BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
NO. CCCCIII. MAY, 1849. VOL. LXV.
CONTENTS.
COLONISATION--MR WAKEFIELD'S THEORY, 509
THE REACTION, OR FOREIGN CONSERVATISM, 529
MADAME D'ARBOUVILLE'S "VILLAGE DOCTOR," 542
NATIONAL EDUCATION IN SCOTLAND, 567
ARARAT AND THE ARMENIAN HIGHLANDS, 577
LEGITIMACY IN FRANCE, 590
THE COLLEGE. A SKETCH IN VERSE, 601
JACK MOONLIGHT, 606
MOONLIGHT MEMORIES. BY B. SIMMONS, 613
AUSTRIA AND HUNGARY, 614
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PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.
BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
NO. CCCCIII. MAY, 1849. VOL. LXV.
COLONISATION--MR WAKEFIELD'S THEORY.[1]
We agree with those, and they are the majority of reflective minds,
who, taking a survey of our half-peopled globe, and considering the
peculiar position which England occupies on it--her great maritime
power, her great commercial wants, her overflowing numbers, her
overflowing wealth--have concluded that colonisation is a work to
which she is especially called. She is called to it by her marked
aptitude and capability for the task, as well as by an enlightened
view of her own interests. Without too much national partiality,
without overlooking our own faults, and that canker of a too
money-loving, too money-making morality, which has eaten into our
character, (though perhaps not more so than it has corroded the
character of other European nations, who have quite as strong a
passion for gold, without the same industry in obtaining it,) we may
boldly say that the best seed-plot of the human race that now exists
(let the best be estimated as it may by the moralist and the divine)
is to be found in this island of Great Britain. To plant the
unoccupied regions of the earth, or regions merely wandered over by
scattered tribes of savages, who cannot be said to possess a soil
which they do not use, by off-sets from this island, is itself a good
work. It is laying no ill foundation for the future nations that shall
thus arise, to secure to them the same language, the same literature,
the same form of religion, the same polity, or, at all events, the
same political temper (the love and obedience to a constitution) that
we possess; to make native to them that literature in which the great
Christian epic has been written, in which philosophy has spoken most
temperately, and poetry most profusely, diversely, and vigorously. Nor
will England fail to reap her own reward from this enterprise. In
every part of the world an Englishman will find a home. It will be as
if his own native soil had been extended, as if duplicates of his own
native land had risen from the ocean. A commercial intercourse of the
most advantageous character will spring up; the population and the
wealth of the old country will find fresh fields of employment in the
new; the old country will itself grow young again, and start in the
race with her own children for competitors. Neither will the present
age pass by without participating in the benefit, since its
overcrowded population will be relieved by the departure of many who
will exchange want for plenty, and despondency for hope. Whatever
opinion may be held of the remedial efficacy against future pauperism
of a system of emigration, it must be allowed that this present relief
arrives most opportunely, as a balance to that extraordinary pressure
produced by the distress in Ireland, and the influx of its
famine-stricken peasantry into other parts of the kingdom.
On this subject--the measure of permanent relief which colonisation
will afford to this country by carrying off its surplus
population--the degree in which emigration may be calculated upon as
the future antagonist of pauperism--we would speak with caution. We
are so far hopeful that we see here a great resource against the
national evil of an unemployed population, but it is a resource which
must be rightly understood and wisely taken advantage of; it is a
great resource for an intelligent people; it comes in aid of that
fundamental remedy, a good sound education for the people, moral and
religious, but is no substitute for that most necessary of all
measures. Misunderstood, and vaguely relied on by those who know not
how properly to avail themselves of it, the prospect of emigration may
even prove mischievous, by rendering the thoughtless and improvident
still more reckless, still more improvident.
Granted, it may be said, that emigration supplies an outlet annually
for a certain excess of population, it supplies, by that very reason,
an additional and constant impulse to an increase of population. The
old country may overflow, but it is always kept full, and to the brim.
The restraint of prudence is relaxed. "We can feed ourselves; and, as
to our children, are there not the colonies?" may be said by many an
improvident pair. People even of the better sort, who would shrink
from the idea of their children sinking into a lower grade of society
than they themselves occupied, would find in emigration a vague
provision for the future family--a provision which would often
disappoint them, and which they would often fail in resolution to
embrace.
Let it be borne in mind that, when we speak of the duty of restraining
from improvident marriage, we are not inculcating any new morality
founded upon the recent science of political economy. It is a duty as
old as the love of a parent to his child, and needs only for its
enforcement an anticipation of this parental affection. No man who
_has_ married, and become a father, ever doubted of the existence of
such a duty, or spoke slightingly of it. Ask the Scotch peasant, ask
the simplest Switzer, who knows nothing of reading-clubs or mechanics'
institutes--who has perhaps never quitted his native valley, and all
whose knowledge is the growth of his own roof-tree--what he thinks of
the morality of him who becomes the father of a family he cannot rear,
or must rear like wild beasts more than men--he will give you an
answer that would satisfy the strictest Malthusian. The prudence that
would avoid famine, the just and righteous fear of having hungry
children about our knees--this is no new wisdom in the world, though,
like all our old wisdom, it continually cries in vain in our streets.
