ENGLAND

AND

AMERICA.

A COMPARISON OF THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL

STATE OF BOTH NATIONS.

TUVO VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

LONDON:
t?

RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET.

LONDON

PRINTED BY \VILLIAM NICOL, CLEYELAND-ROW, ST. JAME S.
1833.

1111•1"--

CONTENTS OF VOLUINIE II.

NOTE X.

ORIGIN, PROGRESS AND PROSPECTS, OF SLAVERY IN AMERICA.

Declamation against slavery—history of the origin and pro-
gress of slavery in America—cause of slavery—prospects of
slavery in the British West Indios—in the United States-
possible means of abolisbing slavery in the United States

-without a servile war - pago 1

NOTE XI.

APOLOGY FOR TITE AMERICAN TARIFE.

Opinions of Englishmen respecting the tariff—moral advan-
tages of the tariff—econornical advantages of the tariff—dif-
fcrence of feeling between the southern and northern states
respecting the tariff—the tariff good, upon the whole, for
the people of America, and thcrefore a work becoming de-
mocratic government—when the tariff may be repealed with
great advantage to America page 47

NOTE XII.

TLIE ART OF COLONIZATION.

I ntroduction—nature and limits of the subject—the ends of
colonization as respects the ruother-country—the extension
of markets—relief from excessive nurnbers—enlargement of
the field for employing capital— ends of colonization

PRINTEI> BY w. NICOL, CLEVELAND-ROW, Sr. JAMES S.

T

15. CONTENTS.

respects the colony—the rneans of colonization—the dis-
posal of waste land—the removal of people—co-operation
of the mother-country—the foundation of colonies—the g-o-
vernment of colonies

- page 61

APPENDIX.

No. 1.

Proofs of the industry, skill and commercial disposition, of the
Chinese people -
page 265

No. 2.

Proofs of the rapidity with which waste latid rises in value,
wherever people congregate, in new colonies - page 287

No. 3.

Part of a correspondence between the English government and
a body of individuals desirous to found a colony - page 305

NOTE X.

ORIGIN, PROGRESS AND PROSPECTS OF SLAVERY IN
AMERICA.

Declamation against slavery history of the
origin and progress of slavery in America-
cause qf slavery—prospects of slavery in Me
British ¡'Vest Indies—in the United States-
possible means of abolishiy slavery in the
United States witliout a servile war.

" THE existente of slavery," says 1.54r. Stuart,*
" in its most hideous forra, in a country of abso-
lute in most respects, is one of those
extraordinary anomalies for which it is impossible
to account."

The writer of the declaration of American in-
dependence has also writtcn—" What an incom-
prehensible machine is man I who can endure
toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment, and death
itself, in vindication of his own liberty, and the
next moment be deaf to all those motives whose
power supported him through his trial, and inflict
on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which
is fraught with more misery tban ages of that
which he rose in rebellion to oppose. But we must

Vol. ii. page 113.
VOL. II. 13

2 ORIGIN, PROGRESS AND PROSPECTE

wait with patience the workings of an over-
ruling Providence, and pope that that is preparing
the deliverance of these our suffering brethren.
When the mensure of their tears shall be full-
when their tears shall have involved heaven itself
in darkness—doubtless a God of justice will
awaken to their distress, and, by diffusing a light
and liberality amongst their oppressors, or, at
length, by his exterrninating thunder, manifest
bis attention to things of this world, and that they
are not left to the guidance of blind fa,tality."

" Every American," says an English writer,*—
every American who loves his country should de-
dicate bis whole life, and every faculty of his soul,
to efface the foul blot of slavery from its character.
If nations rank according to their wisdom and
their virtue, what right has the American, a
scourger and murderer of s'aves, to compare him-
self with the least and lowest of the European
nations, much more with this great and humane
country where the greatest lord dare not lay a
finger on the meanest peasant ? What is freedom
where all are not free ? where the greatest cf God's
blessings is limited, with impions caprice, to the
colorir of the body ? And these are the men who
taunt the English with their corrnpt parliament,
with their buying and selling votes. Let the world

Edinburgh Review, No. LXI. Art. " Travellers in Ame-
rica," attributed to Mr. (now Lord) Brouzbam.

OF SLAVERY IN AMERICA. 3

judge which is the most liable to censure—we,
who in the midst of our rottenness, have torn off
the manacles of slaves all over the world, or they,
who, with their idle purity, and useless perfec--
tion, have remained mute and careless whilc
groans echoed and whips clanked round the very
walls of their spotless congress. We wish well to
America—we rejoice in her prosperity—and are.
dclighted to resist the absurd impertinence with.
which the character of her people is often treated
in this country. But the cxistence of slaver y in
America, is an atrocious CriDIC, with which no
mensures can be kept—for which her situation

or is no sort of apology—which makes liberty
itself distrusted, and the boast of it disgusting."

These passages describe the feeling of English-
men generally, and of not a few Americans, with
respect to slavery in America. But when was
any great evil cured by mere declamation ? and
what but mere declamation is there in these pas-
sages ? Libe other evils, slavery in America has its
causes ; and until these be removed the evil effect
must continue. No Englishman, no American,
as far as I know, has taken the trocable to aseer-
ta.in the causes of slavery in America. Izad this
been done, it might perhaps appear, that the situ-
ation of America does affbrd some sort of apology
for the foul stain upon her character. The causes
of slavery in America will be found in a brief bis-
tory of its origin and progress ; and, these ascer-

4 ORIGIN, PROGRESS AND PROSPECTS

tained, the prospects of slavery may be examined
with some chance of a useful result.

The first European colony in America was
planted by Spaniards in the island of St. Domingo,
or, as it was originally called, Hispaniola. :The
first Spanish colonists of St. Domingo received
from the Spanish crown extensive grants of the
most fertile land. The settlers carried with them
an abundance of capital, and each settler obtained
more good land than he could possibly cultivate.
But land and capital are not the only elements of
production. In orden to produce wealth the first
colonists of St. Domingo wanted labourers. If
some of them had laid out a portion of their
capital in conveying labourers from Spain, the
other settlers, who had not so expended a portion
of their capital, would have been able to pay for
the service of such labourers more than those
could have paid, who had dirninished their capital
by conveying labourers from Spain. Those who
had not so ditninished their capital, offering
higher wages than those who would have
enjoyed what the former had expended capital
to procure. This does actually occur very often
in modem English colonies. Thus, unless all the
settlers had agreed that each should take out a
number of labourers in proportion to his capital,
none of them could have had any motive for lay-
ing out capital in that:way. Moreover, if such an
agreement had been possible, and its execution

OF SLAVERY IN AMERICA. 5

practicable, the labourers taken out by the capi-
talists, to a place where every one could obtain
plenty of good land for a trifle, would have ceased
to be labourers for hire ; they would have become
independent landowners, if not competitors with
their former masters in the market oflabour. This
also does actually occur every day in several
modem colonies. Consequently, the first Spanish
settlers in St. Domingo did not obtain labourers
from Spain. But, without labourers, their capital
must have perished, or at least must soon have
been•diminished to that small amount which each
individual could employ with bis own hands.
This has actually occurred in the last colony
founded by Englishmen—the Swan River settle-
ment—where a great mass of capital, of seeds, im-
plements and cattle, has perished for want of
labourers to use it, and where no settler has pre-
served much more capital than he can employ
with bis own hands. The first settlers in St.
Domingo remaining without labourers, their only
prospect was a solitary, wild, half-savage exist-
ence. Nay, they might have died for want. Of
the colonies planted in modem times, more have
perished than have prospered. Those settlers
might have died of want, because their own la-
bour, not being combined in any degree, but
being cut up into fractions as numerous as the
individuals, might not have produced enough (o
keep them alive. In the colonies of modem times,

6 ORIGIN, PROGRESS AND PROSPECTS OP SLAVERY IN AMERICA. 7

thousands of people have died from this cause,
and some in the last colony founded by England.
Urged by this want of labourers, the first settlers
in St. Domingo persuaded the Spanish govern ment
to include in each of its grants of land a propor-
tionate grant qf natives. The most ancient grants
of land in Hispaniola mention the number of
natives which each grantee was authorised to treat
as cattle. This was the origin of slavery in
America.

The colonists, by means of the supply of labour
thus obtained, readily acquired wealth ; for they
could now employ many hands in the same work,
at the same time, and for a long period of time
without intermission. Other Spaniards, inflamed
by the accounts which reached Spain of the suc-
cess of the first colonists, hurried to St. Domingo,
and, obtaining grants of natives as well as land,
prospered like d'ose who had gone before them.
In the course of a few years, the prosperity of

excited, as that of the United States (loes
now, the envy and admiration of Europe. But the
colonists, regardless of the falle, killed the goose
for its golden eggs : they destroyed the feeble
natives by over working them. The colony had
hardly reached a very flourishing condition when
the source of its prosperity was dried up. In this
emergeney, it occurred to the dejected settlers
that the neighbouring islands were inhabited. To
those islands SODIO of them repaired and seized

the natives, whom they sold to the planters of
St. Domingo. This was the first siave trade car-
ried on in America.

But the discovery of a supply of labour, which
seemed inexhaustible, was not ca.lculated to teacit
the colonists either caution or humanity. As they
had overworked and destroyed the natives of St.
Domingo, so they worked to death the slaves
whom they procured from other islands. It has
been said that in religious and moral England,
there are men who make a practice of buying an
old or diseased horse for the value of its skin,
and driving it without food tul it dies ; the mo-
tive assigned for such barbarity being the clear
profit obtained by the use of an animal, which
costs nothing for keep while in use, and yet
sells, when dead, for as much as it cost alivie.
Somewhat in like tnanner, the planters -of St.
Domingo found it more profitable to work slaves
to death, and replace them, than to preserve their
existence by suiting their work to their strength.
This \vholesale nmrder of stolen Indians produced
a feeling of indignation in Europe. Las Casas,
the Clarkson or Wilberforce of his time, founded
a sect of abolitionists ; a panty closely resembling
in many points the European and American abo-
litionists of the present day. They spared no
pains for the attainment of their object. By ex-
citingthe best feelings of hu man nature, by spread-
ing throughout Europe detailed accounts of the

8 ORIGIN, PROGRESS AND PROSPECTS

cruelties to which Spanish slaves were subject, by
circulating tracts, by an extensive correspondence,
by worming their way into courts and councils,
by enlisting on their side the tender but powerful
influence of women, by extraordinary watchful-
ness to seize every opportunity, and diligence in
turning it to account, and still more by their un-
alterable constancy of purpose, they at length
made an impression on the government of Spain.
But although the King of Spain listened to the
abolitionists, he was unwillingto ruin the plantees:
he consented to protect the Indians to the utmost
extent, using modern language, that was compa-
tible with the rights of property and the interests
of the slave owners : in other words, he expressed
compassion for the slaves, because this was re-
quired by public opinion, but he would do nothing
for them. The question was in this state when
the abolitionists themselves proposed, that the
planters might spare the feeble natives of America
by procuring hardy negro slaves from Africa. The
suggestion was adopted, and found to answer its
purpose. Red slavery was abolished, and black
slavcry established ; and this was the beginning of
a slave trade between Africa and America.

The first English settlers in America, obtained
from queen Elizabeth a grant of land to thc
extent of two hundred miles in every direction
from -the spot on which they inight establish
themselves. They found a country which they

OF SLAVERY IN AMERICA. 9

described as a paradise, and to which the queen,
delighted with their account of it, gave the narre
of Virginia. Instead, however, of proceeding
without delay to cultivate a very small part of
the fertile territory at their disposal, they were
ternpted by its very extent to wander up and
clown upon it ; until the capital which they had
taken with them being consumed they were
reduced to fatnine, and gladly seized an opportu-
nity of returning to England. In the following
year, another settlement was made under the same
grant and on the same spot ; but though on this
occasion the setticrs had an ample stock of seeds,
implements and cattle, with provisions for two
years, every one of thern perished ; by what means,
indeed, can only be inferred, since the skeleton
of one man was all that remained of this colony
when a third body of emigrants from England
reached thc place of settlement. In two years
this third body of emigrants had disappeared like
the second. Thus, three attempts to take advan-
tage of abundance of good " the sole cause,"
says Adam Smith, " of the prosperity of new colo-
nies," entirely failed ; attempts, too, directed by
sir Walter Raleigh, a man eminently qualified to
insure their success. Why tiloso attempts failed,
may be conjectured from what happened to the
first body of English settlers in America that
(lid not perish.

The first English colony in America that did

w

10 ortIGIN, PROGRESS AND PROSPECTS

not perish, ovas planted in Chesapeakc Bay under
a grant from king James 1., who bestowed good
land upon the settlers, not by the acre or the
mile, but by degrees of latitude, and without
limit as to longitude. In this case, a few hun-
dred persons, amply provided with capital, and,
led, too, by men of experience and conduct, ob-
tained more land of very great natural fertility
than existed in the densely peopled country that
they had abandoned. In the course of twenty
years, they were joined by nearly as many thousand
emigrants ; yet at the end of that period the
population of the colony was less than two thousand
souls. - This most uncomrnon decrease of people
was occasioned by extreme misery. Of the first
settlers, each was able to obtain as much good
land as he desired to call bis own. F•om this
great abundance of good land, nothing being
done lo counteract it, there acose two evil con-
sequences in particular. la the first place, nearly
every one became indepenclent of all the others,
working by himself in solitude, and therefore
dividing his labour amongst so many occupations,
that he could bestow but little of bis time on the
production of food, while that small portion of
his labour which was so employed produced but
little, because scarce any operation of agricul-
turre is very productive unless there be employed
in it severa! pairs of hands in combination and
constantly, in the same particular work, at the

OP SLAVERY IN AMERICA. 11

same time and for a considerable period of time
together. Secondly, as nearly every one took
possession of a great deal more land than he could
possibly cultivate, the greater part of what he pos-
sessed became, by becoming his, as a desert which
surrounded him. No roads were made, because
as nearly every settler did every thing for himself
and by himself, that combination of power which
is indispensable to the construction of a road
was out of the case. Thus each settler was sur-
roundcd, not mercly by a desert, but by a desert
which was ncxt to impassable. Further, lunch
of the capital which had been taken out, such as
cattle, seeds and implementa, perished either on
the beach or in the forest, because the owncrs of
it could not preserve that well-regulated laborar
without which it is impossible that capital should
be increased or even preserved. As every colo-
nist was isolated, so all wanted both the means
and the motive for raising any surplus produce ;
and any unfavourable accident, consequently,
such as a wet harvest time or an incursion of the
Indians, reduced rnany to want, cut off some by
fitmine, and brought the colony to the verge of
destruction. The records and traditions of
ginia leave no doubt, that the first .inhabitants
of that country suffered, du•ing a long course of
years, every conceivable hardship.

The colony was on the point of being aban-
doned, when five huncired emigrants, most of

12 ORIGIN, PROGRESS AND PROSPECTS OF SLAVERY IN AMERICA.
13

them of the labouring class, arrived from Eng-
land. He who is accustomed only to what takes
place in densely peopled countries, may imagine
that this infiux of labourers into a society, whose
only want was the want of labourers, must have.
produced the most happy results. But this was
not the case : the evil cause existed still and pro-
duced the same evil effect. The great plenty of
land led nearly all the newly arrived emigrants to
become isolated settlers ; there were more colo-
nists for a time, but not one was in a better con-
dition, or had a better prospect, in consequence of
an increase of numbers. At length, the whose
body of settlers, dispersed, and prevented from
helping each other, were unable to raise enough
food for their subsistencc. Their bright hopes
frustrated, general disappointment produced dis-
content, selfishness and a reckless disregard of
all social ties. The founders of Virginia were not
more remarkable for their great disasters than
for their atrocious crimes. They are described
as resembling hungry wild beasts ; and if we
must speak of thern as 'turnan beings, it is not
harsh to say, that they appeared to have crossed
the Atlantic for the purpose of cutting each others
throats without restraint from any law.

Such was the deplorable state of this colony
when a circumstance occurred, which, though
accidental and apparently tritling, has provcd
one of the most important events in the history

of America. A Dutch ship laden with slaves
made its appearance in Jatnes's river. Want of
provisioris had induced the captain to put in
there., and he was therefore ready to dispose of
his living cargo for a trifle. These slaves were
bought ; and this was the beginning of slavery in
the United States.

The slaves were set to work, some in raising
food, some in cultivating tobacco. For the first
time in this colony there was combination of
labour and division of employments. Tobacco,
although denounced by king James as a vile and
nauseous weed, was already prized in Europe ;
and the soil and clirnate of Virginia were pecu-
liarly suited to its growth. Those settlers, there-
fore, who by obtaining slaves were enabled to
employ many hands constantly in one work, in
preparing the ground for tobacco plan ts, in water-
ing the plants, in preventing the growth of weeds,
and in gathering, drying and packing, the leaves,
now raised a cornmodity exchangeable in the
markets of Europe. In this way, they obtained
various supplies, which they could not have ob-
tained in any other way. In this way also they
found the means of purchasing more slaves. As
the number of slaves increased, the cultivation of
tobacco was extended ; some roads were made
and solid houses were built. In the course of
a few years, the face of the colony was changed,

14 ORIGIN, PROGRESE AND PROSPECTE OF SLAVERY IN AMERICA.
15

and the tobacco planters of Virginia became noted
for their prosperity.

The frightful condition, both physical and
moral, of the settlers, up to the time when they
obtained slaves, was almost a bar to the emigra-
tion of women. It is supposed that the propor-
tion of males to females, who emigrated to this
colony during the first thirty years of its exist-
ence, was abo ye tvventy to orle, While the colony
was in a statc of misery and disorganization, nono
of the settlers could have desired, nor could any
of them have easily procured, wives to share their
misfortunes. But when they liad acquircd the
means of comfort and order,they naturally longed
to be husbands and fathers. As that longing was
created by the combined and constant labour of
slaves, so was it gratified. The settlers offered to
the captains of English ships two hundred and
fifty pounds of prime tobacco for each young
woman of pure health and good tern per, whom the
lattcr should bring from England, harmless, and
bearing a certificate of honest manners from the
clergyman of her parish. At that time, as at
present, England abounded in young women,
bcautiful, gentle and virtuous, but without the
least prospect of happiness in marriage. The
English captains, therefore, easily fulfilled their
commissions, and finally conducted a very exten-
sive commerce in tobacco and marriageable girls.

From this curious traffic, considering the
abundante of good land in Virginia, could not
have taken place without slavery, sprung
large proportion of those illustrious Americans,.
who dared the first trial of perfect equality in
government, amongst whites.

The prosperity of Virginia led to the establish-
ment of more colonies, as well in the islands as on
the main land of America. With the inerease of
white population in America, the number. of Ame-
rican slaves increased, in some mensure by
breeding, but for the most part by importation.
from Africa. At length the horrors of the African
slave trade raised up a new set of abolitionists.
The value of slavery to the white men of America
would be proved, if by nothing else, by the great
and manifold obstacles which the abolitionists
had tú surmount before their object was even
partially effected. Their purpose was to abolish
slavery in America. With greater exertion and
difficulty than attended the establishment of some
wide-spread religions, they have accomplished no
more than the abolition of a trade in slaves be-
tWeen Africa and a part of America.

Las Casas probably knew how slavery bogan in
America. By his proposal to substitute black
Africans for red Indians, he seems to have ac-
knowledged the, difficulty, he may oven have per-
ceived the impossibility, of combining the labour
of freemen and raising a large net produce in

1

16 PROGRESE AND PROSPECTS

countries where every one may obtain more good
land tiran he can possibly cultivate. But Las
Casas had lived in America and witnessed the
operation, first of abundante of good land, and
next of slavery. The modera project of abolition
was conceived by a youth in an English univer-
sity ; and, though Clarkson visited the West
Indies, it was not till iris feelings had been in-
fiamed by contemplating from a distance the
abominations of slavery. At all events, Clarkson
and Wilberforce expected that the abolition of
the African slave trade would put an end to
slavery in America. Never was there a greater
mistake.

The American and English slave trade with
Africa was not abolished till the English in the
West India islands and the Americans on the
continent had procured an arnple stock of slaves.
Their property, neither in these nor in the progeny
of these, was affected by the abolition of the trade
with Africa. In order to keep up their stock
of slaves, in order to increase that stock indefi-
nitely, it was now required that, instead of resort-
ing to Africa for fresh supplies, they should breed
slaves at borne. But in doing this, they found no
difficulty. Thus, slavery in America., instead of
being extinguished by the abolition of the African
trade, was placed on a super foundation than
when it depended on that traffic.

It must be acknowledged, however, that the

OF SLAVERY IN AMERICA. 17

abolition of the African trade has produced some
initigation of the evils of slavery in America.
*hile that trade continued, it was often found
more profitable to work slaves to death and re-
place them, than to preserve them by suiting
their work to their strength. In order that they
should not decrease, still more in order that they
should increase, it becarne necessary to treat them
with some consideration, with just so much con-
sideration as a stock-farmer bestows upon bis
cattle. So far, the slaves of America owe to the
abolitionists a decided improvement in their con-
dition.

But this improvement has not extended over
all British America.. An important distinction
must llene be drawn bctween the islands and the
main land ; a distinction the more necessary be-
cause Englishinen generally suppose, that there
is no great difference, if any, between the state of
slavery in the United States and the state of
slavery in the West Indies. The good land of the
islands is of litnited extent, while that of the
continent has no assignable limits. The same
piece of land will not produce sugar for many
consecutive years withont a great increase of
expense ; and nearly all the good land of the
islands has been exhausted by the cultivation of
sugar. Since that land was exhausted, the growers
of sugar on the continent have liad a great ad-
vantage over the same c]ass of people in the

VOL. II.

18 ORIGIN, PROGRESS, AND PROSPECTS

islands. So great has been the advantage, that
assuredly, if the produce of the continent liad
been let into the markets of Europe on equal
terms with the produce of the islands, the
islanders would, sorne time ago, have ceased to
produce sugar. In the British islands especially,
it is obvious that the cultivation of sugar has been
preservad by rneans of a monopoly of the British
market. But as that monopoly was required by
the exhaustion of the soil of the West Indies, so
it encouraged the further exhaustion of that soil,
till the proas of sug-ar growing in the West
Indies were, reduced to that amount which, with
the monopoly, wasjust sufficient to prevent sugar-
growing from being abandoned. Consequently,
since the abolition of the African siave tradc,
the planters of the West Indies have not liad
strong motive for increasing the number of their
slaves. It was not the abolition of the African
trade, but the exhaustion of all the good land at
their disposal, which deprived them of this
motive. Between those two events there is no
connection, except parity of time. If the Afri-
can siave trade- had not been abolished, if had
continued to render unneccssary the preservation
of slaves, still the greater profit of killing and
replacing slaves. would not have counteracted the
loss of profit arising from the necessity of cul-
tivating land, which eyery year decreased in
fertility.

OF SLAVERY IN AMERICA. 19

But, with a close rnonopoly of the finest market
in the would, the planters of the British West
Indios might for ages have continued to grow
sugar with some profit, and might have retained
motive for keeping up the number of their slaves.
If they liad preserved a close monopoly of the
British market, the people of Britain would, pro-
baMy, have malle up for the continued decrease
the of insular land by continually paying
a higher price for insular sugar. Though the
produce would have been less and less, the proa
might have remained the same, in consequence of
the price becoming higher and higher. But "the
West India interest" as the island planters are
called, though they have long enjoyed very great
infiuence in the legislature of Britain, were not
permitted to flourish in this way at the expense
of the British people. During the last war, the
Eng]ish took from the Dutch their continental
settlernents in America ; and at the close of the
war they determined to keep those colonies, mak-
ing compensation to the Dutch by agreeing to pay
a vast sum to the emperor of Russia, provided
(such is the complication of European politics)
the Belgian.s and the Dutch, who haced cach other
and liad been united at the peace, should not
choose to separate. The West India interest
could easily have prevented this acquisition ; but
they were blincl to its consequences. It broke
up their monopoly of the British market. By

20 ORIGIN, PROGRESE AND PROSPECTS OF SLAVERY IN AMERICA. 21

bringing continental sugar into compctition with
insular sugar, it prevented the island planters
from raising the price of their sugar in propor-
tion to the deerease in the fertijity of their land.
This acquisition was a mortal blow to the West
India interest. Ever since it took place none
of them have made large profits, many of them
have been ruined, by the cuitivation of sugar; and
the total ruin of the wholc of them, in so far as
their West India property is concerned, seems
inevitable. These cireumstances have had a
peculiar effect on insular slavery. What with
the progressive exhaustion of insular land and the
opening of the British market to sugar produced
on land that «ras not exhausted, the island plan-
ters have, for some years past, been without a mo-
tive for keeping up the number of their slaves,
while they have had the strongest motive for
working them to death. The result is wel l known ;
a decrease of population such as if pestilente and
famine had done the work.

Turning to the United States, we find that the
abolition of the African slave trade has led to a
striking improvement in the condition of - slaves.
The increase of white population in America (lid
not increase the proportion of free labourers to
capitalists, and did not therefore diminish the
value of slaves. On the contrary, as every free-
man could readily obtain land of his own, with
that increase of whites, of freemen, persons

wanting labourers bo ye a greater proportion to
labourers, and the demand for slaves increased ac-
cordingly. As every one, not being a slave, could
obtain for a trifle more good land than he could
possibly cultivate, all capitalista felt the want of
combined labour. All those whites, consequently,
svho settled in the slave states beeame anxious to
procure slaves. The African trade being abo-
lished, th-mse who wanted slaves could obtain
them only ; .om those Arnericans who already
possessed them. This great demand for slaves,
great in proportion to the increase of whites in the
slave states, and to the increased demand in the,
other states for the produce of cornbined labour,
led to the establishment of a new trade in Ame-
rica ; the trade of breeding slaves for sale. The
extent and importance of that trade may be esti-
mated by reference to one or two facts. The black
population of the slave states has increased
much more rapidly than the white population of
those states ; and the slave population has in-
creased at a sornewhat greater ente than the free
population of the whole Union. There are two
millions of slaves, and if we reckon the average
value of a slave at 601., the capital invested in sla-
very is 120,000,0001. Taking time yearly mercase
of slaves in the United States to be at least
60,000, and the average value of a slave to be
601.; the produce in money obtained by the
breeders ofsl aves, merely for breeding, is3,600,0001.

22 PROGRESS, AND PROSPECTS OF SLAVERY IN AMERICA. 23

per annum.* These statements will suffice, with-
out further explanation, to show that the abolition
of the African slave trade has worked a great
improvernent in the condition of American siaves.

But the abolition of the African slave trade
woulcl not have had this effect, if the original
cause of slavery had not steadily continued to
operate. Considering how slavery arose, and in
what way it has progressed in America, its ori-
ginal and permanent cause seems to be super-
abundance of land in proportion to people. Other
considerations come to the support of this view
of the subject.

That superabundance of land to which the
English economists, from Adam Smith clown-
wards, attribute the prosperity of new colonies,
has never led to great prosperity without some
kind of slavery. The states of New England, in
which negro slavery was never permitted, forro
no exception to the general rule. Adam Smith,
in bis chapt.er on " the causes of the prosperity of
new colonies," tries to establish by a pretty long
argument that the wonderful prosperity of the
Greek colonies was owing to " dearness of labour,"
to " high wages," which enabled the bulk of the
people to save and to increase as rapidly as pos-

* 2001. and 3001. are common prices for a well taught and
able slave. As much as 6001. is sometimes given for a young
man of superior skill in some lines of industry. See Stvart,
vol. 2,page 195.

sible whereas the unquestionable fact is, that
all the work performed in those colonies, whether
in agriculture or manufactures, was performed
by siaves. All work in Brazil has been performed
by the labour of siaves. In New South Wales
and Van Di emen's Land, prosperous colonies,capi-
talists are supplied with slave-labour in the shape
of convicts. That they set the greatest value
on this labour, s proved by their extreme fear lest
the system of t. 'nsportation should be discon-
tinued ; although the evils which it produces are
too many to be counted, and too great to be
believed in- England. Finally, though the puri-
taus and the followers of Penn, who founded the
colonies of New England, flourished with super-
abundance of land and without negro siaves, they
did not fiourish without slavery. Though their
religious sentiments prompted them to abstain
from the purchase of negroes, so severely did
they, en that very account, feel the want of con-
stant and combine, that they were led to
carry on an extensive traffie in white raen and
children, who, kidnapped in Europe, were vir-
tually sold to those fastidious colonists, and
treated by them as siaves. But the number of
Europeans kidnapped for the purpose of sale in
those parts of America whcre negroes conld not
be sold, though considerable, in proportion to
the number of settlers tiren wanting combined
labour, was small svhen compare(' with the nuin-

24 ORIGEN, PROGRESS AND PROSPECTS

ber of Europeans, who, first decoyed to America
by the offer of a passage cost free, and the promise
of high wages, were then transferred for terms of
years to colonists who paica for their passage.
These, under the name of redemptioners, were, for
a long period, the principal servants of those colo-
nies in which slavery was forbidden by law. Even
so lately as within the last twenty years, and
especially during the last war between England
and America, which put a stop to Irish emigra-
tion, vast numbers of poor Germans were decoyed
to those states which forbid slavery, and there
sold for long terms of years to the highest bidder
by public auction. Though white, and free in
name, they were really not free to becoxne inde-
pendent landowners, and therefore it was possible
to employ their labour constantly and in combi-
nation. Lastly, even in those colonies which
never permitted negro slavery, negroes have
always been considered, what indeed, there seems
reason to conciude that they are by nature, an
inferior order of beings. A black man never was,
nor is he now, treated as a man by the white men
of New England.* There, where the rnost corn-

" The freedmen of other countries have long since dis
-appeared, having Leen amalgamated in the general mass.

.Here there can be no amalgamation. Our manumitted bonds-
men have remained already to the third and fourth generation,
a distinct, a dcgraded and a wretched race." President Nott
Union..College, New York--quoted by Mr. Stuart..

