could wish to have been heard by no one who has now to 
 put up with mine as a substitute ; my honourable friend the 
 member for Limerick (Mr. Smith O'Brien), who has since 
 been the advocate of the same views; my noble friend the 
 Secretary for Ireland (Lord Eliot), who gave them his 
 powerful aid when chairman of the committee of this house 
 on New Zealand; together with my honourable friend the 
 member for Gateshead (Mr. William Hutt), and another 
 friend of mine, whom I am sorry to be able to mention by 
 name I mean Mr. Francis Baring. I should trespass too 
 much on the time of the house were I to take this public 
 occasion of enumerating all who have at different times 
 given these views their valuable aid, but I must not omit the 
 name of my lamented friend Lord Durham, who in this as 
 
ON SYSTEMATIC COLONIZATION. 485 
 
 in other cases, showed his thorough grasp of every colonial 
 question; who was an early friend of a sound system of 
 colonization; who had the opportunity of giving official 
 sanction to these principles in his important mission to 
 Canada; and from whom we expected still more when this, 
 with other hopes, was buried in his untimely grave. But it 
 is necessary to a due understanding of the history of the 
 question that I should acknowledge how much we owe to 
 others, who had the opportunity, when in office, of giving 
 executive effect to improved principles. Among these, the 
 first place is due to my noble friend the member for Sun- 
 derland (Lord Howick), who, in February, 1832, when he 
 had been about a year in office, took the first great step that 
 the government has taken in the right direction, by promul- 
 gating the regulations whereby the sale of land was substi- 
 tuted for the old irregular habit of gratuitous grants, and the 
 application of the proceeds to the conveyance of selected 
 emigrants was commenced. My noble friend the member 
 for London (Lord John Russell) made the next great step 
 when he organized the machinery of public emigration, by 
 constituting the Land and Emigration Commissioners, and 
 prescribed the nature of their duties in instructions wliich 
 contain an admirable view of the general duties of a govern- 
 ment with respect to colonization. My noble friend must 
 have the satisfaction of knowing that he has left behind him 
 a colonial reputation confined to no party; and that, among 
 those who are interested in the well-being of our colonies 
 and colonial trade, many of the most eager opponents of his 
 general politics were the first to regret that their efforts 
 resulted in removing him from the superintendence of that 
 department. It would be ludicrous in me to pay such a 
 compliment to the leader of my own party, were it not noto- 
 riously true. And I must not forget that the noble lord, his 
 successor, deserves our thanks for his Act of last year, of 
 which I do not pretend to approve of the details, but which 
 has the great merit of having fixed the disposal of colonial 
 lands on the basis of an Act of Parliament. 
 
 By these aids, Sir, these views have met with such general 
 acceptance, that I think 1 may take their elementary prin- 
 ciples as now being the admitted basis of colonization. 
 Hardly any man that ever I met with now talks of coloniza- 
 tion without assuming that the lands in the colonies are to 
 be sold instead of given away; that the proceeds are to be 
 applied to emigration; and that the emigrants are to be 
 carried out at the public expense, and are to be selected 
 
486 SPEECH OF CHARLES BULLEK, ESQ., M.P., 
 
 from the fittest among the applicants. But what is even 
 more satisfactory is that, owing to the measures taken by 
 our government, these principles have received so much of a 
 trial as at any rate shows that they are capable of producing 
 some of the greatest results at which they professed to aim. 
 No one can -doubt that the sale of lands, instead of deterring 
 persons from taking them, has very greatly increased the 
 amount, I will not say nominally appropriated, but actually 
 taken into use. No one can doubt that emigration to our 
 colonies has received a very great impulse since the regula- 
 tions of 1832 came into operation. Compare the emigration 
 that took place to the Australian colonies, to which alone the 
 system has been applied, in the eight years preceding the 
 application of the new system, with that which has taken 
 place since. In the first eight years, the total number of 
 persons who emigrated to these colonies was 11,711, giving 
 an average of 1464 emigrants a-year. In the ten subsequent 
 years the total emigration to the Australian colonies, includ- 
 ing New Zealand, which had in the meantime been colo- 
 nized on the same principles, amounted to 104,487, or 
 10,448 a-year, being an increase of more than sevenfold. 
 Nor must you regard this as at all subtracted from the 
 general amount of unassisted emigration, inasmuch as during 
 the first period the total emigration to all other parts was 
 352,580, giving an average of 44,072 a-year; and in the 
 second 661,039, giving an average of no less than 66,104 
 a-year; and this, though during a considerable portion of 
 the latter period emigration to the Canadas was almost 
 stopped by the disturbances in those colonies. And it is 
 also put beyond a doubt, that the fund thus derivable from 
 the sale of lands is a very large one. The sum raised by 
 sales of land in Australia, during a period of nine years, 
 beginning with 1833, and ending with the end of 1841, 
 including the New-Zealand Company's sales, which are on 
 the same principle, and may be reckoned as effected by the 
 government, through the agency of a company, amounts to 
 a few hundreds short of two millions; a sum saved out of 
 the fire a sum which has been received without making 
 any body poorer, but actually by adding immensely to the 
 value of everybody's property in those colonies a sum 
 which, if applied entirely to emigration, would have carried 
 out comfortably more than 110,000 emigrants. The results 
 in one single colony that of New South Wales have been 
 most remarkable and most satisfactory. In these nine years, 
 the land fund has produced 1,100,0007.; and though only 
 
ON SYSTEMATIC COLONIZATION. 487 
 
 partially applied to emigration, has been the means of carry- 
 ing out as many as 52,000 selected emigrants, making two- 
 fifths, and two valuable fifths, of the present population of 
 the colony, added to it in the space of little more than three 
 
 The possibility, however, of raising a very large fund by 
 the sale of land required no proof from actual experience in 
 our colonies; because that fact, at least, had been ascer- 
 tained by a long and large experiment in the United States. 
 In 1795, the federal government put an end to gratuitous 
 grants ; and commenced the plan of selling the waste lands 
 of their vast territory at a system of auction, which has, 
 however, in fact, ended in their selling the whole at the 
 upset price, which for some years was two dollars, and 
 latterly a dollar and a quarter per acre. The proceeds of 
 these sales has, during the whole period, amounted to the 
 vast sum of 23,366,4347. of our money ; being an average of 
 more than half a million a-year for the whole of that time. 
 In the last twenty years of this period, the total sum produced 
 was nearly 19,000,0007., giving an average of more than 
 900,000/. a-year. In the last ten years of the period, the 
 total amount was 16,000,0007., and the annual average 
 1,600,000/. ; and in the last seven years of which I can get 
 an account the years from 1834 to 1840, both included 
 the total amount realized was more than 14,000,0007. of our 
 money, or upwards of 2,000,0007. a-year.* This is what 
 
 * Lord Stanley, in answer to this, stated that the large proceeds of these 
 land sales had been produced by the excessive speculations of the years 1835 
 and 1836, since which " the bubble had burst," and there had been a great 
 falling off. The proceeds of the different years were 
 
 . *. d. 
 
 In 1835 . . . . 3,333,292 10 
 
 In 1836 . . . . 5,243,296 9 2 
 
 In 1837 .... 1,459,900 12 6 
 
 In 1838 .... 896,992 10 1 
 
 In 1839 . . . - 1,346,772 10 
 
 In 1840 .... 581,264 7 6 
 
 The facts stated by Lord Stanley are perfectly correct ; but they do not 
 controvert the conclusions drawn by Mr. Buller. The sales of 1835 and 
 1836 were no doubt swelled by the speculative spirit of the period ; but it 
 is just as obvious that the great falling off in the latter years has been the 
 result of the extraordinary commercial distress that has pressed on the 
 United States all the time. The only subject for wonder is that during 
 such a period of distress as that from 1837 to 1840 there should have been 
 so much as 4,284,930 to spare for the purchase of land. Foot note in Mr. 
 Murray's Publication. 
 