Now the operation of this, in every respect, moral restraint would be
materially interfered with, if the notion should prevail, that in the
colonies there existed (without any distinct knowledge how it was to
be secured) an inexhaustible provision for human life. Numbers would
marry, trusting to this resource, yet the offspring of such marriages
might never reach their destined refuge, or reach it only after much
suffering, and in the degraded condition of uneducated paupers. And
men who have calculated that, at all events, without seeking aid from
Government or the parish, they shall be able to send their child
abroad, when the child has grown up, will hesitate to part with it.
They had calculated what they would do, when parents, before they
became such. They had not been able to anticipate that bond of
parental affection which, we may observe in passing, is by no means
weakest in the humblest ranks, but, on the contrary, until we reach
the very lowest, seems to increase in strength as we descend in the
social scale.
The fact is, that it is not as a distant provision for their children
that the youthful pair should be taught to look on emigration. If it
comes at all into their calculation, they should embrace it as a
provision for themselves, and, through them, for their future
offspring. They should carry their hopes at once to the climate which
is to realise them. Marriage should be the period of emigration. At
this period a man can readily leave his country, for he can leave his
home. The newly married couple, as it is commonly said, and with no
undue exaggeration, are all the world to each other. It is at this
period that men have double the strength, for they have twice the
hope, and exhilaration, and enterprise, that they have at any other
epoch of their lives. That slender hoard, too, which will so soon be
wasted in this country, which a few pleasures will drain, would carry
them creditably into another, and lay the foundation for the utmost
prosperity their birth and condition has led them to wish for. To the
distant colony let them not devote their ill-fed and ill-taught
children; but, going thither themselves, rear a healthy race for whom
they will have no cares. If at this period of life it should become
the fashion of the humbler classes to emigrate, it would be difficult
to say how far our colonies might become a real, and effectual, and
permanent resource against overpopulation. At all events, the
mischievous influence we have been describing could never arise. We
see not why England, if she learns rightly to use them, may not reap
from her colonies all those advantages which the United States have
been so frequently felicitated upon in their territories in the Far
West. Much will depend on the current which public opinion takes.
Presuming that Government discontinues entirely the old system of
transportation, which must always render emigration extremely
unpalatable; presuming that a steady, equitable rule is adopted in
dealing with the unappropriated land, so that a moderate price, a
speedy possession, and a secure title may be depended upon--we think
it highly probable that colonisation will become very popular amongst
us. The more that is learnt about the colonies, the more the
imagination is familiarised with them by accounts of their climate,
products, and the mode of life pursued in them, the less apparent, and
the less fearful will their distance become, and the more frequently
will men find themselves carrying their hopes and enterprises in that
direction. If, therefore, an intelligent and practicable view is taken
of colonisation, we may re-echo, without scruple, the words of our
thoughtful poet--
"Avaunt the fear
Of numbers crowded in their native soil,
To the prevention of all healthful growth
Through mutual injury! Rather in the law
Of increase, and the mandate from above,
Rejoice!--and ye have special cause for joy.
For, as the element of air affords
An easy passage to the industrious bees,
Fraught with their burdens, and a way as smooth,
For those ordained to take their sounding flight
From the thronged hive, and settle where they list,
In fresh abodes--their labour to renew;
So the wide waters open to the power,
The will, the instincts, and the appointed needs
Of Britain; do invite her to cast off
Her swarms, and in succession send them forth
Bound to establish new communities
On every shore whose aspect favours hope
Or bold adventure; promising to skill
And perseverance their deserved reward."
_Excursion_, book 9.
How best to colonise; how far Government should undertake the
regulation and control of the enterprise; how far leave it to the
spirit and intelligence of private individuals, separate or banded
together in groups, or companies; and especially under what terms it
shall permit the occupation of the unappropriated soil--all these have
become highly interesting topics of discussion.