OF SLAVERY IN AMERICA. 25

píete equality subsists amongst white men, and
every white man is taught to respect himself as
well as other white men, black men are treated
as if they were horses or dogs. Thus, notwith-
stand ing su perabundance of land, black men have
always found it difficult to risa abo ye the condi-
tion of labourers for hire ; and thus such blacks
as either escaped, or were allowed to go free, from
the slave states, to settle in the other states, pro-
vided servants for the capitalists of those other
states. The large prop - -*ion of black servants in
New England has always been remarked, and it is
remarkable at this moment in Philadelphia, the
strong bold of quakerism.* In this way, the

" New people of colour in the churehes, and such of them as
are there, assemble in a comer separate from the rest of the people."
Stuart, vol. 1, pago 196.

* " it is computad that there are in Philadelphia 10,000 free
coloured people." Journal of Travels in the United States of
North Anzerica and in Lower Canada, performed in the year 1817,
by John Palmer. The number of blacks in Philadelphia is very
much grcater than in 1817. By the last Census of the Ameri-
can people it appears, that in 1831, there were in the state of
Pennsylvania 37,900 free coloured persons; in the state of New
York 44,869 ; and in Ola 37,930.

" The whole establishment (on board the < North Ame-
rica' steam-boat, New York) of kitehen servants, waitcrs and
cooks, all people of colour, on a great seale." Stuart, vol. 1,
pago 40.

" Nothing can be more disgraceful to the people of the
United States, nor more inconsistent with their professed prin-
cipies of equality, than their trcatment of free people of colour.

26 ORIGIN, PROGRESS AND PROSPECTS

slavery of sorne states has, not very indirectly,
bestowed upon other states much of the good
and some of the evil, that alise from slavery.

In another way, the states which forbid slavery
have gained by it immensely without any corres-
poncling evil. The states of America must be
viewed as one country, in which there is a consi-
derable distribution ofcmployments, and in which
exchanges take place of the different productions
raised in different parts of the Union. "The divi-
sion of labour," says Adam Smith, meaning the
distribution of employments, " is litnited by the
extent of the market." The great fishing esta-
blishments of the non-slaveholding colonies viere
set up for the purpose of supplying the slaves of
the West Maryland, Georgia
and the Carolinas, who viere employed in raising
tobacco, rice and sugar ; commodities exchange-
able in the markets of Europe ; commodities which
have never been raised on any large scale in Ame-
rica except by the combined labour of slaves. A
g reat parí of the commerce of the northern states,
of Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Balti-
more, has always consisted of a carrying trade
for the southern states ; the one work of raising
produce for the markets of Europe and con veyinig
it thither being so divided, that the produce was

They constantly subject them to indignities of cvcry kind, and
'refuse altogether to eat or drink with diem.' Stuart, vol. I,
page 507.

OF SLAVERV IN AMERICA. 27

raised by the southern and conveyed by thc north-
ern states ; a division of employments which
depended on the labour of slaves, since, if a pro-
duce had not been raised fit for distant markets,
earriers would not have been required, and since
such produce could not es have been raised by
labour, uncertain and scatterecl as free labour
ahvays is with superabundance of good land.
At the present time, which is the great market
for the surplus produce of farmers in the non-
slave holding states on the western rivers ? New
Orleans ; and how could that P.-- ,at rnarket have
existed without slavery Capitalists again,

" The following is Mr. Timothy Flint's account of a Louis-
iana plantation. " If we could lay out of the question the
intrinsic evils of the case (he liad bcen alluding to the state of
thc slaves) it would be a cheering sight, that which is pre-
sentid by a largo Louisiana plantation—the fields are as level
and regular within figures, as gardens. They sometimes con-
tain 3 or 4000 acres in one field ; and 1 have seca from a dozen

to twenty ploughs, all making their straight furrows through a
field, a mile in depth, with a regularity which, it would be sup-
posed, could he obtained only by a line." This description is
quite correct. The drills of the finest turnip fields in Norfolk,
or even on Mr. Rennie's, of Phantassies, beautiful farm in East
Lothian, are not more accurately drawn ; nor is the whole
management more admirable than the lines and the cultivation
of the cano on one of the great plantations of Louisiana."
Stuart, vol. 2,page 915.

t " He (Colonel Coleman) had come up the Appalachicola
and Chattabooche rivers, and was now on bis way to New
Orleans to buy pork and provisions for his slaves. He has

28 ORIGIN, PROGRESS AND PROSPECTS

natives of the states which forbid slavery, reside
during part of every year in the slave states, and
reap large profits by dealing in rice, sugar and
cotton, exchangeablecommodities, which, it must
be repeated, have never been raised to any extent
in America except by the labour of slavcs. A
New Englander may boast that.slavery was never
permitted in bis state, as a baker may pride bitn-
self on being, less cruel than bis neighbour the
butcher; but the dependence of the northeru
on the southern states for a market for their sur-
plus produce, for a demand for the produce of
their industry in a thousand shapes, is as close as
the dependence on each other of the baker and
the butcher who deal together. In tire division
of employtnents which has tallen place ir; America,
the far prcfcrable share, truly, has fallen to the

only got forty slaves upon bis property, but he tells me that
twenty slaves are necessarv for every 100 acres of sugar cano
land." Stuart, vol. 2, pago 155.

" One of our stopping places for wood not far abo ye the
confluente of the Mississippi and Ohio, was at Mr. Brox's farm
on the west sirle of the river. He has 700 acres of fine land,
about 100 'wad of cattle, ami an innumerable quantity of pigs.
He says he has no difficulty in selling all the produce of bis
farm ; he disposes of bis stock lo the New Orleans tutchers, who
go all over this country to make their purchases ; and there
are n-lerchants who have great depóts of grain, salteó pork and
other agricultural produce, .which they scour the country to col-
lect, and afterwards carry to New Orleans. Stuart, 2,
page 302.

OF SLAVERY IN AMERICA,

northern states ; but that division of employ-
ments did not precede, on the contrary it fol-
lowed, combination of labour in particular works
and the surplus exchangeable produce obtained
by that first ituprovement in t.he productive powers
of industry. The states, therefore, which forbid
slavery, having reaped the economical benefits of
slavery, without incurring the chief of its moral
evils, seem to be even more indebted to it than
the slave states. If thosc who forbid slavery
within their own legal jurisdiction, should also
resolve to have no intercourse or concern with
slave-owners, to do nothing for tln -, and to ex-
change nothing with them, we should see an
economical revolution in America, that would
prove better than a thousand arguments the value
of slavery in a country where every free man can
obtain plenty of good land for a triflc.

Let us now turn for a mornent to thosc new
countries in which the people have had super-
abundance of good land without slavery. Not
single one of these societies has greatly prospered :
many have perished entirely, and some remain in
a deplorable condition. From these last, two
striking exaruples may be selccted.

It would be unfair to dwell here on the rniscry,
in conjunction with superabundante of good land,
which belongs to many savage nations ; but an
allusion to such cases is not misplaced, if made
only for the purpose of explaining that the

30 ORIGIN, PROGRESS AND PROSPECTS OF SLAVERY IN AMERICA. 31

present enquiry is confined to the operation of
superabundante of good land on civilized so-
cieties, amongst whom private property is es-
tablished, who possess some knowledge of the
productive arts, and who practico to sorne extent
that division of classes and employments which,
on the principie of mutual assistance, adds to the
productive powers of industry. The most re-
markable instance, perhaps, of such a society,
having at its disposal an unlirnited quantity of
good land, is the Spanish colony of Buenos Ayres.
The vast plain which lies between the South
Atlantie and the mountains of Chili contains
hardly any sterile land. Nearly the whole of it
consists of the most fertile soil, which, though in
a state of nature, exhibits vegetation more luxu-
riant than could be produced in the greater part
of Europe by the most skilful cultivation. This
land is naturallyfit for cultivation; since through-
out the pampas there are no dense forests like
those which once covered Pennsylvania, nor any
swamps like those which still remain on the
shores of the gulph of Mexico. On a district
extending one hundred and eighty miles from the
coast,nature produces the richest crops of nothing
but thistles and clover, and on another district,
extending four hundred and fifty miles further to
the west, nothing but a profusion of grass Ivithout
a weed. The elimate of the whole plain resembles
that of Italy with this difference in its favour,

that it is not rendered unwholesome by malaria.
This, then, was the finest situation in the world,
in which to take advantage of abundante of good
lan.d. The Spaniards, who got possession of these
fertile plains, emigrated from one of the civilized
European states. according to the best in-
formation that can be obtained of a society now
more than half barbarous, this colony never pros-
pered. Capital has never obtained high profits,
nor labour high wages. On the contrary, the
colony seems to have languished throughout its
careen, and though the people have increased,. it
has been less quickly than people now mercase
in sorne of the oldest and most densely peopled
countries of Europe. During some ycars this
colony has been an independent state ; but the
people, dispersed over their vast and fertile plains,
have almost ceased to cultivate the good land at
their disposal ; they subsist principally, many of
-diem entirely, on the flesh of wild cattle ; they
have lost most of the arts of civilized life ; not a
few of them are constantly in a state of deplorable
misery ; and if they should continue, as it seems
probable that they will, to retrograde as at present,
the beautiful pampas of Buenos Ayres will soon be
fit for another experiment in colonization. Slaves,
block, red or yellow, would have cultivated those
plains, would have been kept together, would
have been mode to assist each other ; would, by
keeping together and assisting each other, have

32 ORIGIN, PROGRESS AND PROSPECTE

raised a surplus produce exchangeable in distant
markets ; would have kept their masters together
for the sake of markets ; would by combination
oflabour,have promoted division of employtnents ;
would, cattle themselves, have preserved amongst
their masters the arts and habits of civilized life.
That slavery might have done all this, seems not
more plain than that so tnuch good would have
been bought too dear if its price liad been slavery.

The last colony founded by Englishmen has
severely felt the want of slavery. On the west
coast of New Holland there is abunclance of good
land, and of land too, cleared and drained by
nature. Those who have left England to settle
there have carried out, amongst them, more than
enough capital to employ such of theta as were
of the labourin,g class. The capital taken out,
in seeds, implemcnts, cattle, sheep and horses,
cannot have been less, in money value, than
200,0001. ; and the labourers must have amounted
to a thousand at the very lowest. 1Vhat is become
of all that capital and all those labourers ? The
greater part of the capital has perished ; some few
of the labourers have died of hunger ; some, falling
into extreme want, have been glad to escape to
Van Diernen's Land, where there are slaves ; and
the remainder are independent land-owners, iso-
lated, not well Supplied with even the necessaries
of life, and as wild as Englishmen could become
in so short a time. This colony may prosper in

OF SLAVERY IN AMERICA.
33

the course of years ; but for the present it must be
considered, when compared with the expectations
of those who founded it, a decided failure. Why
this failure with all the elements of success, a fine
climate, plenty of good plenty of capital
and enough labourers ? The explanation is easy.
In this colony, there never has been a class of
labourers. Those who went out as labourers no
sooner reached the colony than they were tempted
by the superabundance of good land to become
landowners. One of the founders of the colony,
Mr. Peel, who, it is said, took out a capital of
50,0001. and three hundred persons of the labour-
ing class, men, women and children, has been
represented as left without a servant to make his
bed or fetch hico water from the river.* The
writer of the first book concerning this colony
states, that landing in Cockburn Sound with
goods taken from England, he did, with some
difficulty, procure workmen to place his goods
under a tent, but that there, for want of workmen
to remove . them, they remained till they were
spoiled, as the tent became rotten. In such a
state of things it was impossible to preserve
capital. While Mr. Peel was without servants
bis capital perished ; but ás 'soon as his capital
liad perished for want of servants, those who had

* My authority for this statement is a gentleman, lately in
England, who went to the Swan River as Mr. Peel's agent.

VOL. II.

34 ORIGIN, PROGRESS AND PROSPECTS OF SLAVERY IN AMERICA. 35

been his servants insisted on his giving them em-
ployment. Having tried a Efe of complete in-
dependence and felt the pains of hunger, they
now wanted to become labourerseágain. At one
time Mr. Peel was to be seew imploring his
servants to remain with him, at another eseaping
from their fury at his not being able to give them
work. The same thing happened in many cases.
In each case, it was owing to the facility with
which people, labourers when they reached the
colony, became independent landowners. Sorne
of these independent landowners died of hunger ;*
and at a time too when, as it happened, a large
supply of food had just reached the colony from
Van Diemen's Land. Why viere they starved ?
because where they liad settled was not known
to the governor, or even to themselves ; for,
though they could say " we are: here," they
could nottell where any one else was such was
the dispersion of these colonists in consequence
of superabundance of good land. Many of them,
both capitalists and labourers, capitalists without
capital and labourers without work, have removed
to Van Diemen's Land ; the cost of passage for
the latter being defrayed by settlers in that slave-
holding prosperous island. Some have wandered
from the original place of settlement towardl
King George's Sound, in search, say they, of

* My authority is Mr. Pecl's agent, Mr. Ehnsley.

better land. Others, men of unusual courage
and energy, remain on the 'banks of the Swan
River, knowing well that the partial ruin of this
colony is not owing to want of good land. These,
one of whose chief inducements to settling in this
colony was an undertaking from the English go-
vernment that no convicts should be sent thither,
are now begging for a supply of convict labour:
They want claves. They want labour which
shall be constant and Hable to combination in
particular works. Having this, they would raise
a net produce and have division of employinents.
Not having convict labour, they will long for
African slaves ; and would obtain them, too, if
public opinion in England did not forbid it.
Without cither convicts or slaves, they may have
herds of wild cattle, 'which supply food almost
without labour ; but they cannot have much
more. Considering the superabundance of capital
and labourers in England, the disposition of
capitalists and labourers to emigrate in search of
new fields of employment, the great natural ad-
vantages of this colony, and the faise accounts of
its prosperity now and then received in England,
we should wonder that ernigration to the Swan
River had almost ceased, if that very fact did not
show that by settling in this colony no well in,
formed man can expect to better his condition.
But the failure of this last experiment in coloni-
zation will have one good effect, if it help to teach

36 ORIGIN, PROGRESS AND PROSPECTS

the English and Americans, that the original and
permanent cause of slavery in America is super-
abundante of good land.

The prospeets of slavery in the -West Indies
and the United States may now be briefly con-
sidered ; and, the cause of slavery being ascer-
tained, with some chance of a useful result.

The slaves of the West Indies have just been
turned finto apprentices. As if on purpose that
they should still be made to work like slaves, the
planters' monopoly of the British rnarket is pre-
served. Or, perhaps, since the negroes would not
be worth a farthing apiece without the monopoly,
it is preserved as an excuse for giving cornpensa-
tion to the planters. The monopoly being worth
2,000,000/.a year, the English buy it for 20,000,000/.
let the sellers keep it, and will pay 2,000,0001. a

Miss 11artineau, the most entertaining of writers on poli-
tical economy, in order to show how a society obtains wealth,
has described the supposed case of some English people
settling in a waste country, living together, combining theír
labour and dividing their employments. It is in thís way, and
only in this way, no doubt, that wealth is ever obtained ; but
any thing like the supposed case hardly ever, perhaps •never,
existed. If Miss Martineau had plantel her settlers in an is-
land of such an extent in proportion to their nmnbers that they
should necessarily have lived together, her story would have
been perfect ; but she places them in a vast wilderness of good
land, in a situationl,vhieh, if we are to judge by ali experience,
is inconsistent with the conabinatiou of labour and the division
of employments.

OF SLAVERY IN AMERICA. 37

year as before, by way of bribing the planters to
make the apprentices work like slaves. This,
they cala reformed legislation. It will probably
be defeated by the apprentices ; but, at all events,
in however bungling or, may be, bloody a way,
slavery will soon tease throughout the British
West Indies.

If means be not soon found to abolish slavery
in the United States, gradually and peaccfully, ít
seems more than probable, that, what with the
rapid increase of American slaves, already more
than two millions, and the emancipation of eight
hundred thousand English slaves in the neigh-
bourhood of the United States, the slaves of the
continent will, at no distant day, right themselves
in the midst of Jefferson's thunder. " The Ameri-
cans" says Mr. Stuart, "conceive that the increas-
ing nutnbers of their slaves require more coercive
laws and greater severity of treatment ; and are
proceeding on this principie, every year increasing
the hardships of their almost intolerable situation,
and adding new fetters to those which are already
too heavy for thetn to wear." But what will the
Americans conceive when the fetters worn by
eight hundred thousand English slaves shall have
been broken either by act of parliament or by
those siaves themselves ? Greater harshness in
proportion to the greater danger will doubtless
be their policy. That policy, which Mr. Stuart
says, " no one unconnected with Atnerica can.

38 ORIGIN, PROCRESS ANI) PROSPECTE

wish may prove well-founded," is founded on
experience. Experience has taught all slave-
owners, that education and slavery, kindness and
slavery, cannot go on together. As the slaves of
the United States shall become more munerous,
and as the danger of their learning that they are
men shall become greater, either they must be
set free, or greater pains rnust be taken to main-
tain their ignorante, torpidity and submissive-
ness ; to bold them, mentally, in the state of
brutes. But this policy may defeat its object,
leading, sooner perhaps than might otherwise
have happened, toa great servile war. That the
slaves, once roused, would easily prove a match
for their immediate masters rnay not be doubt-
ful ; but if the force of the wholc Union were
brought against them, ten millions of whites to
two millions of blacks, they would, ahnost cer-
tainly, be conquered, and for a time subdued as
before. In either case, there would be plenty of
thunder ; in either case, the prospect is as black
as possible.

Will the Americans voluntarily set free their
slaves, not having any substitute for the combiried
and constant labour of slaves ? The answer is, that
they will not, of their own accord, destroy pro-
perty which they value at 120,000,000/. and which
is really worth that sum at market.

Is there any prospect of such a fall in the value
of slaves as might render slavery not worth pre-

OP SLAVERY IN AMERICA. 39

serving ? Of this there is not, at present, the
slightest prospect ; because the white population
wanting slaves increases as fast almost in num-
ber,as the slaves themselves, and faster in capital,
for using which slaves are wanted ; because super-
abundance of good land will continue to,make
slaves valuable, by enabling every freeman who
so picases to become an independentlandowner.

But, considering that the Americans pay
3,600,0001. a year for the increase of slave labour,
that the English pay about the same sum for
the maintenance of idle paupers, might not these
two sucos, making together 7,200,0001., be so em-
ployed in conveying to America the surplus labour
of England, that, before very long, free labOnr-
should be:substituted for s'ave labour in America?
Supposing the cost of passage from England to
America to be 101.,* the yearly expenditure of
7,200,000/. in this way would take from England
to America 720,000 labourers every year; about
twelve times as many as the yearly increase of
American slaves. In three years, the number of
labourers so taken to America would be 160,000
more than the whole number of American slaves.
In three years, then, it might be supposed, this
great amount of immigration would extinguish
slavery in America by the substitution of free

The actual cost of a pauper's passage, with more and
better food on the voyage than he obtains in England, is
about 7/.

40 ORIGIN, PROGRESS AND PROSPECTE

labour. But who would suppose this, that has
observed the effects of superabundace of good
land.* The 2,100,000 labourers taken to America
might all of them, and would most of them, cease
to be labourers for hire soon after landing in the
new country; they would become independent
landowners;

competitors with American capital-
ists in the market of labour, and buyers of slaves.
So vast an amount of immigration, therefore,
instead of dirninishing, would probably augment,
the value of American slaves, and render the abo-
lition of slavery in America still more difficult.

Still, as in America the whites are ten millions
and the blacks but two millions ; and as the
whites increase at nearly as great a rate as the
blacks ; as the twelve millions will, there can
hardly be any doubt, become twenty-four mil-
lions in the course of twenty-five years or less, is
there no prospect that land will risa in value, so
that every freeman shall no longer be able to
obtain for a trifie more good land than he can
possibly cultivate ; so that the value of slaves
shall fall ; so that the proprietors of slaves, being
most of thern proprietors of land, shall be ready
to liberate their slaves, gaining on the one hand
as much as they rnight lose on the other, or more ?
Of this there is no prospect ; for there reasons.

See extract from Captain Basil Hall's lettcr to Mr. Wilmot
Horton, in a note to Note I.

OP SLAVERY IN AMERICA. 41

First, because, however •apidly population may
increase, the quantity of land appropriated by
individuals will increase at the same cate; be-
cause, in short, the colonization of new wilderness
will go on as fast as population shall increase, so
that every freeman will still be able to obtain for
a trine, more good land than be can possibly
cultivate. Secondly, because the land east of
the Alleghany mountains has been exhausted to a
considerable extent, not merely for the growth of
sugar, as in the West Indies, but fairly worn out
by unskilful cultivation ;•* and thus, from this

A writer in the Edinburgh Review, (Professor 111‘Culloch,
I suspect) attributes the exhaustion and abandonment of land,
in the eastern states, toa want of animal manure in canse-
quence of the work of cattle being performed by men. Would
not farms in England soon be exhausted if English farmers had
no manure but what is furnished by their working cattle ? There
are many districts of Europe, such as the mountainous coasts
of Spain and Italy, not to mention great part of China, where
agricultura! work is almost entirely performed by men, and
where, notwithstanding, land is kept in the highest state of
fertility by means of animal manure. The exhaustion of land
in America is one of the evils, over and abo ye slavery, result-
ing from superabundance of good land. The single, indepen-
dent, landowner and cultivator, might not be able to live, still
less to raise any surplus produce, if he were fixed on the same
piece of land. He whose labour is already divided amongst
so many occupations, would act a foolish part in adding, to
them the occupation of fetching manare, from a great distante
perhaps, and the occupation of laying manure on his land, when
for a t rifle he can obtain of land very rich by natura more than he

42 ORIGIN, PROGRESS AND PROSPECTS

exhausted district to new land in the western
districts, emigration, both of whites and slaves,

can possibly cultivate. His labour being an isolated fraction,and
being divided again amo ngst many employments, he must depend
on nature for more than half the work. Keep him isolated, so
that none shall hclp him nor he hele any, so that he shall be
obliged to do for himself all the many things required by him ;
do this, and prevent him from moving from one piece of land
to another as the natural fertility of eacla piece ís exhausted,
and the result must be poverty, like that of the small French
cultivator or Irish cottier. " we fiad all the farmers," says

Stuart, " perfectly aware of the importante of fallow and
green crops, but gencrally of opinion that they dare not attempt
that system, on account of the high price of labour in this
country in relation to the value of land ; ne sumptus fructum
superet, according to the sound advice of Varro. The price"
[scarcity at any price] " of labour too, is the great obstacle to
all sorts of ornamental improvements, suela as the formation
of gardens and keeping them up." rol. 1, pace 254.

" Let the settler be well advised, and not acquire land which
has been already impoverished by cropping, and which has
become foul and lost the vegetable mould." Stuart, 1,
page 254.

" When you talk to them, (the farmers) of the necessity of
manuring with a view to preserve the fertility of the soil, they
almost uniformly tell you that the expense," [meaning scarcity
at whatever expense] " of labour renders it far more expe-
dient for them, as soon as their repeated cropping very much
diminishes the quantity of the grain, to lay down their land in
grass, or make a purchase of new land in the neighbourhood,
or even to sell their cleared land and proceed in quest of a new
settlentent, than to adopt a system of rotation of crops assisted by
rnanure. There is great inconvenience,according to the notions
of the British, in rernoving from one farm to another ; but they

OF SLAVERY IN AMERICA. 43

has taken place to a great amount and is still
going on rapidly ; so that in those exhausted dis-
tricts, a fall rather than a rise in the value of
land may be expected. Thirdly, because where
the moral evils of slavery exist, there whites set-
tle for one purpose only, that of gaining by the
combined labour of slaves. But the greater part
of the whites of America are content to share
from a distance the economical advantages of
slavery, without incurring its moral evils by going
to live amongst slaves. The new settler on the
Ohio can sell his honey, which may be raised.
without combined labour in that particular work,
for tobacco, which may not, without hearing the
smack of a slave-driver's whip, or the responding
cry of slaves. If the white population of America
were to be doubled every five years, instead of
five and twenty years, the population of the slave
states, where slave-owners own land, would not
become sufficiently dense to raise the value of
land and lower the value of slaves.

Superabundance of good land If we have as-
certained the cause of slavery in America, a little
declatnation on the subject may be allowed. The
make very light work of it here, and consider it to be mercly
question of finance, whether they shall remain on their improved
land, after having considerably exhausted its fertilizing power, or
acquire and remove to land of virgin soil." Stuart, vol. 1, page 258.

If he obtains land near his first farm after he has worn it out."
Stuart, vol. 2, page 359.

44 ORIGIN, PROGRESS AND PROSPECTS

white Arnericans, speaking generally, would re-
joice to get rid ofslavery. They are men with the
feelings of men ; they can feel compassion and
fear ; they do pity their miserable slaves, and they
hear the not far distant thunder, which thrcatens
to stcep hall* the Union in bloocl, and to ruin the
other half. A successful rebellion of the slaves
would more or less affect every white man in
America, by causing a total revolution in all the
markets for the produce of every kind of industry;
and this the Americans in general know full well.
Knowing this, they must also know what is the
cause of slavery. Have they ever enquired whe-
thcr it is possible to remove that most evil cause -?
They cannot alter the proportion betwcen people
and land in America ; but the proportion betwcen
people and land with a good tale to it, is within
their controul. It is not often in America that
any one uses land without a tale ; and this might
easily be prevented altogether. The title to new
'and is given by the government. The govern-
ment, therefore, or the people acting under the
government, are abie to regulate the proportion
between numbers, and acres ofappropriated land.
In the colonies of old, that proportion depended on
a thousand caprices, on the whims of an English
king, of his colonial rninister, of the minister's
clerks or parasites, on the colonial governors, t heir
clerks and parasites ; all of whom bestowed grants
of land pretty much as it pleased them ; but in

OF SLAVERY IN AMERICA. 45

the United States, which have adopted a system
nearly uniform in the disposal of new land, the
proportionbetween numbers and acres dependa on
the, price per acre which congress thinks fit to
require for all new land. The actual price is
about five shillings per acre ; and the sale of
new land at this price yields near 700,0001. a
year. That amount of revenue is employed for
the general purposes of government. : If it were
crnployed in conducting pauper emigration from
Europe, it would convey every year to the United
States 80,000 persons of the labouring class ;
more than the yearly increase of laves. If the
price for new land were raised, so as to prevent
those labourers from becoming independent land-
owners until others had followed to take their
place ; if the fund obtained by the sale of new
land should thus become greater every year, and
should always be employed in fetchinglabour from
Europe ; if by this increase in the price of new
land and this immigration of labour, the people
were less dispersed than they are, should help
eaeh other more, should produce more with the
same labour, should have a higher rate of profit
and a higher rate of wages ; if, finally, a greater
proportion of people to land in the states already
settled should raise the value of land by means of
allkinds of competition, over and abo ye compe-
tition for superior natural fertility, then might
free labour take the place of siave labour, then

4746 ORIGIN, PROGRES S AND PROSPECTE, &C.

might the owners of slaves and of land set free
their slaves without loss, then might slavery be
abolished without injury to any one, with the
greatest benefit to all. By means of some plan of
this kind, and by no other means, does it seem
possible that slavery in America should be peace-
fully and happily abolished. Those Americans
who would not prefer Jefferson's thunder, may, I
trust, think it worth their while to examine this
subject further in a subsequent note on the Art
of Colonization.

NOTE XI.

APOLOGY FOR• THE AMERICAN TARIFE.

Opinions of Englishmen respecting the tarj-
moral advantages of the tari —economical ad-
vantages of the tariff—difference of feeling
between the Southern and Northern States re-
specting the tarilf— the tarifir good, upon the
whole, for the people of America, and therefore a
work beconiing democratic government — witen
the tariff may be repealed with great advantage
to America.

THE following passage from an article in the
Times newspaper on the late dispute between
South Carolina and the United States, describes
fully the opinions which are prevalent in England
on the subject of the American tariff. "All poli-
tical writers in this country have visited with cen-
sure the present policy of the American general
government in attempting by high protecting du-
tics to force the establishment, or to encourage
the extension, of manufactures in theUnited States.
With the high price for labour that exists in the
United States, with their scanty supply of monied
capital, with their unlimited range of uncultivated
or half improved soil, it was almost a crime

48 APOLOGY FOR THE AMERICAN TARIFF.

against society to divert liman industry from the
fields and the forests to iron forges and cotton fac-
tories, Nature had pointed out the course which
they ought to pursue for perhaps half a century to
come, till the ploug-h and the spade had followed
the axe of the wood-cutter into their primeval
wildernessés of shade,' and till happy plantations
had been formed on the deserted domains of the
Indian huntsman, from the Atlantic to the Ohio,
and from the Mississippi to the Pacific. She
had directed thern to cling to the bosom of mother
earth as to the most fcrtile source ofweaith and the
most abundant reward of labour. She had told
them to remain planters, farmers, and wood-
cutters—to extend society and cultivation to new
rcgions—to practise and improve the arts of the
builder, the carpenter, and the naval architect, to
facilitate every means of internal communication
—to promote every branch of internal trade—to
encourage every variety of landed produce—but
not to waste the energies of their labour, or to
interrupt the course of their prosperity, by forcing
at borne the manufacture of articles, which
foreigners could supply •at half the price for
which they could be made in America."

Englishme.n whO lean to democratie opinions
are, most of them, if well-inforrned, advocates of
free trade. To those, the American tariff is a
very Sore subject. If let alone, they would say
nothing about it ; and as it is, they do not say

APOLOGY FOR THE AIVIERIGAN TARIFF.
.49

rnuch. But they are not let alone. The Conser-
vatives place them in this dilemma—If, say those
friends of the old commercial system, as of every
thing.

old ; íf dernocratic government be good for
a people, conducive to the benefit of all and so
forth, tiren protection of domestic industry is for
the public good, lince the American tariff ovas
established by a democracy ; not preservad, rnind,
but begun and brought to perfection, deliberately,
carefully, and in spite of arguments to the con-
frary if on the, other hand, the exclusion of fo-
reign goods be hurtful to a people, what becomes
of your government by all for the benefit of all ?
In this case, you cannot defend both, free trade
and, democracy ; which do you give up ?