488 SPEECH OF CHARLES BULLER, ESQ., M.P., 
 
 actually has been done in the United States ; and done, let 
 me remark, without the object of promoting emigration, 
 almost without that of getting revenue : for it is very clear 
 that the primary object with which the system of sale was 
 established was not that of getting money, but of preventing 
 that jobbing and favouritism which cannot be avoided where 
 the government has the power of making gratuitous grants 
 of land. The experiment cannot be regarded as a test of 
 the largest amount which could be got for the land, con- 
 sistently with a due regard to other public objects, because, 
 in the first place, there have been large exceptional grants, 
 which have brought a great amount of unbought land into 
 the market. There has been a large amount of additional 
 land, not under the control of the general government, and 
 which had been sold by the old states, particularly Maine. 
 And, above all, the price has, as I said, never been fixed 
 with a view to getting the greatest amount of revenue. 
 There is not the slightest reason to doubt that the same 
 amount of land might have been sold at a higher price. 
 Indeed, we know that the amount of land sold did not 
 increase in consequence of the great diminution of price 
 from two dollars to a dollar and a quarter in 1819; but 
 actually fell off very considerably, and did not recover itself 
 for the next ten years. I have very little doubt that the 
 same amount of land would have been sold at our price of a 
 pound ; and that the sum of eighty millions might thus have 
 been realized in forty-five years as easily as that of twenty- 
 three millions actually was. 
 
 I tell you what has actually been done, and what we may 
 safely infer might have been done by a country, which, with 
 all its vast territory, possesses actually a less amount of 
 available land than is included within our empire ; which 
 has now a much less, and had when all this began, a very 
 much less population than ours ; and with a far less propor- 
 tion even of that available for emigration ; and which, with 
 all its activity and prosperity, possesses an amount of avail- 
 able capital actually insignificant when compared with ours. 
 Imagine what would have been the result, had we at the 
 period in which the American government commenced its 
 sales, applied the same principle with more perfect details 
 to the waste lands of our colonies, and used the funds derived 
 from such sales in rendering our Far West as accessible to 
 our people as the valleys of the Ohio and Missouri to the 
 settlers in the United States. Hundreds of thousands of 
 our countrymen, who now with their families people the 
 
ON SYSTEMATIC COLONIZATION. 489 
 
 territory of the United States, would have been subjects of 
 the British Crown ; as many ay, even more who have 
 passed their wretched existence in our workouses or crowded 
 cities, or perished in Irish famines, or pined away in the 
 more lingering torture of such destitution as Great Britain 
 has too often seen, would have been happy and thriving on 
 fertile soils and under genial climates, and making really 
 our country that vast empire which encircles the globe. In 
 every part of the world would have risen fresh towns, 
 inhabited by our people; fresh ports would have been 
 crowded by our ships ; and harvests would have waved where 
 the silence of the forest still reigns. What now would have 
 been our commerce ! What the population and revenue of 
 our empire ! This, Sir, is one of those subjects on which 
 we may not embody in precise form the results which cal- 
 culation justifies us in contemplating, lest sober arithmetic 
 should assume the features of sanguine fancy. But this 
 much I think I may say, that the experience of America 
 justifies us in believing that if we, like the people of that 
 country, had begun half a century ago, to turn our waste 
 lands to account, we should have had a larger population, 
 and a greater accumulation of wealth than we now have ; 
 and yet that over-population and over-production, and low 
 wages, and low profits, and destitution, and distress, and 
 discontent, would have been words of as little familiarity 
 and meaning in our ears, as they are in those of the people 
 of the United States. 
 
 We need, then, feel little doubt but that the new system 
 of colonization has shown itself capable of producing all the 
 economical results which it professes to attain. But I 
 cannot quit the subject of its practical working, without 
 calling your attention to effects quite as important, which 
 it has shown itself capable of realizing in the way of changing 
 the character and spirit in which our colonization has 
 hitherto been conducted. If you wish colonies to be rendered 
 generally useful to all classes in the mother- country if you 
 wish them to be prosperous, to reflect back the civilization, 
 and habits, and feelings of their parent stock, and to be and 
 long to remain integral parts of your empire care should 
 be taken that society should be carried out in something of 
 the form in which it is seen at home that it should contain 
 some, at least, of all the elements that go to make it up here, 
 and that it should continue under those influences that are 
 found effectual for keeping us together in harmony. On 
 such principles alone have the foundations of successful 
 
490 SPEECH OF CHAELES BULLER, ESQ., M.P., 
 
 colonies been laid. Neither Phoenician, nor Greek, nor 
 Roman, nor Spaniard no, nor our own great forefathers 
 when they laid the foundations of an European society on 
 the continent, and in the islands of the Western World, ever 
 dreamed of colonizing with one class of society by itself, 
 and that the most helpless for shifting by itself. The fore- 
 most men of the ancient republics led forth their colonies ; 
 each expedition was in itself an epitome of the society which 
 it left; the solemn rites of religion blessed its departure 
 from its home ; and it bore with it the images of its country's 
 gods, to link it for ever by a common worship to its ancient 
 home. The government of Spain sent its dignified clergy 
 out with some of its first colonists. The noblest families in 
 Spain sent their younger sons to settle in Hispaniola, and 
 Mexico, and Peru. Raleigh quitted a brilliant court, and 
 the highest spheres of political ambition, in order to lay the 
 foundation of the colony of Virginia ; Lord Baltimore and 
 the best Catholic families founded Maryland ; Penn was a 
 courtier before he became a colonist ; a set of noble proprie- 
 tors established Carolina, and intrusted the framing of its 
 constitution to John Locke ; the highest hereditary rank in 
 this country below the peerage was established in connexion 
 with the settlement of Nova Scotia ; and such gentlemen as 
 Sir Harry Vane, Hampden, and Cromwell did not disdain 
 the prospect of a colonial career. In all these cases the 
 emigration was of every class. The mass, as does the mass 
 everywhere, contributed its labour alone ; but they were 
 encouraged by the presence, guided by the counsels, and 
 supported by the means of the wealthy and educated, whom 
 they had been used to follow and honour in their own 
 country. In the United States the constant and large 
 migration from the old to the new states is a migration of 
 every class ; the middle classes go in quite as large propor- 
 tion as the labouring ; the most promising of the educated 
 youth are the first to seek the new career. And hence it is 
 that society sets itself down complete in all its parts in the 
 back settlements in the United States ; that every political, 
 and social, and religious institution of the old society is 
 found in the new at the outset : that every liberal profession 
 is abundantly supplied; and that, as Captain Marryat 
 remarks, you find in a town of three or four years' standing, 
 in the back part of New York or Ohio, almost every luxury 
 of the old cities. 
 
 And thus was colonization always conducted, until all our 
 ideas on the subject were perverted by the foundation of 
 
ON SYSTEMATIC COLONIZATION. 491 
 
 convict colonies ; and emigration being associated in men's 
 minds with transportation, was looked upon as the hardest 
 punishment of guilt, or necessity of poverty. It got to be 
 resorted to as the means of relieving parishes of their 
 paupers ; and so sprung up that irregular, ill-regulated 
 emigration of a mere labouring class which has been one of 
 the anomalies of our time. The state exercised not the 
 slightest control over the hordes whom it simply allowed to 
 leave want in one part of the empire for hardship in another; 
 and it permitted the conveyance of human beings to be 
 carried on just as the avidity and rashness of shipowners 
 might choose. I am drawing no picture of a mere fanciful 
 nature, but am repeating the solemn assertions of the legis- 
 lature of Lower Canada, confirmed by Lord Durham's re- 
 port, when I say that the result of this careless, shameful 
 neglect of the emigrants was, that hundreds and thousands 
 of pauper families walked in their rags from the quays of 
 Liverpool and Cork into ill-found, unsound ships, in which 
 human beings were crammed together in the empty space 
 which timber was to be stowed in on the homeward voyage. 
 Ignorant themselves, and misinformed by the government of 
 the requisites of such a voyage, they suffered throughout it 
 from privations of necessary food and clothing ; such priva- 
 tions, filth, and bad air were sure to engender disease ; and 
 the ships that reached their destination in safety, generally 
 deposited some contagious fever, together with a mass of 
 beggary, on the quays of Quebec and Montreal. No 
 medical attendance was required by law, and the provision 
 of it in some ships was a creditable exception to the general 
 practice. Of course, where so little thought was taken of 
 men's physical wants, their moral wants were even less cared 
 for ; and as the emigrants went without any minister of re- 
 ligion or schoolmaster in their company, so they settled over 
 the vacant deserts of Canada without church or school 
 among them. Respectable tradesmen and men possessed 
 of capital shrunk from such associations ; and if their 
 necessities compelled them to quit their own country for a 
 new one, they went as a matter of course to the United 
 States. The idea of a gentleman emigrating was almost 
 unheard of, unless he emigrated for a while as a placeman ; 
 and I recollect when Colonel Talb'ot was regarded as a kind 
 of innocent monomaniac, who, from some strange caprice, 
 had committed the folly of residing on his noble Canadian 
 estate. 
 