For ourselves, we will at once frankly confess that we have no faith
in any model colonies, in ideals of any description, or in any "_Art_
of colonisation." What has been done, may be done again; what America
is doing every day on the banks of the Mississippi, England may do in
her Australian continent. With regard more particularly to the last
and most important matter that can affect a new settlement, the mode
of dealing with the land, it appears to us that the duties of
Government are few, simple, and imperative--as simple in their
character as they are indispensable. A previous survey, a moderate
price, lots large and small to suit all purchasers--these are what we
should require. The land-jobber, who interposes between Government
and the emigrant, to make a cruel profit of the latter, must be kept
out, either by laying a tax (as they do in America, under the
denomination of the "Wild-land Tax,") on all land not reclaimed within
a certain time, or by declaring the purchase forfeited, if, within
that time, the soil is not cultivated. Government also must restrain
its own hands from large grants to favoured individuals, who are no
better than another species of land-jobbers. This, though a merely
negative duty, will probably be the last performed, and the most
imperfectly. Few readers are perhaps aware of the criminal ease with
which the Government has been persuaded into lavish grants of land to
persons who had, and could have, no immediate prospect of making use
of it; enormous grants unjust to other settlers, and ruinous to the
young colony, by dispersing the emigrants, interposing between them
wide tracts of barren property. We ourselves read with no little
surprise the following statement, which we extract from the work
before us, Mr Wakefield's _Art of Colonisation_:--
"There are plenty of cases in which mischievous dispersion
has taken place, but not one, to my knowledge, in which the
great bulk of settlers had a choice between dispersion and
concentration. In the founding of West Australia there was no
choice. In disposing of the waste land, the Government began
_by granting 500,000 acres (nearly half as much as the great
county of Norfolk) to one person_. _Then came the governor
and a few other persons, with grants of immense extent._ The
first grantee took his principality at the landing-place; and
the second, of course, could only choose his outside of this
vast property. Then the property of the second grantee
compelled the third to go further off for land; and the
fourth again was driven still further into the wilderness. At
length, though by a very brief process, an immense territory
was appropriated by a few settlers, who were so effectually
dispersed, that, as there were no roads or maps, scarcely one
of them knew where he was. Each of them knew, indeed, that he
was where he was positively; but his relative position--not
to his neighbours, for he was alone in the wilderness, but to
other settlers, to the seat of government, and even to the
landing-place of the colony--was totally concealed from him.
This is, I believe, the most extreme case of dispersion on
record. In the founding of South Africa by the Dutch, the
dispersion of the first settlers, though superficially or
_acreably_ less, was as mischievous as at Swan River. The
mischief shows itself in the fact, that two of the finest
countries in the world are still poor and stagnant colonies.
_But in all colonies, without exception, there has been
impoverishing dispersion, arising from one and the same
cause._"--(P. 433.)
Two very different _ideals_ of colonisation have often haunted the
imaginations of speculative men, and coloured very diversely their
views and projects on this subject. Both have their favourable
aspects; neither is practicable. As is usual, the rough reality rides
zig-zag between your ideals, touching at both in turns, but running
parallel with neither.
With one party of reasoners, the ideal of a colony would be a
miniature England, a little model of the old country, framed here, at
home, and sent out (like certain ingeniously-constructed houses) to be
erected forthwith upon the virgin soil. A portion of all classes would
sally forth for their New Jerusalem. The church, with tower and
steeple, the manor-house, the public library, the town-hall, the
museum, and the hospital, would all simultaneously be reproduced.
Science would have its representatives. Literature with its light
luggage, thoughts and paper, would be sure to hover about the train.
Nobility would import its antique honours into the new city, and, with
escutcheon and coat of arms, traditionally connect it with knighthood
and chivalry, Agincourt, and the Round Table. There would be
physicians and divines, lawyers, and country gentlemen "who live at
ease," as well as the artisan and ploughman, and all who work in wood
and in iron. Dr Hind, the present Dean of Carlisle, in an elegantly
written essay, incorporated in Mr Wakefield's book, proposes and
advocates this mode of colonisation. After remarking on the greater
success which apparently accompanied the schemes of the Greeks and
Romans to found new communities, Dr Hind thus proceeds.--The italics,
it may be as well to say, are his, not ours.
"The main cause of this difference may be stated in few words. We send
out colonies of the limbs, without the belly and the head; of needy
persons, many of them mere paupers, or even criminals; colonies made
up of a _single class_ of persons in the community, and that the most
helpless, and the most unfit to perpetuate our national character, and
to become the fathers of a race whose habits of thinking and feeling
shall correspond to those which, in the mean time, we are cherishing
at home. The ancients, on the contrary, sent out _a representation of
the parent state--colonists from all ranks_." And further on, after
insisting on the propriety of appointing to the colony educated and
accomplished clergymen, he says--"The same may be urged in respect of
men of other professions and pursuits. The desirable consummation of
the plan would be, that a specimen, or sample, as it were, of all that
goes to make up society in the parent country, should _at once_ be
transferred to its colony. Instead of sending out bad seedlings, and
watching their uncertain growth, let us try whether a perfect tree
will not bear transplanting."