The question is galling to an English liberal,
puzzles and therefore irritates him. Hang the
Americans with their tariff, one hears such a one
cornplain, their stupidityis unaccountable. Ano-
ther, admitting the stupidity, lays the blame on
those governments of Europe which have set the
Americans a bad example; as ifprecedent were an
excuse for indulging mean and malignant pas-
sions. These terms are applica,ble to the grasp-
ing, selftsh and jealous, spirit which dictated the
commercial system of Europe' ; but they are quite
inapplicable to those who established the Ame-
rican tariff ; as I will now endeavour to prove, by
shewing that a prohibitory system is, upon the

VOL. II.
E

11'

APOLOGV FOR T1-12 AMERICAN TARIFF. APOLOGY FOR THE AMERICAN TARIFF.
51

whole, useful to the people of America, and there-
fore a work becoming democratic government.

One motive, with some supporters of the Eng-
lish corn laws, is a fear lest the free importation
of cheap corn should cause a great increase of

population ; artizans, living together,
talkers, readers of newspapers, intelligent, given
to politics, unmanageable, radical ; " fierre de-
mocrats." If, say they, you sacrifice the agricul-
tura' to the rnanufacturing and commercial
interests, the glory of England will pass away ;
meaning, if you repeal the corn laws the number
of our stupid country paupers will perhaps be
less, whi le the number of knowing people, living
in towns, independent of us, will surely be greater.
No doubt ; but the free importation of cheap ma-
nufactured goods would have a contrary, a pre-
cisely opposite, effect in America ; that is, would
cause a decrease of town population and an
increase oí' rural population. If English manu-
factured goods were let into the United States
duty free, that portion of the capital and labour
of America, which is now ernployed in making
goods of that kind, would be diverted to agricul-
ture. Upan this point there can be no dispute.
Let us further admit, that the Americans might
obtain better and cheaper manufactured goods
by raising corn for the English market than by
making such goods themselves ; just as the

English rnight obtain better and cheaper corn
with steam engines than with ploughs. If so, the
.America.us lose by the tariff, speaking economi-
cally ; but now turn to the political siete of the
account.

1s it desirable that a very large proportion of
the people should consist pf husbanclrnen, such as
the English terrn clodhoppers ; earth-scratchers,*
they °light to be called in America ? Yes, without
doubt, provided this be the only way in which
every member of the society may obtain plenty ;
but in America profits and wages, both, are so high,
that if an econornical sacrifice for a political gain
be ¡nade, it is not felt. Not being felt, it is not a
sacrifice ; whole the gain is palpable. Supposing
that American industry is less procluctive than it
might be, still it produces enough ; and in order
to make it produce more than enough a great
political advantage rnust be sacrificed ; the advan-
tage of so rnuch town population as would have
consisted of mere husbandrnen if the tariff had
not excluded foreign manufactured goods.-¡r in

" fin English farmer," says Washington, writing to
Arthur Young, " ought to have a horrid idea of the state of
our agriculture, or of the nature of our soil, when he is informed
that one acre with us only produces eight or ten bushels. But
it must be kept in mine), that where land is cheap and labour
dear," [scarce] " inca are fonder of cultivating much than
cultivating well. Much ground has been scratched, and none
cultivated as it ought to be."

T " This gentleman told me that that the first child born at

52 APOLOGY FOR THE AMERICAN TARIFE.
APOLOGY FOR THE AMERICAN TARIFF.

.53
America, whatever tends to keep people together
is of inestimable advantage. Carnp meetings are
very useful as they bring people together, though
but now and tiren. The tariff, by inducing so
many people to become manufacturers, has pre-
vented so manypeople from becoming backwoods-
men ; has created and maintains so many towns,
with the roads between them ; has bestowed opon
all the people . in and near those towns the great
advantage of social intercourse ; has checked
emigration from old settlements to the western
wilderness, fixing so much population as would
otherwise have rolled on towards the Pacific.
The tariff, therefore, counteracts in some degree
the barbarising tendency of dispersion ; and for
that most useful quality is well worth solee
econornical sacrifice, if there be any.

I say, if there be any ; for the econornical
sacrifice is not so plain. Supposing that if there
were no tariff the manufacturers of America
would employ their capital and labour in agri-
culture, skilfully like the English, with sullicient
combination to obtain the greatest produce with
the least nurnber of hands ; in that case, capital
and labour being applied svith the utmost skill to

Rochestcr (New York State) after the settlement of the place,
etghteen years ago, was his son. The place only contable(' 1,000
inhabitants, and now (1S2S) about 13,000. There are cotton
works, power-looms, woollen factories, ELEVEN FLOUR MILLS,
AND SIX OR SEVEN CUURCHES." Stuart, vol. 1, page Sl.

the very fertile soil of America, corn of all kinds
would be raised so as to be sold for a lower price
tiran the lowest price for which corn was ever
sold, and in this way the Americans would obtain
from the English (the English tariff being re-
pealed) the cheapest manufactured goods. Under
that supposition the econornical loss resulting
from the tariff might be reckoned very great. But-
capital and labour would not be so applied to
the soil of America. Judging, at least, from all
experience, the capital and labour which viere
diverted from manufactures to agrie ultu re would,
because it was agriculture, because layad toas in the
case, be divided into small separate parts and
employed in the least skilful manner, trusting
for little to
to nature for much,* and

* " AH the unburnt new lands in the northern, rniddle,
southern and western states have been, and still are, uniformly
valued beyond their real worth. When the traca on the green
cnountains of Massachussetts was first setticd, the sanee luxu-
riant fertility was attributed to it, which has since characterized
Kentucky. About the same time it svas ascribed to the vallev of
Ilousatonnuc in the county of Berkshire. From diese tracts it
was transferred to the lands in New Hampshire and Vermont,
on the western sitie of the Green Mountains. From these regions.
the paradise has travelled to the western part of the state of New
York, to New Connecticut, to Upper Callada, to the countries
on the Ohio, tu the south western territory, and is now making
its progress over the Mississippi into the newly purchased
regions of Louisiana. The accounts given of all diese countries
successively was extensively trae; but the conclusions which

54 APOLOGY FOR THE AMERICAN TARIFF.

obtaining, even with that tnost generous nature;
but a small produce in proportion to the number
of hands employed ; just as, in America, capital
and labour (slaves excepted) are now employed in
agriculture. In this case, many who do now
obtain plcnty of manufactured goods, though
dear, -might not be able to obtain any at what-
ever price.

The tariff, besides, is an aet of combination ;
an agreement amongst the people for distribution
of employments. '!'hose farmers for whom the
tariff, by creating towns, has created markets*

were deducted from ilion were in great ineasure erroneous. So long
as ibis mould reinaba, the produce will regularly be great, and that
with very impufect cullivalion ; but this mould, alter a length of
time, will be dissipated ; where lands are C011tinually ploughecl it is
soon lost ; on those which are covered with grass from the
beginning, it is preserved through a considerable period. At
length, however, every appearance of its effieacy, and even of
its existente, vanishes." Dr. Dwight— quotcd by Stuart, vol. 1,
page 264.

"He" (a farmer near Springfield in Illinois) " has advan-
tagcs, too, in point of situation, being nearer to the Galena leal
mines, to which be last year sold 8,000 wooden posts at three
dollars per hundred. He liad been in Scotland but there was
no land in that country to be compared (he said) to that of his
farm. Finding him so much disposed to praise, I asked him
how he mas off for servants. His answer was marked you
llave hit the nail on the head—it is difficult to get servants
fiero, and more diflicult to get good, Stuart, vol. '2,
page 359.

APOLOGY FOR THE ,ANI ERICA N TA 55

near to their own farros, would by a repeal of the
tariff: lose those markets, and must convey their
net produce to more distara markets, ifsuch there
were, and if the cost of such longer conveyance
did not deter thern from raising food for market.
Either, then, their industry would be less produc-
tive, the cost of its produce at market being
greater ; or they would be less industrious, like
hundreds of thousands of settlers far from á
market for net produce, who loiter away one half
of their time and waste a good deal of the other
half by dividing their labour amongst severa! em-
ployments. Divis ion of employments, says Adam
Smith, meaning the reverse of division of labour,
is limited by the extent of the market ; he might
have added, and so is industry itself.* Each
manufacturer, then, and each of those farmers
who now live near toa town, becoming isolated

" The power of exchanging is the vivifying principie of in-
dustry. It stimulates agriculturists to adopt the test systenz of
cultivation, and to raise the Iargcst crops ; because it enables
them to exchange whatever portion of the produce of thcir
lands exceeds their own consumption, for other commodities
conducive to their comforts or enjoyments ; and it equally
stimulates manufacturers to improve the quantity and variety
of their goods, that they may thereby be enabled to obtain a
greater quantity of raw produce. A spirit of industry is dais
universally diffuse(' ; and that apathy and languor, which are
charaeteristic of a sude state of society, entirely disappear."
Professor ilP Cullach's Edition of Smith's Wealth of Nations. Note
19, vol. 4. page 474,

56 APOLOGY FOR THE AMERICAN TARIFF.

cultivators, without a motive for raising more
than should supply their own wants, would soon
be contented with a rocíe house, coarse food and
rough clothes as necessaries, with tobacco, rum,
a rifle and ammunition as luxuries. This does
nearly always happen to those, who impelled by a
spirit of adventure settle far away from any
market. In this way, the American dernand for
manufactured goods would be less, the wants of
so tnany people wonld decrease, and the sum
total of things useful or agreable to man enjoyed
in America would be less ; a loss econornically
speaking, or I have yet to learn the alphabet of
political economy. The loss, morally or politically
speaking, need not be mentioned again.

But, an English cconomist may ash, why should
not the Americans combine with the English
a clivision of employments between the two nations
which would be equally useful to both parties ?
Because, I answer, general combination of power,
which leads to general clivision of employrnents,
is useless, or rather irnpossible, without combina-
tion of capital and labour, and division of em-
ployments, in particular works. Exchange toany
great extent cannot take place unless two parties
raise a surplus produce, unless the produce of
both parties be great in proportion to the hands
employed ; and in America particular combina-
tion of power, with particular division of em-
ployments, will not take place so long as any

APOLOGY FOR THE AMERICAN TARIFF. 57

quantity of good land may be obtained by any
body for the low price of five shillings per acre.
Evils resulting from the very low price of waste
land tneet one at every turn in America.

With slaves, however, this particular combina-
tion of capital and labour is possible in America.
The whites of the southern states are able to raise
cheap commodities ; much, that is, in proportion
to the hands employed ; commodities which being
cheap would be exchangeable in the English
maxket. To the whites of the Southern States,
therefore, the tariff is injurious, limiting their
foreign market for the sale of corn, rice, tobacco,
cotton and lugar. This accounts for their dis-
like of the tariff. But the northern states, want-
ing- slaves, want, besides those southern markets
which slavery and the tariff combined provide for
the various products of their industry, other
markets, nearer to their own particular works ; a
dernand for the produce of much divided capital
and labour, for dear commodities which would
not bear the cost of conveyance to very distant
markets;* and this want of domestic markets is

" Potatoes, turnips, ruta-baga, peas, lucern, &c. are all to
be seen here (New York State) in sitian quantities, but not so
wcll managecl as in well-eultivated districts of Britain. The
hi•h price" [scarcity] " of labour is the great obstacle to the
management which those erops require. It is not because the
farmer does not understand 'lis business that such crops are ap-
parently not sufliciently attended to, but because he, in all cases,
calculates whether it will not be more prolitable for him to

58 APOLOGY POR THE AMERICAN TARIFE. APOLOGY FOR THE AMERICAN TARIFF. 59

to some extent supplied by the tariff. The affee-
tion of the northern states for the tariff is thus
fully explained. As in the southern states slavery,
so in the northern states the tariff, is an expe-
dient, a shift, for correcting the mischievous influ-
ence of dispersion.

Well then, it may be saicl, if the two divisions
of the union have such different interests, in con-
sequence of the difference between their respec-
tive shifts for correcting the mischievous influ-
ence of dispersion, why should they not have
separate governments, a northern and a southern
union ; one with, the other without, a tariff? For
several reasons. First, because the expedient of

remove his establishment to a new and hitherto unimpo-
verished soil, than to commence, and carry on an extensive sys-
tem of cultivation by manuring and fallow or green crops.
Such a system may be adopted in the neighbourhood of great
towns, where many green crops are easily disponed of, and where
manure can be had in large quantities and at a cheap rate ;
but it is in vain to look for its adoption generally, or to expect
to see agricultura! operations in their test style until the land
even in the most distant states and territories be occupied, so
that the farmer may no longer find it more for his interest to
begin his operations anees, on land previously uncultivated,
than to manage his farni according to the vielhod which will ren-
der it most productive." "x"» k " From what I have been
told, I suspect it will be found that, after the effect of the vege-
table matter on the surface of the !and cleared is at an end, the
average crops of all corte of grain are, according to the pre-
vailing system of management in this state, a hay or nearly a
hay, less than on similar soils in Britain:. ' Stuart, vol. 1, page 162.

the south is useful to the north, providing exten-
sive, though distant, rnarkets for the products of
northern industry ; for the manufactures, ships,
steam-boats, cattle and very many things besides,
which are produced in the states that forbid
slavery, which would not be produced if there
were no demancl for them, and for which there
would. be less demand if the southern states, hav-
ing free trade, should buy what they required in
the cheapest market they could any where find.*
Secondly, because the special expedient of the
south could not be maintainecl without assistance
from the north ; the force of the whole union
being required to preserve slavery, to keep clown
the slaves. If the southern states, urged by hatred
of the tariff, should declare thernselves indepen-•
dent, they would presently lose that power of
raising exchangeable commodities which is the
ground-work of their dislike to the tariff. Losing
their slaves, they too, like the northern states,
would want a tariff to counteract dispersion, to
preserve some combination of capital and labour,
and some division of employinents ; or, at the

." 111r. Stuart, speaking of a district in the state of Illinois,
says, " There is never any want of a market. Every thing is
hought by the merchants for New Orleans or for Galena, where
a vast number of workmen are congregated, who are employed
in the leal mines on the north-western parts of this state."
New Orleans is a great market, because of slavery ; Galena,
because of the tariff.

60
61

APOLOGY POR THE AMERICAN TARIFE.

least, to create domestic rnarkets ; a dernand for
the produce of scattered capital and labour. Give
and talle, live and let live, is a maxim every
where understood. In order to preserve their
own special expedient, slavery, the southern states
must put up with the special expedient of the
northern states, which is the tariff. Upon the
whole, therefore, the tariff appears useful to the
people of America ; and as the people of America
govern thernselves for their own good, it will not,
probably, be repealed, though it may be altered
in various ways, until the price of land shall rise
considerably through the increase of people a
century Menee, or earlier by the will of the peo-
ple, who can put what price they please opon
grants in the desert. If the price of new land
were such, that free labour should always be
obtainable for combination in farming, then, with
a greater produce from capital and labour, with
higher profits and higher wages, the Americans
would raise cheaper corn than has ever been
raised ; and, no longer wanting a tariff, might
drive with the manufacturers of England the
greatest trade ever known in the world.

NOTE XII.

THE ART OF COLONIZATION.

Introduction—nature and limits of the subject-
the ends of colonization as respects the mother-
country—the extension of markets—relief from
excessive numbers—enlargement of the field for
employing capital—ends of colonization as res-
pects the colon y—the means of colonization—the
disposal of waste land—the removal of people-
co-operation of the mother-country—the founda-
tion of colonies—the government of colonies.

INTRODUCTION.

CONSIDERING that the world has been peopled by
the removal of people from old societies to settle
in new places, and that the large portion of the
earth, which is still desert, will probably become
inhabited by the same means, but certainly by
no other means ; sceing, therefore, that the ad of
colonization is one of vast importance to man-
kind, it does appear strange that this subject
should not have been thoroughly examined by
any writer on political economy. Under the head
of Colones, we have, indeed, many treatises ; but
not one, as far as I know, in which the ends and
means of colonization have been fully described,

62 THE ART OF COLONIZATION.

or even noticed with so much as a show of method
and accuracy. Of those treatises, some are con-
fined to a mere history of the Greek colonies ;
while in others, which profess to embrace the
whole subject of colonial policy, not only is the
subject examined superficially and carelessly, but
whenever the writer appears to be in earnest, he
either dwells on points which are foreign to the
matter in hand, or rnixes the plainest misstate-
ments of fact with the grossest errors of reason-
ing. Two examples will suffice to prove this
assertion.

Professor M'Culloch, in a note appended to
Adam Smith's chapter on the " Foundation of
Colonies," after giving a list of works on colonial
policy, says, " The article Colon j , in the Supple-
ment to the Encyclopcedia Britannica, written by
Mr. Mill, is one of the ablest of the recent dis-
quisitions on the subject." A most able disquisi-
tion it is truly, on several subjects, but not on
colonization. It contains the shortest and clear-
est explanation ever given of the syrnptoms of
poverty in old countries ; some verygood reasons
why transportation is a very bad mode of punish-
ing crirninals, and some very conclusive argu-
ments against comrnercial restrictions and boun-
ties ; but of colonization, its objects and means,
Mr. Mill says next to nothing. He says, indeed,
that " colonization, with a view to the relief of
the mother country by a diminution of numbers,

THE ART OF COLONIZATION.
63

deserves profound regard ;" and then proceeds to
recommend, as " the best means of checking the
progress of population," that " the superstitions
of the nursery should be discarded," in order to
the adoption of a physical check to the procrea-
tion of children. Returning to colonization with
a view to relief from excessive numbers, he dis-
poses of the whole subject in a few Enes ; saying,
that on two condit.ions, but not otherwise, " a
body of people may be advantageously removed
from one country for the purpose of colonizing
another ;" when, first, " the land which they are
about to occupy should be capable of yielding a
greater return to their labour, than the land which
they leave ;" and, secondly, " when the expense
of removal from the mother country to the colony,
which is usually created by distante, should not
be too great." This is all. The " Conclusion" of
Mr. Mill's essay, accounts for his having been
content with uttering a pair of mere truisins on
a subject, which, he says, deserves profound
regard. Here he asserts the " tendency of colo-
nial possessions to produce or prolong bad govern-
ment," and emphatically condemns colonization
as a fruitful source of jobs, monopolies and wars.
Be it so ; but is this the only matter of bad govern-
rnent ? would there have been no wars, monopo-
lies or jobs without colonies ? is every thing bad,
including the wealth of nations, which has formed
the matter of jobs, monopolies and wars ? are we

64 THE ART OF COLONTZATION.

to regret the existente of the United States because
they were not founded without some great evils ?
has not colonization been a source of much good,
as well as of some harrn, to mankind ? may not
the evils be avoided in future, more good than
ever being obtained ? is there not in the found-
ing of new states, as in the government of old
ones, a way of proceeding better than all the
others ? If Mr. Mill had asked himself these
questions before he wrote on colonies, his essay
would probahly have deserved Mr. M'Culloch's
admiration. In that case, he would have told us
something, at least,about the United States, which
still receive from other countries, and pour forth
to reclaim the wilderness, great streams of popu-
lation ; about the influence of this gradual increase
of land, in proportion to the increase of people, in
rendering a people fit to enjoy • self-government or
democratic institutions ; about the increased en-
joyments of Europe arising frorn the discovery of
new productions in her colonies ; about tlie sti-
mulus given to European industry and skill, by
the formation of new markets ; about the rea-
sons since the time of the ancient Greeks,
at least, colonization has not been made useful
for relieving an old country from excessive num-
bers ; and, perhaps, about the best means of
reclaiming desert countries with that all impor-
tant object. As it is, his essay may be called a
treatise, and a very able one, on population,

THE ART OF COLONIZATION.
65

punishment, monopolies and patronage, with a
few careless remarks on colonization.

Adam Smith has writtcn at great length on
Colonies, but not with much more cace than Mr.
Mill ; as the reader will perceive who shall take
the trouble to examine the following statement of

the Causes y the Prosperity of New Colonies."*
"The colony of a civilized nation which takes

possession either of a waste country, or of one so
thinly inhabited that the natives easily give place
to the new settlers, advances more rapidly to
wealth and greatness than any other human
society."

This assertion does not rest on facts. Some
few new colonies have advanced very rapidly
population; but sca.rce any have advanced rapidly
to wealth and greatness ; while, as nave had oc-
casion to observe before, the greater number of
colonies have perished, or, at least, have remained
for a long while lcss prosperous and civilized
than their mother countries. Amongst bodies of
people who take possession of a waste country,
the general rule seems to be, very slow progress
towards wealth and greatness, with an exception
now and tiren. The exeeptions are not very strik-
ing. The only exceptions that strike one at all
are the United States, Upper Canada (for Lower
Canada was never a prosperous colony), and the

See Professor INI`Culloch's Edition of the PVealth of Na-
tions, vol. 2, P. 460.

VOL. II.
E

66 THE ART OF COLONIZATION.

penal settlements of the English in Australia. An
increase of population, taken by itself, proves
nothing ; since in Ireland, one of the most miser-
able countries of Europe, people have increased
of late years almost as fast as in the United States.
The progress of the United States in wealth, since
they becam. e independent, has not been nearly so
great as that of England during the same period.
No one pretends that the settlers of Upper Canada
are a. wcalthy people; and their prosperity, such as
it is, seems to be owing mainly to an amount of
itnmigration, both of capital and people, from a
rich old country, far greater than ever occurred
before in the history of colonization. As for the
penal settlements of the English in Australia,
they are societies altogether unnatural ; having
been founded, and being maintained, by the
government of England with the produce of taxes
paid by the people of England. Sorne persons,
not convicts, are established there. These the
English government supplies with s'aves free of
prime cost. The convict labourers, being forced
to work in combination, raise more produce than
they consume. But of what use would be surplus
produce without a market in which to dispose of
it ? Such a market the English government pro-
vides for the, farmers of New South Wales, by
.maintaining a civil and niilitary establishment,
which costs 300,0001. a year. The local govern-
ment buys the snrplus produce of the settlers,

THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 67

either with bilis cirawn on the English treasnry,
or with specie sent from the English mint. With
these bilis and this rnoney, the settlers obtain
various articles of comfort and luxury ; manu-
factured goods from England, vine from Spain
and France, sugar from the Isle of France, to-
bacco from Brazil, spices from the Inclian Archi-
pelago, and tea from China. The government first
supplies the settlers with labour, and then buys,
with exchangeable cominodities, the surplus pro-
duce of that labour. In this way, a great trade
has been maintained great, that is, in propor-
tion tu the people who viere there to conduct it.
That trade could not but be very profitable, so
long as the dernand of the government exceeded
the supply of the colony ; and this excess of de-
mand over supply continuad until lately. The
high profits of that trade, and the high wages also

* When the English colonial minister boasts in Parliainent
of the revenue raised by duties of customs in New South
Wales, he seems to forget, that the trade on which thosc du-
ties are levied is nothing but a certain mode of expenditure by
the Englisii government. He might as well boast of having .ezot
a revenue by taxes on the stone and wood used in building the
palace at Phnlico. A portion of the money, which the English
pay for keeping convicts at New South Wales, is nade to pass,
and not by a very indirect process, through the hands of the
custorn-house officers at Sydney : whercupon the English
colonial minister, who has ale the patronage attendant on that
distant and most costl y

jail, exclaims—Hcre's a flourishing
Colon for vou !

68 THE ART OF COLONIZATION. THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 69

which every free labourer who chose to take part
in it could obtain, have induced the colonists to
keep together ; whilst the management of that
trade called for a division of employments, such as,
1 believe, never occurred before in any colony so
lately established. The unnatural causes of the
prosperity of this colony show in a striking man-
ner, that new colonies in general are not apt
to be prosperous. The only new colonies that
have been remarkably prosperous, are those of
the ancient Greeks. Here follows Adam Smith's
statement of the causes of their prosperity.

" The colonists carry out with them a know-
ledge of agriculture and other useful arts, supe-
rior to what can grow up of its own accord in the
course of many centuries amongst savage and bar-
barous nations. They carry out with them too
the habit of subordination, some notion of the
regular government which takes place in their
own country, of the system of laws which sup-
port it, and of a regular administration ofjustice ;
and they naturally establish something of the
same kind in the new settlement. But among
savage and barbarous nations, the natural pro-
gress of law and government is still slower than
the natural progress of arts, after law and govern-
ment have been so far established as is neces-
sary for their protection. Every.colonist g-ets more
land than he can possibly cultivate. He has no
rent and scarce any takes to pay. No landlord

shares with him in its •produce, and the share of
the sovereign is commonly but a trifle. He has
every motive to render as great as possible a pro-
duce which is thus to be almost entirely bis own.
But his land is commonly so extensive that with
all bis own industry, and with all the industry of
other people whom he can get to ernploy, he can
seldom make it produce the tenth part of what it
is capable of producing. He is eager therefore
to collect labourers from all quarters, and to re-
ward them with the most liberal wages. Those
liberal wages, joined to the plenty and cheapness
of land, soon make those labourers leave him,
in order to become landlords themselves, and to
reward, with equal liberality, other labourers, who
soon leave them for the same reason that they left
their first master. The liberal reward of labour
encourages marriage. The children, during the
tender years of infancy, are well taken cure of;
and when they are grown up the value of their
labour greatly overpays their maintenance. When
arrived at maturity, the high price of labour and
the low price of land, enable them to establish
themselves in the same manner as their fathers
did before them. In other countries, rent and
profit eat up wages, and the two superior orders
of people oppress the inferior one. But in new
colonies, the interest of the two superior orders
)bliges them to treat the inferior one with more
;enerosity and humanity ; at least where that in-

70 THE ART Ok` COLONIZATION.

feriar one is not in a state of s lav e r y . Waste lands
of the greatest natural fertility are to be had for
a t'Ye. The mercase of revenue which the pro-
prietor who is also the undertaker, expects from
their improvement, constitutes bis profit ; which
in these circurnstances is coinmonly very great.
But this great profit cannot be malle without em-
ploying the labour of other people in clearing
and cultivating the land ; and the disproportion
between the great extent of the land and the
small number of people, which commonly takes
place in new colonies, inakes it difficult for him
to get this labour. He does not therefore dis-
pute about wages, but is willing to employ labour
at any price. The high wages of labour encou-
rage population. The cheapness and plentij of
good land encou ruge improvement and enable the
proprietor to pay those high wages. In those
wages consists almost the whole price of the !and:
and though they are high, considered as the
wages of labour, they are low, considered as the
price of what is so very valuable. What encou-
rages the progress of population and improve-
ment encourages that of real wealth and great-
ness. The progress of many of the Greek colo-
nies towards wealth and greatness, scouts accord-
ingly to have been very rapid. In the course
of a century or two, severa! of them appear to
have rivalled, and oven to have surpassed their
mother ci tics. Syracuse and Agrigentmu in Sicily,

THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 71

Tarentum and Locri in Italy, Ephesus and Mile-
tus in Lesser Asia, appear, by all accounts, to
have been at least equal to any of the cities of
ancient Greece."

This passage contains a curious mixture of
truth and error. It is the error that concerns us
here. With respect to the colonies of Greece,
there is nota word of truth in the whole passage.
The remarkable prosperity of those colonies is
attributed to superabundante or extreme cheap-
ness of land, and to dearness of labour or high
wages. But the emigrants from Greece did not,
most certainly, obtain great tracts of land over
which to spread at will. There is no instante of
their having advanced far from the sea shore.
Wherever they landed, they had to displace war-
like tribes who,abandoning the coast after a strug-
gle, continuad to watch the intruders and to con-
fine them within very narrow limits ; within a
short stripe of land. The first occupation of a
Greek colony seems to have been te build a for-
tress, into which the whole body of colonists
might retire when attacked. Sotne of those strong
places became very soon great towns ; but the
quantity of land required to feed the inhabitants
of one great tocan, formed, in most cases, the
whole territory of a Greek colony from the begin-.
ning to the end of its careen. Abundance and
consequent cheapness of land, therefore, was not
a cause of the prosperity of the Greek colonies.

72 THE ART OF COLONIZATION. THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 73

In the next place, dearness of labour, or high
wages, are terms which emigrants from Greece
would not have understood even. In no Greek
colony did any one ever sell his labour ; or any
one pay wages, high or low; for all the works of
those societies, the cultivatión of their small ter-
ritory, the building of their houses, the making
of their tools, clothes, furniture, roads, carriages,
and ships, and also the exchanges which took
place either within a colony, or between a colony
and other states ; all these works, so far as respects
labour, were performed exclusively by slaves.

The account, therefore, which the father of
the English economists has given of the causes of
the prosperity of those colonies whose prosperity
is the most remarkable, is obviously, nay, grossly
incorrect. From these two examples of careless
writing about colonies, by the first and the last
distinguished Englishmen who have professed to
examine the subject, it muy bé inferred that the
subject has never been carefully examined. They
are noticed, by way of apology for conducting
this enquiry with a degree of method, cave' and
fullness, which would have been pedantic or im-
pertinent if such a course liad ever been pursued
before.

NATURE AND LIMITS OF THE SUBJECT.

The word colony, is used to express very dif-
ferent ideas. A conquered nation, amongst whom

the victors do not settle, even a mere factory for
trade, has eommonly been termed a colony; as
for example the English factories in India and
the actual dominion of the English in that coun-
try. Mere stations also for rnilitary or trading
purposes, such as Malta and Heligoland, go by
the narre of colonies. In libe rnanner, the penal
settlements or distant gaols of the English are
superintended by their colonial minister, and
were called colonies even when their whole popu-
lation consisted of prisoners and keepers. rf\vo
societies more dífferent than the people of India
ruled by the servants of a London trading coin-
pany, and the convicts of New South Wales
before Englishmen not criminals began to settle
there, could not well be imagined. But the dif-
ference between the ideas often expressed by the
term colony is matehed by the caprice with which
that term is used. The settlements of the Grceks
in Sicily and Asia Minor, independent states from
the beginning, have always been temed colo-
nies : the English settlements in America were
termed colonies, though in local matters they
governed themselves from the beginning, so long
as England rnonopolized their foreign trade and
managed theír external relations ; but from the
time when England attempted to interfere with
their dornestic government and happily lost both
the monopoly of.. their foreign trade and the
management of their foreign relations, they have

74 THr, A RT OF COLONIZATION.

not been reckoned as colonies. According to
the loose way in which this terco has been used,
it is not dependence that constitutes a colony ;
nor is it the continua! immigration of people
from distant places, since in this respect the
United States surpass all other countries. In
order to express the idea of a society, which con-
tinually receives boches of people from distant
places, and sends out bodies of people tu settle
perrnanently in new places, no distinctive terrn
has yet been used. This, however, is the idea
which will be expressed whenever the terco colony
is used Itere ; the idea of a society at once immi-
grating and emigrating, such as the United States
of America and the English settlements in Canada,
South Africa and Australia.

