COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
We have already observed that a vast deal of discontent prevails in
colonies. With all the natural advantages of a fruitful soil and a
heavenly climate, colonists are always dissatisfied with their
position; because, in a pecuniary point of view, they are always
poor. And why are they so? The answer is a startling one. The
excess of their abundance is the first cause of their poverty; the
instability of their government, the second. They possess more than
they can dispose of, and are borne down by the weight of their
possessions. Place the markets of England and the labour of Ireland
within their reach, and they would become millionaires were they to
cease to be colonists; but so long as they continue to be colonists,
governed by a Power altogether distinct from that which rules over
Englishmen in their native land, they will continue to be helpless,
oppressed, and poverty-stricken.
They alone, among British subjects, are living under an absolute
Monarchy; the caprices of which render property insecure and of
uncertain value; neutralizing industry, paralyzing enterprise, and
crushing with fatal authority the energies and the spirits of the
people.
In the absolute recklessness of colonial rule, no sooner does private
enterprise raise its head, and throw out the first feelers on the way
to wealth, than a watchful government steps forward, and careful only
to secure gain to itself, crushes out (in the first feebleness of
existence,) the germ of vitality.
In all new countries in which the sources of wealth are imperfectly
developed, the expense of applying the means necessary to their
development is so enormous, as to leave but small profit to the
speculator. Labour is always dear in new countries, where there is
so large an outlet afforded to the labourer to escape from the toils
of servitude, and become himself an occupant or an owner of the soil.
All that he gains by the exchange is an ideal independence; which is,
unhappily, but too attractive to the uneasy spirit of modern
improvement.
The prosperity of a colony is the aggregate of individual wealth.
the prosperous advance of the colonist, is, therefore, the first duty
of a superintending Government. But the first aim of that watchful
guardian is ever to wring from the settler as much as may be
extracted by pressure. The lowest demand for land, which would be
dear at half-a-crown an acre, is eight times that amount. No sooner
does the settler, by his science or industry, discover some lucrative
opening, than government steps in with its restrictions, its taxes
and duties, and at once cuts down the budding promise. If the design
be to bring to light the mineral wealth of the country, royalties are
immediately imposed; and no chance of profit is left to the
speculator when the rents are raised according to the probabilities
of success. It is the same with all other speculations; no one will
embark, even in a timber-trade, when he knows that he is placing his
capital at the mercy of a grasping and short-sighted Government.
How much more lucrative, and how much more statesman-like would it
prove, were our rulers to display as much good policy as the peasants
of Norfolk, who do not pluck their geese until they be well
feathered! Colonists, like cabbages, should be allowed to acquire
the necessary strength, and attain the proper dimensions, before they
be seriously operated upon. You might then cut and nick them with
reasonable hope of their sprouting forth anew.
But the worst evil of an absolute Government arises from the
destruction in the minds of the people of all faith and confidence in
its truth and honour.
One Secretary of State countermands the edicts of his predecessor;
and as the Executive Government of a colony is composed of the paid
servants of the Crown, and is merely the machine of the Secretary for
the time being, the ordinances which it promulgates are distinguished
by only one uniform feature -- the announcement of broken promises
and betrayed faith.
The inhabitants of colonies, disappointed and deceived, have no trust
in their rulers, and dare not invest their capital in enterprises
which may be ruined in a moment by an arbitrary edict. At one
period, for instance, they may have been induced, upon the faith of
the Government, to purchase remission tickets, which entitle the
owner to a certain quantity of land wherever he may choose to select
it. A succeeding Government confines this right of selection within
certain narrow limits; whilst another decides that the holder shall
be allowed to purchase with these tickets only land that is entirely
valueless. At one period men are encouraged to attempt the
production of colonial spirits; but no sooner is a large amount of
capital expended, than it is made illegal to distil. Some parties
are permitted to purchase land at a distance from the capital: and
after years of toil and expense are deprived of all protection from
the Government, and allowed no compensation for its withdrawal.
But it were vain to attempt to enumerate the acts of broken faith on
the part of an absolute Government, from whose decree there is no
appeal, and from whose oppression no redress. The moral evil to
colonies is crushing and fatal.