We apprehend that this project of "transplanting a perfect tree" is
none of the most feasible. However the Greeks managed matters, we
moderns find it absolutely necessary to begin "at the beginning," and
with somewhat rude beginnings. If the Greeks had the art in the
colony, as in the epic poem, of rushing _in medias res_--of starting
with and from maturity--then indeed must colonisation be reckoned, as
Dr Hind seems half to suspect, amongst the _artes perditæ_. Anything
more lamentable than a number of cultivated men--"samples" of all
kinds, physicians, and divines, and lawyers, with, of course, their
several ladies--set down upon the uncultivated soil, on the long green
grass, we cannot imagine. It seems to us quite right and unavoidable
to send out "a single class," first--good stout "limbs," without much
of "the belly"--which must mean, we presume, the idle folks, or much
of "the head," which must mean the thinkers. That class, or those
classes which cultivate the soil, and render the place somewhat
habitable, had better surely precede, and act as pioneers, before the
gentry disembark from their ships. Other classes must follow as they
are wanted, and find room and scope. What would the physician do with
his elaborate skill and courtesy, without that congregation of idlers
on whose ailments he rides and dines? What need yet of eloquent
barrister, or are his fees forthcoming, when a new estate could be
purchased with less money than would serve to defend the old one by
his pleading? Who would attend to the man of science, and his latest
experiments on magnetic currents, when every one is trying over again
the very first experiment--how to live?--where corn will grow, and
what the potato will yield? Even your clergy must be of a somewhat
different stamp from the polished ecclesiastic, the bland potentate of
our drawing-rooms. He must have something more natural--"some
rough-cast and a little loam" about him, be serviceable, accessible.
And the fair "sample" partners of all these classes, what is to become
of them? As yet, pin-money is not. There is nothing refined and
civilised; men talk of marriage as if for prayer-book purposes. Very
gross ideas!
The ancients, says Dr Hind, "began by nominating to the honourable
office of captain, or leader of the colony, one of the chief men, if
not the chief man of the state--like the queen bee leading the
workers. Monarchies provided a prince of the blood royal; an
aristocracy its choicest nobleman; a democracy its most influential
citizen." In order to entice some one of our gentry--some one of
wealth, station, and cultivated mind, to act as "queen bee" of the
colony--seeing that a prince of the blood royal, or a Duke of
Northumberland, would be hard to catch--the Doctor proposes to bestow
upon him a patent of nobility. Wealth he has already, and wealth would
not bribe him, but honour might. We see nothing ridiculous whatever in
the suggestion. A patent of nobility might be much worse bestowed;
but, unless we err greatly in our notion of what colonisation really
is, the bribe would be lamentably insufficient. The English gentleman
of fortune and of taste, who should leave his park and mansion in the
county of Middlesex, to share the squabbles and discomforts of a crowd
of emigrants--too often turbulent, anxious, and avaricious--would have
well earned his earldom. He would be a sort of hero. Men of such a
temper you may decorate with the strawberry leaf, but it is not the
coronet, nor any possible bribe--nothing short of a certain thirst for
noble enterprise can prompt them.
The other ideal of what colonisation might be is quite the reverse,
presents a picture every way opposite to this of our classical dean.
Many energetic and not uncultured spirits, wearied with the endless
anxieties, cares, hypocrisies, and thousand artificialities of life,
are delighted with the idea of breaking loose from the old trammels
and conventionalities of civilisation. Their romance is to begin life
afresh. Far from desiring to form a part of the little model-England,
they would take from the Old World, if possible, nothing more than
knowledge, seeds, and tools. To a fresh nature they would take a fresh
heart, and a vigorous arm. Fields rescued by themselves from the waste
should ripen under their own eyes. Thus, with a rude plenty, care and
luxury alike cut off, no heartburnings, no vanity, a cultivated temper
and coarse raiment--they and their families, and some neighbours of
kindred dispositions, would really enjoy the earth, and the being God
had given them. Not theirs the wish to see a matured society spring
from the new soil. They regret to think that their own rustic
community must inevitably advance, or decline, into some one of the
old forms of civilisation; but they and their children, and perhaps
their grandchildren, would be partakers of a peculiar and envied state
of social existence, where the knowledge and amenity brought from the
old country would be combined with the healthy toil and simple
abundance of the new; where life would be unanxious, laborious, free;
where there would be no talk of wars, nor politics, nor eternal
remediless distress; but a disciplined humanity, in face of a kindly
nature whose bounty had not yet been too severely taxed.