For the existente of a colony two things are
indispensable ; first, waste land, that is, land not
yet the property of but fiable to
become so through the intervention of govern-
ment ; and secondly, the migration of people ;
the rernoval of people to settle in a new place.
Further it will be seen at once, that this migra-
tion must be of two kinds ; first, the rernoval of
people from an old to a new country ; secondly,
the rernoval of people from a settled part to a
waste part of the colony. Colonization, then, sig-
nifies the rernoval of people from an old toa new
country, and the settlernent of people on the
waste land of the new country. As in this there

THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 71.5

is more to be done than to be learned, this is an
art rather than a science. In every art, the means
to be employed ought to be regulated strictly by
the ends in view. The first point, therefore, in this
enquiry is the ends of colonization.

Two very different societies tnay have a com-
mon interest in colonization, though with objects
widely different in some respects. The English,
for exarnple, may have a deep interest in removing
people to America for the sake of relief from
excessive numbers ; while the Americans, cursed
with slavery, might gain incalculably by receiv-
ing numbers of people from England. • Fhe ends
of colonization, therefore, may be divided into
two classes ; those which belong to the old coun-
try, and those which belong to the colony. Eaeh
class of objects will be best ascertained by being
examined separately.

THE ENDS OF COLONIZATION AS RESPECTS THE
MOTHER-COUNTRY.

It may be questioned whether, in modem times
at least, any old state has founded or extended a
colony with any definite object whatever. The
states of ancient Grecce are supposed by Mr.
Mill to have sent forth bodies of emigrants de-
liberately with a view to relief from excessive
numbers ; and he has shown in a very clear and
foreible manner that the rulers of tirase states had

76 THE ART OF COLONIZATION.

a strong motive for seeking that relief in that
way, while no such motive was likely to occur to
the rulers of modern Europe.* The rulers of

sr
"A eurious phenomenon here presents itself. A redun-

dancy of population, in the states of ancient Greece, made
itsclf visible even to vulgar eyes. A redundancy of population
in modern Europe never makes itself visible to any but the
most enlightened eyes. Ask an ordinary man, ask almost any
man, if the population of this country be too great ; if tile po_
pulation of any country in Europe is, or ever was too grcat : so
far, he will tell you, ís it from being too great, that good
policy would consist in making it, if possible, still greater; and
he might quote in his own support, the authority of almost all
governments, who are commonly at pains to prevent the
emigration of their people, and to give encouragement to
marriage.

The explanation of the phenomenon is easy ; but it is also of
the highest importante. When the supply of fe:te(' is too small
for the population, the deficiency operates, in modern Europe,
in a manner different from that in which it operated in ancient
Greece. In modem Europe, the greatest portion of the food
is bought by the great body of the people. What the great
body of the people have to give for it is nothing but labour.
When the quantity of food is not suffieient for all, and when
some are in danger of not getting any, each man is induccd,
in order to secare a portion to himself, to give better tercos for
; t than any other man ; that is, more labour. In other words,
that part of the population, who have nothing to give for food
but labour, take less wages. This is the primary effect, clear,
ímmediate, eertain. lt is only requisite further to trace the
secondary or derivativc effccts.

When we say, that in the case in which the supply of food
has become too small for the population, the great body of the
people take less wages, that is less food, for their labour 3 we

THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 77

modem Europe, however, have had a motive of
affection for colonies. " Sancho Panza," says

mean that they take less than is necessary for their comfortable
subsistence ; because they would only have what is necessary
for eomfortable subsistente in the case in which the supply of
food is not too small for the whole.

The effect, then, of a disproportion between the food and the
population is, not to feed to the full measure that portion of the
population which it is sufficient to feed, and to leave the re-
dundant portion destitute ; it is to take, according to a certain
cate, a portion of bis due quantity from each individual of that
great class who have nothing to give for it but ordinary labour.

What this state of things imports is most casily seen. The
great class, who have nothing to give for food but ordinary
labour, are the great body of the people. When every indivi-
dual in the great body of the people has less than the due
quantity of food, less than would fall to bis share if the quantity
of food were not too small for the population, the state of the
great body of the people is the state of sordid, painful and de-
graded poverty. They are wretchedly fed, wretchedly clothed,
have wretched houses, and neither time nor means to keep
their loases or their persons free from disgusting impurity.
Those of them, who, either from bodily infirmities, have less
than the ordinary quantity of labour to bestow, or, from the
state of their need a greater than the ordinary quantity
of food, are condemned to starve ; either wholly, if they have
not enough to keep them alive ; or partially, if they have
enough to yield them a lingering, diseased, and, after all, .a
shortened existente.

What the ignorant and vulgar spectator sees in all this, is
not a redundant population : it is only a poor population. He
sees nobody without food who has enough to give for it. To
bis eye, therefore, it is not food which is wanting, but that
which is to be given for it. When events succeed in this

78 THE ART OF COLONIZATION.

Mr. Mill " liad a scheme for deriving advantage
from the government of an island. He would

train, and are viewed with those eyes, there never can appearto
be a redundancy of population.

Events succeeded in a different train in the states of ancient
Greece, and rendered a redundancy of population somewhat
more visible, even to vulgar and ignorant eyes.

In ancient Greece, the greatest portion of the food was not
bought by the great body of the people ; thc state of whom,
wretched or cornfortable, legislation has never yet been wise
enough much to regard. Ali manual labour, or, at least, the
far greater portion of it, was performed, not by free labourers
serving for wages, but by slaves, who werc the property of the
great men. The dericiency of food, therefore, was not dis-
tributed in the shape of general poverty and wretchedness
over the great body of the population, by reduction of wages ;
a case which affects with very slight sensations those who re-
gard themselves as in no degree hable to fall into that miser-
able situation. It was felt, first of all, by the great men, in
the greater cost of maintaining their slaves. And what is fclt
as disagreeable by the great men, is sure never to confirme
long without an effort, either wise or foolish, for the removal
of it. This law of human nature was not less faithfully ob-
served in the states of ancient Greece, for their being ealled
republics. Called republics, they in reality were aristocracies ;
and aristocracies of a very bad description. They were aris-
tocracies in which the people were cheated with an idea of
power, merely because they were abie, at certain distant
intervals, when violently exeítecl, to overpowcr the aristocracy
in some one particular point ; but they viere aristocracies, in
which there was not one efficient security to prevent the
interests of the many from being sacrificed to the interests of
the few ; they werc aristocracies, accordingly, in which the
interests of the many viere habitually sacrificed to the interests

THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 79

sell the people for slaves, and put the money into
his pocket. The Few, in some countries, find in

of the few ; meaning by the many, not the slaves merely, but
the great body of the free citizens. This was the case in all
the states of Greece, and not least in Athens. This is not seen
in reading the French and English histories of Greece. It is
not seen in reading Mitford, who has written a history of
Greece for no other purpose but that of showing, that thc
interests of the many always ought to be sacrificed to the
interests of the few ; and of abusing the people of Greece,
because, every now aud then, the many in those countries
showed, that they were by no means patient under the habi-
tual sacrifice of their interests to the interests of the few. But
it is very distinctly seen, amongst other occasions, in reading
the Grcek orators, in reading Demosthenes, for example, in
reading the Oration against Midias, the Oration on Leptines,
and others ; in which the license of the rich and powerful, and
their menas of oppressing the body of the people, are shown to
have been excessivc, and to have been exercised with a shame-
less atrocity, which the gentleness and modesty of the manners
of modem Europe, oven in the most aristocratically despotic
countries, wholly preclude.

In Greece, then, any thing which so intimately affected the
great men, as a growing cost of maintaining their slaves, would
not long remain without serious attempts to fiad a rernedy.

It was not, however, in this way alone, that a redunclant
population shewed itself in Greece. As not many of the free
citizens maintained themselvcs by manual labour, they had
but two resources more,—the land and profits of stock. Those
who lived on profits of stock, did so, comtnonly, by employing
slaves in some of the known arts and manufactures, and of
course were affected by the growing cost of maintaining their
slaves. Those who lived on the produce of a certain portion
of the land, could not but exhibit, very distinctly, the redun-

SO THE ART OF COLONIZATION.

colonies a thing which is very dear to them ; they
find, the one part of them, the precious matter
with which to influence ; the other, the precious
matter with which to be influenced ;—the one,
the precious matter with which to make political
dependents ; the other, the precious matter with
which they are ¡nade political dependents ; the
one, the precious matter by which they augment
their power ; the other the precious matter by
which they augment their riches. Both portions
of the ruling Few, therefore, find their account
in the possession of colonies. There is not one
of the colonies, but what augments the number
of places. There are governorships and judge-
ships and a long train of eteeteras ; and, aboye
all, there is not one of them but what requires
an additional number of troops and an additional
portion of navy. In every additional portion of
army and návy, besides the glory of the thing,

dancy of their numbers, when, by the multiplication of families,
portions carne to be so far subdivided, that what belonged to
each individual was insufficient for bis maintenance.

In this manner, then, it is very distinctly seen, why, to
vulgar eyes, there ncver appears, iu modem Europe, to be any
redundaney of population, any demand for relieving the country
by carrying away a portion of the people ; and why, in ancient
Greece, that redundancy malle itself to be very sensibly per-
ceived ; and created, at various times, a perfectly effident
demand for removing to dístant places a considerable portion of
the people." 4rlicle Colony, in the Suppleinent to the Encyelo-
yedia Britannica.

THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 81

there are generalships and colonelships and cap-
tainships, and lieutenantships ; and in the equip-
ping and supplying of additional portions of army
and navy, there are always gains which may be
thrown in the way of a friend.. Ali this is enough
to account for a very considerable quantity of
affection maintained towards eolonies." For the
affection of the rulers this is enough, but not
for that of the nations. The nations of modem
Europe have had a very different motive of
affection for colonies ; a sense of the benefits
derived from the discovery of new productions
and the creation of new markets. Those English-
men, for instante, who during the last century
and a half have -shouted, "Ships, Colonies and
Commerce were good political economists. If
they did not know scientifically, that all irnprove-
ments in the productive powers of industry, that
industry itself, is limited by the extent of the
market, still they felt that every new colony, or
every enlargement of an old one, increased by so
much the means of exchanging the produce of
English labour, and by so much increased the
wealth of England. Who that produces does not
feel, though he may be unable to account for it,
the advantage of having come other ready to
leal with him for the surplus produce of his
labour ? A desire for new markets has, indeed,
searcely ever been the deliberate motive for
establishing' a colony ; nor perhaps did any go-

VOL. 11.

82 THE ART OF COLONIZATION. THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 83

vernment ever establish a colony deliberately for
the sake of patronage. But, colonies having been
established, sometimes by the adventurous spirit
of individuals, sometimes by religious persecution,
the governments and nations of modem Europe
had strong motives of affection towards them ; the
governments, for the sake of patronage ; the
nations, for the sake of maAets, Dente the
anxiety of the governments of modem Europe to
retain dominion over their colonies, and their
attacks upon each other's colonies hence, too,
the Colonial System, as it is called ; the system
of trading monopolies, which took its rice in a
rnistaken desire in each nation to monopolize as
tuna as possible of that trad-e between Europe
and her colonies, which would have been more
valuable to all the nations if it had been per-
fectly free. Let us distinguish between the
existence and the dominion of a colony ; betweeri
the existence and the monopoly of a colonial
market. " There is no necessity," says Mr. Ben-
-tham, " for govcrning or possessing any island in
order that we inay sell merchandize there." But
in order to sell rnerchandize in a colony, it is ne-
cessary that the colony should exist. If Mr.
Bentham had drawn this distinction, if he had
separated the question of dominion from the ques-
tion of existence, he would not have been led, by
dwelling on the evils of colonial monopoly, to
undervalue the benefits of colonial -trade. His

disciple, Mr. Mill, likewise, if he had drawn this
distinction, would not have deprecated colonies
because they have been made improperly a
ground for jobs, monopolies and wars he might
have condemned the wars, monopolies and jobs,
of which colonies have been the matter ; but
perceiving that the real source of those evils
was, not the colonies, but the badness of Eu-
ropean governments, he would probably have
seen also, along with Adam Smith, the " natural
advantages," which Europe has derived from
her colonies, in spite of the tricks which those
governments have played with them. The uses
and abuses of colonization are very different
things. While some philosophers have con-
demned colonization on account of its abuses,
the nations of Europe, even when they prornoted
the abuses, had, one cannot say a knowledge,
but a deep sense of the usefulness. That such
" unscientific knowledge," to use ternas ernployed
by Bentham, should have been attended with
very " unartificial practice," is j ust what might
have been expected.

The objects of an old society promoting
colonization seem to be three ; first, the extension
of the market for disposing of their own surplus
produce; secondly, relief from excessive numbers ;
thirdly, an enlargernent of the field for employing
capital. Referring, however, to a previous Note
on the coincidente of overfiowing national wealth

84 THF, ART OF COLONIZATION.

with the uneasiness and misery of individuals, it
will be seen presently, that these three objects
may come under one head ; namely, an enlarge-
ment of the field for ernploying capital and
labour. But, first, each object must be considered
separatel y.

1. The extension of markets.
Why does any man ever produce of any thing

more than he can himself consume ? Solely be-
cause líe expects that some other man will take
from him that portion of the produce of his labour
which he does not want, giving him in exchange
something which he wants. From the power of
exchanging comes every improvement in the ap-
plication of labour, and every atoro of the pro-
duce of labour, beyond that rude work and that
small produce which supply the wants of savages.
It is not because an English washerwoman can-
not sit down to breakfast without tea and sugar,
that the world has been circumnavigated ; but it
is because the world has been circumnavigatcd,
that an English washerwoman requires tea and
sugar for breakfast. According to the power of
exchanging, are the desires of individuals and
societies. But every mercase of desires, or wants,
has a tendency to supply the means of gratifica-
tion. The savage hunter, enabled te exchange
bis furs for beads, is stimulated to grcater energy
and The solo gTound on which it is sup-

THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 85

posed that the blaeks of the ; Test Indies will
work for wages as soon as they shall be set, free,
is their love of finery. They will produce sugar,
it is said, in arder te buy trinkets and fine clothes.
And who ever worked hard, when was an im-
provement made in any useful art, cave through
the impulse of a passion for some kind of finery ;
for some gratification, not absolutely necessary,
to be obtained by means of exchange ? As with
individuals, so with nations. In England, the
greatest improvements have taken place conti-
nually, ever since colonization has continually
produced new desires amongst the English, and
new markets wherein te purchase the objects of
desire. With the growth of sugar and tobacco
in America, carne the more skilful growth of
corn in England. Because, ín England, sugar
was drank and tobacco smoked, corn was raised
with less labour, by fewer hands ; and more Eng-
lishmen existed to eat bread, as well as to drink
sugar and smoke tobacco. The removal of En,g-
lishmen to America, and their industry in raising
new productions nót fit for the support of life,
led, in England, to more production for the sup-
port of life. Because things not necessary had
been produced, more necessaries were produced.*

" Rich subjects malee a rich nation. As the formen Mercase,
so will the means of filling the coffers of the lattcr. Let con-
temporary nations lay it to their account that England is more
powerful ;han ever sha was, notwithstanding her debt and

86 THE ART OF COLONIZATION. THE ART OF COLONIZATION 87

If the French should know how to colonize North
Africa, they may overtake the English in the
skilful application of domestic capital and labour;
but if they do this, it will be through the impulse
arising from new markets in which to. sell the
surplus produce of their industry. It thus-appears,
that the removal of people from an old society to

tases. This knowledge shoulcl form an element in their foreign
policy. Let them assurc themselves that instcad of declining
she is advancing ; that her population increases fast ; that she
is constantly seeking new fields of enterprise in other parts of
the globe, and adding to the iMprovements that already cover
her island at new ones that promise to go fax beyond
them in magnitude : in line, that insteaci of being worn out, as
at a distance is sometimes supposed, she is going a-head with
the buoyant and vigorous effort of youth. w * * Britain still
exists ail over the world in her coIonies. These alone give
her the means of advancing her industry and opulence for ages
to come. They are portions of her territory more .valuable
than if joined to her island. The sense of distanee is destroyed
by her command of ships ; whilst that very distance serves
as the feeder of her commerce and marine. Situateci on every
continent, lying in every latitude, these, her out dominions,
make her the centre of a trade already vast and perpetuaily
augmenting,—a honre trade and a foreign trade,—for it yields
the riches of both as she controls it at her will. Thcy take
off her redundant population, jet malee her more populous ; and
are destined under the policy already commenced towards
them, and which in time she will more extensively pursue, to
expaud her empire, cornmercial, manufacturing and maritime,
to dimensions to which it would not be easy to fix
A Residence at the Court of London ; by the han. Mr. Rush, Env.
Ex. and Min. Plen. from the United States to England.

a new place;
may be of the greatest use to that

old society, even when the people removed occupy
themselves in raising objects of mere luxury, and
when the mother country has yet many stops to
make in the careen of wealth and civilization.

But now comes the more interesting case of a
society, which, stimulated by the extension of its
markets, has cultivated all that part of its ter- -
ritory which is fit for cultivation ; a society in
which the utmost skill in the application of
capital and labour to agriculture is counteracted
by the necessity of cultivating inferior land ; a
society, consequently, in which food is dear, and
in which there exist the strengest motives for int-
porting food from other countries by means of
manufactures and exchange ; a society, in short,
which requires new markets in which to purchase
the staff of life. This is, pre-eminently, the case
of England. Imagine a country, in which the
quantity of air for breathing were limited, and
were not more than suflicient to keep alive the
actual number of its inhabitants ; while of that
actual number the larger portion by much ob-
tained less than enough air ; ovas half suffocated
for want of air ; in a state bctween life and
death. Conceive farther, that in this country an
inexhaustible supply of food might be obtained
without labour, as air is every where obtained.
NOW suppose that this society shouid be able to
obtaiu air from other countries by Ineans of

88 THE ART OF COLONIZATION.

manufactures and exchange. If this ability were
allowed its free exercise, the population of that
country would go on increasing continually, all
the people being at ease, so long as the ability
should last. But if the rulers of this country,
having a property in the ni rnosphere, should for-
bid the people to get air from other countries, the
bulk of that people must remain half suffocated,
notwithstandinp-, their natural ability to obtain
plenty of the means of life. Substituting bread
for air, this is the case of England with her

corn laws. The English corn laws will be
repealed. As the present enquiry relates to
country like England but without corn laws, we
may, fc.mr the salce of more ready illustration,
speak of England as if her corn laws were re-
pealed. When that shall happen, the English
will hunt over the world in search of cheap corn.
But where will t.hey fiad any? Not in countries
situated like England ; not in any country where
land is dear. They will fiad cheap corn, only in
countries where land is cheap ; in countries where
the proportion which land bears to people is so
great as, first, to render unnecessary the cultiva-
tion of inferior land, and, secondly, to encourage
a large proportion of the people to occupy them-
selves with the growth of com. But is not this
the description of a colony, according to the
sense in which the term eolony is here used ? a
country having room for more people, with more

THE ART OF COLONIZATION.. 89

room at hand for the greatest mercase of people.
Poland is such a country ; as was England when
the bulk of Englishmen were serfs. But there
are three reasons why such a country as England
vas then, is not the most fit to provide cheap corn
for such a country as England is now : first,
because in the then barbarous and despotic state
of the English government, no dependence could,
have been placed on English industry for a
regular supply of corn : secondly, because in the
then barbarous condition of the English people,
capital and labour were not a,pplied to the growth
of corn with that skill which renders the produce
great in proportion to the hands employed :
thirdly, because the savage ancestors of the Eng-
Esti would not have cared to huy such objects
as those, with which alone the English of this
day could buy foreign corn. The market would
have been very insecure ; the corn brought to it
not very cheap ; and of that corn, whethcr cheap
or dear, but a small quantity would have been
brought to market. This is precisely the case of
Poland, where the market is fiable to be chut
by the whim of a tyrant ; where the produce of
agricultura' capital and labour, though, by means
of slavery, greater than it would be if the capital
and labour were cut up into fractions as nume-
vous as the cuitivators, is latid) less than it would
be if the sanee number of Poles should cultivate
the salce land with English skill ; and where the

90 THE ART OF COLONIZATION.

demand for English goods is by no means equal
to the supply that contri be afforded, nor likely
to become so. Whereas in a colony planteó by
Englishmen, civilized and well governed, the
highest skill in the application of capital and
labour to the growth of corn, might conspire with
great cheapness of land, to the raising of cheaper
corn than has ever yet been raised ; while so
cheap a market for the purchase of eorn would
not only be as secure as any distant market ever
was, but might be extended continually with the
progress of colonization. Why such very cheap
corn has not been raised in any English colony,
is a different question, slightly n.oticed before
and the means of raising very cheap corn in a
colony, without slavery, will be carefully exa-
minál amongst the means of colonization. Here
my object has been to show, that for such a coun-
try as England, a chief end of colonization is to
obtain secure markets for the purchase of cheap
corn ; a steady supply of bread, Hable to be in-
creased with an inereasin

•

demand.
The trade which the English should conduct

for obtaining cheap bread from their colonies
might be of two kinds ; direct and indirect.
Supposing that very cheap corn were raised in
Canada, the English might buy such corn with
the manufactured goods of Leeds, Manchester

See Note VIL

THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 91

and Birmingham ; this would be a direct trade.
But it might very well happen, that the Canadians
should be able to raise, not more corn than the
English should be able to buy, but more than
they should be able to buy with manufactured
goods. In other words, the demand of the Cana-
dians for English goods might be much less than
the demand of the English for Canadian corn.
But the Canadians would require many things,
besides English goods, which are not producible
in Canada : they would require tea and silver, for
instance. The English, then, might, first buy tea
and silver of the Chinese with manufactured
goods, and then buy corn of the Canadians with
tea and silver. But the demand, again, of the
Chinese for English goods might not be sufficient
to supply in this way the demand of the English
for Canadian corn. Por one thing, however, the
demand of the Chinese is very urgent and would
be without limit ; for food in every chape ; for
the means of life. Here, then, is the ground-
work of the most extensive commerce that ever
existed in the world. Supposing that cheap food
were raised in the English colonies of Australia,
which, though far from England, are near to
China, the English //light buy such food with
manufactured goods ; with that food, buy tea and
silver of the Chinese ; and with that tea and silver,
buy cheap corn of the Canadians. In this case;
combination of capital and labour for division of

92 THE ART OF COLONIZATION. THE ART OT COLONIZATION. 93

employments amongst four different nations,
would be of the greatest service to all of them ;
to the Australian colonists, the Chinese, the
Canaclian colonists, and the English. A great
number of cases like this might be reasonably
supposed. From this case, which, though sup-
posed, is very likely to occur, it will be seen that
a colony, at the antipodes even of its mother
country, might help to supply that mother coun-
try with cheap corn ; and by means of the
cheapness of land which is an attribute of colo-
nies. Both by a direct and an indirect trade,
Monjes might, according to their number and
extent, enlarge the field for employing capital
and labour in the mother country ; at home ;
without reference to the emigration of people or
the removal of capital into distant fields of
employment. The warmest imagination could
hardly exaggerate the benefits which a country
like England might derive from such enlarg-e-
ments of her domestic field of production ; could
hardly reckon at too much the new demand
for labour at honre, in building, machinery and
manufactures ; for the produce of domestic agri-
culture, corn alone excepted ; for ships ; for the
use of mercantile capital ; and for all kinds of
services not usually called labour.

But, it may be said, a country like England,
having no corn laws, might obtain all there
benefits without colonies. " The possession of

colonies," Sir Heni•y Parnell would say, " affords
no advantages which could not be obtained by
cornmercialintercourse with independent states."*
Here, again, the question of dominion is mixed
up with the question of existence. Independent
states which are the independent st.ates that
could produce very cheap corn for the English
market? The United States truly ; but the
United States are as much colonies as were the
never dependent colonies of Greece. Canada, on
the other hand, being dependent, is neither more
nor less fit than the United States to produce
cheap corn for the English market. Let us
banish altogether, for the present, the idea of
monopoly or dorninion. Of him who has done
this, I would ask, What country, in which land is
cheap, is most fit, on other accounts, to provide
the English with cheap corn ? Not Poland ;
because there property is insecure, industry un-
skilful and the people barbarous : not Buenos
Ayres, where land is cheaper than in any other
country, being obtainable in unlimited quantities
for nothing, of the richest quality, already cleared
and drained by nature ; not Buenos Ayres, be-
cause the people of this colony are barbarously
unskilful and have no desire for English goods
not Ceylon ; because, though that country be
improperly called an English colony, its inhabi-

Financial Reform, pago 2.51, 3d. edit.

tants are not anxious to obtain English goods :
nono of these, but the United States, Canada, and
the English settlements in South Africa and Aus-
tralia ; because, in all of those countries, corn
might be raised on cheap land, with English skill,
by people anxious to buy English goods. If the
English should buy cheap corn of the Canadians
with Chinese tea and silver, it litigia be by means
of selling English goods to the growers of cheap
food in Australia. If cheap corn were brought
to England, whether by the most straight and
simple, or by the inost round-about and com-
plicated traffic, the original purchase-money of
sucli corn rnust be nnanufactured goods, the pro-
duce of capital and labour cmpioyed in England ;
and it coulcl be nothing clse. Whence it follows,
inevitably, that the number or extent of the
niarkets, in whieh the English might buy very
-cheap corn, must depend upon the number or
extent of contarles raising cheap corn and recluir-
ing English goods. An English colony, whcther
dependent like Canada, or independent like the
United States, might do both : it rnight both raise
the corn and want the manufactured goods. We
may conclude then, that with a view to the great-
est tnarket for buying cheap corn, a people like
the English would plant or extend colonies ; na-
tions of Englishtnen born, and their descendants;
using the English language ; preserving English
skill and English tastes ; and, therefore, both

able and willing to purchase English goods with
cheap corn.

II. Relie f from excessive numbers.
In modem times, no old country has ever ob-

tained relief from excessive numbers by rneans
of colonization. In no case, has the number of
emigrants been sufficient to diminish, even for á
year, the ruinous competition of labourers for
employment ; much less to produce any lasting-
improvement in the condition of the bulle of the
people. More than once, however, this has been
the object, or has been called the object, of an
old state in promoting colonization. Twice since
their late war with the French, the English have
sent out bodies of people to colonies under the
rule of the English government, for the declared
purpose of checking pauperisrn at honre : first to
the Dutch colony of South Africa, and next to the
English colony of Upper Cañada. On neither of
these occasions was the object attained even in
the slightest degree. Both these attempts were
called experiments. This year, the English go-
vernment is making, to use the expression of
Lord Goderich,* another " experiment" of the
same kind, by providing the funds wherewith to
convey to South Africa a number of destitute

* in a letter addrcssed toa socicty for the relief of orphan
and destitute children.

THR ART OF COLONIZATIOIkL 9594 THE ART OF COLONIZATION.

96 TFIE ART OF COLONÍZATION.

children ; the prodigious number of twenty. Con-
sidering that the population of England is four-
teen millions, this experhnent may be j u stly called
child's play. The previous experitnent in South
Africa, and the outlay of 60,0001. in taking
English paupers to Upper Canada, at the sug-
gestion of Mr. (now Sir Robert) Wilmot Horton,
and the Ernigration Committees of the house of
cormnons, were hardly less preposterous, if we
are to believe that any benefit to the labouring
class at borne was serionsly expected from them.
To call experiments measures so futile, so ob-
viously inadequate to the end in view, is an abuse
of language ; and one calculated to be mis-
chievous ; since, if diese ehildish attempts liad
really been experiments, the signal failure of them
would have been a fact tending to establish, that
colonization with a view to relicf from excessive
numbers must necessarily fail of its object.

Two classes of men in England, classes of the
most opposite tu rn of mind, have decide(' against
colonization \vitt' this view ; and on grounds
equally unreasonablc : first, those unreasoning
men who would determine questions in political
economy by quoting scripture; secondly, men,
who possess in a high degree the faculty of reason,
but who, having made a religion for themselves,
are often under the infiuence of a kind of bigotry ;
1 mean those political economists who worship
capital. Speak of emigration to one of the former

THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 97

class, and he will exclaim,—" Dwell in the land
and verily ye shall be fed :" to one of the latter,
and he will say,---The question deserves profound
regard; but as employment for labour is in pro-
portion to capital, as emigration would cost
money and diminish capital, therefore it would
diminish employment for labour and do more
harm than good.

Whether right or wrong in their dislike of
emigration, those who swear by David, and those
who worship capital, are equally contradicted by
facts. The people do dwell in the land, but
verily they are not fcd. Though no labour be
employed save by capital, still millions upon
millions of capital are accumulated, not to cmploy
dornestic labour, but, for want of employment for
capital, éither to lie idle, or to be wasted in
distant and ruinous speculations. The quotation
from scripture may be disposed of by another :
"Llenase and multiply, and replenish the earth,
and subdue it." But those who object to emigra-
tion on the score of its expense deserve, on ac-
count of their reputation and authority, that their
argurnent shouid be carefully exarnined.
- The argurnent is stated as follows, by Mr. Mili.
" It has been often enough, and clearly enough
explained, that it is capital which gives employ-
ment to labour: we may, therefore, take it as
a postulate. A certain quantity of capital, tiren, is
necessary to give employrnent to the population,

VOL. II.