 Within the last ten or twelve years a great change has 
 
492 SPEECH OF CHAELES BULLER, ESQ., M.P., 
 
 come over this state of things ; within the last three or four 
 years our colonization has entirely altered its character. 
 The emigration to Port Philip, South Australia, and New 
 Zealand, has been an emigration of every class, with capital 
 in due proportion to labourers ; with tradesman and artisans 
 of every kind, and with the framework of such social institu- 
 tions as the settlers have been used to in their native land. 
 Clergymen and schoolmasters, and competent men of every 
 liberal profession, are among the earliest emigrants ; artists 
 and men of science resort to a new field for their labours ; 
 in the foundation of the settlement you find funds set apart 
 for public works, for religious endowments, and even for 
 colleges. Associations of a religious and charitable and 
 literary nature are formed at the outset ; and these are in- 
 tended to benefit not only the poor emigrants, but the help- 
 less native, who is brought into contact with a superior race. 
 To such settlements men of birth and refinement are 
 tempted to emigrate ; they do so in great numbers. I will 
 be bound to say, that more men of good family have settled 
 in New Zealand in the three years since the beginning of 
 1840, than in British North America in the first thirty years 
 of the present century. It is notorious that the greatest 
 change has taken place in the public feeling on this point, 
 and that a colonial career is now looked upon as one of the 
 careers open to a gentleman. This change in the character 
 of colonization this great change in the estimation in which 
 it is held, is of greater moment than the mere provision of 
 means for conducting emigration without cost to the public. 
 It makes colonization, indeed, an extension of civilized 
 society, instead of that mere emigration which aimed at 
 little more than shovelling out your paupers to where they 
 might die, without shocking their betters with the sight or 
 sound of their last agony. 
 
 I come, then, before you to-night as the advocate of no 
 new fancy of my own, of no untried scheme for the realiza- 
 tion of unattainable results. The remedy which I propose 
 is one which the experience of the world has approved ; and 
 the mode in which I would apply it is one which sufficient 
 experience justifies me in describing as of recognised efficacy 
 in the opinion of all practical authorities. The great prin- 
 ciples of the plan of colonization which I urge have been 
 formally but unequivocally adopted by the government of 
 this country ; they have been adopted with the general 
 sanction of public opinion here; and the colonies, as we 
 well know, are clamorous for the extension of a system 
 
ON SYSTEMATIC COLONIZATION. 493 
 
 which they feel to have already given an amazing stimulus 
 to their prosperity, and to which they look as the only means 
 of enabling their progress to be steady. I ask, then, for no 
 experiment. The tiling has been tried, and I call upon you 
 to make more use of the remedy, which has proved to be 
 sound. If you think that on the system which is now recog- 
 nised as the sound one, the benefits of colonization may be 
 practically secured, then I say that the only question that 
 remains for us is, whether and how that system can be so far 
 extended as to realize its utmost results. For it is clear that, 
 if it contains the means of greater relief, the condition of the 
 country requires its extended application. It is equally 
 clear that, though it has done great good already, it has been 
 put in operation with no system or steadiness, not always 
 quite heartily, certainly with no readiness to profit by ex- 
 perience for the purpose of either amending or extending it. 
 It has, nevertheless, called into existence a large fund, which 
 was not in being before. Those lands, which from all time 
 had been barren and nominal domains the mere materials 
 for jobbing, this discovery has converted into a valuable pro- 
 perty ; and it has also shown you how to apply them, so as 
 to make them most productive to the general good of the 
 colonies, by effecting the importation of labour. But I think I 
 am justified in saying that, under such circumstances, the 
 system has never been turned to full account; that if the 
 people of the United States can purchase two millions of 
 pounds' worth of land a-year, there is spare capital in this 
 country to purchase something more than one-eighth of that 
 amount; and if they can dispose of some seven or eight 
 millions a-year, we could dispose of more than one-thirtieth 
 of that quantity; that if they can take annually from us 
 50,000 emigrants, besides at least as large a number from 
 their own country, our Australian colonies could take more 
 than one- seventh of that total amount. If we could only 
 realize the same results as actually are realized in the United 
 States, we should get two millions, on the average, instead 
 of 250,0007. a-year, from the sale of our lands ; and the 
 means of sending out, free of cost, some 110,000 instead of 
 10,000 or 12,000 poor persons every year, in addition to the 
 large unassisted emigration that goes on. If, with our vastly 
 superior wealth and immeasurably larger emigrant population, 
 we fall so lamentably short of the results actually realized in the 
 United States nay, if with such superior powers we do not 
 realize much greater results I say it is sufficient proof that 
 there is some defect in the mode of applying a sound principle. 
 
494 SPEECH OF CHARLES BULLER, ESQ., M.P., 
 
 It is no defect of inclination on the part of the people to better 
 their fortunes in another part of the empire ; the amount of 
 voluntary emigration shows that. It is no defect of inclination 
 on the part of capitalists to invest their money in the purchase 
 of colonial lands ; there is never any difficulty in getting 
 money in any sound system of colonization. The defect 
 must be in the mode of facilitating the access of labour to 
 the colonies ; it must be from our not making the most of 
 the good principles on which we go. I say it is our bounden 
 duty to have the matter investigated thoroughly ; and to dis- 
 cover and remove the faults of detail that prevent our satis- 
 fying our present most extreme need, by devising, from a 
 sound principle, the utmost benefits that colonization can 
 produce. It is clear that the public not the ignorant and 
 thoughtless but men of the greatest speculative research 
 men of the greatest practical knowledge and interest in com- 
 merce, such as those who have signed the recent memorials 
 to the right honourable baronet, from this great city, and the 
 other principal parts of the kingdom ; it is clear, I say, that 
 the public look to colonization as affording a means of relief 
 for our national difficulties. It is our business to prove 
 whether that hope is sound or unsound; and either without 
 delay to expose its want of truth, and clear it out from the 
 public mind as a delusion that can only do harm; or, seeing 
 it to be sound, to take care that it shall be realized, and that 
 the means of good which God has placed at our disposal 
 shall be turned to their full account. To do one of these things 
 is our imperative duty. Above all, it is a duty most binding 
 on her Majesty's government, who alone can be the instru- 
 ment of thoroughly sifting such matter who alone can give 
 practical effect to the results of such inquiry. It is a duty 
 of which, if they should, contrary to my hopes, neglect it, it 
 becomes this House to remind them. And it is with this 
 view that I have ventured to bring forward the motion of 
 to-night. 
 
