_Extract from “Emigration Fields.”_
Britain, at the present moment, exhibits man in a position altogether
new, from the extensive application of steam power and improved
machinery in aid of human labour. By means of these facilities to
production, together with combined labour, the work of man has been
rendered doubly efficient in raising food, and many times more
efficient in fabricating clothing, and other human requisites. An
immense available power and surplus labour supply has thus been
developed, limited in the field of food production by our confined
territory, restricted in the field of manufacturing production by
our home food-monopoly. A great change in the relative proportion of
labour and capital requisite for production has also taken place, and
human labour, in part superseded by steam power and machinery, has
undergone a comparative depreciation of value. The usual balance of
demand and supply of labour being thus deranged, has caused occasional
gluts, and it may require a time, and much further misery may ensue,
risking political convulsion, before the social economy adjust itself,
unassisted, to the new order of things.
One of the most prominent consequences of this new order, is the
great comparative increase of number of the non-producing classes
(the holders of accumulated wealth--the idle recipients of income)
and the unprecedented extent of their comforts and luxuries, while
the condition of the working-class, instead of improving, has
deteriorated. Had the free-trade system been adopted contemporaneously
with this available increase of power of production, the condition
of the working-class would, no doubt, have improved in nearly an
equal degree, as an almost unlimited demand for our manufactures,
in exchange for the food and raw produce of the Continent, would
have taken place. But as this system, however much to be desired, is
awanting, and the mischievous effects of our restrictive system already
in part irremediable, humanity calls upon us to endeavour to devise
some other means of effecting an improvement in the condition of the
working-class, but of such a nature, as not to impede the attainment of
free trade.
Prevented by our trade-restrictive system from obtaining a market
in foreign nations for the immense surplus fabrics which this vast
increase of power is capable of producing, there is only one other
available resource,--_to transplant our surplus working-population to
new lands_. This would not only bring about a salutary balance in our
home economy, but at the same time, by raising up new and most valuable
customers, would afford wide and extending fields of consumption,
commensurate with the future increase of our powers of production. In
the present condition of Britain, it is even probable that a system
of colonization, judiciously planned and _sufficiently_ followed out,
would eventually be equally promotive of the comfort and happiness
of the working-population of Britain, as if free trade were to give
full scope to the employment of the whole working-population at home,
and at the same time be more influential in improving the race of man
generally. Change of place within certain limits of latitude, seems
to have a tendency to improve the species equally in animals as in
plants, and agricultural and trading occupations are far more congenial
to health and increase, than manufacturing occupations. It cannot
therefore be doubted that the increase of the British race (evidently a
superior race), and their extension over the world, and even the vigour
of the race itself, will be more promoted by this colonizing system,
than by the utmost freedom of trade without the colonizing system, and
the turning of our entire energies to manufacturing industry.
But our advocates of restriction and home monopolies exclaim--Why
export workmen when so much improvement can still be made in Britain?
Why import food and raw produce while we have full capacities of
growing enough at home? Were Great Britain properly cultivated it
would produce double what it now produces. The answer is, It is not
what Britain is capable of producing, but what it in reality will be
made to produce, which concerns us. Further improvement, and even
the keeping up of the improvement already effected, depend upon the
returns of the capital employed. If, from the less exhausted field for
production abroad, we can obtain ten per cent. per annum for capital,
while from the more exhausted, restriction-limited field at home, we
can obtain only four per cent., capital will continue to be exported
and British improvement will languish, or things will retrograde. This
is the actual state of matters, and unless means are taken to bring
about a more salutary state, the improvements they look forward to,
and which Britain is indeed susceptible of, will never be attained.
By a properly conducted colonization, in the first place, diminishing
the labour-supply, and acting as a stimulus to our labour-market, and
afterwards affording a continually increasing stimulus by means of
the new-created, fast-extending colonial field of demand for British
manufactures, and all this working in mutual reaction to excite
industry, we may in reality go on improving till Britain produce ten
times over what she now produces.
This attempt to draw attention to colonization proceeds from no wish
to check the present national effort to obtain free trade! Colonial
intercourse is in effect a circumscribed kind of free trade, under
peculiarly favourable circumstances; _and the amazing increase, and
vast extent and advantage, of our colonial trade, is the most direct
proof of the advantage, not only to Britain, but to mankind, which
would result from free trade over all_. Every enactment to prevent the
exchange of the produce of labour between man and man, and nation and
nation, if the article is not injurious to health and morals, is truly
diabolic. All who have aided in these enactments ought to be held up
to the detestation of mankind as repressers of industry, as promoters
of misery, as ministers of evil, selfishly bent upon rendering
abortive the good which a benevolent Providence has designed for
man, in forming one portion of the earth more fitted for the seat of
manufacturing industry and trade, and other portions for the peculiar
production of various kinds of food and raw material, thus calculated,
by giving rise to a reciprocity of advantageous intercourse, to promote
an enlightening and friendly connection, and to diffuse science,
morality, the arts of life, all that conduces to improvement and
happiness, over the nations.