98 THE ART OF COLONIZATION• THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 99

which any removal for the sake of colonization
may leave behind.. But to afford the expense
of that removal, so much is taken from the capital
of the country that the remainder is not sufficient
for the employment of the remaining population,
there is, in that case, a redunclancy of population,
and all the evils which it brings. For the well-
being of the remaining population, a certain
quantity of food is required, and a certain
quantity of all those other things which minister
to human happiness. But to raise this quantity
of other things, a certain quantity of capital is
indispensably necessary. If that quantity of
capital is not supplied, the food and other things
cannot be obtained."*

Though the argument stated thus hypothe-
tically, thus guarded by ifs, amounts to the state -
ment of a mere truism, still the " postulate" which
runs through the argurnent is an assumption, that
emigration would Cake away too much capital ;
so much as to leave too little for the rernaining
people. M •. Bentharn assumes this without any

" Colonization," he says t " requires an im-
mecliate expense, an actual loss of wealth, for a
future profit, for a contingent gain. The capital
which is carried away for the improvement of the
land in the colonies, had it been employed in the

* Anide Colon y. Supplement to the Eneyelopwdia Bri-
tannica.

Rationale of Reward, B. 4, chal). 14.

mother-country, would have added to its increas-
ing wealth, as well as to its population, and to the
rneans of its defence, whilst, as to the produce of
the colonies, only a small part ever reaches the
mother-country. If colonization is a folly when
employed as a means of enrichment, it is at least
an agrecable folly."

Now upon what rests this assumption ? It rests
upon two other assutnptions, one of which is true,
the other false ; first, that ipo labour is employed
save by capital ; secondly, that all capital employs
labour. If it were true that every increase of
capital necessarily gave employment to more
labour ; if it were true, as Professor M'Culloch
has said,* that " there is plainly only one way of
effectually improving the condition of the great
majority of the community or of the labouring
class, and that is by increasing the ratio of capital
to population," then it rnight be assumed that co-
lonization would, on account of its expense, do
more harm than good. But it is not true that all
capital employs labour. To say so, is to say that
which a thousand facts prove to be untrue.
Capital frequently increases without providing
any more employment for labour. That this does
actually happen in England, I have endeavoured
to show elsewhere.± It follows, that capital, for

* Introductory Discourse, in his edition of the wealth of
Nations.

fi Note IV.

i

THE ART OF COLONIZATION.
101100

THE ART OF COLONIZATION.

which therc is no employment at honre, might be
spent on emigration without diminishing employ-
ment for labour to the slightest extent. I use
the word spent instead of invested, in order to save
the trouble of explaining at length, that if capital
so employed ;:ere utterly lost, that loss of capital
peed not climinish employment for labour. No
one pretends that employment for English labour
was climinished, to the extent of a single pair of
hands, by the loans which the English latel y made •
to the republics, so called, of South America, to
the Spanish Cortes, to Don Miguel or Don Pedro ;
or by the late waste of English capital in pre-
tending to work mines in South America, or in
oluttino. distant markets with English goods, soldb b b
for less than the cost of production ; or by the
waste of English capital in founding the Swan
River settlement. Still less has employment for
English labour been diminished by late invest-
ments of English capital, in foreign countries,
which yield some return ; such as loans to the
emperors of Austria and Russia, to the kings of
Prussia, Naples, the Low Countries and France ;
purchases lately made in the securities of foreign
governtnents, amounting at one time in the French
funds alone to neár 40,000,0001. ; investments of
English capital in the iron and cotton works of
France, the Low Countries, and Germany ; and

loans to the North American States. If
all the capital removed from England in all these

ways during the last seventeen years, amounting
to some hundreds of millions, had been lost in
conducting ernigration, employment for labour in
England would not have been less than it is at
present.

A recent fact illustrates this view of the sub-
ject still more forcibly. During the last year
(1832), it is supposed, about 125,000 people, men
women and children, emigrated from Britain to
the United States, Canada and Australia. Of these
a considerable nurnber carried property with
them, varying in amount from 50001. to a, few
pounds over the cost of passage. Thc passage of
the whole of thetn must have cost, at the lowest
estimate of 51. for each person, not less than
625,0001. Supposing that they took with them a
capital of 51. each, opon the average, which scems
a very low estímate, emigration from Britain car-
ried off during the last year a capital of 1,250,0001.
ajes any one pretend that this abstraction of
capital has diminished, to the extent of a single
pair of hands, the amount of employment for
labour in Britain ? Might we not rather expect, if
England had no eorn laws, that these 125,000
emigrants, employing their capital and labour in
a vide and rich field, would create a new demand
for the produce of capital and labour employed in
Britain? Let these questions be answered care-
fully, and it will appcar that lunch of the capital
of such a country as England may be used in

102 THE ART OF COLONIZATION.

promoting emigration, without diminishing, to
say the least, the amount of employrnent for do-
mestic labour. Whether capital might be so
used with profit to the OWIleFS of it, whether, by
such a use of capital, effectual relief from exces-
sive numbers might be obtained, a requestions
which belong rathcr to the means than to the
ends of colonization. Here, my sole object is to
show how groundless is the objeetion to emigra-
tion on the score of its expense ; how futile is that
a priori reasoning, by which some ccnclude, that
the cosí of emigration would necessarily diminish,
according to its amount, the amount of employ-
ment for labour at horne. I have dwelt so long on
this objection, not with a view to recommend
emigration by means of an outlay of English
capital (for I shall endeavour to show hereafter
that it would be greatly for the advantage of colo-
pies to provide a fund for the immigration of
labour), but in order to remove a prejudice
against colonization, on the ground of the mis-
chicvous loss of capital which it might occasion
to the rnother-country ; a prejudice, which stops
him who entertains it, on the very threshold of
this subject.*

* This prejudice was once cntertained by Mr. Bentham. It
depended upon a non sequitur Nvhich had got posscssion of his
mirad. In the fourth book of the Rationale of Reward, M. Du-
mont has a chapter en t itled " Bentham and Adam Smith," where
he draws a comparison betwecn the views of political economy,

THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 103

Supposing that, whether by means of English
capital about, at all events, to fiy off to foreign

taken by the English and Scotch philosophers. " Mr. Ben•
tham," he says, " has simplified his subject, by referring every
thing to one principie ; namely Ihe limitation of production mal
trade by the linzitation of capital ; a principie which brings all his
reasonings into a very small circle, and which serves to unite
into one bundle those observations, which cannot be so easily
grasped when they are disunited." This one principie is stated
as follows in the first paragraph of Bentham's Manual cf. Poli-
tical Econonly. " No kind of productive labour of any import-
anee can be carried on Nvithout capital. From hence it follows,
that the quantity of labrar applicable to any object, is
by the quantity of capital which can be employed in it." Doubt-
less; but then the principie is, " the limitation of production
and trade by the limitation of capital"for which there is employ-
ment. The words which I have added, in italics, rnake all the
difference. It does not follow that, because labour is employed
by capital, capital always finds a field in which to employ labour.
This is the non sequitur always taken for granted by Bentham,
Ricardo, Mili, Weulloch, and others. Adam Smith, on the
contrary, saco that there were limas to the employment of
capital, and therefore besides the limit of capital, to the
employment of labour ; the limits, namely, of the field of pro-
duction, and of the market in which to dispose of surplus pro-
duce. During the summer of 1831, Mr. Bentham's attention
was called to this subject. At first he urged the objection to
colonization which has beca here examined, but finally aban-
donad it. Then, immediately, notwithstanding his great age
ami bodily infirmities, he proceeded to study the whole subject
of colonization, and evcn to write upon it at sotue length. His
written remarks upon the subject, now in my possession, show
that he lived to consider colonization, not " an agreeable folly,"

104
THE ART OF COLONIZATION. THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 105

countries, or by means of a fund raised in :the
colonies, such an arnount of labour should etni,
grate from England as considerably to diminish
the proportion which, in England, labour bears to
employment, then would the wages of labour be
higher, then would the state of the bulk of the
people be improved, then would relief be ob-
tained from excessive numbers. rftlis great end
of colonization has never beca so rnuch as seri-
ously contemplated by the ruling class in Eng--
land. On the contrary, taught by ccrtain econo-
mists to believe, that profits rise when wages fall,
and fall when wages rise, that the prosperity of
the capitalist is consistent only with the niiscry
of the labourer, the late ruling class in England
would have set their faces against any projcct of
colonization which liad seemed fit to alise wages.
Late events have produced some change of feel-
ing on this subject ; and coming events, proba-
bly, will soon produce a greater change. " What,"
says Mr. Mill, " is felt as disagreeable by the
great MC11, is sane never te> continue long without
an effort, either vise or foolish, for the retnoval
of it." The new .

ruling class of England, those
whorn late events have mace the great mere of
England, are placed in a situation which rnay
rendez excess of ntunbers hig-Itly disagreeable to

1)14 a work of the greatest utility. I am proud to add, that the
forro of the present treatise was suggested 1)y one of the wisest
and bcst of mankind.

them. Thcy may be glad to pay high wages for
the security of their property ; to prevent the
devastation of England through commotions
arising from discontent in the bulk of the people.
Even before the late change, while the fears of
the great men were urging them to bring about
that .change,. while fires were blazing and mobs
exacting higher wages in the south of England,

dread of the polit.ical evils likely to come frota
excessive numbers, induced the English govern
ment to foral a Board of Emigration, with the
avowed purpose of improving the condition of
the labouring class, by removing sorne of them
to the colonies. A more foolish, or Luther futile,
effort by great raen tú remove what they felt as
disagreeable, was, perhaps never ¡nade ; but the
effort, feeble and puerile though it were, tends to
point out that for a country situated like Eng-
land, in which the ruling and the subject orders
are no longer separated by a middle class, and in
which the subject orden, composing the bulk of
the people, are in a state of gloomy discontent
arising from excessive numbers ; that for such a
country, one chief end of colonization is to pre-
vent tumults, to keep the peace, to maintain
orden, to upholcl confidence in the security of pro-
perty, to hinder interruptions of the regular
course of industry and trade, to avert the ter-
rible evils which, in a country like England,

106 THE ART OF COLONIZATION.

•

THE ART OF COLONIZATION• 107

could not but follow any serious political con-
ulsi on.
For England, another end of colonization, by

.means of relief from excessive numbers, would be
relief from that portion of the poor's-rate which
maintains workmen in total or partial idleness ;
an object in which the ruling order have an ob-
vious interest.

For England again, a very useful end of colo-
nization would be to turn the fide of Irish emi-
gration from England to her colonies ; not to
inention that the owners of land in Ireland, inost
of them being foreigners by religion, might thus
be taken out of the dilemma in which they are
now placed ; that of a choice between legally
giving up a great part of their rental to the hun-
gry people, and yielding to the people's violence
the land which ovas taken by violence from their
fathers.

Finally, comprised in relief from excessive
numbers is the relief to many classes, not called
labourers or capitalists, from that excessive com-
petition for employment which renders thcm
uneasy and dissatisfied. Of the 1'25,000 persons
who quitted England last year to settle in colo-
nies, not a few viere profcssional raen ; surgeons,
clergymen, lawyers, architects, engineers, sur-
veyors, teachers and clerks : some few of diem
viere governesses. It will be seen, when we shall

come to the means of colonization, that, if colo-
nies viere properly managed, they would furnish,
according to the continuad progress in their num-
ber or extent, a continually increasing demand
for the services of all those classes.

II I. Enlargement qf the field for employ ing
capital.

This end of colonization is distinet from that
enlargement of the field for employing capital,
v hi eh would come by the creation of extensive
markets for the purchase of cheap corn with the
produce of domestic industry. It may be best
explained by reference to sorne facts. Since Eng-
land began to colonize, how many Englishmen
have quitted their country with small fortunes,
and returned with large ones, mide by means of
high profits in the colonies! In the West India
islartds, alone, millions upon millions of English
capital have been ernployed with very great
profit ; millions upon millions, which, we may
be sure, would not have been removed to the
West Indies, if théy could have been invested at
borne with equal profit. An existing London
Company has more than doubled its capital in a
few years, besides paying a handsome dividend
to the shareholders, by the purchase and sale of
waste land in Upper Canada. In 1829, the Dutch
firm of Crommelin, of Amsterdam, advanced
1,500,000 dollars to. sorne colonists in America,

108 THE ART OF COLONIZATION• THE ART COLONIZATION. 109

for the purpose of making a canal._ This money
is securely invested, and yields a higher interest or
profit, than it would have done had it remained
in Holland ; a country in which, as in England,
capital appears to increase faster than the field of
production. The loan lately made by the Lon-
don house of Baring Brothers, to the state of
Louisiana, is a secure and profitable invcstment
of English capital in the int provement of a colony.
While I write, the firm of Thomas Wilson and
Co. is negociating in London a loan of 3,500,000
dollars to the state of Alabama. One condition
of this loan, evidently devised to tempt the capi-
talists of London, is, that the lenders shall not he
paid off for thirty years. Examples without end
might be adduced of prolitable investments made
by the people of old states in new colonies ; and
made, too, without any permanent abstraction of
capital from the old country. That great masses
of English capital have been wasted in colonies, is
also true. Of such a case, the absurd proceed-
ings of the London Australian Agricultura Conz-
pan y, and the capital wasted in founding the
Swan itiver settlement, are good examples. But
those sucos wcre as well wasted in that way, as if
they had been lent to Don Miguel or Don Pedro.
To say that because English capital has been
wasted in colonies, no more capital ought to be
invested in that way, would be like saying, that
because Waterloo bridge yields no profit to those

who built it, no more bridges ought to be built.
How English capital might be seeurely invested
in colonies without loss, with certain profit ; what
would be the most secure and profitable mode of
investing English capital in colonies ; these are
questions which belong to the next division of
this subject. Here it is sufficient to have shown
by the aboye examples, that colonies may open
a riel' and wide field for ernploying that capital
of a mother country, for which there is no very
profitable cmploytnent at horne.

Ml these ends of colonization, the extension of
markets, relief in severa] ways from excessive
numbers, and new investments for capital, may
now be brought under one head ; namely, a pro-
gressive enlargemcnt, partly domestic, and partly
colonial, of the field for ernploying capital and
labour. The vast importance of this objeot, to a
country situated like England, is more fully cx-
plained in some of the foregoing notes.

THE ENDS OF COLONIZATION, AS RESPECTS THF.
COLONY.

The United States are still colonies, according
to the sense in which the word is used hese.
They receive people from old states, and senil out
a much greater number of people to settle in new
places. For promoting the immigration of capital
and people, the motive of these states seems to be
precisely opposite to that of an"old country in

110 THE ART OF COLONIZATION. THE ART OF COLONIZATION.

prornoting the emigration of capital and people.
The old country wants an enlargement of its field
for employing capital and labora . : the colonies
want more capital and labour for cultivating an
unlirnited field. By pouring capital and labour
hito England, you would augment the competi-
tion and uneasiness of capitalists, as well as the
cornpctition and misery of labourers : by pou ring
capital and labour into America, you would in-
crease the wealth and greatness of that great
colony. By pouring labour only into England,
you would not increase the capital of that coun-
try, because the increase of labour would not
find employtnent ; l)ut, as labour creates capital
before capital employs labour, and as, in America,
there is capital enough for the employment of
more labour and room for the employment of
more capital, therefore, by pouring labour only
into America, you would provide more capital
for the employment of still more labour. It fol-
lows, that colonies situated like the United
States, colonies, that is, which already possess
more capital than labour, have a greater interest
in obtaining labour than in obtaining capital
from old countries : just as a country situated
like England, has a greater interest in procuring
relief from excessive numbers than from the com-
petition of capital with capital. As the main
object of an old country in promoting emigration
is to send forth continually all that portion of the

constantly increasing labouring class for which
there is not employrnent with good wages, so the
main object of a colony in promoting the imrni-
gration of people is to obtain as much labour as
can find employmcnt with good wages. A like
difference of objects occurs with respect to new
markets, and especially to those in which corn
should be bought or sold. The object of the
colony is to buy manufactured goods with raw
produce and corn ; that of the old country to buy
raw produce and corn with manufactured goods :
the object of the colony is to obtain more labour,
wherewith to raise the means of bnying manu-
factured goods; that of the old country to obtain
cheap corn, wherewith to support more labourers
at borne. But, though two persons in different
places cannot meet without proceeding in oppo-
site directions ; though, if they intend to meet,
the object of one is to go in one direction and the
object of the other to go in an opposite direction ;
still they have a common object, that of meeting.
Just so in colonization, though the immecliate
object of an old state be to send out people, and
that of a colony to receive people, though the
colony want to sell, and the old country want to
buy, the means of life still they have a common
object, that of increasing the number and enjoy-
ments of mankind. Their comrnon object is to
give full play to the principie of population, so

112 THE ART OF COLONIZATION. THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 113

long as any habitable para of the colony remains
uninhabited.
- This community of interest recomes still more

plain, when we reflect on the object of a colony in
remoying people from the settled to the miste
parts of the colony. Here the immediate object
of the colony is the very same as that of the
mother country ; an enlargement of the general
field of production in proportion to the general
increase of capital and labour. The object of the
oíd country is, that room should be malle for
more people ; that of the colony to make room
for more people. These truisms are repeated,
because it will be useful to bear them in mirad
when oye shall come to the means of coloniza-
tion ; and because, hitherto, those who have liad
the means of colonization at their disposal would
seem never to have heard of those mere truisms.

With a view also to saving time when we shall
come to the means of colonization, it wili be
well to notice here, in a more particular way,
some of the special objects of a colony in prorno-
ting the immigration of people.

have attempted to prove elsewhere, that want
of free labour is the canse of s]avery in America ;
not the dea •ness of labour, but the want of free
labour at any price. Why do the settlers in New
South Wales, having capital, dread aboye
things that the English government should tease

to pour finto that colony a st •eam of population
utterly depraved and irreclaimable ? The criminal
code of England is more bloody than that of any
other country which has a code of laws ; but in
New South Wales, the proportion of public exe-
cutions to public executions in England is, I
believe, allowing for the difference of nurnbers, in
the ratio of 325 to 1. This is partly accounted for
when we reflect, that, of the convicts sent to New
South Wales, nine out of ten are men, brought to
that pass, rnost of them, by the violence of their
passions ; fine men to one woman ; men accus-
tomed to unbridlecl indulgente and reckless of
all social ties. The result need not be described.
Nor is it difficult to account for the attachment
of the English government to this system of
Reformation. If English convicts were punislied
by imprisomnent at home, though the English
aristocracy would have, to bestow upon their
dependants, more places, such as that ofjailer or
turnkey, they would miss the disposal of a number
of places such as gentlemen will accept. The
governor of New South Wales is a jailer ; but,
being called Your Excellency, and paid accord-
ingly, he is thankful for his place ; as thankful as
any one ever is for a place which he has obtained
by electioneering services. But how are we to
account for the attachment of the richer colouist.s
to this horrid system of transportation ? By their
want of free labour ; by d'ehr anxiety to keep

VOL. H.

114 THE ART OF COLONIZATION. THE ART OF coIoNIzATIoN. 115

that slave labour, without which each of t.hem
could use no more capital than his own hands
could employ. They say, and with perfect truth,
that if the supply of convicts were stopped the
colony would be ruined. Assuredly the colony
would be ruined, unless

•the richer settlers should
find the mearas of obtaining either free labour, or
that kind of slave labour which they have in
America.

But even with the convict system, there is a
dcficiency of labour. In Van Diemen's Land, it is
cominon to see one, two or three, thousand sheep
all in one flock, the old and the young, the strong
and the weak, all mixed together. While feeding,.
the strongest of a flock, so mixed, always take the
van, the weakest always bringing up the rear.
'i'hus a great number of the lambs or weaker
sheep are starved to death ; and, of course, the
profits of the owner of the flock are by- so much
diminished. Why is this loss incurred ? for want
of more shepherds ; of more labour. If there
were in Van Diemen's Land shepherds enough to
rnanage all the flocks in t.he best way, the increase
of produce would give higher wages to the greater
number of labourers, besides augmenting the
profits of the flock owners. The soil and ellinate
of New South Wales appear admirably suited to
the growth of tobacco, olive oil, silk and avine.
A London company has spent ra jar 300,000/. with
the intention, declared by its prospectus, of grow-

ing all these things in New South Wales. Why
has it not grown any of these things ? Because
for the growth of any of these things constant
and combined labour is required ; an element of
production wanting in New South \Vales. Con-
viet labour, though constant when compared with
such labour as is got by the occasional immigra-
tion of free workrnen, is very inconstant when
compared with the labour of negro slaves. The
convict works only so long as his term of punish-
ment lasts, and for one master only so long as
t.he governor Aleases, or the secretary of the
governor, or the superintendent of convicts, or
some member of the colonial eouncil ; any one of
whom may suddenly, and without rhyme or
reason, deprive a settler of bis convict servants.
While slave labour may be combined in quan-
tities proportioned to the capitalist's mearas of
buying slaves, convict labour can never be com-
bined in large quantities ; because, as the govern-
ment bestows this labour, if any one settler
should obtain more than his due share of con-
victs, all the others would complain of gross par-
tiality ; and because the proportion of convicts to
settlers is so small, that without gross partiality
no one settler can have more than a few pairs of
convict hands. Favoured settlers, those who find
favour with the governor and his officers, do often
obtain more than a fair share of convicts ; but, as
the favour of governors is uncertain, no motive

116 THE ART OF COLONIZATION. THE ART OF COLONMATION. 117

is furnished, even in these cases of gross par_
tiality, for the commencement of works which
require the constant employment of many hands,
at the same time, in the same place, and for a
period of consecutive years. How, says Mr.Blax.
land, a great land proprietor of New South Wales ;
how should our settlers undertake to plant vine-
yards, when years must pass before any vine
could be got ; years during which much labour
musa be employed in tending the vires ; when,
for gathering the grapes and turning them into
vine, much more labour would be required ; and
when, in this colony, the supply of labour is
always, not only small, but uncertain ?* This is
why the Australian Agricultura! company has
not raised any exchangeable produce ; save wool,
which in a country like New South Wales, na-
turally olear and dry, may be raised with very
little labour : this is why the greater part of the
300,0001. spent by that company has been utterly
wasted ; is gone to nothing.

Why has so much of the capital perished, that
was taken to the Swan River ? for want of labour
wherewith to preserve it. Why do the few settlers
that remain in that colony wish for a supply of con-
vict labour ? .because they have no free labour.

In Canada, as in t.he United States, there is a
'» 1 quote from recollection of a paper, printed by Mr.

Wilmot Elorton, con taining Minutes of a Conversation between
himsclf and Mr. Blaxland.

want of free labour for works which require the
combination of many hands and division of em-
ployments. The canals which the English govern-
ment has lately formed in Canada could not have
been fin ished, or perhaps begun, without a supply
of labour from Ireland. The great Lake Erie
canal, a work of which the public advantage, and
the profit to the undertakers, was ¡nade manifest
upon papel. long before the work was begun,
could not perhaps have been begun, most certainly
could not have been finished, without a great
supply of Irish labour. Capital from Amsterdam
and London, and labour from Ireland, have,
lately, been of infinite service to the United
States. Theirs is the most favorable case. In
all the more favorable cases, the difficulty is for
masters to get servants. In t.he less favorable
cases, such as Buenos Ayres and the Swan River,
the difficulty would be for servants to finci mas-
ters. In the worst cases, want of labour leads to
want of capital, and condemns the people to a
state of poverty and barbarism in the best cases,
the people would be more wealthy, would pro-
duce and enjoy more, if they were more numerous
in proportion to capital. All the more favorable
cases are maintained by some expedient, which
more or less counteracts the want of labour ; in
the United States by slavery and the immigra-
tion of people ; in New South Wales and Van
Dietnen's Land by the convict system ; in Canada

118 THE ART OF COLONIZATION. THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 119

by a constant immigration of labour by sea,
greater than ever took place before in the history
of colonization. If the means by which the
United States, Canada and New South Wales,
obtain labour, should be taken away, no others
being supplied, then Inust those colonies soon fall
into the miserable state of other colonies which
have never had any means of obtaining labour.

• In a word, from whatever point of view ore look
at this subject, it appears that the great want of
colonies is Labour, the original purchase-money
of all things.

THE MEANS OF COLONIZATION.

The elements of colonization, it is quite obvious,
are waste land and the rernoval of people. If
there were no waste land, no people would re-
move ; if no people would remove, waste land
trust remain in a desert state. Waste land is
cultivated by the rernoval of people, and people
are removed by means of the motive to removal
furnished by the existence of waste land. Capital
for the removal of people, and for the settlement
of people on waste land, being included in the
ideas of removal and- settlement, the means of
colonization, it follows inevitably, will resolve
themselves into the disposal of waste land for the
removal of people. A notice of some facts will
illustrate this proposition.

The moving power for founding the first English

colony in America, that did not perish, vas a
grant by James I., to the London Company, of
five degrees of waste land in Virginia. The power
of the king to dispose of waste land induced the
company to forro the project of founding a colony
the power thus obtained by the company to dis-
pose of waste land, enabled them to find people
willing to etnigrate, and capital for their removal
and settlement. Just so, in the. case of the last
colony founded by England, those who founded
the colony were induced to remove by receiving
grants of svaste land from the English governtnent.
Mr. Peel's motive for removing to the Swan
River with a capital of 50,0001.and some hundred
people, was a grant of 500,000 acres of waste
land ; and the motive with which those people
accompanied him was the pope of high wages for
cultivating waste land, or the prospect of obtaining
waste land of their own. So also, last year, when
an English company offered Lord Goderich
125,0001. for 500,000 acres of land at Spencer's
Gulph on the South coast of Australia, intending
to lay out 375,0001. more in planting a colony on
that desert spot, the motive of those projectors
was to obtain waste land. Of the 125,000 people,
who are supposed to have emigrated from Britain
last year to settle in the United States, Canada
and Australia, the greater number were induced
to remove by the prospect of obtaining waste
land, and the remainer by a prospect of benefits

1

120 THE ART OF COLONIZATION. THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 121

to result to them from the disposal of waste land
in the countries where they should settle. The
greatest emigration of people that ever took place
in the world occurs from the eastern states to the
outside of the western statcs of Atnerica ; and
here the solo object in removing is either to
obtain waste land, or to rcap benefits in sorne
other shape from the late disposal of waste latid.
It seerns needless to rnultiply such examples.

The disposal of waste 'and for the removal of
people Might be considered in two different points
of view ; first, as that element of colonization is
liable to be used by an old state ; and secondly,
as it is liable to be used by a colony. Both these
Nvays of examining the subject would load to the
sarne conclusion. For instante, ave should de-
termine the best mode of treating waste land,
either by ascertaining how the United States
might best dispose of waste land for the rernoval
of people, or how the English, with the sante
object, inight best dispose of waste land in
Canada or Australia. But considering that the
removal of people is a secondary rneans of colo-
nizador), depending on the disposal of waste land ;
seeing that it is waste land which draws people
from the settled to the waste parts of the colony,
and so makes room for the arri val of people from
an old country, and that this prime mover, or
point of attraction, exists in the colony, it will
be found Inuch. more convenient to look at the

rneans of colonization from a colonial position.
If this course had been pursued before, the
English would not have been as ignorant as they
are of the political economy of new countries.
Their economists, in treating of colonies, have
worked with no other tools than those which thev
were accustomed to use in cxplaining the pite-
nomena of an old country; have reasoned from
principies, that were une in the old country, to
facts that never existed in the colony. They
remind one of an Englishman who, having
been used to the luxury of music, carried
a grand npright piano to the Swan River, and
then, finding no body to make a cupboard for
hita, was fain to gut the musical instrutnent and
use it for holding his crockery ; or of that English
colonial minister, who, knowing that in .Europe
the seas are salt, sent water butts from England
for the use of the English fleet on a fresh water
sea in America. By looking at this subject from
a colonial position, wc shall proceed from facts to
conclusions. Whatever course it would be best
for the United States to pursue for drawing
people from England to America, would be the
best course that the English could pursue for
sending people to Canada or Australia. Having
ascertained what this best course is, it will be
easy to apply our conclusions to the foundation
of colonies; and to show how an old state might
best co-operate with a colony for giving to the

122 THE ART OF COLONIZATION. THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 123

means of colonization their greatest possible
effect.

I. The disposal of waste land.
It is not because land is uncultivated, nor even

because it is uninhabited, that it forms an ele-
ment of colonization. The greater part of Prince
Edward's Island, in the Gulph of St. Lawrence,
though neither eultivated nor inhabited,still,being
the private property of two English lords,* is not
liable to be used for the removal of people : nor,
indeed, is any land, to which no government can
give a title of possession ; since the motive for
removing to waste land is the prospect of obtain-
ing a property in the land. Considering how
much land in America, South Africa and Aus-
tralia, is open to be used by individuals without .a
title to the possession of it, it would be surprising
that so few people should ever have used land
without a title, if we did not reflect, also, on the
influence of that "charro of property," which,
says M. Dumont, "is the spur of youth and pil-
low of old age." Those Americans, who, under
the narre of squatters, use land without a title are
exceptions to the general rule. Their motives
for acting differently from people in general will
be noticed hereafter. But while, speaking ge-
nerally, people will not use land without a title,

* Melville and Westmoreland.

they will obtain a title to land without using
their property, or to more land than they can pos-
sibly use. The English company which founded
Virginia would have preferred a grant of all
America to a grant of five degrees. Lower Ca-
nada is not the only English colony in which
English lords have obtained great tracts of land,
without using, or even intending to use, their
property. An Englishman, calling himself the
Earl of Stirling, lately took much pains to make
out a property in all the land of Upper Canada.
The clergy of the political church in Upper
Canada have obtained a property in vast tracts of
land which they cannot use. General Lafayette
lately accepted from the United States 300,000
acres of waste land which he cannot or will not
use. In 1824, the Australian Agrieultural Company
and the Fan Diemen' s Land Conzpany, both of
London, obtained, the one, 1,000,000, the other,
500,000 acres of waste land, when it was im-
possible they should turn a fourth part of those
great tracts to any useful purpose. The first im-
migrants to the Swan River obtained more land
than a thousand times as many people could have
cultivated. In all these cases, and in a countless
numbcr more, so much of the chief element, of the
primary means, of colonization was annihilated.
Nay, further, in most of them, the destruction
was extended for a time to land that was not
granted : as for instance, at the Swan River,

where a bread stripe of the coast, not being used,
being almost without inhabitants and quite with-
out roads, became, when it becarne the property
of individuals, a bar to the disposal of land more
in the interior ; land which, if the coast were in-
habited and easily passable, might be disposed of
for the removal of people. For the sarne reason,
General Lafayette has been requested to sell bis
grant to people who will use it ; because, that is,
being at once desert and private property, it is a-
bar to the progress of settlement in all directions
towards its centre. This, again, is the case with'
the lands of the clergy in Canada ; and %val] a still
more absurd kind of property created in that
colony ; namely, tracts of land " reserved" by the
crown in the midst of land which has become
the property of
In this last case, the

government behaves worse than the dog in the
manger, \vilo only prevented others from using
that which he could not use himself. Besides
doing this, the government of Canada inj tires
the people who surround its reserves of land, by
interposing deserts amongst them : it is as if the
dog haca baten the cattle, besides hindering theta
from eating the hay. As flour is an element of
bread, so is waste land an element of colonization;
but as flour, which has been turned into pie-crust,
will not rnake bread, so neither is waste land,
which has become private property, an element of
colonization. It is the disposal of waste land in

a certain way, which is the prirnary means of co-
lonization ; and when theland has been disposed
of in another way, the power to dispose of it in the
right way no longer exist.s. Land, to be an ele-
ment of colonization, must not only be waste, but
it, inust be publio property, liable to be converted
into private property for the end in view. In
the art of colonization, therefore, the first rule
is of a negativo kind : it is, that govcrninents,
having power over waste land, and seeking to
promote the removal of people, should never
throw away any of that power ; should never dis-
pose of waste land except for the object in view,
for the removal of people, for the greatest pro-
gress of colonization.