 It is not my purpose to propose any specific measure to 
 the House. And in the first place let me guard myself 
 against the supposition that I mean to propose anything of 
 a kind to which I have the very strongest objection namely, 
 compulsory emigration. Most assuredly I have no thought 
 of proposing that any one should be compelled to emigrate. 
 So far from proposing compulsory emigration, I should 
 object to holding out to any man any inducement to quit his 
 country. On this ground I deprecate anything like making 
 emigration an alternative for the Union Workhouse. I am 
 
ON SYSTEMATIC COLONIZATION. 495 
 
 very dubious of the propriety of even applying parish rates 
 in aid of emigration. My object would be that the poor of 
 this country should be accustomed to regard the means of 
 bettering their condition in another part of the empire as a 
 great boon offered them not a necessity imposed on them 
 by government. I do not wonder that in the old days of 
 convict colonies and pauper emigration they shrank from 
 colonization, and responded to Mr. Cobbett's denunciation 
 of the attempt of their rulers to transport them. But a better 
 feeling has now sprung up, together with a better knowledge 
 of the subject. The difficulty is now not to inveigle emi- 
 grants, but to select among the crowds of eager applicants ; 
 and the best portion of the labouring classes are now as 
 little inclined to look on the offer of a passage to the colonies 
 as a punishment, or a degradation, as a gentleman would be 
 to entertain the same view of an offer of cadetship or writer- 
 ship for one of his younger sons. The prejudice is gone ; and 
 I did imagine that the attempt to appeal to it by the agency of 
 stale nick-names was not likely to be made in our day, had I 
 not been undeceived by some most furious invectives against 
 the gentlemen who signed the City memorials, which were 
 recently delivered at Drury Lane theatre, on one of those 
 nights on which the legitimate drama is not performed. I 
 cannot imagine that my esteemed friend the member for 
 Stockport (Mr. Cobden), who is reported on that occasion 
 to have been very successful in representing the character of 
 a bereaved grandmother, can help, on sober reflection, feeling 
 some compunction for having condescended to practice on 
 the ignorance of his audience by the use of clap-traps so 
 stale, and representations so unfounded; and for bringing 
 just the same kind of unjust charges against honest men 
 engaged in an honest cause, as he brushes so indignantly 
 out of his own path when he finds them opposed to him in 
 his own pursuit of a great public cause. I must attribute 
 this deviation from his usual candour to the influence of the 
 unseen genius of the place in which he spoke, and suppose 
 that he believed it would be out of keeping in a theatre to 
 appeal to men's passions otherwise than by fiction. 
 
 It is not my purpose to suggest interference on the part of 
 government to induce emigration, except by merely facilitat- 
 ing access to the colonies by the application of the land-fund 
 to that object. To do this more effectually than it now does 
 is what I ask of it, and for this purpose I only ask it to per- 
 fect the details of the system now in force. Carry out, I say 
 of her Majesty's government, the system which was begun 
 
496 SPEECH OF CHARLES BULLEK, ESQ., M.P., 
 
 by the Regulations of 1832, and by the appointment of 
 Land and Emigration Commission, to which you made a 
 valuable addition when you sanctioned the principle of the 
 Act of last session, which secured the system of disposing of 
 the lands of the colonies against the caprice of Colonial 
 Governors, and even of Secretaries of State. Carry it out 
 with the same sound purpose at bottom, but with more 
 deliberate consideration of details than it was possible for 
 the noble lord to apply to a matter of so difficult a nature, 
 which he brought in a few months after entering on the 
 duties of his department. I suppose that the noble lord 
 cannot set such store by the details of a measure so rapidly 
 prepared, that he will deny that they may be possibly 
 amended on reconsideration ; that in fact many of the details 
 of a sound and large system of colonization are not touched 
 by his Act ; and that, until they are matured by assiduous 
 inquiry, the principle can never be fairly tried, or rendered 
 productive of the full amount of good of which it was capable. 
 There are some most important questions which require 
 to be fully investigated before the system of colonization can 
 with prudence be placed on any permanent footing; and I 
 think it right to mention the most important of them, in order 
 to impress upon the house how much of the success of any 
 scheme must depend on their being rightly adjusted. There 
 is, in the first place, a very important question as to the 
 possibility of applying to the rest of our colonies the system 
 which is now in force only in the Australian. It has never 
 yet been satisfactorily explained what causes prevent the 
 application of the principle to the land that lies open for 
 settlement at the Cape of Good Hope, speaking not merely 
 of the present limits of the colony, but of the boundless 
 unappropriated extent which adjoins it superior, apparently, 
 in natural fertility, and free from all proprietary claims on 
 the part of individuals. With respect to the North American 
 colonies, I am aware that some difficulties are presented by 
 the partial cession of the crown lands contained within them 
 to the control of their respective legislatures. With the 
 control of these legislatures I should not be disposed to 
 interfere, even if the Imperial Government retain the strict 
 legal right ; but I am so convinced that the interests of the 
 mother-country and the colonies with respect to emigration 
 are identical, that I have no doubt that the colonial legisla- 
 tures would rejoice to co-operate with the imperial govern- 
 ment in the adoption of the general principles of such a 
 plan as might be deemed most conducive to the good of the 
 
ON SYSTEMATIC COLONIZATION. 497 
 
 empire. At any rate, viewing the magnitude and importance 
 of these colonies, and their proximity to Great Britain, they 
 ought not to be excluded from the general plan without the 
 fullest inquiry. 
 
 But there are very important questions with respect to the 
 mode of applying the principles, which are still matters of 
 doubt and controversy. Thus it is yet a question what is 
 the " sufficient price" which the government should endeavour 
 to secure from the lands in each colony. It is obvious that 
 no more should be asked than may be applied so as to 
 attract labourers to the colony ; whatever more is imposed is 
 a partial tax on immigrants and agriculture for the general 
 purposes of the community, and would actually deter instead 
 of attract settlers. On the other hand, it is contended that 
 the price is in many instances still so low as to lead to 
 too great an accumulation of land in private hands at the 
 first formation of settlements ; and to the subsequent drying 
 up of government sales and land-fund when the first pur- 
 chasers are compelled to bring their lands back into the 
 market. It will be seen that it is of the utmost importance 
 to the right working of the system that the right price should 
 be ascertained, not only in a rough and general way, but in 
 the case of each colony. 
 
 Another question of considerable importance is, how this 
 sufficient price should be got whether by fixing it on all 
 lands as both minimum and maximum, or by trying to get 
 the highest price which may be offered at an auction. By 
 the latter plan it is said that the full worth of the land is 
 most sure to be got. While it is objected to it that, besides 
 operating with peculiar unfairness on all persons of known 
 enterprise and skill, the tendency of the auction system is to 
 encourage great competition for favoured town lots, lavish 
 expenditure at the outset, an exhaustion of the capital 
 necessary to give value to the purchase, and a consequent 
 stagnation of the settlement after the first feverish burst of 
 speculative ardour ; that the system of uniform price, by 
 giving to the purchaser all the advantages derivable from the 
 possession of peculiarly advantageous sites, presents the 
 greatest attraction to purchasers, and gives the surest 
 stimulus to energy in developing the resources of the colony; 
 and that though the auction system may bring in the greatest 
 amount of money to government at first, it will be found that, 
 in the course of a few years, the steady produce of a fixed 
 price will make the largest return. A subsidiary question to 
 this is, whether the same principle of price should be 
 
 K R 
 
498 SPEECH OF CHARLES BULLER, ESQ., M.P., 
 
 uniformly applied to all kinds of land, or any distinction 
 made between different qualities. 
 
 But a far more important matter, still in dispute, is, 
 whether the whole of the land fund shall be devoted to the 
 introduction of labourers, or whether a portion shall be 
 applied to the general expenses of the colony. It is said, on 
 the one hand, that if the object be to apply the land-fund so 
 as to render the colony attractive to settlers, the formation of 
 roads and public works is as requisite to that end as the 
 supply of labour. To this it is answered, that the applying 
 of the largest possible amount of money to the importation 
 of labour is the surest way of increasing the population, the 
 increase of population the surest way of raising the ordinary 
 revenue from taxes, out of which all necessary works may be 
 provided ; and that applying any portion of the land-fund to 
 the general expenses of the colony is merely placing at the 
 disposal of irresponsible authority an additional and easily- 
 acquired fund, which will be sure to be expended with that 
 shameless extravagance, which, whether in New South Wales, 
 or South Australia, or New Zealand, is the curse of our 
 colonies, and the scandal of our colonial system. 
 