A charming ideal! which here and there is faintly and transiently
realised. Here and there we catch a description of this simple,
exhilarating, innocuously enterprising life, either in some Canadian
settlement, or in the forests of America, or even in _the Bush_ of
Australia. There is rude health in all the family; housekeeping is a
sort of perpetual pic-nic, full of amusing make-shifts; there is
rudeness, but not barbarism; little upholstery, but wife and child are
caressed with as much amenity and gentle fondness as in carpeted and
curtained drawing-rooms. If the tin can should substitute the china
cup, the tea is drunk with not the less urbanity. Such scenes we have
caught a glimpse of in this or that writer. But alas! that which
generally characterises the young settlement, let it be young as it
may--that which would so wofully disappoint our pastoral and romantic
emigrant, is precisely this: that, instead of leaving care behind
them, the care to get rich, _to get on_, as it is disgustingly
called--our colonists take a double portion of this commodity with
them. Comparatively few seem to emigrate simply to live then and there
more happily. They take land, as they would take a shop, to get a
profit and be rich. And then, as for the little community and its
public or common interests, it is the universal remark that, if
politics in England are acrid enough, colonial politics are bitterness
itself. The war is carried on with a personal hatred, and attended by
personal injuries, unknown in the old country.
One would indeed think that people, fatigued with this anxious passion
which plays so large a part in English life--this desire to advance,
or secure, their social position--would seize the opportunity to
escape from it, and rejoice in their ability to live in some degree of
freedom and tranquillity. But no. The man commerce bred cares not to
enjoy life and the day. He must make a profit out of himself; he must
squeeze a profit out of others; he toils only for this purpose. If he
has succeeded, in the new colony, in raising about him the requisite
comforts of life--if he has been even rescued from threatened famine
in England, and is now living and well housed, he and his family--you
find him full of discontent because of the "exorbitant wages" he has
to pay to the fellow emigrants who assist him in gathering in his
corn--full of discontent because he cannot make the same profit of
another man's labour _there_ that he could have done in the old
country--in that old country where he could not for his life have got
so much land as the miserable rag upon his back would have covered.
Such men carry out a heart to work, none to enjoy: they have not been
cultivated for that. The first thing the colonist looks for is
something _to export_. It was in vain that Adelaide boasted its
charming climate and fruitful fields; it was on the point of being
abandoned--so we hear--by many of its inhabitants, when some mines
were discovered. There was then something that would sell in England,
something to get rich with; so they that would have left the soil,
stayed to work in the bowels of the earth. In _the Bush_ you hear of
the shepherds and small owners of sheep living, the year round, on
"salt beef, tea, and damper," which last is an extemporised bread, an
unleavened dough baked in such oven as the usual fire-place supplies.
But fresh mutton, you exclaim, is plentiful enough; what need to diet
themselves as if they were still in the hold of that vessel which
brought them over? True, plentiful enough--it sells in Sydney at some
three-halfpence a pound; but while the sheep lives it grows wool upon
its back. For this wool it is bred. Sometimes it is boiled down bodily
for its tallow, which also can be exported. Mutton-chops would be a
waste; it would be a sin to think of them.
Set sail from England in whichever direction you will, East or West,
over whichever ocean, the first thing you hear of, in respect to
colonial society, is its proverbial "smartness"--an expression which
signifies a determination to cheat you in every possible manner. The
Old World, and the worst of it, is already there to welcome you. Nay,
it has taken possession of the very soil before the spade of the
emigrant can touch it. There lies the fresh land, fresh--so geologists
say of Australia--as it came up at its last emergence from the ocean.
You are first? No. The land-jobber is there before you. This foulest
harpy from the stock exchange has set its foot upon the greensward,
and screeches at you its cry for _cent per cent_!
There is yet a third and later ideal of colonisation--the ideal of the
political economist. With him colonisation presents itself under the
especial aspect of a great _exploitation_ of the earth. He is desirous
that capital and labour should resort to those spots where they will
be most productive. Thus the greatest possible amount of production
will be generated between man and his terraqueous globe; capital and
labour are with him the first elements of human prosperity; and to
transfer these in due proportions, and as quickly as possible, to the
new land, when they may be most profitably employed, is the main
object of his legislation. Hitherto, it may be observed, the political
economist has limited his efforts to the _undoing_ what he conceives
has been very unskilfully done by previous legislators. In this matter
of emigration he steps forward as legislator himself. It is no longer
for mere liberty and _laissez-faire_ that he contends; he assumes a
new character, and out of the theory of his science produces his
system of rule and regulation. He knows how a small village becomes a
great city; he will apply his knowledge, and by positive laws expedite
the process. Let us see with what success he performs in this new
character.
Mr Wakefield's system--for it is he who has the honour of originating
this politico-economical scheme--consists in putting a price upon
unoccupied land, and with the proceeds of the sale raising a _fund for
the transmission of emigrant labourers_. This is, however, but a
subordinate part of his project, which we mention thus separately,
because, for a purpose of our own, we wish to distinguish it from the
rest. This price must, moreover, (and here is the gist of the matter,)
be that "sufficient price" which will _debar the labourer from
becoming too soon a proprietor of land_, and thus deserting the
service of the capitalist.
