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 upon the rate of the increase of
population in the colony, especially by means of immigration,
which would determine when the place of a labourer, turning
out 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 according to these would be the
labourer's power of saving the 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 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, ten acres would support him well; in
South Africa, or New South Wales, he might require fifty or a
hundred 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 Mother-country say, '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
relations to each other, that in depending on them
exclusively 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 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 eyes.
_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 was--whether too plentiful
or too scarce--no legislature, 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 superabundant, and the
price too high, he would lower the price; if he saw that
labour was neither scarce nor superabundant, he would not
alter the price, because he would see that it was neither too
high nor too low, but sufficient."
Admirable machinery! No steam-engine could let its steam on, or off,
with more precision. The legislature or governor "could always tell
whether or not labour for hire was too scarce or too plentiful," and
open or close his value accordingly. "No legislature, hardly any
individual could be in doubt" about the matter! Indeed! when was hired
labour ever thought too cheap--in other words, too plentiful--by the
capitalist? When was it ever thought too dear--in other words, too
scarce--by the labourer? Could the most ingenious man devise a question
on which there would be more certainly two quite opposite and
conflicting opinions? And suppose the legislature to have come to a
decision--say that the labour was too scarce--there would still be this
other question to decide, whether to _lower_ the price, in order to
tempt emigrants, might not be as good a means of rendering labour more
plentiful, as to _raise_ the price in order to render it still more
difficult for labourers to become landowners? Here there is surely
scope for the most honest diversity of opinion. One party might very
rationally advise to entice thither the stream of emigration:--"Let it
flow more copiously," they might exclaim, "though we retain the waters
for a shorter time;" while the party thoroughly imbued with the
doctrine of the "sufficient price" would devise fresh dikes and dams,
and watch the locks more narrowly.
In his "sufficient price," Mr Wakefield has discovered the secret
spring that regulates the economical relations of society. He has his
hand upon it. He, or his lawgiver, will henceforward regulate the
supply of labour, and the remuneration of labour, upon scientific
principles. Unenviable post! We should infinitely prefer the task of
the philosopher in _Rasselas_, who fancied himself commissioned to
distribute rain and sunshine, in just proportions, to all the farmers
in the neighbourhood.
It is quite curious to observe how strong a faith our projector has in
his theory of a sufficient price, and how singular a bias this has
exerted on his mind in some other matters of speculation. He finds
that slavery, both in olden and modern times, has been all owing to
"cheapness of land." Could he have fixed his sufficient price upon the
arable land in Chaldea, or about the cities of Athens and Rome,
neither the patriarchs, nor the Greeks, nor the Romans, would have
known the institution of slavery. "Slavery is evidently," he says, "a
make-shift for hiring; a proceeding to which recourse is had only
where 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 was
a choice."--(P. 324.) Most logical "_therefore_!" The mode of hiring
is preferred by those to whom experience has taught all this; but
slavery, so far from being the "make-shift," is the first expedient.
It is the first rude method which unscrupulous power adopts to engross
the produce of the earth. The stronger make the weaker labour for
them. "It happens," he continues, "wherever population is scanty in
proportion to land." It happens wherever people prefer idleness to
work, and have been able to coerce others to labour for them, whether
land has been plentiful or not. Was it abundance of land, or the
military spirit, that produced the amiable relationship between the
Spartan and the Helot?--or was there any need of a "sufficient price"
to limit the supply of good land in Egypt, which lay rigidly enough
defined between the high and low margin of a river? Or could any
governor, with his tariff of prices, have performed this duty more
effectually than the Nile and the desert had done between them?
But the most amusing instance is still to follow. "It was the
cheapness of land that caused Las Casas (the Clarkson or Wilberforce
of his time, as respects the Red Indians of America) to invent the
African slave-trade. It was the cheapness of land that brought African
slaves to Antigua and Barbadoes."--(P. 328.) It was the cheapness of
land! If land had been dearer, the Spaniards would have worked for
themselves, and not have asked the Red Indians for their assistance!
If land had been dearer in Antigua and Barbadoes, the climate would
have lost its influence on European frames, and Englishmen would have
laboured in their own sugar plantations!