 There is a question of even greater magnitude and 
 difficulty than any of these; and that is, the question 
 whether, viewing the great necessity of supplying labour in 
 the early period of the colony's existence, it may not be 
 advisable to anticipate the proceeds of the land sales by a 
 loan raised on the security of future sales; and in this 
 instance only has aid been demanded from the mother 
 country in the form of a guarantee, which would enable the 
 colony to raise money at a moderate interest. If the prin- 
 ciple on which this suggestion is made be sound, it is of 
 paramount importance, because it would really be bridging 
 over the ocean, and enabling the future purchasers to repair 
 at once to the spot which they are to render productive. 
 No doubt great caution would be requisite in thus forestalling 
 the resources of a colony ; and I should deprecate such 
 extravagant suggestions of large loans as have been some- 
 times proposed. But, on the other hand, a debt con- 
 tracted for such a purpose is not unproductive waste of 
 capital, such as our national debt, nor is it to be likened to 
 the debts of individuals contracted for the enjoyment of the 
 moment. It is rather to be compared to those debts which 
 wise landlords often deliberately contract, for the purpose of 
 giving an additional value to their estates, or to the loans by 
 which half the enterprises of trade are undertaken, and which 
 
ON SYSTEMATIC COLONIZATION. 499 
 
 are to be regarded as resources of future wealth, not em- 
 barrassment. 
 
 The proposal of a loan in anticipation of the land-fund 
 has been recently urged on the government from a quarter 
 deserving of great weight I mean the legislative council of 
 New South Wales in a report, which, I trust, has been 
 successful in correcting an erroneous notion most fatal to 
 colonial interests, to which the noble lord (Lord Stanley) 
 gave rather an incautious expression last year, I mean the 
 notion that the Australian colonies were at that time rather 
 over-supplied with labour. It appears that the term over- 
 supply is correct only as respects the means of paying the 
 cost of emigration out of the land sales of the year ; that the 
 colony exhausted its means of bringing over labourers, but 
 that it is still, in fact, craving for it as much as ever ; that 
 the supply of nearly 24,000 labourers in one year, far from 
 overstocking the labour-market, had produced no material 
 reduction of wages; that the labourers and artisans imported 
 that year were getting ample wages, and that the colony 
 still continued capable of absorbing an annual free importa- 
 tion of 10,000 or 12,000 of the labouring classes. 
 
 I have briefly adverted to these important points without 
 suggesting the decision which, I think, ought to be made 
 with respect to any of them. The details of a plan of 
 colonization are obviously matters in which it would be idle 
 for any one not a member of the executive government to 
 make any specific suggestions. To discuss the general 
 bearings of such a question, and to impress its general 
 importance on the general government, is all that appears to 
 me to lie practically within the competence of this House. 
 It is with the government that the investigation of such 
 details as I have adverted to, and the preparation of specific 
 measures must rest. They have the best means of collecting 
 the most correct information and the soundest opinions on 
 the subject. I have no wish to take the discharge of their 
 duties on myself. I think this a stage of the question in 
 which it would tend to no good purpose to call in the cum- 
 brous and indecisive action of a committee of this House : 
 but that I have done my duty when, after thus explaining 
 the grave necessities of our condition, and sifting the prac- 
 ticability of the remedy which seems most efficient, I leave 
 the question, with its niceties of detail and responsibilities 
 of execution, in the hands of the advisers of the Crown. 
 But I leave it not as a question to be discussed by one par- 
 ticular department as a matter of detail, or as a mere 
 
 K K 2 
 
500 SPEECH or CHARLES BULLER, ESQ., M.P. 
 
 colonial question, but as one of general import to the condi- 
 tion of England. The remedy, which I thus call on her 
 Majesty's ministers to investigate, is one on which inquiry 
 can excite no illusory hopes ; for, though I believe that its 
 adoption would give an immediate impulse to enterprise, it 
 is one of which the greater results cannot be expected for 
 some few years. It is one, too, which, if it fails of giving 
 relief to the extent that I have contemplated, cannot fail of 
 bettering the condition of many, and of extending the 
 resources and widening the basis of our empire. 
 
 The honourable and learned Member proposed the fol- 
 lowing motion : " That an humble address be presented to 
 Her Majesty, praying that she will take into her most 
 gracious consideration the means by which extensive and 
 systematic colonization may be most effectually rendered 
 available for augmenting the resources of Her Majesty's 
 empire, giving additional employment to capital and labour, 
 both in the United Kingdom and in the colonies, and 
 thereby bettering the condition of her people." 
 
APPENDIX No. II. 
 
 A LETTER FEOM CEETAIN NEW-ZEALAND COLONISTS 
 TO MR. HAWES, 
 
 I XDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES. 
 
 70, Jermyn Street, 5th Oct., 1846. 
 
 SIR, In accordance with the suggestions so courteously 
 expressed by you to some of our number that we should 
 write down some of our ideas, on the subject of the Orders 
 in Council to be framed in pursuance of the recent New 
 Zealand Government Act, we beg to submit to you the 
 following observations. 
 
 We have, however, to request that you will excuse the 
 rough form in which they appear, owing to the necessity 
 which there has been for their prompt consideration and 
 arrangement; and also that, if in the course of them you 
 should remark any freedom in urging opinions somewhat at 
 variance with those pre-conceived by her Majesty's Govern- 
 ment, you will ascribe the fact to our wish to meet in a 
 cordial spirit the invitation which you have made to us to 
 state, without reservation, views which we believe will be 
 approved by the leading members of the communities with 
 which we are connected. 
 
 Our attention has been first called to the powers which 
 are to be granted to the proposed Municipal Corporations. 
 Putting aside, for the present, their function of electing 
 representatives to a Provincial Assembly, we fear that the 
 local powers which may be granted under the act to the 
 Municipal Corporation of each settlement are not sufficiently 
 large. 
 
 The settlements now existing in New Zealand are scat- 
 tered at a considerable distance one from the other; and the 
 next settlement which is likely to be founded, that of the 
 
502 LETTER TO ME. HAWES. 
 
 Free Church of Scotland, is intended to be placed at Otago, 
 four hundred miles from the nearest of the others. From 
 the varying nature of the country, and the different classes 
 of colonists who are likely to proceed in large bodies from 
 this side of the world, each body to found a distinct planta- 
 tion, the settlements may, in a short time, vary as much in 
 character and circumstances as they are actually distant 
 from one another. We may here again instance the pro- 
 posed Scotch colony, which will consist entirely of emigrants 
 from Scotland, who are as little acquainted with the details 
 and forms of English law as the English settlers of Welling- 
 ton and Nelson are with those to which the Scotchmen have 
 been accustomed. We may remark that, while discussing 
 the details of the proposed institutions, we have discovered 
 that these colonists are not acquainted with the duties of a 
 Coroner or of a Recorder, at any rate under these names. 
 In some other points the difference will be equally striking. 
 We can conceive, for instance, that a much lower rate of 
 franchise would secure as desirable a class of voters among 
 the Scotchmen as could only be attained by a high rate 
 among the mixed British population of the Cook's Strait 
 settlements, which already number many immigrants from 
 the neighbouring penal colonies, and which may probably 
 be for the next few years subject to such immigration. A 
 colony such as has been proposed in particular connexion 
 with the Church of England, to be founded in the plain of 
 Wairarapa, near Wellington, might require certain local 
 institutions different from those of its neighbour. A still 
 more striking instance would occur, if the success of the few 
 French colonists who have taken root at Akaroa, in Banks's 
 Peninsula, should encourage others to follow them in large 
 numbers, willing to submit to a general British allegiance, 
 provided that they may enjoy, in their own particular locality, 
 the peculiar usages and privileges to which they have been 
 accustomed in their native country. Again, one community 
 may, from its position, be almost exclusively pastoral, 
 another agricultural, and a third manufacturing or com- 
 mercial; while present appearances promise that some dis- 
 tricts may derive their prosperity in great measure from 
 mining operations. 
 
 We are inclined to believe that the toleration of these 
 distinctive features in the different plantations of a new 
 country will be productive of no mischief; but that, on the 
 contrary, each separate community will flourish the more, 
 
LETTER TO MR. HAWES. 503 
 
 and even contribute the more to the general prosperity, the 
 more it is allowed to mnnage its own affairs in its own way. 
 