The object of Mr Wakefield, it will be seen at once, is to procure the
speedy transmission in due proportion of capital and labour. The
capitalist would afford the means of transferring the labourer to the
scene of action; the labourer would be retained in that condition in
order to invite and render profitable the wealth of the capitalist.
The twofold object is good, and there is an apparent simplicity in the
means devised, which, at first, is very captivating. There is nothing
from which the colonial capitalist suffers so much as from the want of
hired labour. He purchases land and finds no one to cultivate it; the
few he can engage he cannot depend upon; the project of agricultural
improvement which, if it be not completed, is utterly null and
useless, is arrested in mid progress by the desertion of his workmen;
or his capital is exhausted by the high wages he has paid before the
necessary works can be brought to a termination. The capitalist has
gone out, and left behind him that class of hired labourers without
which his capital is useless. Meanwhile, in England, this very class
is super-abundant; but it is not the class which spontaneously leaves
the country, or can leave it. Mr Wakefield's scheme supplies the
capitalist with the labour so essential to him, and relieves our
parishes of their unemployed poor. But these emigrant labourers would
soon extend themselves over the new country, as small proprietors,--Mr
Wakefield checks this natural tendency by raising the price of land.
There is, we say, an apparent and captivating simplicity in the
scheme; but we are persuaded that, the more closely it is examined,
the more impracticable and perplexing it will reveal itself to be. As
Mr Wakefield's system has made considerable progress in public
opinion, and obtained the approval, not only of eager speculative
minds, but of cool and calculating economists--as it has already
exerted some influence, and may exert still more, upon our colonial
legislation--and as we believe that the attempt to carry it out will
give rise to nothing better than confusion and discontent, we think we
shall be doing no ill service to the cause of colonisation by entering
into some investigation of it.
We are compelled to make a division, or what to Mr Wakefield will
appear a most unscientific _fracture_, of the two parts of his scheme.
We acquiesce in fixing _a_ price upon unappropriated land, and with
the proceeds of the sale forming a fund for the transmission and
outfit of the poor emigrant. We do not say that these proceeds must
necessarily supply _all_ the fund that it may be thought advisable to
spend in this matter, or that the price is to be regulated solely
according to the wants of this emigration fund. But we do _not_
acquiesce in the proposal to fix a price for the specific purpose of
retarding the period at which the labourer may himself become a
proprietor. The doctrine of "a sufficient price" (as it has been
called, and for brevity's sake we shall adopt the name) we entirely
eschew. To the imposing of an artificial value upon the land, for this
purpose, we will be no parties. Simply to transport the labourer
hence, shall be the object of our price, beyond such other reasons as
may be given for selling at a certain moderate sum the waste land of
the colonies, instead of disposing of it by free grant. This object
may be shown to be equitable; it appeals to the common justice of
mankind. But as to the longer or shorter term the hired labourer
remains in the condition of hired labourer, for this the capitalist
must take his chance. This must be determined, as it is in the old
country, and as alone it can be determined amicably, by that current
of circumstances over which neither party can exercise a direct
control. To such collateral advantage as may accrue to the capitalist
from even the price we should impose, he is welcome; only we do not
legislate for this object--we neither give it, nor take it away.
The wild unappropriated land of our colonies belongs to the crown, to
the state--it is, as Mr Wakefield says, "a valuable national
property." In making use of this land, one main object would be to
relieve the destitute of the old country; to give them, if possible, a
share of it. What more just or more rational? To give, however, the
soil itself to the very poor would be idle. They cannot reach it, they
cannot travel to their new estate--they have no seeds, no tools, no
stock of any kind wherewith to cultivate it. The gift would be a mere
mockery. We will sell it, then, to those who can transport themselves
thither, and who have the necessary means for its cultivation, and the
purchase-money shall be paid over to the very poor. By far the best
way of paying over this purchase-money, which as a mere gift of so
much coin would be all but worthless, and would be spent in a week, is
by providing them with a free passage to the colony where they will
permanently improve their condition; obtaining high wages, and
probably, after a time, becoming proprietors themselves; and assisting
in turn, by the purchase-money their own savings will have enabled
them to pay, to bring over other emigrants to the new field of labour,
and the new land of promise.
This is an equitable arrangement, and, what is more, the equity of it
is level to the common sense of all mankind. It effects also certain
desirable objects, though not such as our theorist has in view. It
places the land in the possession of men who will and can cultivate
it, and who, by paying a certain moderate price, have shown they were
in earnest in the business; and it has transmitted, at their expense,
labourers to the new soil. With the question, how long these shall
continue labourers, it interferes not. It is a question, we think, no
wise man would meddle with. Least of all does it represent that the
capitalist has obtained any claim upon the services of the labourer,
by having paid for his passage out: this payment was no gift of his;
it was the poor man's share of the "national property." They meet in
the colony as they would have met in England, each at liberty to do
the best he can for himself.