The best informed among English statesmen know nothing of colonies:
but their hardihood in legislating for them is, unhappily, equal to
their ignorance. It was only last year (1846) that the bill for the
government of Western Australia was (according to newspaper report)
opposed in the House of Lords by a noble duke, on the ground, as his
grace alleged in an animated and interesting speech, of the
wretchedly immoral state of the colony, arising from the system of
transportation, which so deluged the country with convicts that it
was now a perfect hell upon earth! A noble lord, then
Under-secretary for the Colonies, apologised, with the best grace he
could assume, for this lamentable state of things, and assured the
noble duke that the Government was quite aware of the evil, and was
turning its attention to a remedy for it. Had any one of the noble
lords present known anything at all about the subject of the debate,
he might in a few words have relieved the anxiety of the Government,
by informing it that Western Australia is not, and never has been, a
penal settlement -- that convicts are not sent thither for
punishment; that even a single bush-ranger has never been known
within the territory; and that, in the words of an Adelaide journal,
"it is as free from stain as any of the rural districts of England."
Another Australian colony (that of Port Phillip) calls for the
attention of Government more imperatively, perhaps, than any other of
these settlements. At present an appendage to Sydney, but situated
at a most inconvenient distance from that capital, it is compelled to
remit thither between fifty and one hundred thousand pounds annually
for rates, taxes, and duties, not a tithe of which ever finds its way
back again. It is deprived of roads, bridges, and all public works
of importance, solely because it is friendless at home, voiceless and
unrepresented. Might Englishmen be made to feel that interest in
colonies which in general they are ever ready to accord to the
unfortunate, they would glow with indignation at the wrongs, the
injustice, and the oppression under which the inhabitants of distant
settlements bend in silence. "If you don't keep your colonies in a
state of dependence," are the memorable words of Lord Stanley, in
May, 1846, "of what use are they?" Such has ever been the
narrow-minded and unstatesman-like policy of the British Government.
And yet even the infant colonies of the empire, though fettered,
cramped, and swathed like the young progeny of the Esquimaux, are
useful still to the Mother Country. They afford the best market for
her produce; and when freed from the pressure of their bonds, like
plants released from the torturing confinement of their earthenware
prison, and allowed to extend their roots abroad in the free soil of
Nature, they will display new strength and viridity, and bring forth
fruit in increased abundance. Her Majesty's present Secretary of
State for the Colonies (Earl Grey) entered upon his office with truly
liberal and right-minded views, which, we trust, will be carried out
into operation wherever found necessary and practicable. "There can
be no doubt," said his Lordship in the House of Lords, shortly before
taking office, "that in our colonial empire we have the advantage of
possessing warm friends and allies in all quarters of the world, who,
commanding great natural resources, are united in heart and soul to
defend our trade and our interests, and to take part with us in all
contests against our enemies. We have garrisons of the cheapest kind
in every quarter of the universe. On the other hand, the colonies
have this inestimable advantage -- they have the glory and security
to be derived from an intimate connexion with the greatest, the most
civilized, and the most powerful nation on the face of the earth.
They have the glory -- and they feel it to be a glory -- of calling
themselves British subjects, and feeling that in defence of their
interests and best rights, the power and might of this country are
ready at any moment to be called forth and exercised in their behalf.
This is a substantial advantage of the most important kind to the
colonies; and they are fully sensible of it. And if with this we
pursue a liberal policy, and extend to them the dearest privilege of
Englishmen -- THE PRIVILEGE OF SELF-GOVERNMENT, AND DO NOT
VEXATIOUSLY INTERMEDDLE WITH THEIR INTERNAL AFFAIRS; in short, if we
pursue a liberal policy towards them, both commercially and
politically, we shall bind them to us with chains which no power on
earth may break, and the connexion between the parent state and those
great dependencies may continue until they far exceed us in
population."
These are generous sentiments and profound truths, and they have shed
the bright beams of Hope over that vast colonial empire to which they
refer.
In legislating for colonies, let it not be forgotten that one of the
chief drawbacks to their prosperity is the want of confidence in the
stability and permanency of existing regulations. There can be no
success, and there can be no safety, whilst those regulations and laws
are liable to the influence of peculiar views or individual caprice.
It is the people themselves, for whose government the laws are
intended, who should be allowed to impose, to modify, or to expunge
them.
The predominating evil in colonies is THE WANT OF CONFIDENCE AND
FAITH IN THE GOVERNMENT.