This rule has never been strietly observed by
any colonizing government : it has been grossly
neglected by all such govcrnments, excepting
only the United States, which, since they becarne
entirely independent, have been more cautions
than any other colonizing government ever was
about the disposal of waste land. One or two ex-
amples of this neglect, and this caution, will assist
us in determining in what way a government
ought to dispose of waste land with a view to
colonization.

The most striking instauce of the neglect of
this rule has occurred in the Dutch colony of
South Africa. Here, we are informed by Mr.
Barrow, in the account of his travels through that

THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 125124 THE ART OF COLONIZAT1ON.

126 THF; ART OF COLONIZATION. THF, ART OF COLONIZATION. 127

colony, the colonial government, having absolute
controul over all the land in the country, disposed
of that land in the following way. They first de-
clared, that any one desirous to obtain land
should be at liberty to do so on one condition ;
natnely, that of taking a hundred times, at least,
more land than he could possibly cultivate. The
whole district to be granted was marked out in
circles, the diameter of each circle being some
miles ; and any one who undertook to live in the..
centre of one of those circles obtained a title to
all the land within the circle. What became of
the land bctween the circles is not stated ; but
all these interstices must neeessarily-have been
so many " crown reserves." The object of this
system was to separate those who should become
proprietors ; to separate them, all from each other,
by a distante equal to the diameter of the circles;
and the motive for this object was fear lest, if the
colonists were not so separated, they might, as
union is force, be strong enough to think of self-
government. This object was fully acomplished,
and the colony was effectually ruined. All the
land so granted, though scarcely inhabit.ed, still
less cultivated, ceased, by this manner of dispos-
ing of it, to be an element of colonization. That
such a disposal of the land liad no tendency to
promote the removal of people, save only that of
the few persons thus scattered over the colony,
becomes plain when we reflect, that there can be

but one motive for emigrating to a place where
all the land has become private property, namely,
the pope of obtaining high wages ; and that a few
scattered settlers were necessarily prevented, even
by their dispersion, from accumulating capital
wherewith to pay high wages to immigrant la-
bourers. If they had not obtained some slaves,
that is some combination of labour in the parti-
cular works of their farms, they would, being so
scattered and prevented from combining their
osen labour, have degenerated into the state of
those savage descenclants of Spaniards, who in-
habit the plains of Buenos Ayres. As it was, a more
ignorant and brutal luce of men than the boors
or farmers of South Africa never, perhaps, existed.
The poverty and barbarism of that country, the
unfitness of the greater part of it for the work of
colonization, are owing, not, as has been supposed
for the want of a better reason, to the badness of
its soil and climate, (for these very much resemble
those of Spain) but to the neglect by its early
governments of the first rule in the art of colo-
nization.'1

" The white population at present (1828) is estimated at
about 70,000. In 1806, it was not more than 27,000. From
a variety of causes, some permanent, others accidental, they
hace Leen scattered over a larger space than was consistent with
mutual ald and support. This retarded the progressive di-
vision of labour, and exposed the solitary settler to many
dangers and privations, which did not operate beneficially

128 THE ART OF COLONIZATION. THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 129

If the first Dutch governor of New York had
been able, he would probably have been willing,

his habits of inclustry. Instead of trying how much produce of
every kind they could raise, they were rather led to consider
on how little they could subsist. The limits of the settlement
being, perhaps too rapidly extended, rendered defence, rather
than cultivation, the chief object of public attention. It is not
meant that the settlers should have been crowded together.
The nature of the colony rendered that impossible. But for
sorne time no moderation was observed in this respect ; and a
great waste of capital, and misapplication of labour and strength,
were the consequence. The increase of population, provided
the boundaries be now fixed and adhered to, will gradually
correct this evil, and bring both labour and a market more and
more within the reach of the formen If these views of the colony
be near the truth, it will be worth considering whether, when
new settlers are to be provided for, it would not be better to
selcct locations for them in detail, as near the villages,and Cape
Town, as these can be found, ¿han to set them down in masses
by themselves on the outskirts of the colony or beyond its
peopled limits. In such situations they are not merely useless,
but a burthcn, to the community for many ycars—requiring
new and expensive establishinents for their protection, besides
wasting their own money in fruitless undertakings, begun from
mere ignorante of the resources of the country. There appears
to be abundante of unappropriated land, or at least of unoccu-
pied, or at all events, of uncultivated latid, in niost of the settled
districts, on which many thousands of industrious people might
be placed, rnost advantageously to the old ínhabitants, and
with much surer prospect of providing for themselves and
their families all the necessaries of life, than in the remate places
to which the stream of emigration is too often directed. It is true,
the best places in those districts have fallen to the lot of the
first settlers. But locations of the second, third, orfourth qua-

enough, to ruin that colony by planting each of
the first settlers in the centre of a eircle nine or
twelve miles round ; but hese, fortunately, the
warlike temper of the natives, and the extreme
denseness of the forests, tnade it impossible to
execute such a contrivance for ruining the colony.
Though, in this case, the first settlers were allowed
to appropriate much more land than they could
possibly use, still they were allowed to settle
whereabouts they pleased. In fear of the natives,
and checked by the density of the forests, they
settled not very far from each other, and were
thus enabled to hold sorne intercourse with each
other, to assist each other in some degree, to
accumulate some capital, to preserve in some
degree the arts and civilization of their mother-
country. In this case, circkunstances independ-
ent of the government, created a sort of rule for
the disposal of waste land. This case is not,
therefore, an example of attention in a govern-
ment to the first rule in the ad of colonization :
it is mentioned by way of contrast with the pre-

lity, as regards soil, 8c.c. near a good road or a town, may ex-
ceed in value, a thousandfold, those of the first description which
possess no such advantages." Extract from the South African
Conunercial Advertizer ; a Journal conducted by an Englishman
of great intelligence and ability 3 a political economist too, who,
until he saw a new country, would have commenced an expla-
nation of the English theory of rent, saying with Mr.

Land is of different degrees of fertility."
VOL. II.

130 THE ART OF COLONIZATION. THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 131

ceding case ; a contrast the more remarkable,
since the miserable colony of South Africa, and
the prosperous colony of New York, were founded
by the same industrious, skilful and thrifty
nation.

Two examples of some caution on the part of
colonial governments in disposing of waste land
may now be cited, in contrast with examples of
reckless profusion.

1. Up to the year 1822, thirty-four years after
the first settlernent in New South Wales, and
when the prdsperity of the free settlem in that
colony was a subject of great admiration in Eng-
land, the quantity of svaste land disposed of by
the government was 381,466 ecres ; less than the
one grant obtained by Mr. Peel before he left
England for the Swan River. Shortly afterwarcls,
Lord Bathurst, the English colonial minister,
living in London, and knowing as much about
New South Wales as about Japan or the MOCO,
disposed of a million of acres in a single grant.
In one day, then, twice as much land was granted
as had been granted in thirty-four years. Up to
1822, all the land in New South Wales, except
less than 400,000 acres, was liable to be disposed
of as a rneans of colonization. In 1828, when
the population of the colony was little more than
in 1822, the number of acres rendered not Hable
to be disposed of for the removal of people, was
nearly 3,000,000. That the greater part of this

land was not used by any one, appears from an
official returu, which státes that only a forty-first
part of it, or 71,523 acres, was cultivated. Allow-
ing for the very siight interference with nature,
which is termed cultivation in New South WaleS',
and for the turn of colonial governments to ex-
aggera.te the prosperity of the people ruled by
them, we may perhaps conclude, that not so
much as a forty-first part of these 3,000,000 acres
was used beneficially. If so, in 1828, more than
forty parts Óut órforty-one, of the land granted
by the government of New South Wales, had
been disposed of so as to render thein no longer
an elernent of colonization, without rendering
them useful to any other purpose. The profu-
sion of the government after 1822, arose from the
publication of Mr. Wentworth's book on New
South Wales: Mr. Wentworth informed people
in England, that landin New South Wales:was
worth soinething ; that of the 400,000 acres then
granted, thousands of acres, being near to a
market, yiélded rent ; that an estate in New
South Wales was a good thing to have, especially
if it could be got for nothing. All at once, the
colonial office in London was besieged by appli-
eants wanting land in New South Wales. What
way so easy of gratifying a friend of govern-
ment, or the friends and relatives of the friends
and members of government ? Itnmense grants,
accordingly, were made ; some, indeed, to peo-

ple who emigrated, but some to lords and mem-
bers of parliament who never thought of ernigra-
ting. In this way, the colony would have been
ruined, but for the peculiar circumstances before
alluded to, which supply the colonists with
labour, keep them together, and provide thern
with a market.

2. Between the moles of granting land on the
Canadian and American sides of the line, which
divides Upper Canada from the state of New
York, there has existed until lately a very remark-
able contrast. On the Canadian side, crown and
clergy " reserves ;" unconditional grants of vast
tracts to any one who could find favour with the
English minister or colonial governor ; grants of
smaller tracts, but still without conditions, to
disbanded soldiers, military pensioners and pan-
per immigrants ; in a word, the greatest profu-
sion on the American side, a system, nearly
fixed and uniform, one general and unvarying
rule, with few exceptions, for the granting of
land ; an act of congress, which decrees that no
waste land shall be disposed of except by a spe-
cial grant of congress, or upon payment by the
grantee to the government of a dollar and a
quarter per acre. The special grants by congress
are few and far between ; while the price put
upon all other waste land operates as a check,
almost as a bar, to the appropriation of land by
persons not able, or not willing, to use their pro-

perty. Mr. Stuart, after describing various marks
of industry and growing wealth on the American
side of the line, says " We crossed the river
* * * * The country we passed through
(on the Canadian side) was greatly over-cropped,
with little appearance of industry or exertion to
reclaim it. Whenever the stage stopped to water
the horses, the doors viere crowded with children,
offering apples and plums 'for sale ; and we saw,
for the first time on this side of the Mande, seve-
ral beggars."* The following account, of the
difference between the American and Canadian
sides of the line, in point of industry and wealth,
is given by Mr. Pickering ; a careful observer,
with strong prejudices against the Americans.
" I am once again under the jurisdiction of the
British government and laws, and therefore feel
myself no longer an alien. Though the Ameri-
cans, in general, are civil and friendly, still an
Englishman, hirnself a stranger amongst them, is
annoyed and disgusted by their vaunts of prowess
in the late puny war, and superiority over all
other na.tions ; and they assurne it as a sellevi-

* " I never observe(' land more in want of manure than this
part of Canada (near Montreal) originally of indifferent soil,
and now totally worn out by over-cropping, and in the most
wretehed state of agriculture. Yet the manure in a great ata-
ble yard, belonging to the hotel whcre we lodged, is thrown
finto the river ; and obviously little use is made of it any wbere.'
Stuart, vol. 1, p. 163.

132 THE ART OF COLONIZATION. THE ART OF COLONIZATION.
133

THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 135134 THE ART OF COLONIZATION.

dent fact, that the Americans surpass all others
in virtue; wisdorn, valour, liberty, government,
and every other excellence. Yet, much as the
Americans deserve ridicule for this foible, still
1 admire the energy and 'enterprise every where
exhibited, and regret the apathy of the British
government with regará to the improvement of
this province. A single giance clown the banks
of t.he Niagara tells on which side the most effi-
cient government has resided. On the ITnited
States side, large towns springing up the nume-
rous shipping, with piers to protect them irk.ihar-
bour ; coaches rattling along t.he road ; and trade
evidenced by waggons, carts, horses, and people
owfoot, in various directions. On the Canadian
side, although in the immediate vicinity, an older
settlement, and apparently better landa there are
only two or three stores, a.tavern or two, a natu-
ral harbour without piers, but few vessels, and
two ternporary landing places."*

To what is owing this striking difference be-
tween the prosperity of two sets of people, culti-
vating the same soil, under the same climate,
with the same degree of knowledge, and divided
only by anitnaginary line ? What has ~sed the
second emigration into the state of New York
of a large proportion of the poorer emigrants
from Britain to Upper Canada ? These questions

Emigrant's Guide Lo Canada, 1830.

will be answered presently. Meanwhile, enough
has been stated to show, that there must be some
one way better than all the others of treating
waste land for the removal of people, for the
greatest progress of colonization ; and that every
disposal of waste land in any way but the best
way diminishes by so much the power of a colo-
nizing state to proceed in the best way.

What is the best way in which to dispose of
waste land with a view to colonization ? It may
be supposed, that in some one colony, at least,
for some short time, this best way of proceeding
has been adopted, if only by accident. On the
contrary, as far as I can learn, in no one colony
of modem times, has any uniform system been
adopted even for a week : while in nearly all
colonies severa! wats of proceeding, the most
different and often contradictory, have been pur-
sued either within a short period or at the same
ti me.

The nearest approach to an uniform system is
that of the United States ; the sale of waste land by
public auction at a fixed upset price, except as to
special grants by congress. The exceptions,
however, are so import.ant as to defeat the role.
Amongst these exceptions are the grant of 300,000
acres to General Lafayette ; grants to the amount
of 6,528,000 acres to disbanded soldiers,* and

The grcat IvIilitary Bounty tract, reserved by Cong,ress

136
THE ART OF COLONIZATION.

enormous grants for the support of schools and
colleges, as well as to the undertakers of public
works, such as roads and canals. Ali these grants
so far resernble the crown and clergy reserves of
Upper Canada, that they have dirninished, ac-
cording to their extent, the field of colonization,
and injured the settlers round about those special
grants. For neither the French general, nor the
disbanded soldiers, nor the schools and colleges,
nor the undertakers of canals, attempted to cul-
tivate the land which they so obtained for nothing.
But General Lafayette may sell his land for less
than the rninimum price per acre required by con-
gress from all buyers of waste land. This the
disbanded soldiers has-e aetually done : %1 thus
counteracting svhatever may have been the
object of congress in adopting that price. In
several ways, therefore, the special grants by
congress are, not merely in exception, but in

for distribution among the soldiers of the late war, commences
in the neighbourhood of Lower Alton. It comprehends the
1101111 west comer of the state— about 170 miles long and 60
miles broad." Stuart, vol. 2, p. 336.

* Most of those lands have bcen sold by the soldiers to other
individuals, and are now owned in great quantities by gentle-
men in the eastern states. * They have been sold by
the soldiers for about 50 dollars for a quarter seetion, con-
taining 160 acres." Letter

•

-ont Mr. Duncan, of Fandalia.
Stuart, vol. 2, p. 396.

This is at the rato of 3l cents. per acre; while the upset
price of land sold by Congress is 125 cents; per acre.

THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 137

downwright contradiction, to the general way of
procéeding.

As soon as the French settlement in Lower
Canada, which was established by private ad-
venturers, became of sufficient irriportance to
deserve the attention of the mother-country, the'
court of Versailles proceeded to grant all the
land within reach of ernigrants, and much that
was-heyond their reach, to certain courtiers or
creatures of courtiers. Each of these grantees
obtained an immense tract, on two conditions
first, that neither he nor his descendants should
ever part with the property ; secondly, that he
should grant leases, on condition of receiving
services like those required from the holders of
l and under the worst feudal system of Europe.
In this case, court favour, iban which nothing is
much more irregular, was the means of obtaining
property in land ; or, if ave are to consider the
second condition attached to these seigneuries as
leaving them open to use by settlers, then the
means of obtaining land were as irregular and
whimsical as the feudal services required from
tenants. Upon the whole, however, it will secta
that the establishment of these absurd lordships
in the wilderness, was, after the Dutch plan in
South Africa, the best way to ruin the colony, by
means of the restrictions thereby imposed on the
useful appropriation of waste land. In the French
colony of Louisiana, on the contrary, " lands,"

138 THE ART OF COLONIZATION: THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 139

gays the Abb2-1 Raynal, "'were granted indiscri-
minately to every person who applied for them,
and in the manner in which he desired thern,"
Here, then, instead of a system, land was disposed
of acc.ording to the irregular fan cies-of indi viduals.
This might be called a, rule for the disposal of
waste land, if it were not clear that every gratifi-
cation of an individual fancy, as to the extent
and situation of grants, was calculated to prevent
the gratification of other individual fancies. The
historian of Freneh Louisiana, one of the many
colonies that has perished, goes on te, sar—" Izad
it not been for this original error, Louisiana would
not have languished for so long a time ; immense
deseas would not have separated the eolonists
from each other. Being brought near to a com-
mon centre they would have assisted each other,
and would have cnjoyed ale the advantages of a
well regulated society. Instead of a few bordes
of savages, we should have seen a rising colon,Y
which might in time have become a powerful
nation, and procured infinite advantages to
France."

In Upper Cana.da land has been granted, at the
same time, to favourites of the colonial court for
nothing; to others, for bribes paid to colonial
officers ;* to some, on condition of paying a quit

" Will you inform the Committee of the sucos that have
been paid by the Canada Company, and thcir appropriation ?

rent to the government, which quit rent was
exácted in some cases and not in others ; to some,
for nothing, because they were American royalists ;
to others, for so much money per acre, paid
openly to the government, and disposed of in
various jobs of which the note below gives an
example ; to the political clergy for nothing, as
we have seen. before ; and even to the grantor, to
the crown itself, in the preposterous shape of
crown reserves. In this eolony, too, while ale
these ways of granting land were pursued at once,
during the very period of this irregularity in

* Thirdly, 2,5661., as an annual ~pensativa, for the
period of sevcn years, to those officers of the land-granting
department in Upper Canada, who, by the adoption of the new
regulations for granting lands, are deprived of their enzoluments."
See evidence of the Right Honorable R. Wilmot Horton, M. P.
and Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, delivered before
a Select Committee of the House of Commons, on the Civil
Government of Canada, 1828. The Report of this Committee,
which seis a thick folio volume, is crowded with examples of
jobbing in the disposal of waste land.

"The surveyors reccive their compensation in land, and gc-
nerally secare the mostváluable portions. When I was in Canada,
they would sell thcir best lots for one dollar per acre; while
131. tos., the fec on one hundred acres, amount to more than
half a dollar per acre. I never met with any one person,
amongst ale those with whom I conversed on the subject, who
did not agree, that, if a settler had but a very little money, it
would be much more to his advantage to buy land than to re-
ceive it from the government.'' Letters from North America,
by Adam Hodgson. Vol. 2, p. 47.

140 THE ART OF COLONIZATION. THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 141

granting land, grants were refused with equal
irregularity because the applicant had offended
the governor ; because he asked for land in a
favourable situation reserved by the governor, in
his excellency's tnind, 1 mean, for some relative
or dependent ; because he wanted land, in a
situation which bis excellency, in his wisdom,
thought not fit for settlement, and, in his power,
resolved should continue desea ; because this
spot was intended for the site of a town, and that
for some military purpose ; because this district
had not been surveyed, or this was, in the go-
vernor's opinion, too thickly peopled ; or that re-
quired more people, and was, on that day, the
only spot in which a g,rant would be made. Such
are not all, but only a few, of the very different
and often contradictory grounds on which, at one
and the same time, waste land was granted and
withheld in this colony clown to last year.

In New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land,
colonies not fifty years old, land has been granted
and refused on all sorts of different and contra-
dictory grounds ; granted by favour, for money,
for public services, real or pretended, to English
lords and rnembers of parliarnent, because tbey
were lords and mernbers of parliament, to the
political clergy, to schools and other institutions;
granted unconditionally and with conditions ;
conditions fulfilied in some cases but much oftener
neglected ; granted on account of the applicant's

wealth, that is, because he was able to invest
capital on the land, and on account of bis po-
verty, that is, on the score of charity : refused
according to every whirn of every successive
governor, always a sailor or a soldier, as fit to
manage a grea.t work of public econoiny as Adam
Smith was fit to navigate a ship or command a
regiment. To save the reader's time, in order
that he play be able to imagine the excessive ir-
regularity with which land has been granted,
and withheld in these colonies, I shall state two
facts, out of hundreds, which tend to establish
that here, as to the disposal, of new land, the
governtnent has been regular in nothing but ir-
regularity.

1. About four years ago, General Darling being
governor of New South Wales, -the colonial
office in London, used to distribute a " regula-
tion," by which it was declared that any person
in England wishing to settle in New South Wales,
would obtain, on reaching the colony, a grant of
land extensive in proportion to the capital that
he was prepared to invest on it. On the faith of
this regulation, people used to emigrate with their
capital. One of them, with the regulation in his
hand, waits upon the governor, and begs for a
grant of land still at the disposal of government,
in the county of Cumberlánd ; as-near, that is, to
the town of Sydney as the previous disposal of
waste land would allow. Has he brought

142 THE ART OF COLONIZATION. THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 143

letter of recommendation to the governor, or the
treasurer, or the secretary, or some member of
council ? If yes, Utile letter come from a powerful
man or Toman in England, the grant is made out.
If no, then says the governor or his deputy—we
wish to promote settlements in Wellington Valley,
two hundred miles from Sydney, on the western
side of the Blue Mountains. Take a grant there,
or do without a grant : in other words, go back to
England or bury yourself and utterly waste your
capital in a distant wildernéss. What, it may be
asked, could be the governor's motive for this
cruel injustice ? a desire to spread his dominion,
to make the colony appear wide upon the map, to
be able to boast of new settlements far apart,
(this is the mera), far apart from each other !
Some of the evils of this ignorant desire are well
described in the following extract from a letter
addressed, in 1832, by General Clausel to Mar-
shal Soult. " Tont devenait facile, si on eíit suivi le
systZrne de cólonization que j'avais établi. N'ay-
ant plus t m'occuper de Constantine et d'Oran,
j'aurais porté tous mes soins, toute mon attention,
sur la ville d'Alger et les environs. Notre éta-
blissement sur ce point, aisément surveillé, eát
pris, peu á peu, et sans exigen presque aucun Erais,
une extension suffisante. A mesure que des colons
Européens seraient arrivés, on aurait gagné du
terrain ; et lorsque les besoins de la colonie
l'eusgent exige, on aurait pris une partie suffi-

sante du territoire d'Oran et de Constantine. Vou-
loir colonizer en métne temps la régence toute en-
ti¿re, vouloir mettre des garnisons sur tous les
points, avoir la prétention de tout retenir dés
aujourd'hui sous notre domination immediate,
tout cela me parait 'etre un projet chimerique
en faire meine l'essai serait de comproinettre le
succ?-,.s de notre établissement en Afrique, et en-
trainer l'état, en pure perte, dans des dépenses
ruineuses."

2. During the rule of this same governor of
New South Wales, it was proposed to make a road
between Sydney and FIunter's River, a spot where
sotne settlements had been formed, but between
which and Sydney, there was no communication
except by the sea and Hunter's River. This road
was to pass through a district, the whole of
which, though of course narer to Sydney than
the settlements on Hunter's River, remained in
the hands of government. before the go-
vernment began to make the road, two or three
applications were [nade for grants of land in this
district ; small grants of less than a hundred
acres each ; modest applications, considering that
the applicants were persons of high official rank
in the colony, and near connections of the go-
vernor to boot. The applications were success-
ful, of course. Some how or other, the new
road took the direction of these grants ; over or
by the side of which, therefore, all travellers
by land between Sydney. and Hunter's River

144 THE ART OF COLONIZATION. THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 145

necessarily passed. On each of these grants a house
was built ; a house, which, being licensed (for
they have a licensing system in New South Wales)
becarne an inn. These inns, then, were the
only places on the line of road at which travellers
could stop for rest and refreshment. Of course
such a monopoly caused thc erices of rest and re-
freshment to be very high ; gave very high pro-
fits to the inn-keepers. Other persons, desirous
to share in these high profits, now applied for
grants of land on the Ene of road. No, said the
governor, or one of these inn-keepers, you may
have land on Hunter's River or in Wellington
Valley ; but along this line of road no more
land will be granted at present. Thus the power
of the governor to grant or withhold waste latid
was used in this case, with the effect, and one can
hardly doubt for the purpose, of turning two or
three of his Excellency's favourites into highway-
men ; of enabling them to rob all travellers be-
tween Sydney and Hunter's River ; to rob thern
of somewhat less than the difference between the
the cost of going round by sea and the cost of
travelling on a straight road open to the compe-
tition of inn-keepers. It -would not be easy to
find, even in Ireland, a match for this job ; but
many to match it have taken place in New South
Wales. My authority for this statement is Mr.
Potter Macqueen, late member of parliament for
Bedfordshire ; himself the proprietor of a large
tract of land in New South ,Wales, and, as such,

an instance of the shameful irrcgularitywith which
new land has bcen disposed of in that colony.

For granting land at the Swan River Settlement,
regulations, made by Sir George Murray and
Mr. Horace Twiss, the chief and under secre-
tarjes of state for the colonies, were published in
England ; but not tila after Sir George Murray
had granted 500,000 acres to the cousin of his col-
league Sir Robert Peel. This grant to Mr. Peel
was obtained by means of a letter, which has
be-en published, from Sir Robert to Sir George.
Some member of the house of commons having
said that this transaction was a job, Sir Robert
Peel defended it ; and Mr. now Lord Brougham,
the author of a book on colonial policy, rising
after the right honourable baronet, declared, that
for the first time the right honourable baronet had
made an " unnecessary speech ;" so complete, or
rather so unnecessary, was thc vindication of his
conduct. The grant, however, to Sir Robert's
eousin, of more land than had been granted in
New South Wales during thirty-four years, and
the outcry that was raised against it, compelled
the government to give land to other people in
the same way; that is, with the most reckless pro-
fusion. Thus the only advantage obtained by
Mr. Peel over other settlers was his being allowed
to mark out his grant upon the map in England,
and to chase what he considered the very best
situation. But this, though it has proved of no

VOL. II.

1

t4 6 THE ART OF COLONIZATION. THE ART OF COLONIZATTON 147

advantage to Mr. Peel, was very injurious to
all the other settlers ; because as he had selected
his grant round about the port or landing place,
so great an extent of land in the very best situa-
tion became private property, as to rendez all the
other situations very bad in comparison. If Mr.
Peel hall leen compelled to make roads through
his grant, or had obtained only such an extent
of land as might easily have had roads made
through it by the •government, the case would
have been different. As it was, his property be-
Carne- as a desert between the -port or landing
place, and the land beyond that property. Beyond
that desert, however, it

• was declared, that all the
world should be entitled to unlimited grants, on
either one of two conditions, as the granteeshould
prefer ; either an outlay of is. 6d. per acre in con-
veying labourers to the settlement, or the invest-
ment of capital on the land at the rate of ls. 6d.
per acre. - The second of these conditions was
flatly at variante with the first. The object of
the first condition was to promote the emigration
of labourers in proportion to the land granted ;
but as those who had obtainecl land on the second
condition wanted labourers, and, not having spent
capital on the imrnigration of labourers, were able
to offer higher wages tiran those who had, the
labourers brought out by one set of capitalists
were taken from thern by another set ; and tbus
it carne to happen that no one had a motive for

obtaining land on the first condition. Cine of the
conditions made the other a nullity: just as else-
where, the profusion of one governor and the
caution of bis successor, or the, profusion of one
and the caution of bis predecessor, or the pro-
fusion and caution of the same governor either at
different times, or with respect to different parts
of the same colony at the same time, have had
opposite tendeneies ; have tended to increase,
and, as the people were increasing, to decrease,
the proportion between the inhabitants of a
colony and the land open to cultivation.

Ali these cases pretty well establish, that in no
modem colony has the best way, or indeed any
one way, of trcating waste land been pursued sys-
tematically : to these cases it would be easy to
add several hundreds of different and often con-
tradictory modes, in which the governments of
modem Europe have disposed of the chief ele-
ment of colonization.

What is the best rnode in which to dispose of
waste land with a view to colonization ? In order
to ascertain this, wc must first determine what is,
or ought to be, the immedia.te object of a colo-
nizing government in exerting its power over
waste land. The accomplishment of that imme-
diate object would be a way to ultimate ends.