Doubtless the difficulty of obtaining hired labour has been sometimes
a reason, and sometimes an excuse, for the continuance of slavery. It
is also true that the willingness of the discharged slave to work, as
a hired labourer, is almost a necessary condition to the extinction of
slavery. But, losing sight of all our amiable passions and
propensities, to describe slavery as originating altogether in the
scarcity of hired labour, (as if the slave had first had the offer
made to him to work for wages, and had refused it,) and then to
resolve this cause again into no other circumstance than the
"cheapness of land," is something like monomania.
In America, those states which have colonised so rapidly have not been
the slave-holding states, nor have they needed slaves; nor has land
been scarce; nor has much been done by the mere capitalist who goes to
hire labour; but almost all by the man who goes there to labour
himself, upon property of his own. And who, after all, we would ask,
are the best of emigrants, in every new country where the land has yet
to be reclaimed? Not those who seek the colony with an intention of
making a fortune there, and returning to England; nor even those who
go with some feeling that they shall be the Cæsars of the village; nor
the easy capitalist, who expects, from the back of his ambling nag, to
see his fields sprout with corn and grow populous with cattle. The
best of emigrants, as pioneers of civilisation, are those who intend
to settle and live on the land they shall have reduced to cultivation,
who go to labour with their own hands on property they shall call
their own. It is the labour of such men that has converted into
corn-fields the dark forests of America. That ardent and indefatigable
industry which has been so often admired in the peasant
proprietor--the man who has all the hardy habits of the peasant and
all the pride of proprietorship--is never more wanted, never more at
home, than in the new colony. We have a sympathy with these men--we
like their hearty toil, their guiltless enterprise. This is not the
class of men we would disgust; yet it is precisely this class who go
forth with their little store of wealth in their hand, or with hope
soon to realise it, whom the "sufficient price" of Mr Wakefield would
deter from entering the colony, or convert, when there, into
unwilling, discontented, uncertain labourers.
The rights of every class must, of course, be determined by a
reference to the welfare of the whole community. The poorer settler
must have his claims decided, and limited, according to rules which
embrace the interest of the empire at large. We hope we shall not be
misunderstood on so plain a matter as this. We do not contemplate the
settler as arriving on the new land unfettered by any allegiance he
owes to the old country. He belongs to civilised England; carries with
him the knowledge and the implements which her civilisation has
procured him; lives under her protection, and must submit to her laws.
But in limiting the rights of the settler in a land spreading open
before him--where nothing has taken possession of the soil but the
fertilising rain, and the broad sunshine playing idly on its
surface--you must make out a clear case, a case of claims paramount to
his own, a case which appeals to that sense of justice common to the
multitude, which will bear examination, which readily forces itself
upon an honest conviction. It must not be a mere speculative measure,
a subtle theory, hard for a plain man to understand--benevolently
meant, but, intricate in its operation, and precarious in its
result--that should come betwixt him and the free bounty of nature.
Not of such materials can you make the fence that is to coop him up in
one corner of a new-found continent. Laudable it may be, this
experiment to adjust with scientific accuracy the proportion of
capital and labour; but a man with no peculiar passion for political
economy, will hardly like to be made the subject of this experiment,
or that a scientific interest should keep his feet from the
wilderness, or his spade from the unowned soil. It would be an
ungracious act of parliament, to say the least of it, whose preamble
should run thus--"Whereas it is expedient that the labouring
population emigrating from England should be 'prevented from turning
too soon into landowners,' and thus cultivating the soil for
themselves instead of for others, Be it enacted," &c. &c.
Although this theory of a "sufficient price" is the chief topic of Mr
Wakefield's book, yet there are many other subjects of interest
discussed, and many valuable suggestions thrown out in it; and if we
have felt ourselves compelled to enter our protest against his main
theory, we are by no means unwilling to confess our share of
obligation to one who has made colonisation the subject of so much
study, and who has called to it the attention of so many others. It
was he who, struck with the gross error that had been committed of
stocking certain of our colonies with too large a proportion of the
male sex, first pointed out that the period of marriage was the most
appropriate period for emigration. Do not wait till want drives out
the half-famished children, but let the young married couple start
whilst yet healthy and vigorous, and not broken down by poverty. Some
might be disposed to object that these will do well enough in England.
