[1] While two-thirds of the world are lying almost waste, it is yet
rather premature to speak of preventive or destructive checks--war,
nunneries, _infanticide_, single-blessedness. The latter, recommended
as preferable to colonization by political economists, may be left to
their own especial practice.
[2] “‘It is a most beautiful country. I have visited the Brazils,
the whole of Van Diemen’s Land, and New South Wales, and been on the
Continent, but I never saw a country in the world that equalled it (New
Zealand). In scenery, climate, and productiveness, it is a perfect
paradise.’--(See T. B. Montefiore, Parliamentary Evidence, 1838.)”
[3] “The missionaries have been sojourning in New Zealand for the last
twenty-three years. They, with their families, amount to upwards of
ninety individuals, and, with the exception of infants, only one death
(it is said) has occurred amongst them. In this country, according
to the Rev. W. Yate, ‘invalids become well, the healthy robust, and
the robust fat. It has a perpetual spring, the whole atmosphere seems
impregnated with perfumes, and every breath inhaled stimulates the
system, and strengthens man for the labour which may lie before him.
I am persuaded (says he), that all graminivorous animals, wild or
domestic, would thrive well in this temperate clime, if allowed to
range at large in the forests, on the hills, in the valleys, or on the
plains.’”
[4] “‘Marriages among the English have been prolific, in a very
extraordinary degree, of a most healthy progeny.’--(See official
document by T. Busby, Esq., British Resident.)”
[5] “‘There is a great variety of timber in the country fit for all
purposes, as for shipbuilding, domestic, and other purposes. The
forests of New Zealand afford perhaps the finest spars for masts and
yards in the world, and which are extremely valuable. In India, the
wood being there very heavy, they cannot get any description of wood to
make good spars, and those taken from New Zealand find there a ready
sale.’--(See J. L. Nicholas, Esq., Par. Evidence.)”
[6] “Mr Flatt, an agriculturist from the East of England, of
considerable professional and general knowledge, and who has lately
returned from New Zealand, where he had been remaining several years,
informs the Author, that in crossing the North Island, he travelled
along a tract of fine alluvial soil in the lower valley of the Waikato
rivers, equal in extent, but richer, than the alluvial level between
Cambridge and Hull,--the kernel of England. Mr Flatt also corroborates
the statements of others respecting the salubrity, mildness, and beauty
of the climate,--that it is a land of sunny-showers, and that is the
case of heavy rains, the clouds clear off immediately when the rain
ceases, and a most brilliant sun shines out.”
[7] “The Company are not to be considered as guaranteeing the title,
except as against their own acts.” See published “Terms of Purchase” by
the New Zealand Land Company, and signed John Ward. This is the amount
of their boasted security of title.
[8] The cost of free labour in a new colony, or wherever all the land
of fair quality is not occupied, has always been--from the ambition
to be his own master, inherent in man,--must necessarily be, greater
than the producing value of the labour. Where fair land is unoccupied,
none but he, who, from some natural defect or incapacity, is incapable
of working to himself so well as to produce a maintenance, will ever
work as an agricultural servant to another, excepting at a hire
beyond the value of his labour; consequently, the work performed for
hire will be done in a very inferior and unprofitable manner. This
must cause the hired workman to be not upon the best terms with his
employer, and he will be felt to be a _plague_ rather than a _help_.
Mr Wakefield’s “sufficient price” plan, “a high price upon fresh
land,” at least “such a price as render slave labour a loss, plenty
of free hired labour being made attainable,” is one of the most crude
and impracticable schemes in reference to a British race population,
that the brain even of modern political economists has hatched.
Nevertheless, he has procured a whole host of followers, including
the South Australian and New Zealand Committees. How would people be
prevented from settling beyond the precincts of his high-price-limited
territory? Would he keep an army scouring the country beyond this line
with fire and sword? Nothing short of this would suffice; and we should
have enough of bush-fighting. We would remit from the heated fancies
of ignorant closet colonists to the experienced judgment of men who
have seen colonization going on, and more especially who have borne
a part in it, to determine of the utter unfitness of the “sufficient
price.” Has the attempt at the sufficient price worked well in South
Australia? Has not a great proportion of the small capitalists lost
their capital and been forced to become servants (in some cases obliged
to the servants they had carried out for procuring a master), while
only the larger capitalists have been able to hold out? Has not the
high price of land, L.1 per acre, instead of condensing been the means
of dispersion,--throwing the stock owners with their flocks out to
wander over the undivided territory for which they pay no price, which
in fact is worth no price--perhaps no great loss in that arid country
where change of place is necessary in the season of drought to obtain
herbage and water--a country only fit for this Tartar or Arab system
of husbandry? Has the miserable Adelaide and the steril sands around
it, a place scarcely capable of affording support, even under the best
culture for which it is fitted, for a few hundreds, become any thing
but the grave of the hopes of the many thousands who have been thrown
upon this desert coast by means of the money extracted from capitalist
emigrants by this “sufficient price,” or by money borrowed at 10 per
cent. per annum upon the faith of the “sufficient price?” Adelaide will
never reach higher than a miserable village, unless like Sydney it
get an extraneous Government expenditure of several hundred thousand
pounds per annum (Sydney without this would have remained a miserable
village). As soon as the money spent by emigrants (not unfrequently all
they possess) waiting upon the lagging surveys, or upon some plausible
means of employing their little capital to advantage, shall have ceased
to flow, Adelaide will appear in its natural poverty.
Is the sufficient price calculated for New Zealand? Why import so many
servants when it is so politic to employ native labour, and to leave
the labour market open for this supply? The natives say they have a
double motive for selling land to the British--the price they receive
for it, and the employment they procure in cultivating it. Why take
means to prevent dispersion when prudence will direct a pretty close
arrangement? Why take means to procure a consolidated population as
a market for agricultural produce, when a market so very favourable
already exists in the agricultural produce-demand of Australia and of
the South Sea Whalers, together with the British and Indian demand
for flax and spars? For what then is a “sufficient price” desirable?
Only for the private emolument of managing secretaries and other
officials, to whom the “sufficient price” will pay a pretty good tax
_in transitu_, and to be a plausible pretext for the Land Company
resident in London to obtain the warrantry of the Legislature for
monopolizing whole provinces of New Zealand, and for selling the land
at a high price to the buyer;--no doubt thinking the buyer will be a
more industrious colonist after his pockets have been emptied into this
land-jobbing Company’s coffers. From some hints which have been thrown
out in Parliament lately, it would seem to be in contemplation to have
something like “a sufficient price” in the British colonies in the West
Indies (perhaps practicable there by a sufficient demonstration of
bayonets), that is, a plan of preventing the working black population
from procuring portions of land, by the industrious cultivation of
which they could maintain themselves in ease and comfort. By this plan
it is intended “to make slave-labour a loss, plenty of hired labour
being attainable,” the black population being thus compelled to labour
to the planters at whatever hire the planters choose to give, or to
starve. Perhaps there is some understood stipulation, that the planters
will restore the twenty millions to the British Legislature on the
passing of this “sufficient price” act, as well they might? Welcome
back slavery to the West Indies--welcome West Indian slavery to the
working man in Australia and New Zealand, rather than the “sufficient
price.” But it is an absurdity, and, if persisted in, will ruin these
colonies. For a complete exposure of the indirect systems of slavery,
see “Emigration Fields,” pages 53 and 187.