Why should any government exert power over
waste land either by giving or withholding ? Why
not let individuals judge for themselves as to the

148.THE ART OF COLONIZATION. THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 149

situation and extent of new land that each
should like to call his own ? This course

has been recommended by some English econo-
mists on the ground that individuals are the
best judges of what is for their own interest, and
that 1111 unnecessary interference of government
with the affairs of is sure to do more
harin than good. 13tit in this case, the govern-
ment rnust necessarily interferc to some extent :
that is, it rnust estahlish or confirma title to the
land of which individuals had taken possession.
Or, perhaps, those English economists, who
cate the interference of govcrnment in the dis-
posal of waste land, would have each settler on
new land to be a " squatter ;" a settler svithout
any title, liable to be ousted by any other man •
who was strongcr, and who, being the best judge
of his own interest, should think it worth while
to onst the first occupier. Passing by so absurd
a conclusion from t.he principie of non-inter-
ference, let as now suppose the case, in which a
colonizing govcrnment should confine its inter-
ference to securing a property in that land of
which individuals had taken possession. In
this case, all the land, to which it was
sible that government should afterwárds give a
title, would immediately be taken possession of

Especially by Mr. Mill ; in a Letter to Mr. Wilmot Hor-
ton, not printed but industriously circulated, by the latter.

by a few individuals ; good judges of their own
interest, consulting their own advantage. But
what, in this case, would becorne of all the other
individuals, who in pursnit of their own advan-
tage, rnight be desirous to obtain some waste
land ? This question settles the point. For the
good . of all, t.he interference of govcrnment is not
less necessary to prevent a few individuals from
seizing all the wastc land of a colony, than it is
necessary to prevent robberies. As it is for the
good of all . that no one should be allowed to take
any other one's property, so it is for the good of
all that no individual should be allowed to injure
other individuals by taking more than the right
quantity of waste land. In the fo•mer case,
government enforces a compact amongst all the
members of a society ; an agreement that any
one who takes the property of another shall be
punished: so, in the latter case, the interference
of governtnent with respect to waste land is no-
thing but the enforeement of a compact amongst
all who are interested in the disposal of waste
land ; an agreement that pone shall be allowed
to injure the others, that the greatest good of all
shall be consulted. This point settled, what, for
the greatest good of all, is the immediate object
of a colonizing government in exerting its power

. over waste ¡and ? Its ultimare object being the
greatest progress of colonization, its immediate

.object is, that there should exist in the colony

150
THE ART OF COLONIZATIOYi. THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 151

those circumstances which are best calculated to
attract capital and labour, but especially labour,
from an old country. The advantage of the irnmi-
grants, though one of the ends, is also an essen-
tial means, of colonization. For the greatest
advantage of immigrants to a colony, it is neces-
sary that the colonial profits of capital, and
wages of labour, should be as high as possible.
IIigh profits, then, and especially high wages, are
the immcdiate object of a colonizing government
in exerting its power over waste land.

In order to creme and maintain a very high
rate of wages in the colony, it is necessary, first,
that the colonists should have an acople field of
production ; acople, that is, in proportion to
capital and labour ; sud] an extent of land as to
t'endez unnecessary the cult.ivation of inferior
soils, and as to permit a large proportion of the
people to be engaged in agriculture ; a field,
large from the bcginning, and continually en-
larged with the increase of capital and people.
But, in the second place, it is quite as necessary
that the field of production should 'lever be too
large ; should never be so large as to encourage
hurtful dispersion ; as to promote that cutting
up of capital and labour into small fractions,
which, in the greater number of modem colonies,
has led to poverty and barbarism, or speedy ruin.
For securing the first condition of high profits
and wages, the power of the govermnent over

waste land must be exerted actively, in bestow-
ing opon individuals titles to the possession of
land : for the second object, that power must be
exerted negatively, in refusing titles to waste
land. The action of the two exertions of power
together, may be compared to that of an elastic
belt, which, though always will always yield
to pressure from within.

But as a belt which should press more in one
place than in another, or should be more tight
at one time than at another, would be defective,
so would any system for granting and refusing
waste land be defective, which should not be
both uniform and lasting.

It is easy to grant land, and easy to refuse
applications for grants : the difficulty is to draw
a line between the active and negative exertions
of power, so as to render the proportion which
land bears to people, neither too small nor too
great for the highest profits and wages.

VVith a view, not deliberate, certainly, but
rather instinetive, to maintaining a due propor-
tion between people and land, three inethods of
proceeding have been adopted by several colonial
governments : first, that of attaching conditions
to grants of land ; secondly, that of imposing a
tax on the land granted, and in case the tax vas
not paid, seizing and selling the land for arrears
of taxes ; thirdly, that of requiring payment

152 THE ART OF COLONIZATION. THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 153

money for waste land before the grant was made
out.

In thc first mode of proceeding, the grantee
obtained his land on such conditions, for example,
as that of cultivating it, or that of paying a quit
rent ; and in either case the grant was liable to
be recalled provided the condition was not ob-
served. But grants of land have scarcely ever
been recalled because the land had not been cul-
tivated, or the quit rent had not been paid. Why
snob conditions have nearly always been a dead
letter is plain enough because the terco " culti-
vation" is so general and vague that no tribunal
could decide whether or not that condition had
been fulfilled ; while all the holders of land ob-
tained on that condition, including frequently
the members of the only tribunal to which the
question could he submitted, have 'nade common
cause to prevent the question from being raised :*

The grants at the Swan River were declared liable to be
forfeited unless they should be " cultivated to the satisfaction
of the governor ;" a gentleman deserving, en many accounts,
very great respect ; but, nevertheless, a naval captain, whose
knowledge of " cultivation" must necessarily be small, and
who, besides, owns in the colony, a hundred, perhaps a
thousand, times as ruuch land as it is possible that he should
cultivatc. Is it to be expected, that he will declare his own
land to be forfeited for want of cultivation ?

Mr. now war-minister uf England, was asked by the
Committcc of the House of Commons on the Civil Governntent

because, as to quit rents, all who obtained land
on condition of paying them, including the favo-
rites of governments, and frequently the officers
of government themselves, have made common
cause to prevent thc recaí of grants for non-pay-
Inent of quit rent. Thus, while such conditions
were sure to be neglected, the certainty of being
able to disregard them led so many people to,
acquire more property than they could possibly
use, that the grantees would not have been able,
supposing them willing, to have observed the
conditions ; would not have been able to culti-
vate so much more land than there were labour-
ers to employ, or to have paid quit rent for so
much land which yielded nothing. Judging

of Canada, whether escheats of latid had taken place under
the Gth uf Gcc-ge IV , which empowered the government to
seize and sell lands, as to which certain conditions had not
been performed. He answercd, "Nene, that 1 am aware of."
But then, he had just before informed the committee, that,
" grants had been rnost inconsidcrately ami wantonly malle, in
large rnasses, to people connected with government, te the
great detrhnent of the country and the great nuisance of the
inhabitants around ;" that land had been so granted " in largo
masses, since it was the fashion for every councillor or officer
connected with. the Government, to get a grant of from 5,00D to
20,000 acres ;" that many of " those grantees were absentees ;
and some governors of the colony." The evidente of
Ellice before this committee, and especially that part of it
which relates to the disposal of waste land, is full of instruction
for colonizing governments.

154 THE ART OF COLONIZATION. THE. ART OF COLONIZATION. 155

from these cases, and from very many more in
which conditions have been attached to grants
without an attempt to enforce them, it seems
impossible to devise any after condition, in the
nature of a promise, which would hinder people
from taking more land than they ought to take ;
which would render the belt always tight, while
always sufficiently elastic.

Secondly. Though by imposing a tax on granted
land which rewains in a desert state, and selling
the land for arrears of taxes, some check would
be put to the misappropriation of new land, still
this plan is open to the same objections as the
one just examined : the execution of the plan
would be difficult or next to impossible it is
but another mode of attaching to grants the after
condition of cultivation. In some of the United
States, truly, this plan has been successfully pur-
sued with respect to deserts of private property,
which liad become private property before the
plan of taxing and seizing was adopted. But
why was this plan devised ? Not to prevent, but
to cure, the evils of deserts interposed amongst
the settlers. Act opon this plan with respect to
ale desert land now private property, still what is
to be done with the land so seized, or recovered,
by the government? Is it to be granted again in
such a way as tú cale for a second seizure and a
third grant of the sanee loas of land ? This plan
may be good for the cure of an evil, bu t is, plainly

quite insufficient to prevent the evil. It has
been successful, as a cure, in some of the United
States, only because, since the evil arose which it
was intended to cure, another plan had been
adopted to prevent the evil as to ale new grants.

thirdly, it is obvious that a government
may put any degree of restraint en the acquisi-
tion of waste land, by rneans of conditions to be
performed before the grant is bestowed ; by
making the grant itself conditional on some
previous act by the grantee. Of this nature was
a part of the plan for granting land at the Swan
River ; that part by which he, who had paid for
the conveyance of labourers to the colony, was
entitled to waste land in proportion tú his outlay.
Not less strictly of this nature, though somewhat
more obviously, is the plan now pursued by the
United States ; that of requiring payment in
money for new grants. This appears to be the
most sure and most simple way to prevent the
itnproper acquisition of waste land. For, though
tnany expedients might be suggested for rendering
the grant conditional on the performance of some
act by the grantee, such as withholding the titie
until the land was cultivated, still in ale of these
wavs of proceeding much room would be left for
favour, for disputes and evasion, as well as for
miscalculation on the part of the grantee; not to
mention that, if time viere required for the per-
formance of the condition of title, ale new land

a

156
. THE ART OF COLON1ZATION.

must pass through a state of uncertainty as to
its ownership ; being used in some way by indi-
viduals with a view to gaining a title, and yet not
the property of individuals, but liable to be re-
stuned by the government in case the condition
of a title were not thoroughly performed• •The
great merit of the system pursued by the United
States consists in its simplicity, and the certainty
of its operation.

Still, the object of the government, or rather of
the community, would be missed, if the payment
required for waste land were not so high as to
deter individuals from taking more land than,
for the benefit of the whole society, they ought
to take. If the price were so low that great
tracts should be attainable by paying a trifle of
money, individuals, specuiating vaguely on some
distara benefit to arise from the increase of popu-
lation, would acquire great tracts without being
willing, or even able, to use thern ; would inter-
pose great deserts arnongst the settlers ; would
produce an extreme degree of dispersion, reducing
the power of capital and labour to the minimum,
and rendering out of the case both high profits
and high wages. Thus, at the Swan River,
though some guantees paid money for their land,
when they paid for the passage of emigrant la-
bonrers, still as the rae of payment was two
hundred acres for each labourer, or 1s. 6d. per
acre, they were not prevented from taking a great

THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 157

(leal more land than they could use: In this
case, the object of requiring money for land
would not have been attained, even if the system
liad been uniform ; if none had been allowed to
acquire [and save by paying money for it. So,
in the United States, where, for want of coin-
binable free-labour, slavery is, one may say,
necessity ; where restrictions on foreign trade
and bounties on honre manufactures, are, not in
opposition to, but in strict agreement with, the
first principies of political economy, being, after
slavery, the chief means by which the people are
kept together, and induced to keep each other ;
where, notwithstanding these expedients for pro-
moting combination of power, it is a general
practice to exhaust the fertility of land, trusting
to nature for nearly all, and to skill for hardly
anything ; where, though not half of the appro-
priated land be cultivatcd, the people are moving
on, leaving great gaps of desert behind them, in
search of more land to be treated in the same
way ; these, it seems evident, the price put upon
waste land is too low for the object in view. And
this conclusion is supported by particular facts.
In the newest settlements, universally, we find
much land, which is become private property
without being used in any way ; not even cleared
of the forest ; taken out of the control of the
public, and yet of no service to any individual ;
whiie all such land interpoles so much desert, or

158 THE ART OF COLONIZATION. THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 159

so many deserts, amongst the settlers, increasing
the distante by whieh they are separated, interfer-
ing with the construction of roads, and operating
as a check to social intercourse, to concert, to
exchange, and to the skilful use of capital and
labour.

On the other hand, it is equally plain that too
high a price ri3ight be requircd for waste land.
If it be for the good of -all that no waste land
should be granted without being used- benefi-
cially, it is equally for the good of all that none
shouid be withheld from individuals able and
willing to use it in the best way. In order to
make the belt clastic- as well as tight, in order
that the field of production should increase gra-
dually along with the mercase of capital and
labour, it would be necessary to require for new
land a price not more than sufficient to prevent
the improper acquisition of land ; it would be
necessary to make the price so low, that the ac-
quisition and use of new land should be one of
the rnost productive etnployinents of capital. To
make the price so high, that the acquisition and
use• of new land should not be one of the most
productive employments of capital, would be
equal to a decree that no more land should be
used in any way ; would encompass the settled
parts of the colony, not with an elastic belt, but
with "a wall of brass ;" would, as soon as capital
and labour had reached an excessive proportion

to latid, canse low profits and low wages ; would
prevent the irnmigration of people ; would inevit-
ably defeat the objects of colonization ; just as if
all the land of a colony were granted suddenly to
a few persons neither able nor willing to use it,
but willing and able to prevent others from using
it. The piden alean, a terna often rnisapplied to
sache degree between right and very wrong,.
really signifies the right degrce and nothing else
for this case, in which contrary powers are to be
exertcd, the, power of granting and the power of
withholding, the gulden mean is all in all. Sorne
remarks will be offered presently on the class of
facts, which a coionizing people would take as
their guide for ascertaining the best price of new
land.

Meanwhile, we have to dispose of two questions
hardly less important than the question,of price.

First, supposing the best price ascertained, thé
beneficia] operation of it might be checked, nay,
altogether prevented in tuvo different ways ; either
by opposing obstacles to the acquisition of land
at that price, or by granting land on other tercos.
Thus, in New South Males, where the English
government has been persuaded to adopt the plan
of selling new land instead of giving it away,*

Ever since May, 1829, the Colonial Department in London
has been urgeci, in various ways, to adopt the American
plan of selling waste land, instead of jobbing it according to

160 THE ART OF COLONIZATION. THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 161

the governor's caprice still determines where-
abouts land shall be surveyed and granted.

the English plan, Por a long while, this suggestion was
cither fiercely opposed or treated with ridicule, by persons
connected with the colonial oflice, and especially by Mr. Wilmot
Horton and Mr. Hay, one of them lately, and the other still,
Under Secretary of State for the Coloides. This suggestion,
having been pressed opon the government by a society es-
tablished for the purpose of promoting systcmatic colonization,
Mr. Wilmot Horton, jealous, it would secm, of any inter-
ference with a subject, part of which had employed his thoughts
for some years, became a member of the society, and then
broke it up by getting into the chair at a public meeting, and
zealously condemning the objects of those with whom he had
professed to unite himself. But, at the same time, he greatly
promoted the objects of the society by attacking their views,
and thus causing those views to be examined. As an example
of the assistance which he thus gave to the dispersed members
of the society, I may mention, thathe persuaded Colonel Torrens
to join him in conducting a written controversy with two of
those gentlemen, and that, in the end, Colonel Torrens became
one of the warniest advocates of the measure to which he had
objected when it was first submitted to him. Not the least
impression, however, was made upon the government while
the Duke of Wellington's administration lasted. But, soon
after the change of ministry which followed the threc days
of Paris, soon after Lord Howick succeeded Mr. Horace
Twiss as Under Secretary for the Coloides, the measure sur
gested by the Colonization Society was, in part, adopted by the
government.. Defective as is that part of a measure defective
because incomplete ; still it cannot fail to be of great service to
the colonies. Whatever the people of Canada and of the
English settlements in Australia may gain by the check which
has thus been put opon official jobbing in the disposal of waste

Though any one may wait upon the governor with
the new regulations in his hand, saying,—I want

land, they owe, not very remotely, to the workmen of Paris or
M. de Polignae. For this great improvement they are more lin-
inediately obliged to Lord lIowick to the leading members of
the Colonization Society, Mr. John Sterling, Mr. Hutt now M.P.
for Huil, and Mr. Charles Tennant, then M. P. for St. Alban's 3
and, more especially to Mr. Robert Gouger, the secretary of
the society, whose efforts to procure the adoption of its whole
plan have been unceasing for several years. The successful
issue of Mr. Gouger's long contest with the judgements of
ignorance, the insults of pride and the dclays of idleness, should
be a lesson of eneouragcment to the advocates of useful projects.
Here follows the most correct list that I have been ablc to
obtain of the members of the Colonization Society.
Woronzow Grcig, Esq. Sir Francis Burdett, Bart.
W. S. O'Brien, Esq. M. P. Clayton Brown, Esq.
R. H. Innes, Esq. T. Kavanagh, Esq. M. P.
John Hutt, Esq. James Talbot, Esq.
I. II. Thomas, Esq. Charles Tennant, Esq.
I. W. Buckle, Esq. Lucius O'Brien, Esq. M. P.
John Sterlimr, Esq. John Mill, Esq.
.Edward King, Esq. O. S. Tucker, Esq.
Robert Scott, Esq. (of New Col. Torrens.

South Wales) J. E. Bicheno, Esq.
Howard Elphinstone, Esq. R. Trench, Esq.
Saud. Humphreys, Esq. William Hutt, Esq.
Charles Buller, Esq. Rey. G. V. Sampson.
C. Ilolte Bracebridge, Esq, Lawrence Marshall, Esq.
John Young, Esq. Right Hon. R. W. Horton.
E. Barnard, Esq. John Gore, Esq.
Sir J. C. Hobliouse, Bart.M. P. Arthur Gregory, Esq.
John Gibson, Esq. Richard Heathfield, Esq.

VOL. II.

162 THE ART OF COLONIZATION. THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 163

so many .acres in such a spot : take my money,--
t he governor may reply, No ; that spot is reserved

Sir Philip Sidney.
Erskine Flumphreys, Esq.

Hyde Villiers, Esq.
T. Potter Macqueen, Esq. M.P.

John Buckle, Esq.

Colonel Talbot, M. P.
Hon. Secretary, Robert Gouger, Esq.

The views of the Society werc first published in a supple-
ment to the Spectator newspaper, and afterwards reprinted in a
pamphlet, entitled A Statement of the Principies and Objecls of a
proposed National Society for the cure and prevention of pauper-
ism by means of Systematic Colonization. Ridgway, 1830. Those
views have been further explained in the following publica-
tions.

Sketch of a proposal for colonizing Australasia ; printed and
circulated, but not sold, in 1829.

A Letter to the Right Honourable Sir George Murray on Syste-
matic Colonization, by Charles Tennant, Esq. M. P.—Ridgway,
1830. This pamphlet contains a Report of the Society, and a
Controversy between Mr. Hutt and Mr. Sterlimr, on one sirle,and
Mr. Wilmot Horton and Col. Torrens, on the other.

Letters forminár parí of a Correspondence with Nassau William
Senior, Esq., concerning Systematic Colonization, &c. by Charles
Tennant, Esq. M. P. Ridgway, 1831.

A Leiter from Sydney, the principal 102071 of Australasia, edited
by Robert Gouger. Joseph Cross, Holborn, 1829. Reprinted
frote the Morning Chronicle newspaper.

Eleven Letters in the Spectator newspaper, signed P. 1830 and
1831.

A Lecture on Colonization delivered before the Literary Associa-
tion, at the London Tczvern, on December 5, 1831 : by R. Davies
Hanson, Esq. Ridgway and Sons. 1832.

Proposal to ¡lis Majesty's Government for founding a colony 071
the South Coast of Australia. Printed and circulated, but not
sold, in 1831.

you must chuse elsewhere. Nay, until the go-
vernor have declared a spot open for settlement,
until it please him to offi?r land for sale, no one
can now obtain new land any where on any
terrns. IIere, then, is the restriction of price,
without liberty subject to that restriction. If the
price fixed on land had been the right one, suf-
ficient., that is, for the purpose of restraint, all
further restraint could not but have been hurtful ;
could not but have interfered with the cine opera-
tion of the proper price. From this example ore
rnay gather, what indeed no fact oras required to
cstablish, so obvious is the conclusion ; that, along
with the best price for oraste land, there ought to
be the most perfect liberty of appropriation at
that price. This is secured in the United States
by very simple rep;ulations.

But this secured, what if there should be ex-
ceptions to the systetn ? what if some portions of
new land should be granted on some other con-
dition than parchase, or for less money than the
general price, or for nothing ? The result is plain :

Plan of a Company to be established for founding a colony in
Southern Australia. Ridgway and Sons. 1831.

Article in the Literary Gazette. 1831.
Emigration and Colonization. A speech delivered at a general

meeting of the National Colonizatiori Society in .1 -une, 1830, by
William Hutt, Esq. M. P. Wilson, Royal Exchange, 1832.

Emigration for the Relief of Parishes„ practically considerad, by
Robert Gouger. Ridgwav and Sons, Piccadilly ; and Effingham
\Vilson, Royal Exchange. 1833.

161
THE ART OF COLONIZATTON. THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 1(35

the object sought by the best price would be de-
feated in proportion to the extent of exceptional
grants. If land were given, as in the United
States, to schools and colleges, deserts would still
be interposed amongst the settlers ; and either
this would happen, or waste land would be sold
for less than the price generally required by go-
vernment, if new land were given for nothing by
way of reward for public services. Every special
grant, besides, made for nothing or for less than
the general price, would be an act of great in-
justice towards those who had paid the general
price : unless, indeed, the government shoulcl
proclaim, before taking money from any one, that
it intended to grant land for nothing in special
cases. Such a declaration, however, by the go-
vernment, though it would be a fair warning to
individuals, and would thus prevent any injus-
tice, could not but greatly interfere with the sale
of land at the best price ; for it would amount
to saying, Beware, land buyers, of -paying to us,
the government, more than will suffice to buy
land from individuals on whom we mean to bestow
grants for nothing. Whereas, if the plan of selling
at a fixed price were the only one, if the system
were uniform, the due operation of the best price
would be perfectly secured ; no deserts would be
interposed amongst the settlers ; no one would sell
land for less than the government price ; every
buyer would make his calculations accordingly ;
ami no one would suffer the least injustice.

notwithstanding the force of all these
reasons in favour of an uniform system, a colo-,.
nial governmentwould always be stronglytempted
to make exceptional grants ; a bad colonial go-,
verntnent, by the wish to favour individuals, by
all the motives which any where lead to govern-
ment jobs ; a good colonial government, by find-
ing this the easiest way to reward public services
and to provide for public education. In both
cases, the temptation to go wrong would become
very powerful indeed after the plan of selling had
been acted on for some time ; after it had given
to waste land outside of the settled districts, or
still within thetn, a greater value than waste land
ever possessed before. Suppose the people so far
kept together, so far in a condition to help each
other, that their industry was more productive
than colonial industry has ever been ; in that
case, all their land would be subject to some of
those advantages, over and aboye superior natural
fertility, for which rent is paid ; and all the land
adjoining the settled districts would be in a state
to become very soon, with the increase of wealth
and people, subject to the higher degrees of com-
petition. Presents, therefore, of new land would
now be worth more than such presents have ever
been worth : the temptation to make such pre-
sents would be greater in proportion to their
greater value ; while that greater value of the
thing desired would whet the ingenuity of pari-

166 THE ART OF COLONIZATION.

sites and jobbers, in devising new pretexts for an
improper use of the powcr of government. In the
case of a good colonial government, even in the
case of a government strictly representing; all the
colonists, the temptation to go wrong would
become stronger with an increase in the value of
new land : it would be more easy than it ever
has been to reward public services aad provide
for public education by means of gifts of new
land. And why not, some would ask, do in the
easiest way that which ought to be done? The
question may be answered by another. Since
the easiest way to prevent a criminal from com-
mitting more crimes is to hang hirn,

-
why not

hang all criminals ? why not do in the easiest
way that which °right to be done ? Because more
harur would come to society by making the law
hateful, than would be prevented by preventing
criminals from committing; more crimes ; because
that very easy mode of hindering some from
comrnitting crimes would encourage others to
comwit crimes, by rendering conviction or even
detection impossible in ninety-nine cases out of
a hundred. Just so, in colonizador], by provi-
ding for so great a good as public education in
the easiest way, that is, by exceptional grants of
land, more harrn than good would be done to
society. But if, as may easily happen, this should
be denied by those, who are not familiar with the
evils resulting to colonies from a profuse exer-

THE ART OF COLONIZATiON.
167

cise by the government of its power over waste
land, I would remind these, that the choice cloes
not lie between knowledge and ignorance, but
between two modos of securing education : j ust
as, in jurisprudence, the choice is, not between
the prevention and non-prevention of crimes by
persons already but between two inodes
of prevention, the easiest mode, hanging, and a
troublesome mode, the reformation or confine-
ment of the criminals. If all the waste land,
without exception, were sold at the right price,
then might public education be provided for out
of the money paid for land ; or, the people being
richer, because kept more together, by means of
contributions from the public in the shape of
taxes. A moderate land tax, for example, would
take from each proprietor of land less tiran would
be bestowed upon him by an uniform system of
selling new land at the best price. If, on the
contrary, the great good of public education were
sought by means of exceptional grants, a door
would be left opera for other exccptions. 'l'hose,
for example, who think a political church very
good, would demand exceptional grants for that
purpose ; if real public services were rewarded
by exceptional grants:such grants might be nade
for pretended public services. Once allow, by
admitting a single exception, that the facility of
doing good in this way is a sufficient reason for
taking this way to do good, and pretexts would

168 TIME ART OF COLONIZATION. THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 169

never be wanting for doing harm in so easy
way ; harm of two sorts, that which migbt avise
from giving land for irnproper purposes, and t.hat
whichr must avise from counteracting the desired
effect of requiring the proper price for every
addition of territory.

The importance of complete uniformity in any
system for treating the chief element of coloniza-
tion is so great, that I am tempted, at the risk of
tiring the reader, to illustrate my viéw of the
subject by a supposed case, which will be readily
understood, even by those who have never wit-
nessed the mischievous cffects on a colony of
irregularity in granting and withholding new
land.

Suppose t.hat the English government had
found a mass of pure gold in Middlesex,•close to
the surface of the round, and weighing some
thousands of millions of pounds ; and further,
that it was an object of great moment to the peo-
ple of England to keep up the present value of
gold, neither more nor less. In that case, how
would the government, supposing it bent on the
advantage of the people, use its power over this
rich mine? Here would be a very easy way of
paying off the nacional debt ; but if this were
done in this way, more ovil would come to the
people than if their debt had been doubled. Sup-
posing, as we do, that the object was to preserve
the actual value of gold, litera would the govern-,

ment supply the people with enough gold to make
up for the orear and toar of the currency, and to
maintain, if the people and their money transac-
tions were increasing, the actual proportion be-
tween the demand and supply of gold. But in
order to issue gold enough, without issuing too
much, sotne rule must be adopted. Supposing
a good rule adopted, would it ever, in any case
be departed from ? Clearly not ; because a gene-
ral plan with exceptions would be, not a rule,
but several plans working at the same time, and
perhaps in opposite directions. The rule, to be
worth any thing for its object, must be com-
plete: that is, whatever the mode of issuing gold
adopted by way of rule, it must be strictly ob-
served, or it would be no rule at all. In such a
a case, there would not be wanting people to ask
for gold, as a reward for public services, real or
pretended, as a support for religion, as a fund for
charity or for public education. Our object, each
set of applicants would say, is so very, very im-
portant, ami the facility of accomplishing it in
this way is so very, very great, that we are enti-
tled to an exception from the general rule. But
to all of these applicants a good government
would answer : obtain gold according to the
rule ; in no other way will we issue a single
ounce, seeing that our first duty in this matter is
to maintain the value of money by strictly ob-
serving the rule. But now suppose this case

170 THE ART OF COLONIZATION. THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 171

with a careless or corrupt government. Itere, it'
any rule were adopted in appearance, the excep-
tions would be so many as to make the rule a nul-
lity. If the members of this careless or corrupt
government had sense enough to perceive, that
extreme profusion in the issue of gold must soon
l'ender the mine worthless, they would, for their
own sake, issue gold with some caution, but still
with shatneful injustice, favouring some at the
expense of others, granting at one time and re-
fusing at another, causing violent fluctuations in
the value of rnoncy, and in time ruining every
one of their richer subjects, one after the other.
If the government were very ignorant as well as
careless and corrupt., it wonld be tempted, by the
facility of doing favours and complying with
urgent requests, to issue so much gold, that the
mine would soon be worth nothing, and there
would be an end of the mischief. Colonizing
governments, being, nearly all of them, careless
and corrupt, have, most of them, liad sense
enough to perceive, that there was a degree of pro-
fusion in granting waste land which would Tender
worthless their power over this element of wealth.
Not so the government which founded the Swan
River colony. There the profusion has been so
great that waste land is not worth the trouble of
accepting it : .11 the rich mine of gold is worth

' Last vear,
a hutalred thousand acres of picked land ncar

nothing. But, allowing for some caution in
colonial governments, the evils which it is in
their power to inflict on their subjects, by the
capricious exercise of their power over waste
land, are greater than those which would be in-
flicted on the English by a very ignorant govern-
ment, having power over an immense quantity of
gold. It is the very caution of those colonizing
governments, for their own ends, which preserves
their power to do mischief. How much mischief
they have done, and may yet do, by retaining
power over waste land, and exerting that power
capriciously, may be conceived, even by the inha-
bitant of an old country, who will reflect on this
supposed case of a very rich gold mine at the dis-
posal of a careless and corrupt government, and
who will further bear in mind how tnuch the
value of land, of capital, and of labour, depends
upon the proportion between land and people.

The last condition of a good rule for the dis-
posal of waste land is permanency. One ralo at
one time, and another rule at another time, would
be nearly as bad as no rule at al!. The Swan
River settlement has not existed five years ; but
already three quite different plans have been

the Swan River was offered for sale at the rate of less than
farthing per acre ; but no buyer could be found. At the sane
time, waste land was sold by the government in New South
\Vales and Van Diemen's Latid at prives varying from live to
twenty shillings per acre.

IN l

172 THE ART OF COLONIZATION. THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 173

adoptéd in that colony for the disposal of new
land. In the description of the first plan issuecl
by the English government, it was stated, in so
many words, that another plan, which was not
described, would be adopted in a year or two :
another plan was adopted within less than two
years after the first expedition -sailed ; and thcn,
with the change of ministry in England, carne a
third plan ; all within three years. The first and
the .last plan were as different as possible. Ac-
cording to the first plan, any one might obtain
an unlimitecl quantity of land for nothing ; ac-
cording to the last, no one could obtain new land
except by paying five shillings, at least, per acre.
Unta 1831, grants were obtainable for nothing
in Van Diernen's Land, New South Wales and
Canada : this year, no land will be granted ex-
cept to purchasers : next year, the plan of gra-
tuitous grants may be revived. The last change
of system in the English colonies, was brought
about, not by an act of the legislature, but sim-
ply by means of letters frorn the English colonial
minister to the colonial governors, saving in
effect : This is the way in which you will dispose
of waste land, until I change my mirad, or you
bear from my successor. Here, says an anony-
mous papen issued frorn Downing-street on the
lst of 1571arch 18:31 ; Itere is " a summary of the
rules which it has been thoughtft to substitute
for those dated the 20th of July 1830." Here,

says another anonymous publication from Down-
íng-street; dated January 20, 1831, is "a sana-
mary of the tules which it has been thought fit to
g ay clown for regulating the sales of land in New
South Wales and Van Diernen's Land." Who
thought fit ? thought fit to make such very impor-
tant changes in the political econotny of t.hese
coloras ? The English colonial minister : but his.
successor may think fit to change back again to
the old plan, or to adopt some entirely new plan;
and whatever an ignorant, lazy, English lord
shall Alease to call " a summary of rules," to that
must the colonists submit without appeal. Allow
that the last change is good for the colonists ;
that the plan now followed is far hetter-than the
irregular and corrupt practices for which it has
been substituted ; still, what securi ty• have .the
buyers of land, according to tbe new plan, against
being cheated of their pinchase money by the
revival of old practices ? The new plan is hateful
to the colonial governments, from whom . it takes
their most valuable privilege ; the privilege of
jobbing in the disposal of waste land. It is hate-
ful likewise, to those in England, who belong to
what has been called " the red tape school of
politics," or " the Peel and Dawson crew."* At
presenta the borne minister might give bis cousin

See that elever organ of the political church and of the
tory party in England, the Standard newspaper.