 We conceive Burke to have been of this opinion, when he 
 wrote the words quoted by Sir Robert Peel in the debate on 
 New Zealand, during the session of 1845, praising the 
 municipal institutions which laid the foundations of repre- 
 sentative government in our old colonies of North America, 
 and which still exist in the United States under the name of 
 " townships." 
 
 We have reason to believe that Governor Grey is so far 
 of our opinion that he has recommended the division of the 
 present general government of New Zealand into as many 
 subordinate governments of the same form, each with a 
 lieutenant-governor, and legislative council, as there are 
 separate settlements. He has already, indeed, introduced 
 the great improvement of publishing the revenue and ex- 
 penditure of each settlement, separately from the general 
 accounts of the colony ; and he promised the inhabitants of 
 Nelson that he would " eventually recommend a local council, 
 with powers to enact laws, subject to the approval of the 
 Governor, in accordance with the wants and wishes of the 
 settlers;" thus almost advocating the establishment of a 
 provincial assembly, rather than a mere municipal corpora- 
 tion, in each settlement. 
 
 We therefore earnestly desire that each distinct settlement 
 or "township" should have power to make all laws and 
 regulations for its own local government, not being repug- 
 nant to the laws of Great Britain, or to those of the General 
 Assembly on the nine points reserved for its jurisdiction, by 
 section 7th of the Act, or to those made by the provincial 
 assembly for the peace, order, and good government of the 
 province in which it is situated, as provided for by the 5th 
 section. 
 
 We fear that under the present Act such powers could 
 not be at once given to " municipal corporations" constituted 
 here by letters patent, as they would exceed those " which 
 in pursuance of the statutes in that behalf made and pro- 
 vided, it is competent to her Majesty to grant to the inha- 
 bitants of any town or borough in England and Wales in 
 virtue of such statutes." (sect. 2.) 
 
 But if we are not mistaken in conceiving that it would be 
 expedient to grant such extensive powers, for local purposes, 
 to the "municipal corporation" of each separate settlement, 
 we can suggest a means by which this may be done without 
 exceeding the limits of the Act. The " municipal corpora- 
 
504 LETTER TO MB. HAWES. 
 
 tions" may be constituted at first only for the purpose of 
 electing members to a Provincial House of Representatives, 
 and the provincial assembly may then legislate for the 
 powers to be enjoyed by each separate corporation, or may 
 pass a law to the effect that these bodies shall have the 
 power of legislating on all local purposes, such legislation 
 not being repugnant, &c., as before recommended. 
 
 We are the more impressed with the expediency of some 
 such arrangement, because we are convinced that it is 
 essential to secure in each settlement the services of the 
 leading colonists as officers of its corporation, since those 
 officers are to chose the members for the Representative 
 Chamber of their Provincial Assembly. The colonists who 
 are most fit for this important trust might be unwilling to 
 exercise it, if with its exercise were coupled the necessity of 
 acting as Common Councilman or Alderman of a Borough, 
 confined in its powers like those of England and Wales. 
 
 We should even desire to see a provision for the erection 
 of any one or more "Municipal Corporations" into a sepa- 
 rate Province, as soon as it or they should apply for it, and 
 could fairly show an ability to provide the necessary civil 
 list. We imagine that the power of enacting such a change 
 might be vested in the General Assembly, subject of course 
 to the approval of the Government in England, like all its 
 other measures. This provision would at any rate act as a 
 remedy, should it be found that too many communities were 
 included in one Province, and that the Provincial Assembly 
 was legislating for matters beyond the powers of the particular 
 Municipal Corporations, which could be better managed by 
 persons more immediately and locally interested. To give 
 an instance, it would be desirable that Otakou should, upon 
 its application for the change, and production of evidence 
 that it could provide its own civil list, have a right to be 
 separated from an Assembly consisting of members from 
 many communities of different character from its own, and 
 legislating at a distance of four hundred miles for matters 
 comparatively local: or again, Nelson might complain of 
 being taxed by a Provincial Assembly which should include 
 it along with Wellington and New Plymouth, for the ex- 
 pense of making a road between the two latter settlements. 
 
 We are anxious that, if possible, the settlements in the 
 north part of the islands should enjoy the same civil rights 
 as those which are to be granted to the southern settlements. 
 We should regret to see any use made of the 9th Section, 
 which provides for the continuance of the present form of 
 
LETTER TO MR. HA WES. 505 
 
 government in the northern part of the islands until 1854, 
 should such a course appear advisable. We are aware of 
 tlio difficulties arising from the fact that extensive tracts of 
 land in their neighbourhood are held by individuals under 
 title from the Crown, so as to obstruct a system of coloniza- 
 tion similar to that pursued in the Company's settlements. 
 And we are aware that what is termed the "native question," 
 in that part of the country where the natives, credulous in 
 the intrinsic value of the waste lands which they have learned 
 to claim, and indisposed to submit to British authority, are 
 very numerous, may prevent the immediate establishment of 
 Municipal Corporations legislating for the local wants of 
 extensive districts like those in the south. But we would 
 suggest that " Municipal Corporations " be established in 
 the northern districts, within boundaries, at first, as small as 
 the Governor (with whom the settlement of the " native 
 question" rests) may think fit to determine, but that within 
 these necessarily circumscribed boundaries the inhabitants 
 should receive privileges of local self-government similar to 
 those of the south. The boundaries might be afterwards 
 extended as the natives might either abandon their imme- 
 diate vicinity, or request to be admitted within the pale of 
 British law. 
 
 We cannot refrain from expressing our doubts as to the 
 expediency of the proposed election of Members to the Pro- 
 vincial House of Representatives by the officers of the Cor- 
 porations. We freely own that we should have preferred 
 two distinct elections, one for the officers of the Corporations, 
 and another for the Representatives to the Assembly. But 
 in proportion as larger local powers are granted to the 
 Municipal Corporations, and these bodies thus become in 
 fact, if not in name, inferior Provincial Assemblies, our mis- 
 trust of this rather novel provision diminishes. If the officers 
 of the Corporation are to perform duties such as those of an 
 alderman or common councilman of an English town or 
 borough, we object strongly to their having a main voice in 
 choosing members for the Provincial House of Representa- 
 tives, because, as we before stated, the best colonists will not 
 have consented to perform the ungenial duties in order to 
 secure the vote. But if the " Municipal Corporation " possess 
 the " Township" powers which we have above recommended, 
 its offices would confer sufficient dignity and importance to 
 induce the best colonists to accept them; and they, being the 
 elite, as it were, of the general body of electors, might, without 
 disadvantage, be empowered to select the Representatives. 
 
506 LETTER TO MR. HA WES. 
 
 We approach the question of franchise with some diffi- 
 dence, because we are unaware how far our views as to the 
 large local powers necessary for the " Municipal Corpora- 
 tions" will be agreed to by her Majesty's Government. We 
 should, however, be unwilling to give an opinion as to what 
 qualification would secure success to the scheme, if the 
 Municipal Corporations were to have only the powers of 
 bodies which bear that name in England and Wales; be- 
 cause we should conceive that the functions of such bodies 
 were totally distinct from those of choosing a representative. 
 The suggestions, therefore, that we offer on this point, are 
 based on the assumption that each Municipal Corporation is 
 to enjoy those powers of local legislation for which we have 
 been pleading. 
 
 The object of any qualification is to secure that the men 
 most fitted for the duties should be chosen as officers of the 
 corporations. They must be the men most fitted, not only 
 to carry on the local legislation of the " township," but also 
 to select members for the representative house of an Assem- 
 bly, which makes all laws for the whole province, except on 
 the nine points reserved for the General Assembly. 
 