In the event of our own Legislature adopting the free-trade system,
the introduction of the colonizing, by rendering Great Britain more
independent of foreign nations, will be a means of inducing these
nations also to agree to a reciprocity of free-trade; whereas, were
we soliciting the free exchange of commodities, and apparently
dependent upon these nations for a market, there would be no end to
the haggling of their selfish and ignorant governments. In this view,
therefore, colonization is a step to the attainment of general free
trade throughout the world; at any rate, the increase of our trade
and manufactures, sequent to an extensive emigration, by diffusing
intelligence and wealth, must sooner bring about the free-trade system.
The mind is almost overwhelmed in contemplating the prospects of
improvement in the general condition of humanity, now opening through
the medium of British colonization, and the consequent diffusion of the
elevating and meliorating influences of British liberty, knowledge, and
civilization. One great free naval people, aided by all the discoveries
of modern science, and united under the attractions of a common
literature, and the reciprocal advantage of the exchange of staple
products, increasing rapidly in numbers, and ramifying extensively over
numerous maritime regions, will soon overshadow continental despotisms,
and render them innocuous.
From the unlimited supply of new land, colonies are especially fitted
for a connection with Britain. Being in the opposite extremes of
condition, they are in the highest degree mutually beneficial, the
former affording the raw material in exchange for the more laboured
products of industry of the latter, while at the same time the
colonists are by habit great consumers of British manufactures. What
is required is, that the extension of colonization should go hand in
hand with the extension of manufactures, thus generating new markets in
proportion to the increase of fabrics.
But, at the present moment, it is as a salutary drain to our
overstocked labour-market, that colonization is so vitally
necessary. To bring things to a healthy state, a vast exportation of
working-population must in the first place be effected, and to keep
them so, a constant great stream of emigration must be afterwards kept
up. And in proportion as this efflux is properly regulated, will,
at the same time, the condition of the people at home and abroad be
prosperous, and the population progressive.
Emigration to fruitful new lands, where our superabundant capital
and population would be employed to the greatest advantage and most
rapidly enlarged, is in policy and humanity alike our interest and
our duty, as being the clear and direct road to prosperity. Under a
properly regulated colonization, the most sanguine can scarcely form
a conjecture of the extent to which our manufacturing and commercial
greatness might be carried; and the comfort and happiness to which all
classes might attain.
Under a properly regulated colonization, to obey the common instincts
of nature, “to increase and multiply,” instead of being, as it too
frequently has been in Britain, a curse, will become, as in the United
States, a blessing. _Things have been so far misdirected hitherto, that
the greatly increased facilities of production of what is necessary
to the comfort and pleasurable existence of man, which, under proper
direction, ought to have benefited all classes, has only administered
to the luxury of a comparatively small number, the property class._
So sensible are the working men in England of this, that they have
considered facility of production their enemy, and have had recourse
to the most pernicious and atrocious practices,--machinery-breaking,
and burning of agricultural produce, to prevent it. The old system of
English poor-law (perhaps the worst that could have been invented)
and the new amendment, are equally ineffectual to accomplish the
end desired,--the prevention of human misery,--the removal of
those sufferings arising from inadequate employment or inadequate
remuneration, evils for which there can be no effectual remedy save an
increased or improved field of labour; and this, as formerly stated, is
obtainable in Britain only by free trade or by extensive emigration,
but most effectually by both. The prudential check, from which so
much has been expected, is but an irksome and unnatural palliative,
scarcely preferable to the natural destructive check itself. And in
respect to gratuitous assistance, nothing can be more pernicious than
poor-law contributions, and charitable givings, and bequests of all
descriptions, at least as these matters have been conducted. It is
merely _a nursing of misery_,--keeping up a vast number of unemployed
people, ready at all times, should labour come a little more into
demand, to compete with those in employment, and keep down wages to the
lowest pitch that the animal machine can be kept working upon. It is
the interest of the property-holders to have a very numerous population
at this lowest pitch, and their poor-rate and charity contributions are
virtually a mere pittance-supply to prevent their indirect slaves from
perishing.
Charity is not less injurious as interfering with the great law
of nature, by which pain and death are the established penalty of
ignorance, idleness, and improvidence; enjoyment and life the reward of
knowledge, industry, and forethought. Alms or relief to the poor is
clearly an interference with, or a subversion of, this natural law,
and though it does not prevent the suffering sequent to the former,
it destroys the advantages sequent to the latter, and only promotes
general misery. It is to the purposes of colonization that the English
poor-rates and other charitable bequests, now worse than uselessly
consumed in nursing up the improvident poor and keeping down the
industrious, should be converted.