174 THE ART OF COLONIZATION. THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 175

a letter of introduction to the colonial minister,
without getting for that cousin 500,000 acres of
waste land. The new plan, which was suggested
to the government by a society in London, carne
opon the colonial governments by surprise. Fiad
they been consultad about it, they would proba-
bly, assisted by a strong party in the colonial
office at borne, have induced lord Goderich to
abstain from writing d'ose letters by which the new
plan has been set on foot. As it is, human nature
will be at fault, if they do not exert themselves
to get the old practices revived ; and they will
be zealously backed by eunning allies in Down-
ing-street. The successor of lord Goderich, a
traveller in America, is not lilcely to revive the
old English jobbing plan or practices ; but he
may, if it picase him, by a stroke of bis pen ; as

-may bis successor. Whatever dependence, then,
the colonists may place on the American know-
ledge, the industry,' and, may be, the price of
1VIr. Stanley, they have no security, worth the
llame, for the continuance of the present system.
That the new plan, that any plan, should work
well, while so fiable to be changad or overturned,
is quite impossible. They manage these things
better in America. There, the disposal of waste
land is a separate department of government. The
general plan of selling has been established by
congress : when the price has been altered, it was
congress that decided on the change : congress

alone can make exceptional granas. The system
is upheld by the united legislature of all the
states, and is administered by persons chosen for
their fitness, responsible to the people, and com-
pelled, not only to publish an account of all their
proceedings, but to proceed, step by step, in the
lace of the public. Here, then, are the best securi-
des against change ; an act of the legislature with
constant publicity. The result is, that, in Ame-
rica, every huyer of waste land knows what he is
about, makes his calculations on sine grounds :
and that the government obtains by the sale of
waste land 3,000,000 dollars a year. If the con-
gress of America viere to raise the price of waste
land up to that point, which would prevent any
hurtful dispersion of the people, without causing
any hurtful dcnsity of population, and should
also cease to make exceptional gratas, then would
their rule for the disposal of waste land be quite
perfect ; of the right measure, uniform and lasting ;
operating like a belt, tight but elastic, all round
and at all times. This is the rnode of proceeding
suggested by the English Colonization Society.

In any colony where this perfect rule for treat-
ing the chief element of colonization should be
adopted, colonization would proceed, not as every
where hitherto, more or less, by the scattering of
people over a wilderness and placing them for
ages in a state between civilization and barbar-
ism, but by the extension to new places of all that

176 THE ART OF COLONIZATION. THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 177

is good in an old society ; by the removal to new
places of people, civilized, and experienced in all
the arts of production ; willin• and able to assist
each other ; excited to the niost skilful applica-
tion of capital and labour by ready markets for
disposing of surplus produce ; producing, by
means of the tnost skilful industry in the richest
field, more than colonial industry has ever pro-
duced ; obtaining the highest profits of capital
and the highest wages of labour ; offcring the
strongest attraction for the immigra.tion of capital
and people ; increasing rapidly ; enjoying the ad-
vantages of an old society without its evils ; with-
out any cal) for slavery orrestrictions on foreign
trade ; an old society in every thing save the un-
easiness of capitalists and the misery of the bulk
of the people. Colonization, as hitherto con-
ducted, may be likened to the building of a
bridge; a work, no part of which is complete
until the whole be completad : according to the
method here proposed, colonization would be like
the making of a tunnel ; a work, in the progrcss
of 'which each step must be complete before
another step can be taken.

Two objections to this system remain to be
noticed.

1. It has been said : If the price of new land
-were high enough to prevent any one from legally
acquiring more land than, for the good of the
whole society, he ought to acquire, people would

use land without a title ; the beneficia) compact
amongst the colonists, implied by an uniform and
fixed rtde for the disposal of new land, would not
be observed by all the people ; some would be-
come squatters, that is, settlers on new land with-
out a title. The answer to this ohjection places
the merits of the system in a strong point of
view.

It is a remarkab le fact, that in the history of Ame-
rican colonization, there is hut one instante of a
person having settled totally out of the reach of
markets ; the case of the celebrated Daniel Boon,
who is known, for what ? for his eccentricity.
Invariably, then, it, may be said, when people use
land without a title, they keep within reach of
some tnarket in which to obtain, by the sale of
what their own labour produces, some thing which
their own labour will not produce. They do not
intend to cut themselves off from all social inter-
course ; they use land so near to the settled dis-
tricts, that it is fiable to be taken from them as
colonization advances. In many cases, squatting
has been encouraged by a regulation, which
awarded to the holder of land without a tale,
when the land should be takcn from hiel, COM-
pensation for the improvements which he had
made upon the land. Bilt, in every case, the
squatter expects that his land will be taken from
him: nay, in most cases, he intends abandon it
as soon as he has exhausted its natural fertility.

VOL. II. N

178
THE ART OF COLON iZATION. THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 179

The object of the squatter, then, is merely to get
a few crops from a virgin soil, and then to re-
inove for the purpose of exhausting another spot
of virgin soil. But this, Americans know, and
Mr. Stuart informs the English, is a general
practice in America ; not only with squatters, but
with those who have paid for land. Why this
practice ? Because, as I have explained before,*
of the minute division of labour in America ;
because labour, so minutely divided, would not,
perhaps, even support the isolated labourer, unless
the unproductiveness of his labour were counter-
acted by the great productiveness of a virgin soil.
It is the extreme cheapness of new land which
causes this minute division of labour_ At all
events, calculates the squatter, I must work by
myself: if I must work by myself, I must, in
order to live, use and exhaust a virgin soil :
where's the use of paying for land when one's only
object is to destroy its fertility ? Here is the
squatter's motive for using land without a title.
Utile price of new land ,viere such as to keep the
people together, so that they might combine their
Jabour, it would .be for the interest of every one to
remain where he could be assisted and give assist-
anee : the motive of the squatter would entirely
tease. As it is, no one goes beyond the reach of
markets : in that case, we have a right to presume,

See Note-.X.

no one would go out of the way of all the great
advantages which belong to combination of
labour. It appears, therefore, that, by putting
sufficient price upon new land, squatting, instead
of being encouraged, would be prevented. This
will be still more clear, when we shall see with
what great rapidity colonization would advance
how very soon a squatter, if there were one, not
going out of the reach of markets, would be over
taken by society, provided the parchase money of
all new land viere ernployecl in accelerating the
progress of colonization.

2. The second objection is, that into a colony,
where new land was not. obtainable except by
parchase, neither cápitalists nor labourers would
be disposed to immigrate ; but that, On the con-
trary, from such a colony both classes would be
disposed to emigrate to other colonies not far off,
where new land was obtainable for nothing.

We cannot decide this point by reference to
facts ; because in no colony has that price ever
been required for new land, which, together with
perfect liberty of appropriation, would insure
the greatest productiveness of industry, or, in
other words, the highest profits and wages. But
there are some facts which tend to show, that the
attractive power of a colony would be increased
by putting a sufticient price upon all new land.
Why have so many English and Irish labourers,
who liad emigrated to Canada, removed from

180 THE ART OF COLONIZATION.
THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 181

Canada to the United States ? from a colony where
land was cheaper to one where it was dearer.
The only rational answer is, because etnployment
was more regular, with higher wages, where the
people were in some degree kept together than
where they were carefully dispersed. Why is
not the Swan River colony, where, under a fine
climate, land is so very cheap ; why is not this a
favourite colony with English etnigrants, both
capitalists and labourers ? Why have so many
people, both labourers and capitalists, emigrated
from the Swan River to colonies where land was
dearer ? Why does it happen, when a large traca
of new land is bought by an American company,
and resold by tiren: in lots with great profit, that
to this spot people fiock, both capitalists and la-
bourers, and here congregate for the advantages
which come from mutual assistance. In this last
case, as to a great tract of country, the cornpany
Cake the place of government, and will not part
with any land except at a higher price than that
which they have paid to the government. In all
these cases, people are attraeted from a worse to a
better proportion between land and people ; from
lower to higher profits and wages. That it should
be so, is consistent with the principies of human
nature and political economy. True it is, that
people now and then go from a better to a worse
proportion between land and people ; as when
citizens of the United States etnigrate to Canada

but these are exceptions to the general rulo ; just
as those who ruin their fortunes and destroy their
health by excessive debauchery, do that which is
contrary to their ONVI1 interest, and therefore con-
trary to a law of political econorny and human
nature. The case of those capitalists, who emi-
grate from an old country, led on by the hopo of
acquiring wealth by obtaining for little or nothing
bnmense traets of wilderness, alises from pro-
found ignorance. If this case support the ob-
jection under review, then, when a child is
poisoned by mistaking night-shade berries for
red currants, it goes to prove that children have
no sentiment of self-preservation. These men
act like the colonial minister of England, who
sent butts for holding fresh water, to ships that
were floating on a fresh water sea. Judging of
a desea country by what they see in one thickly
peopled, they dream of domains and millions till
they awake, having lost their all. But the people
of a colony, in which there existed the advantages
of a proper degree of concentration, could not be
ignorant of those advantages : and the existente,
for the first time, of those great advantages would
surely become known both in other colonies and
in the mother-country. Such a colony, then,
would be highly attractive. How much more
attractive, both to capitalists and labourers, tiran
colonies have ever been, will be seen in the fui-
lowing section of this treatise ; where it is ex-

182 THE ART OF COLONIZATION.

plained, that if all the purchase-money of waste
land were properly disposed of, capitalists in the
colony would always be supplied with labour,
and every labourer reaching the colony might
surely become not only a landowner, but, some
thing more grateful to one of his class, a master
of other labourers. The first colony in which
labour was plentiful, though dear, and in which
labourers might be sure to become masters as
well as landowners ; the first colony in which
there was the good without the evil of an old
society, would probably attract people, both
capitalists and labourers, from colonies in which,
along with the good, there was all the evil, of a
new society,

II. The removal of people.
In a colony where new land was supplied in

proportion to the wants of a people increasing
rapidly' in wealth and numbers; where the pro-
duce*

of industry was so great as to give high
profits and high wages. where, consequently, all
should possess the means of removal, and where,
anoreover, the land newly become the property of
individuals-shoulcl mercase very rapidly in value,
by very soon becoming subject to the higher
kinds of competition which produce rent . ; in
such a colony, there would be motives in plenty
for the removal of people from .the settled to the
waste paras of the colony. Co!onization would

THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 183

go on of itself, through the increase people by•
births in the colony. But more quickly than in
proportion to such increase, colonization could
not go on, unless means were found to remove
people from some old country. For the imtni-
gration of people from an old country, the induce-
ment, we have seen alrcady, would be high profits,
and especially high wages. Thosc who would
come in search of high profits may be supposed to
possess the means of coming. But those who
would most desire to come in search of high
wages, are the poorest of the poor in old countries;
so poor as to be unable to move from one part to
another part of their own country ; people who
live from hand to mond), never having any pro-
perty save their own thews and sinews. This,
however, is the class of people whose immigration
into a colony it would be most useful to promote ;
a class who, as labourers should become capital-
ists and landowners, would fill their place in the
market of labour ; beeoming themselves, in time,
capitalists and landowners, and having their place
filled, in turn, by immigrants of the same class.
These, however strong their inducement to emi-
gration, cannot move without assistance. Ifthey
are to move at all, the cost of the-ir passage rnust
be defrayed, or at least advanced, by some body:
It might be greatly for the advantage of the old
country to defray the cost of their passage ; but.
Mere we are considering only the means which a

184 THE ART OF COLON1ZATION. THE ART OF COLONIZAT1ON, 185

colony possesses of prornoting immigration with-
out the aid of an old country. The question
then is,—How may a colony advantageously pay
for the irnmigration of labour ? that is, build a
bridge, as it were, toll-free, for the passage of
poor labourers from an old country to the colony

Reflecting on the urgent want of labour that
occurs in all colonies which prosper, we rnay be
cure, that great pains have been taken by peoplc
in colonies to devise some mearas of obtaining a
regular supply of labour from old countries. The
supplies of labour obtained by kidnapping in the
oid English colonies of America, by the late im-
migration of poor Germans into the United
States ; poor Germans, who, ignorant of the laves
arad of the language of America, were Hable to be
heid in a state of bondage ; and by the trans-
portation system in New South Wales and Van
Diemen's Land ; all there supplies of labour de-
pended on a kind of slavery. Every scheme of
the sort, that did not establish a kind of slavery,
has failed the moment it was tried. On the prin-
cipie of the redemptioner system, that of payrnent
by a capitalist for the poor immigrant's passage,
re-pa.yment being obtained by the immigrant's la-
bour, many schemes have been tried, and have
failed, in Canada, New South Wales, Van Die-
men's Land and South Africa ; not to mention
the Swan River. And yet nothing can be more
plain than that the capitalists of a colony and the

labourers of an old country would find it for
their mutual advantage to act on this principie.
About the advance by the capitalist there is no
sort of difficulty ; so much greater would be to
him the value of the poor immigrant's labour for a
few years, even at high wages, than the cost of
the irmnigramt's passage. Nor is there any diffi-
culty in finding poor labourers nay eager,
to engage with colonial capitalists for a certain
terco of service in the colony. The difficulty lies
in this ; that without some kind of slavery, the
capitalist has no security for repayment of bis
outlay ; that the labourer, as soon as he reaches
the colony, laughs at bis engagement ; that what
the capitalist brings to the colony in the shape of
labour, ceases to be labour the moment it reaches
the colony ; or, at all events, is never labour over
which he who paid for it has any control. Du-
ring the last fifteen years, some thousands of poor
labourers, to speak within compass, have been
conveyed from England to English colonies at
the expense of colonial capitalists, and under en-
gagement to work for those who had paid for
their passage. " There is no instance on record,"
says M'Arthur, the greatest capitalist of New
South Wales, " where settlers have been able to
prevent their indented servants, hired in England
from becoming dissatisfied, and then leaving them
alter their arrival." At the Swan River, the first
settlers had hardl y landed before the governor

186
THF, ART OF COLONIZATION.

was required to punish indented labourers for re-
fusing to work for those who had brought them
from England. In Canada, universally, labou ring
servants taken from England and Ireland by
capitalists, under engagement to repay with la-
bour the cost of their passage, have quitted those
to whom they were bound, to work for others,
who, not having laid out money in that way,
could afrord to pay higher wages than those who
had. If it had been possible to enforce, such con-
tracts, what Canadian would have written
‘‘ Place us on an equal footing with New South
Wales, by giving us a share in those benefits.
which must, more or less, accrae from convict
labour ?".1 In vain have severe laws been passed
to enforce the observanee of such contracts by
the labourer, and to prevent sueh irnmigrants
from being empioyed except by those who had
paid for their immigration. It has been all so
thoroughly in vain, that the diffieuity, not to say
impossibility, of conducting immigration in this
way, seerns to be established.

To meet this difficulty, an ingenious writer in
the Quarterly Reviezot has prohosed to create a
colonial fund for the immigration of labour, by
means of a tax on wages. Thus the poor labourer

Suggestions on the propriety of re•introducing British
Convict Labour into British North America. By a Canadian,
1824.

t -Presume(' to be 111r. Powiett Serope.

THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 187

brought te the colony would repay the cost of
bis passage by a deduction from his wages ; and
the fund so raised would be employed in bringing
more labourers, who, in their turn, would repay
the cost of their passage, and provide a fund for
the immigration of other labourers. The prin-
cipie of this suggestion is excellent ; but is the
execution of it more practicable tiran the enforce-
rrient of contracts for service, which are based on
the same principie ? Unlcss the price of new land
were raised up to the piden mean, there would
be scarce any hired labour to tax ; scarce any
wages from which 'te rnake a deduction. But
supposing the peor irnmigrants should, during a
certain period, work for high wages, how is the
tax-gatherer to distinguish workmen, whose pas-
sage had been paid .for-them,-from those who had
paid for their own passage, or from those bern in
the colony ? If very severe laws llave failed to
bold immigrant labourers to their engagements,
what law could be devised that would induce
them te remain subject to a deduction from their
wages ? In a word, the scheme appears to be
impracticable.

This súbeme rnay have been suggestcd to its
author by the proposal of the Colonization So-
ciety*. Their proposal was, That, no waste land

* The number of the Quarterly Reuiew, in which this seheme
was proposed, appeared not long after the publication of A

Letter from Sydney ; in which the impossibility of holding ap-

188 THE ART OF COLONIZATION. THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 189

being disposed of by the government except by
public sale at a fixed upset price, all the purchase-
money should be employed in bringing poor la-
bourers to the colony. As labourers brought to
the colony in this way would in time, ninety-nine
out of a hundred of them, purchase land with
savings from their wages ; and as this deduction
from their wages would be employed to bring
more labourers, who, in their turn, would save
money and buy land, the proposal of the Society
play be said to be founded on the same principie
as the suggestion of the Quarterlq Review ;
namely, the repayment by the immigrant's labour
of the cost of his passage. But over that sugges-
tion thc proposal of the Society has sorne great
advantages, which 'will bccome manifest as we
examine the plan more closely.

1. This plan would be very easily carried into
effect. The experience of the United States shows,
that it is very easy to raise a fund by the sale of
waste land. Not to reckon how much larger the
fund raised in that way by thc United States
would be, if the price of new land were brought up
to the golden mean, and if no exceptional grantS
were made, the Americans do actually raise by
the sale of waste land near £700,000. a year.
What could be more easy than for the United
States to spend this income in fetching labour to
prenticed labourers to thcir engagements was explained at
length.

America ? We have only to suppose that Con-
gress should chuse to do this, and we suppose the
plan of the English Colonizatiort Society carried
into effect without any sort of difficulty.*

* The most simple method of laying out the Immigration
fund would, probably, be the formation of a Board of hurni-
gration, instructed to make open contracts with ship•owners
for the passage of labourers from Europe to America ; to the
amount in each year of the immigration fund obtained in the
previous year; and at a certain rate for each labourer landed
in good health at the port named in the contract. 'When the
English government first sent convicto to New South \Vales,
they used to contract with shipowners for the passage of con-
victs, at the rate of so much per head for the number embarked.
As the captain was to feed the convicto during their voyage, it
was for bis interest that they should be siekly, or that they
should die. Under these contracts, accordingly, half, and
sometimes two-thirds, of the inmates of a convict ship used to
die during the voyage. The punishment of transportation
was, in at least half the cases, the punishment of death. It
was not till this murderous system had been pursued for some
years, that the English government discovered the faulty na-
ture of those contracts. At present, the rate of mortality on
board convict ships is said to be lower than the rate of mor-
tality amongst the English nobility. How was this change
brought about ? Simply by contracting, instead of for the
number embarked, for the number landed in the colony. As the
captain or ship owner is now paid only for those who reach
their destination, it is greatly for • his interest to keep all the
passengers in good health. Contracts under which the ship-
owner was paid only for those who were landed in good health,
the state of each passenger's health being ascertained by me-
dical officers in the colony, would be a better security for the
well being of the immigrants during their passage, than all

190
THE ART OF COLONIZATION. THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 191

2. Pursuing this case, for the salce of more
ready illustration, the disposal of this fund in this
way would bring to the United. States in the first
year (reckoning the cost of each immigrant's pas-
sage to be 7.,) .100,000 labourers. But, as the
income, which the United States obtain by the
sale of waste land, has been steadily increasing
for years, along with the increase of people by
•births and immigration, so would that fund in-
orease anuda more rapidly, if each year's incorne
were employed in bringing to the United States
people who must othersvise have remained at
honre. The added labour of 100,000 persons in
one year would provide the means of purchasing
land to rneet the wants oía population so growing
in nurnbers ; would provide a fund for the next
year's immigration, corresponding with the ad-
ditional demand for labour arising from the in-
crease of capital, and of land the property of
individuals. According to the extent of land

would be the increase of demand for labour
wherewith to cultivate the new land ; and ac-
cording to the extent of land soid, would be the
amount of the fund for procuring fresh labour.
Supposing a fund for immigration to be got in
sorne other way than by the sale of new land ; as,
for example, by a tax in the old country, or by a
tax on wages in the colony, there would be no
those uilnute enaetments which the English , 'parliametit has
'nade .fop,the regulation of ernigrant ships.

measure for suiting the supply of labour to the
detnand. Too munir immigrant labour rnight be
introduced at one time, and too little at another.
If the supply were not in some way regulated by
the demand, all kinds of evils would ensue. Un-
less the supply were regular, unless those who
should become landowners were replaced
diately by new comers, the salve obstaeles would
exist, that exist now, to the commencement of
works which require the constant ernployment of
many hands ; and thus, when a great supply of
labourers should arrive, employment for them
might be wanting. Gluts of labour, arising from
uncertain immigration, do frequently happen in
Canada and the State of New York. The cause
of these gluts ís explained by Mr. Teárant ina
letter to Mr. Senior. He says—" 1 have con-
versed upon this point with capitalists both .of
Quebec and New York ; and 1 have often heard
them explain the circumstance in this way. Not-
withstanding; (say they) our having capital
wherewith to employ labour, we have found such
immigra.tions of labour a great ovil ; because
felt that it would. be impossible to-retain such
labour if we had hired it. Our capital was..ready
for many operations which require a considerable
period of time for their cOmpletion ; but we could
not begin such operations with labour which, we
knew,_would soon leave us. If we had been sure
of retaining the labour of such emigrants,. we

192 THE ART OF COLONIZATION. THE ART OF COLONIZA'fION. 193

should have been glad to have engaged it at once,
and for a high price : and we should have en-
gaged it, even though we had been sure it would
leave us, provided we had been sure of a fresh sup-
ply whenever we might need it.' " " From these
and other facts," says Mr. Tennant, " it may be
safely inferred, that the cause of the gluts of la-
bour in Canada and New York might be removed
by rendering the supply constant and regular ;
thus permitting a much greater supply in the
course of ten years, without distress, than has ever
yet taken place in a similar perioci with distress."
Now, by the plan of the Colonization Society, the
supply of labour must be constant and regular :
because, first, as no labourer would be able to
procure land until he had worked for money, all
irmnigrant labourers, working for a time for wa-
ges and in combination, would produce capital
for the employment of more labourers ; secondly,
because every labourer who left off working for
wages and became a landowner, would, by pur-
chasing land, provide a fund for bringing fresh
labour to the colony.

Still, it may be said, this rule for avoiding at
all times any glut of labour would be obtained,
even if the fund for itmnigration were raised
by the old country, provided no land were granted
save upon payment of the proper price ; because,
in that case, all labourers would be employed for
a time in creating capital for the employment of

more labourers, and thus the demand for fresh
labour in any given year would always be equal
to the supply of immigrant labour in the previous
year. Agreed ; but here there would be no rule
for a sufficient supply of labour : the evil of too
great a supply would be avoided, but not the evil
of too small. a supply ; because nothing would
show plainly to what extent the demand for labour
had increased. Nothing, at least, would show
this half so distinctly as the amount of land sold.
We might, indeed, regulate the supply of labour
by the amount of land sold, even if the labour
were brought by a fund raised out of the colony
that is, the old country might spend, on the emi-
gration of labour to the colony in one year, a
sum precisely equal to the sum raiséd in the pre-
vious year by the sale of colonial land. But the
object of so measuring one fund by the other
would be secured, as a mattcr of course, if the
whole fund obtained by the sales of land were
spcnt in procuring labour. One of the greatest
merits of this plan, therefore, seetns to consist in
its self-regulating action.

3. We have seen already,that itwould be greatly
for the advantage of a colony to put one price
upon all new land without exception, if merely
with a view to the increase of the first element of
wealth, land, in due proportion to the increase of
the other elements, capital and labour; that by
requirihg - this price, as a rule for the supply of

VOL. II.

o

194 THE ART OF COLONIZATION. THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 195

new land, the colonists, being sufficiently kept
together, would raise more produce, would get
higher profits and wages, would have more phy-
sical enjoyrnents, to say nothing of their escape
froin the moral evils of great dispersion ; and
that, consequently, it would be well to put the
best price upon all new land, even though the
money so raised should not be employed in any
useful way. Under the supposition of the money
being wasted, the buyer of land would pay for
justice and uniforrnity in the disposal of land,
and for a free choice as to the situation and extent
of bis grant ; he would pay also for the assurance
that no other could obtain land by favour, with-
out payment, for the certainty of not being under-
sold by landowners who had obtained their pro-
perty for nothing ; be would pay for all the
advantages of' that system, of which his indivi-
dual payment was a part. But if the money were
not wasted, he would pay, besides, though paying
no more, for whatever useful purpose the money
might serve. If the money wcre spent in pro-
curing labour, he would pay, not merely for his
title to the land bought, but also for justice and
uniforrnity in the disposal of new land, for a free
choice, for the value conferred upon all land by a
due concentration of the people, for a system
which must hinder ruinous fluctuations in the
value of land ; and further, he would pay for
labour wherewith to cultivate his land, for mar-

kets in which to sell the produce of that labour,
for population, which must render the whole of
his land subject to one or more of those higher
kinds of competition which lead to the payment
of rent. Nominally, he would receive for his out-
lay—land, or the title to hold and sell land : in
reality, he would obtain the land for nothing ;
paying for a great number of other things, with-
out any of which bis land might be worthless ;
along with all of which, it must, no sooner than
it was bought, be worth more than he had paid
for it. This paradox may be explained away in
a motnent. Mr. Peel, required to invest ls. 6d.
per acre on his grant of 500,000 acres, appeared
to pay 37,5001. for that tract of land. But be
made the investment, which was to secure his
title, in taking labourers to the settlement. Whe-
ther the government had bestowed the land on
the condition that the grantee should spend
37,0001. in conveying labourers to the settlement,
or had sold the grant for 37,0001., spending the
money in that way, would have been perfectly
indifferent : in either case, the grantee would
have paid, not for land, but for labour ; he would
have received the land for nothing, but subject to
the condition of buying, so much labour where-
with to cultivate it. The average cost of clearing
waste land in Canada and the northern parts of
the United States, is about 41. per acre. No land,

196
THE ART OF COLONIZATION. THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 197

it is plain, ought to be granted to remain un-
cleared. Now suppose that the government should
require 41. per acre for such land, using the
rnoney tú clear the land : in this case, for what
would the grantee pay ? not for the land, but for
having it cleared. So in the case before us, the
grantee would pay for the means of cultivating
his land, and for the value which that disposal of
his purchase money rnust bestow upon his land,
rather than for the land itself.

4. It follows that, in justice to all the buyers of
land, in order that the supply of labour should
correspond exactly with the quantity of land
granted, in order to give to all of the grantees
the greatest return for their purchase money, it
would be necessary to employ the whole of the
fund, obtained by sales of land, in fetchinglabour
to the colony. If any part of that fund were'em-
ployed in any other way, neither would there be
a rule for suiting the supply of labour to •the
demand, nor would the purchasers of land receive
as much as possible for their money. The neces-
sity, in order to make the system perfect, of
avoiding any exceptional disposal of this money,
is as clear as the necessity of refusing exceptional
grants for the salce of a good rule by which to
grant and withhold land. This will be still more
clear, when we shall look at the circutnstances
which would guille the government in fixing on

the best price for land ; a consideration reserved
till now, for the reason that will appear in the
next paragraph.

5. According to the value of the thing pur-
chased, ought to be the purchase-money. The land
bought would be more, much more, valuable, if
the purchase-money were employcd in adding to
the colonial population, than if it were used for
any other purpose whatever. By how much more
valuable we cannot determine exactly ; but this
is quite plain, that for land, of which all the pur-
citase money was devoted to the increase of colo-
nial population, a higher price miglit properly be
required than for land, of which the purchase-
money was wasted, or was used in any way less
calculated, than the use of it as an immigration
fund, to increase the value of land. Thus, in
America, those who last year paid 700,0001. for
new land, rnight, with greater advantage to them-
selves, have paid twice the amount, or 1,400,0001.
for the same extent of land, if the larger sum liad
been ernployed in . adding 200,000 sotas to the
population of the United States. Thus the
Canada Company, which has paid, or engaged to
pay, to the English government 304,0001; for
waste land in Upper Canada, might have paid
twice as much for the same land with greater
profit, if all their purchase money had been em-
ployed in adding to the population of the colony;*

* The money hitherto paid by this Company has been dis-

198 THE ART OF COLONIZATION.

THE ART OF COLONIZATION. 199

and if no land had been granted to other people
save for money, and all the money so obtained
had been employed in the same way. Let us
pose that by this ernployment of the purchase
money of new land, the cost of clearing land
were reduced frorn 41. to 21. per acre ; without
any fall of wages, merely from the greater facility
of ernploying many hands in combination. In
this case, whichl would be better for the Ameri-
can settler, to pay 4/. 5s. per acre for his land
when cleared, that is 5s. for the title and 4l. for
the clearing ; or to pay 2/. 10s. for the land when
cleared, that is 10s. instead of 5s. for the title,
and 2/. instead of 4/. for the clearing ? Like
illustrations of the advantage which the buyer
would derive from paying more, if his purchase
money were used in the way proposed, will occur
to every one. This, then, is a most important con-
sideration, with a view to deterinining the best
price for new land. SoMe others appear scarcely
less important.