 We are of opinion that, at any rate in the existing settle- 
 ments and for the present, it would be very dangerous to ex- 
 tend the franchise too much by making the qualification for 
 a voter too low, trusting to a higher qualification for the per- 
 son to be elected. This arrangement allows mischievous 
 and intriguing individuals, who have no difficulty in provid- 
 ing themselves with the higher qualification, to obtain the 
 suffrages of a low and comparatively ignorant class of voters 
 through bribery or other corrupting means. A remarkable 
 instance of this occurred at the election which took place at 
 Wellington in October 1842, for the officers of a corporation 
 which possessed very limited powers. Every male adult 
 who chose to pay 17. sterling to have his name registered, 
 was privileged to vote ; and any voter was qualified for elec- 
 tion : 350 persons obtained the franchise ; and of course 
 the small sum of money was paid for many of them by 
 parties who wished to secure their votes. In one case, a 
 committee for the election of certain persons had given 257. 
 to a colonist who had great influence over a number of High- 
 land labourers, in order that he should register twenty-five 
 of their votes, and make them vote for the committee's list. 
 The leader of the opposing candidates, however, knew the 
 laird's failing set to drinking with him at breakfast- time till 
 he had won his heart, and then marched reeling arm-in-arm 
 
LETTER TO MR. HAWES. 507 
 
 with him to the poll, followed by the twenty-five High- 
 landers, who were in the same state ; and who all voted for 
 the man who had so disgraced himself and them. He was 
 an auctioneer, who had joined the community of Wellington 
 from Van Diemen's Land, and w r ho had always distinguished 
 himself by courting the admiration of the most ignorant por- 
 tion of the inhabitants. He was comparatively uneducated; 
 and very unfit, at any rate, to exercise such influence as he 
 would do, among voters qualified by a small stake in the 
 country. A high qualification for candidates would not have 
 excluded him; he would easily have procured that qualifica- 
 tion, and then have resorted to the same means of procuring 
 votes, so long as the voters included a class comparatively 
 ignorant, careless of their reputation, and easily swayed by 
 mere mob oratory and dishonourable artifice. 
 
 We should be content, then, to allow of a qualification 
 for candidate no higher than that for voter, provided that 
 the franchise is only extended so as to include those labourers 
 who shall have earned sufficient money to buy some land, 
 or to hold a considerable quantity as tenants ; thus proving, 
 to a certain degree, not only their steadiness and intelligence, 
 but their determination to retain an interest in the country. 
 Supposing the franchise to be so arranged, we can conceive 
 no reason why such persons should not be perfectly eligible 
 to the office of a councilman. On the contrary, we should 
 be glad to see, if possible, a certain proportion of such men 
 in the governing body of each municipality, because we 
 distinctly consider them to be included among the best 
 colonists. 
 
 We are thus averse to a qualification for a candidate 
 higher than that for a voter, but strongly in favour of a 
 qualification for both which shall depend on holding a 
 sufficient stake in the colony to prevent the selection of unfit 
 persons. With our knowledge and experience of the present 
 population of the existing settlements, we are in favour of a 
 scale of qualification which may at first sight appear very 
 high ; but we will begin by stating it, and afterwards adduce 
 some reasons to justify it. The right to vote should, in our 
 opinion, be confined to persons : 
 
 1st. Owning a freehold estate in land of the value of fifty 
 pounds sterling, clear of all charges and encumbrances. 
 
 2nd. Deriving a beneficial interest from land, to the amount 
 of Jive pounds sterling annually. 
 
 3rd. Occupiers or tenants of land, houses, or other tene- 
 ments to the value of fifty pounds sterling annually. 
 
508 LETTER TO MR. HA WES. 
 
 Provided always that for the purposes of this arrangement, 
 land shall never be estimated at less than the price originally 
 paid for it to the New Zealand Company in their settlements, 
 or to the Crown, or to the natives with the sanction of the 
 Crown, elsewhere. And provided also, that any land to be 
 estimated for these purposes must be held by title derived 
 from the Crown ; that not even, for instance, the occupation 
 of native reserves by natives should give them the franchise, 
 still less that natives admitted on their own application with 
 their own lands (formerly constituting an exceptional terri- 
 tory) should be able to qualify, until the land has been 
 distributed in freehold among individuals of their number 
 by title from the Crown. This will give the Crown the 
 power of determining how soon natives may be competent to 
 enjoy the electoral franchise. 
 
 It is necessary that we should here explain that the cus- 
 tomary rate of interest on money in New-Zealand and the 
 neighbouring Colonies, is ten per cent., while it is only three 
 per cent, in England, and that the wages of labour are also 
 ordinarily much higher. A freehold qualification in these 
 new settlements of the value of 67. 13s. per annum, is, there- 
 fore, equal to a 40s. per annum freehold qualification in 
 England; and the freehold ownership of land of the value 
 of fifty pounds which we advocate is worth five pounds a 
 year there, but is actually equal to a smaller freehold quali- 
 fication in England. We do not, however, found our estimate 
 of the scale desirable at present only on this calculation, 
 but on a practical view of that scale which will include the 
 most suitable class of voters, and we only adduce the un- 
 deniable difference in the value as at least worthy of con- 
 sideration. 
 
 We have not failed to seek for precedents as to franchise 
 in some new communities. We find that the qualification 
 for voters in New South Wales is a freehold estate in lands 
 and tenements of the clear value of two hundred pounds ster- 
 ling, though this high qualification is rendered almost null 
 by the granting of the franchise also to householders occupy- 
 ing dwelling houses of the yearly value of 201. in a Colony 
 where scarcely any dwelling house is worth less than this 
 sum. 
 
 Even in some of the States of the American Union, the 
 qualification is as high as that which we recommend, and in 
 others not far below it. 
 
 In Massachusets, it is necessary to have an income of 3/. 
 sterling, or a capital of 60/. 
 
LETTER TO MR. HA WES. 509 
 
 In Rhode Island, a man must possess landed property to 
 the amount of 133 dollars. 
 
 In Connecticut, he must have property which gives an in- 
 come of 17 dollars. 
 
 In New Jersey, an elector must have a property of 501. a 
 year. 
 
 In South Carolina and Maryland, the elector must possess 
 fifty acres of land. 
 
 It is also of importance to observe, that there is great 
 difficulty in restricting a franchise once established and ex- 
 ercised, while there is comparatively none in extending it; 
 so that a fault on the side of fixing too high a qualification 
 will be easily remedied, but one in the opposite direction 
 will be almost irretrievable. 
 
 We are of opinion that, under the before -mentioned con- 
 ditions, " Municipal Corporations" under the Act might be 
 advantageously established at once in the existing settle- 
 ments of Wellington, Nelson, New Plymouth, and Petre, to 
 form a southern province, and in those of Auckland and 
 Russell, to form a northern province. We have included 
 Petre among those, although it contains no more than 200 
 European inhabitants. But it has a town and country dis- 
 trict of its own under the Company's arrangements; it is 
 upwards of a hundred miles from the nearest of the other 
 settlements; it numbers among its inhabitants four gentle- 
 men who were thought fit for the office of Justice of the 
 Peace under the existing form of government; and, the 
 " Native question" having been recently arranged there by 
 Governor Grey, we have little doubt that its population will 
 rapidly increase; and even in its present state, it will be 
 good economy to let the inhabitants manage their little local 
 matters without having to refer to Wellington or New Ply- 
 mouth. The boundary in this case may be left to be fixed 
 by the Governor, as in the cases of Auckland and Russell; 
 and the Provincial Assembly may be trusted to determine 
 what local powers the little " township" shall exercise. 
 
 In the case of Wellington, we should recommend that the 
 " Municipal Corporation" extend its jurisdiction over all to the 
 south of a line as follows: The latitude of 40 30' S., from 
 the east coast to the highest ridge of the Tararua mountains ; 
 then southwards along that ridge to the point nearest to any 
 waters of the Waikanae river ; then along that river to its 
 mouth in Cook's Strait; together with the islands of Kapiti 
 and Mana. But the Governor might be allowed to use his 
 discretion in excepting for the present any districts within 
 
510 LETTER TO MR. HAWES. 
 
 this boundary, as provided for by the 10th section of the Act, 
 so as to meet the difficulties which may arise from the con- 
 tinuance of Rangihaiata in a troublesome attitude. 
 
 In the case of Nelson, we should recommend the " Muni- 
 cipal Corporation" to extend over all that part of the Middle 
 Island which lies between Cook's Strait and the latitude of 
 42 south. 
 