Observe how the difficulties crowd upon us, when we enter upon the
other and indeed the essential part of Mr Wakefield's scheme. The
emigrant is not "too soon" to become a proprietor. What does this "too
soon" mean? How long is he to be retained in the condition of hired
labourer? How many years? Mr Wakefield never fixes a period. He could
not. It must depend much upon the rapidity of immigration into the
colony. If the second batch of immigrants is slow of coming in, the
first must be kept labourers the longer. If the stream of labour flow
but scantily into this artificial canal, the locks must be opened the
more rarely. But how is the "sufficient price" to be determined until
this period be known? It is the sum the labourer can save from his
wages, during this time, which must constitute the price of so much
land as will support him and his family, and enable him to turn
proprietor. Thus, in order to regulate the sufficient price, it will
be necessary to find the average rate of wages, the average amount of
savings that a labourer could make (which, again, must depend upon the
price of provisions, and other necessaries of life) during an unknown
period!--and, in addition to this, to determine the average produce of
so many acres of land. The apparent simplicity of the scheme resolves
itself into an extreme complexity. The author of it, indeed, proposes
a short method by which his sufficient price may be arrived at without
these calculations: what that short method is, and how fallacious it
would prove, we shall have occasion to show.
But granting that, in any manner, this "sufficient price" could be
determined, the measure has an unjust and arbitrary character. It is
not enough that such a scheme could be defended, and shown to be
equitable, because for the general good, before some committee of
legislators; if it offends the popular sense of justice it can never
prosper. "I know," the humble emigrant might say--"I know there must
be rich and poor in the world; there always have been, and always will
be. To what is inevitable one learns to submit. If I am born poor
there is no help for it, except what lies in my own ability and
industry. But if you set about, by artificial regulations, in a new
colony, where fruitful land is in abundance, to keep me poor, because
I am so now, I rebel. This is not just. Do I not see the open land
before me unowned, untouched? I well enough understood that, in old
England, I could not take so much of any field as the merest shed
would cover--not so much as I could burrow in. Long before I was born
it had been all claimed, hedged, fenced in, and a title traced from
ancestor to ancestor. Here, I am the ancestor!"
Tell such a man that a price is put upon the land in order that some
companions whom he left starving in England may come over and partake
the benefit of this unbroken soil,--he will see a plain justice here.
He himself was, perhaps, brought over by the price paid by some
precursor. What he received from one more prosperous, he returns to
another less prosperous than himself. But tell him that a price is put
upon the land, in order that he may serve a rich master the
longer,--in order that he may be kept in a subordinate station, from
which circumstances now permit him to escape--he will see no justice
in the case. He will do everything in his power to evade your law; he
will look upon your "sufficient price" as a cruel artificial barrier
raised up against him; he will go and "squat" upon the land, without
paying any price at all.
Indeed, the objection to his scheme, which Mr Wakefield seems to feel
the strongest,--to which he gives the least confident reply, is just
this--that, equitable or not, it would be impossible to carry out his
law into execution; that if the price were high enough to answer his
purposes, the land, in colonial dialect, would be "squatted"
on,--would be taken possession of without any payment whatever. A
moderate price men will cheerfully pay for the greater security of
title: Englishmen will not, for a slight matter, put themselves
wittingly on the wrong side of the law. But, if coupled with a high
price, there is a rankling feeling of injustice: they will be very apt
to satisfy themselves with actual possession, and leave the legal
title to follow as it may. It is true, as Mr Wakefield urges, the
richer capitalists will by no means favour the squatter; they will be
desirous of enforcing a law made for their especial benefit. But they
will not form the majority. Popular opinion will be against them, and
in favour of the squatter. It would not be very easy to have a police
force, and an effective magistracy, at the outskirts of a settlement
stretching out, in some cases, into an unexplored region. Besides, it
is a conspicuous part of Mr Wakefield's plan to give municipal or
local governments to our colonies: these, as emanating from the
British constitution, must need be more or less of a popular
character; and we are persuaded that no such popular local government
would uphold his "sufficient price," or tolerate the principle on
which it was founded.
But, even if practicable, if carried out into complete execution, it
remains to be considered whether the measure proposed would really
have the effect contemplated by our theorist--that of supplying the
capitalist with the labour he needs. With a certain number of
_labourers_ it might,--but of what character? It is not a remote
possibility that will influence a common day-labourer to save his
earnings. It is one of the terms of the proposition that high wages
are to be given; for without these there would be no emigration, and
certainly no fear of a too speedy promotion to the rank of proprietor.