They might, but their children might not. It is wise to take the
stream of population a little higher up, where it yet runs clear; not
to wait till the waters have become sluggish and polluted.
In a literary point of view, Mr Wakefield's book is an extremely
entertaining one. It is difficult to believe what we are told in the
preface, and hear with regret, that it was written in ill health, so
elastic a spirit is observable throughout. The work assumes the form
of letters passing between a statesman, who is in search of
information and theory on the subject of colonisation, and a colonist
who has both to give. One would naturally conclude, from the letters
themselves, that both sets were written by the same author, and that
the correspondence was but one of those well-understood literary
artifices by which the exposition of certain truths or opinions is
rendered more clear or interesting. The letters of the statesman have
that constrained fictitious aspect which responses framed merely for
the carrying on of the discussion are almost sure to acquire. At all
events, it was hardly necessary for Mr Wakefield to describe himself
in the title-page as "_one_ of the writers;" since the part of the
statesman, in the correspondence, is merely to ask questions at the
proper time, to put an objection just where it ought to be answered,
and give other the like promptings to the colonist.
With many readers it will add not a little to the piquancy of the
work, that a considerable part is occupied in a sharp controversy with
the Colonial Office and its present chief. Mr Wakefield does not spare
his adversaries; he seems rather to rejoice in the wind and stir of
controversy. What provocation he has received we do not know: the
justice of his quarrel, therefore, we cannot pretend to decide upon;
but the manner in which he conducts it, is certainly not to our taste.
For instance, at p. 35 and p. 302, there is a littleness of motive, a
petty jealousy of him (Mr Wakefield) attributed to Lord Grey as the
grounds of his public conduct--a sort of imputation which does not
increase our respect for the person who makes it. But into this
controversy with the Colonial Office we have no wish to enter. So far
as it is of a personal character, we can have no motive to meddle with
it; and so far as the system itself is attacked, of governing our
colonies through this office, as at present constituted, there appears
to be no longer any controversy whatever. It seems admitted, on all
hands, that our colonies have outgrown the machinery of government
here provided for them.
In the extract we lately made from Mr Wakefield's book, some of our
readers were perhaps startled at meeting so strange an appellation as
_Mr Mothercountry_. It is a generic name, which our writer gives to
that gentleman of the Colonial Office (though it would seem more
appropriate to one of the female sex) who for the time being really
governs the colony, and is thus, in fact, the representative of the
mother country. The _soubriquet_ was adopted from a pamphlet of the
late Mr Charles Buller, in which he very vividly describes the sort of
government to which--owing to the frequent change of ministry, and the
parliamentary duties of the Secretary of State--a colony is
practically consigned. We wish we had space to quote enough from this
pamphlet, to show in what a graphic manner Mr Buller gradually narrows
and limits the ideas which the distant colonist entertains of the
ruling mother country. "That mother country," he finally says, "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 are we to look for it?" He finds it eventually
in some back-room in the large house in Downing Street, where some
unknown gentleman, punctual, industrious, irresponsible, sits at his
desk with his tape and his pigeon-holes about him. This is the
original of Mr Mother-country.
That which immediately suggests itself as a substitute and a remedy
for the inefficient government of Downing Street, is some form of
local or municipal government. As Mr Wakefield justly observes, a
local government, having jurisdiction over quite local or special
matters, by no means implies any relinquishment by the imperial
government of its requisite control over the colony. Neither does a
municipal government imply a republican or democratic government. Mr
Wakefield suggests that the constitution of a colony should be framed,
as nearly as possible, on the model of our own--that there should be
two chambers, and one of them hereditary. The extreme distance of
many, of most of our colonies, absolutely precludes the possibility of
their being efficiently governed by the English Colonial Office, or by
functionaries (whether well or ill appointed) who have to receive all
their instructions from that office. Throughout our colonies, the
French system of centralisation is adopted, and that with a very
inadequate machinery. And the evil extends with our increasing
settlements; for where there is a "seat of government" established in
a colony, with due legislative and executive powers, every part of
that colony, however extensive it may be, has to look to that central
power for the administration of its affairs.