 In the case of New Plymouth, we approve of the boundary 
 recommended in Mr. E. G. Wakefield's letter to Mr. Glad- 
 stone, dated in February, 1846. Although, as we believe 
 Governor Grey has found some difficulty in overcoming the 
 obstacles which his predecessor threw in the way of adjust- 
 ing the " Native Question" at that settlement, the boundary 
 might, in this case also, be left to be fixed by the Governor 
 for the present. 
 
 We should also desire that a " Municipal Corporation" be 
 constituted at once for|Otakou, to include within its boundaries 
 at least the whole block purchased in that neighbourhood by 
 the Company. 
 
 We also think it very advisable that some of these exten- 
 sive " Boroughs" should be divided into " Hundreds" or 
 "Wards," with a view to the election of councillors from each 
 such subdivision in proportion to its population. Some of 
 these subdivisions might return no councillor for the present, 
 but any person holding qualification therein should vote in 
 that " Hundred" nearest to his qualification. 
 
 It would be necessary, with a view to the numerous changes 
 in the state of population which are sure to take place in a 
 country under the process of a rapid colonization, that the 
 powers now possessed by her Majesty to constitute " Muni- 
 cipal Corporations," to extend the boundaries of those first 
 established, or to erect any one sub-division or more of a 
 " borough," into a separate " Municipal Corporation," or to 
 alter and amend the boundaries in any way, be delegated to 
 the Governor, if, as we apprehend, such delegation be pos- 
 sible under the Act. If the proposed Church of England 
 Colony, for instance, should intend to settle in a part of the 
 Wellington borough, at present only inhabited by squatters, 
 and only placed under its jurisdiction in order to include 
 them within the pale of law, the person sent out to order the 
 land to be surveyed for such a settlement might also carry 
 out an application to the Governor to constitute such sub- 
 division of an already existing " borough" into a separate 
 one. Or if, upon the settlement of the " native question," 
 the population in the valley of the Hutt, or at Porirua, should 
 
LETTER TO MR. HAWES. 511 
 
 so rapidly increase as that the local matters could be better 
 managed by a separate municipality, the Governor might be 
 empowered to grant the application for that boon of a certain 
 amount of population, say one or two thousand souls. 
 
 We may here observe that the average population of a 
 "township" in the state of Massachusets is about 2000 
 souls. 
 
 With regard to the provinces, we are content to propose 
 that at first there should be two. 
 
 1. All north of the latitude of the mouth of the Mokau 
 River, including the municipal corporations of Auckland and 
 Russell. 
 
 2. All south of the same parallel, including the munici- 
 palities of Wellington, Nelson, New Plymouth, Petre, and 
 Otakou. 
 
 We are of opinion that the same qualification which we 
 have recommended as calculated to secure the best class of 
 voters in each municipality, is sufficient for a representative 
 to the provincial assembly, no less than for a councilman ; 
 and this is on the principle before advocated, that you are 
 more secure of a correct choice when the whole body of 
 electors is of a station secured by property, than when you 
 provide that the few persons chosen shall be possessed of a 
 certain property, and leave the choice to a larger body of 
 electors, having less stake in the country, and a lower 
 position to maintain by upright conduct. 
 
 The representatives from each "municipal corporation" 
 should be in proportion to its population. 
 
 We are inclined to desire that no ex-officio members should 
 sit in the Provincial House of Representatives; but that 
 officers of the government should offer themselves to the 
 suffrages of the electors, in the same way as in England. 
 Such an arrangement would go far to secure that the officers 
 of the provincial governments should be chosen from among 
 the most estimable of the colonists, and not from among 
 strangers and new comers careless of their welfare, as has 
 almost always been the case under the old form of govern- 
 ment. 
 
 We should desire, above all, that the legislative councils 
 be composed of persons having a very important stake in the 
 country. At the beginning, indeed, it may be expedient to 
 allow the Governor perfect carte blanche in the selection of 
 legislative councillors ; because the late troubles of the colony 
 have left many persons fitted for so high a station with 
 comparatively little property. We should not, therefore, be 
 
512 LETTER TO ME. HAWES. 
 
 sorry to leave this discretion entirely with the Governor for 
 at least three years. But during the succeeding three years, 
 no one should be eligible to the legislative council, who had 
 not resided at least two years in the colony, and who did 
 not possess property to the clear value of three thousand 
 pounds sterling, of which at least one thousand should be in 
 real property, in the province to whose legislative council he 
 might be nominated. After these six years no one should 
 be eligible who had not resided at least five years in the 
 colony, and who did not possess property to the clear value 
 of six thousand pounds sterling, of which two thousand must 
 be in real property in the province. 
 
 All nominations, excepting those made during the first 
 six years, should, in our opinion, be for life, or at any rate 
 for the duration of the Provincial Assembly as then con- 
 stituted. But it should be at the option of the Governor to 
 nominate or not for life, at the end of the six years, any of 
 the persons who had served during any part of that time, 
 but who at the end of it might not possess the highest quali- 
 fication required. It may be necessary that some Govern- 
 ment officers not possessed of the above qualification, should 
 hold seats in the Legislative Council by virtue of their office, 
 as the Judge of the highest Court in the Province, &c. ; and 
 perhaps that the Governor should always preside ; though 
 we should prefer to see him so completely a representative 
 of her Majesty as only to appear even in the Upper House 
 on occasions of dissolution, prorogation, and re-assemblage, 
 and as to introduce Government measures into either House 
 through the medium of responsible Executive Officers. We 
 are convinced that the office of Colonial Governor loses 
 much of its dignity and usefulness, when its holder appears 
 as a violent partisan in a legislative chamber, and the dis- 
 cussion of public objects is converted into an occasion of 
 personal dispute between the representative of royalty and 
 one of the Queen's subjects. 
 
 We would apply precisely the same principles to the 
 representatives and legislative councillors of the General 
 Assembly as to those of the Provincial Assemblies. The 
 House of Representatives of each Province should be em- 
 powered to choose those of their number to be sent to that 
 of the General Assembly. 
 
 But it appears to us most essential that the number of 
 members thus deputed by each province should be in pro- 
 portion to the bond fide tax-paying population of such 
 province ; and this would be still more requisite, should it 
 
LETTER TO MR. IIAW1 513 
 
 be determined against our wish to continue the present form 
 of government in the northern part of the north island ; for 
 in that case, by the 9th section, the Government would be 
 enabled to send to the General House of Representatives a 
 number of mere Government nominees from the northern 
 Province, equal to that of the members really representing 
 the more populous southern Province, and there would be 
 only a mockery of Representative Government on the nine 
 points of legislation reserved for the General Assembly of 
 the islands. Bond fide Representatives, indeed, from any of 
 the settlements, would probably not be found to give their 
 countenance to its deliberations ; as they have on many 
 occasions heretofore refused a seat among the non-official 
 minority in the Legislative Council as at present con- 
 stituted. 
 
 Although there are some other matters relating to the 
 affairs of New Zealand on which, at some future time, we 
 should be glad of the opportunity of submitting our views to 
 her Majesty's government, we have thought it of importance 
 to confine ourselves at present to that subject which is more 
 immediately under the consideration of Earl Grey, the 
 Orders in Council to be framed under the New Zealand 
 Government Act ; and we beg to repeat that the above sug- 
 gestions have been expressed in some haste, although they 
 contain, as the principles on which they are founded, our 
 deliberate and carefully considered opinions. We would, 
 therefore, respectfully request that we may be allowed to 
 explain or reconsider any points which may not seem suffi- 
 ciently clear in this rough statement ; and we may add that we 
 have also turned our attention to some of the more minute 
 details of the proposed arrangements, with which we have 
 not thought fit to encumber this letter. We have the honour 
 to be, Sir, your most obedient servants, 
 
 (Signed) W. CARGILL, leader of the proposed Colony at 
 
 Otago. 
 
 E. S. HALSWELL, ex-member of the Legisla- 
 tive Council, N. Z. 
 
 H. MORE ING, four years Resident and Magis- 
 trate, N. Z. 
 
 E. JERNINGHAM WAKEFIELD, four years and 
 a half resident in New Zealand. 
 
 Benjamin Hawes. Esq., M.P. 
 
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