A sufficient emigration of the labour-classes would increase the
labour-demand, and raise wages so high, that every one able and willing
to work would obtain a competency for the support of a family, and even
of a parent in infirm old age, in case of necessity; thus cutting up
pauperism by the roots, and leaving the bastiles, the poverty-prisons
in the south of England, untenanted. In the United States of America
nearly all the marriageable people enter the marriage state, and find
a family advantageous to the increase of their wealth and comfort.
This arises from the favourable field for industry, and the social
advantages they enjoy. Nothing hinders Great Britain from enjoying
these, and even greater advantages, but her own stupid and guilty
neglect. In many respects she is equally favourably circumstanced as
America, in some much more favourably. Her climate is better, her
capital beyond comparison greater, her machinery and aids of human
labour and advantages of combined labour vastly superior, her new
unpeopled territory more extensive and more favourably situated for
trade, and equally easily reached. Why, then, should the condition
of the working population of Britain not be as favourable as that of
America? Simply because the field of labour, from our narrow home
territory, dense population, and restrictive trade system, is more
limited in proportion to the labour supply, and that we fail to
profit by our opportunities of extending it. A sufficient emigration
would render it equally, if not more favourable. Let the truly
charitable--those who have the welfare of their suffering countrymen
really at heart, reflect that ignorance is criminal, where knowledge
is within their reach. Let them hasten to devote their exertions and
wealth to purposes of utility, and not waste them in increasing the
very evils they wish to remedy. _Let them promote colonization._
With an overflowing capital, and a population, notwithstanding our
emigration, increasing at present nearly 400,000 annually, and
as things are regulated beyond the means of full subsistence and
labour-demand, Britain is placed under circumstances more favourable
than ever occurred at any former period for carrying the principle of
colonization into effect to its fullest, most salutary extent. The
importance of emigration, as before stated, is proved by the immense
and most advantageous trade we now carry on with the countries we
have colonized; an almost unlimited extent of unoccupied territory is
at our command; a very extensive emigration is necessary to render
a poor-law practicable in Ireland, and to assist the working of the
new poor-law in England (a sufficient emigration would soon render
both unnecessary); the economy of transporting great numbers to
distant countries in health and safety, and with celerity, is nearly
perfected:--all these conspire, in an almost miraculous manner, to
place the destinies of man at the disposal of Britain, and to render
the present era the most eventful in the history of the world--_the era
of colonization_.
Even although 450,000 (the present total yearly increase, including
the present emigration of nearly 100,000) were exported annually, the
future increase, from the improved condition of the great body of the
people, would extend perhaps to double this number, say 1,000,000
annually, and that of our capital in a corresponding ratio; while at
the same time the demand for manufactured produce, caused by the wants
of the exported portion of our people, would greatly improve the home
labour-demand, even with this great increase of hands. Thus our numbers
would go on increasing faster at home than at present, while at the
same time the country would increase in power, in a ratio still more
rapid from the greater prosperity of all.
It is only within a few years that the immense importance of
colonization has come to be appreciated; recently the most unfavourable
prejudices existed respecting it, and the most erroneous and absurd
doctrines were promulgated, to feed the popular odium, by political
economists; who, in their wisdom, could never solve the difficulty how
Britain continued the richest nation of the world, while her resources
were being wasted upon numberless useless colonies. Let us contemplate
the difference of results which the resources of Britain would have
accomplished had they been so _wasted_,--had they been devoted to
purposes of _creation_ as they were to purposes of _destruction_ during
the American and French revolutionary wars. We did not then hesitate
to lavish hundreds of millions in engaging in deadly feud the European
and American nations. It seems hitherto to have been the principle of
Government to hold any expense incurred for purposes other than rapine
or destruction as a misapplication of the national resources. A change
is at hand. The reign of Queen Victoria promises to be glorious for a
victory over barbarism and human misery--Colonization is the means.
A tax of ten per cent. in Britain and Ireland upon land rental would
be most profitably employed in carrying out labouring emigrants, and
in locating them comfortably. This would be a humane and rational
amendment of the English poor-law, and the best poor-law for Ireland
that could be introduced. This fund, together with the proceeds of the
sales of colonial lands, under judicious and economical management,
would in the course of a few years have a most beneficial effect upon
trade, and greatly ameliorate the condition of the working population;
continued for half a century it would change the face of things over a
great portion of the habitable world; and the extent of its effects,
persisted in for several centuries, would be beyond even what we now
can contemplate.
Independently of the communities formed by British emigration, were a
good system of colonial government adopted, islands and inferior states
would find it their interest to unite with us, and the whole of the
multitudinous island-groups scattered over the vast Pacific, in number
as the constellations of the heavens, might become incorporated as part
of the British empire.