THE OVER-SEA COLONY.
As in England, so in India, the establishment of a colony over the sea
will in the end prove the necessary completion of our scheme for
supplying work to the workless. There are sure to be found eventually in
overcrowded centres many for whom work at home cannot be found, and for
whom vast reaches of unoccupied territories in other lands wait to
afford a home.
Happily this will not be an immediate necessity in India. Over the
extended area occupied by the various races which comprise the Indian
Empire, large tracts of land still wait to be conquered by well-directed
industry, and the numerous settlements which it will be possible to form
in different parts of the country may for some time to come absorb the
surplus labour, add to the wealth of the country, the stability of the
Empire and the more rapid advancement of the Kingdom of Christ. Since,
however, we must look forward to emigration as the ultimate solution of
the problem which confronts us, we shall briefly indicate the lines upon
which we propose to carry it out.
In the establishment of Over-sea Colonies we shall follow very closely
the lines laid down in "Darkest England."
At present the continuous stream of emigrant labour flowing into
existing colonies already overstocked with labor, is creating serious
difficulties, and we have no idea of relieving a congested labour market
in one country by overstocking another: this would be, not to heal the
disorder, but only to shift the locality.
It may not be generally known how extensively emigration is already
resorted to by the people of India. We know that the impression is
abroad that Indians will not leave their country, that they fear the
sea, are too much attached to their home and their customs, and are far
too much filled with the dread of losing caste to yield to any pressure
that may be brought to bear upon them to quit the shores of their own
land for foreign fields of labour. As a matter of fact, however,
emigration to a considerable extent already exists.
In Ceylon alone there are nearly 300,000 Tamil coolies employed on the
Tea Estates, besides hundreds of thousands more who have permanently
settled in various parts of the Island. Vast tracts in the Island are
still waiting to be occupied. The former population of Ceylon is
variously estimated as having been from twelve to thirty millions,--now
it is only three! Is it impossible for us to suppose that it can be
restored to its former prosperity? Immense tanks and irrigation works
cover the entire country in tracts which are now unoccupied and desolate.
Many of these have been restored by Government, and there are now
100,000 acres of irrigable land in that country, only waiting to be
occupied and cultivated. Government is ready to give it on easy terms.
Here, then, alone is a wide and hopeful field for Indian emigration,
only requiring to be skilfully directed in order to find a home and
living for millions of India's destitute.
Now what we propose to do is not to check the stream of emigration, nor
yet to help it to flow on in its present channel until it overflows its
banks and engulfs in ruin the colonies it might have enriched, but
rather to dig out new channels, founding entirely new colonies in
districts yet unoccupied, on the plan laid down in "Darkest England."
The stream which, diverted into 20 or 30 channels, would enrich and
fertilize a whole continent, would if confined to one or two channels
burst its banks and become a desolating flood.
We shall ourselves become the leaders of the coolies, and dig out
channels in Ceylon, in Africa, in South America, and other countries,
building up from entirely new centres new colonies and territories and
kingdoms where the Indian colonist would find himself not a stranger in
a strange land, unwelcome, neglected, or illtreated, but at home in a
new India, more prosperous and happy than the one he had left behind,--a
colony peopled and possessed and managed by those of his own race and
language.
Emigration carried on simply in the interests of those who promote it
and derive a profit out of it, without regard to the needs of the
districts to which they are exported, and with absolute disregard to the
comfort and convenience of the emigrant, and often attended with
heartless cruelties, must necessarily be fraught with grave evils. These
we believe we should largely be able to obviate. In vessels chartered by
ourselves or in some way under our direction, and with every comfort and
convenience which can be secured for the limited sum available for cost
of transit, for men, women, and children, under the direct
superintendence of our own trained officers, what a curtailment of human
suffering and shame there will be in the transit of the Colonist alone!
On his arrival he will be met by those who, if strangers, are his
friends, and who will secure for him comfortable quarters, communicate,
or enable the emigrant to communicate, with his friends at home,
introduce him to the particular industry to which he is assigned, and
who will not cease their personal care of him until he is happily
settled in his new home, and who will afterwards be available for
advice and counsel. He will find himself, not amongst people who are
eager to secure their own profit at his expense, but a part of a
commonwealth where each is taught to seek the good of his neighbour, and
where the laws are framed to secure and perpetuate this desirable
condition of things. A community where the blessings of home and
education and sanitary laws and religion are valued and made available
for all, and where liberty, which nowhere shines so sweetly as amongst a
frugal, industrious, intelligent, simple and godly people, reigns in
truth.
Moreover, our widely extended operations, our connection and oneness
with the great social movement of the Army in various lands, and the
regulations which will control the movement, will enable us invariably
to convey our colonists to fields where their labours will be of the
greatest value, and instantly to check any tendency to excess of labour
at any given centre, and even at times to greatly relieve temporary
gluts in the labor market arising from unforeseen circumstances.
In short, it is scarcely possible to overrate the blessings likely to
flow from Colonies where drink and opium will be unprocurable, where
vice will be repressed, where greed will receive little encouragement
and have few opportunities to grow, and where the comparative absence of
poverty on the one hand, and of extreme wealth on the other and the
general contentment of the people, will make life on earth a joy to
those who were once nearly starved out of it.