It follows, therefore, that you have a class of men earning high
wages, and not under any strong stimulus to save--a class of men
always found to be the most idle and refractory members of the
community. A journeyman who has no pressing motive for a provident
economy, and who earns high wages, is almost invariably a capricious
unsteady workman, on whom no dependence can be placed; who will
generally work just so many days in the week as are necessary to
procure him the enjoyments he craves. One of these enjoyments is
indolence itself,--a sottish, half-drunken indolence. Drinking is the
coarse pleasure of most uneducated men: it is so even in the old
country; and in a colony where there are still fewer amusements for
the idle hour, it becomes almost the sole pleasure. How completely it
is the reigning vice of our own colonies is known to all. Imagine a
labourer in the receipt of high wages, little influenced by the remote
prospect of becoming, by slow savings, a proprietor of land--and
feeling, moreover, that he was retained in a dependent condition,
arbitrarily, artificially, expressly for the service of the
capitalist--what amount of _work_ think you the capitalist-farmer
would get from such a labourer? Not so much in seven years as he
would have had from him in two, if, at the end of that two, the man
had calculated upon being himself a farmer.
Recollect that it is not slave labour, or convict labour, that we are
here dealing with: it is the free labour of one man working for
another man, at wages. He gets all the wages he can, and gives as
little labour as he can. If the wages are high, and the inducement to
save but feeble, he will probably earn by one day's work what will
enable him to pass the two next in idleness and debauchery. What boon
will Mr Wakefield have conferred upon the capitalist?
The theory of a "sufficient price" is, therefore, placed in this
hopeless predicament:--1. It would be almost impossible to enforce it;
and, 2. If enforced, it would fail of its purpose. It would supply the
capitalist with inefficient, profligate, and idle workmen, on whose
steady co-operation and assistance he could never calculate.
That it may be desirable to tempt the capitalist abroad by securing
him an abundance of hired labour, something like that which lies at
his door in England, we do not dispute. But the thing is impossible.
You cannot manage this by direct legislation. You cannot combine in
one settlement the advantages of a new and of an old country. It is
not in the wit of man to bring together these two stages of society.
Our political economist is in too great a haste to be rich: he forgets
the many lessons he has given to others against bootless and
mischievous intermeddling with the natural course of things. Meanwhile
"the attempt will confound us,"--it will throw an unpopularity over
the whole subject of emigration in the minds of the working classes.
Already we hear it murmured that the land is to be made a monopoly for
the rich; that the man of small substance is to be discouraged; that
the sole object of the moneyed class is to make profit of the labours
of others; and that they are bent upon creating, artificially, in the
colony, those circumstances which put the workmen in their power in
the old country. We would earnestly counsel those who are interested
in the subject of emigration, to consider well before they teach or
practise this new "_art_ of colonisation."
Those who have not perused Mr Wakefield's book may, perhaps, entertain
a suspicion that, in thus separating the objects for which a price is
to be laid on land, admitting the one and rejecting the other, we are
only engaging ourselves unnecessarily in a theoretical debate. If a
price is to be affixed, the result, it may seem to them, is
practically the same, whatever the object may be. But the practical
result would be very different; for a very different price would be
exacted, according to the object in view, as well as a very different
motive assigned for imposing it. The price at which a considerable
fund would be raised for the purpose of emigration, would be too low
to answer the purpose of restraining the labourer from soon becoming a
proprietor of land. Those, however, who are familiar with Mr
Wakefield's book, know well that this last purpose forms the very
substance of the plan it proposes; and that hitherto no
price--although it has ranged as high as 40s. per acre--has been
considered sufficiently high to effect the object of the theorist.
"There is but one object of a price," says Mr Wakefield, (p.
347,) "and about that there can be no mistake. The sole
object of a price is to prevent labourers from turning into
landowners too soon: the price must be sufficient for that
one purpose, and no other." "The sufficient price," he says,
(p. 339,) "has never yet been adopted by a colonising
government." And a little further, (p. 341,) he thus
continues: "There are but three places in which the price of
new land has had the least chance of operating beneficially.
These are South Australia, Australia Felix, and New Zealand.
In none of these cases did the plan of granting with
profusion precede that of selling; but in none of them did
the price required prevent the cheapest land from being cheap
enough to inflict on the colony all the evils of an extreme
scarcity of labour for hire. In these cases, moreover, a
large portion of the purchase-money of waste land was
expended in conveying labourers from the mother-country to
the colony. If this money had not been so spent, the
proportion of land to people would have been very much
greater than it was, and the price of new land still more
completely inoperative. More facts might be cited to show the
insufficiency of the highest price yet required for new
land."
We will continue our first quotation from p. 347. The manner in which
Mr Wakefield himself exposes the difficulties of fixing the
"sufficient price," and the very inadequate expedient he points out
for obviating, or avoiding, these difficulties, may throw some further
light upon the matter.