If it is desirable, as no one will deny it to be, that the planting of colonies should
be conducted, not with an exclusive view to the private interests of the first founders,
but with a deliberate regard to the permanent welfare of the nations afterwards to arise
from these small beginnings; such regard can only be secured by placing the enterprise,
from its commencement, under regulations constructed with the foresight and enlarged views
of philosophical legislators; and the government alone has power either to frame such
regulations, or to enforce their observance.
The question of government intervention in the work of Colonization involves the future
and permanent interests of civilization itself, and far outstretches the comparatively
narrow limits of purely economical considerations. But even with a view to those
considerations alone, the removal of population from the overcrowded to the unoccupied
parts of the earth's surface is one of those works of eminent social usefulness, which
most require, and which at the same time best repay, the intervention of government. To
appreciate the benefits of colonization, it should be considered in its relation, not to a
single country, but to the collective economical interests of the human race. The question
is in general treated too exclusively as one of distribution; of relieving one labor
market and supplying another. It is this, but it is also a question of production, and of
the most efficient employment of the productive resources of the world.
Much has been said of the good economy of importing commodities from the place where
they can be bought cheapest; while the good economy of producing them where they can be
produced cheapest, is comparatively little thought of. If to carry consumable goods from
the places where they are superabundant to those where they are scarce, is a good
pecuniary speculation, is it not an equally good speculation to do the same thing with
regard to labor and instruments? The exportation of laborers and capital from old to new
countries, from a place where their productive power is less, to a place where it is
greater, increases by so much the aggregate produce of the labor and capital of the world.
It adds to the joint wealth of the old and the new country, what amounts in a short period
to many times the mere cost of effecting the transport. There needs be no hesitation in
affirming that Colonization, in the present state of the world, is the best affair of
business, in which the capital of an old and wealthy country can engage.
It is equally obvious, however, that Colonization on a great scale can be undertaken,
as an affair of business, only by the government, or by some combination of individuals in
complete understanding with the government; except under such very peculiar circumstances
as those which succeeded the Irish famine. Emigration on the voluntary principle rarely
has any material influence in lightening the pressure of population in the old country,
though as far as it goes it is doubtless a benefit to the colony. Those laboring persons
who voluntarily emigrate are seldom the very poor; they are small farmers with some little
capital, or laborers who have saved something, and who, in removing only their own labor
from the crowded labor market, withdraw from the capital of the country a fund which
maintained and employed more laborers than themselves. Besides, this portion of the
community is so limited in number, that it might be removed entirely, without making any
sensible impression upon the numbers of the population, or even upon the annual increase.
Any considerable emigration of labor is only practicable, when its cost is defrayed, or at
least advanced, by others than the emigrants themselves.
Who then is to advance it? Naturally, it may be said, the capitalists of the colony,
who require the labor, and who intend to employ it. But to this there is the obstacle,
that a capitalist, after going to the expense of carrying out laborers, has no security
that he shall be the person to derive any benefit from them. If all the capitalists of the
colony were to combine, and bear the expense by subscription, they would still have no
security that the laborers, when there, would continue to work for them. After working for
a short time and earning a few pounds, they always, unless prevented by the government,
squat on unoccupied land, and work only for themselves. The experiment has been repeatedly
tried whether it was possible to enforce contracts for labor, or the repayment of the
passage money of emigrants to those who advanced it, and the trouble and expense have
always exceeded the advantage. The only other resource is the voluntary contributions of
parishes or individuals, to rid themselves of surplus laborers who are already, or who are
likely to become, locally chargeable on the poor rate. Were this speculation to become
general, it might produce a sufficient amount of emigration to clear off the existing
unemployed population, but not to raise the wages of the employed; and the same thing
would require to be done over again in less than another generation.
One of the principal reasons why Colonization should be a national undertaking, is that
in this manner alone, save in highly exceptional cases, can emigration be self-supporting.
The exportation of capital and labor to a new country being, as before observed, one of
the best of all affairs of business, it is absurd that it should not, like other affairs
of business, repay its own expenses. Of the great addition which it makes to the produce
of the world, there can be no reason why a sufficient portion should not be intercepted,
and employed in reimbursing the outlay incurred in effecting it. For reasons already
given, no individual, or body of individuals, can reimburse themselves for the expense;
the government, however, can. It can take from the annual increase of wealth, caused by
the emigration, the fraction which suffices to repay with interest what the emigration has
cost. The expenses of emigration to a colony ought to be borne by the colony; and this, in
general, is only possible when they are borne by the colonial government.
Of the modes in which a fund for the support of colonization can be raised in the
colony, none is comparable in advantage to that which was first suggested, and so ably and
perseveringly advocated, by Mr Wakefield: the plan of putting a price on all unoccupied
land, and devoting the proceeds to emigration. The unfounded and pedantic objections to
this plan have been answered in a former part of this chapter: we have now to speak of its
advantages. First, it avoids the difficulties and discontents incident to raising a large
annual amount by taxation; a thing which is almost useless to attempt with a scattered
population of settlers in the wilderness, who, as experience proves, can seldom be
compelled to pay direct taxes, except at a cost exceeding their amount; while in an infant
community indirect taxation soon reaches its limit. The sale of lands is thus by far the
easiest mode of raising the requisite funds. But it has other and still greater
recommendations. It is a beneficial check upon the tendency of a population of colonists
to adopt the tastes and inclinations of savage life, and to disperse so widely as to lose
all the advantages of commerce, of markets, of separation of employments, and combination
of labor. By making it necessary for those who emigrate at the expense of the fund, to
earn a considerable sum before they can become landed proprietors, it keeps up a perpetual
succession of laborers for hire, who in every country are a most important auxiliary even
to peasant proprietors: and by diminishing the eagerness of agricultural speculators to
add to their domain, it keeps the settlers within reach of each other for purposes of
co-operation, arranges a numerous body of them within easy distance of each center of
foreign commerce and non-agricultural industry, and insures the formation and rapid growth
of towns and town products. This concentration, compared with the dispersion which
uniformly occurs when unoccupied land can be had for nothing, greatly accelerates the
attainment of prosperity, and enlarges the fund which may be drawn upon for further
emigration. Before the adoption of the Wakefield system, the early years of all new
colonies were full of hardship and difficulty: the last colony founded on the old
principle, the Swan River settlement, being one of the most characteristic instances. In
all subsequent colonization, the Wakefield principle has been acted upon, though
imperfectly, a part only of the proceeds of the sale of land being devoted to emigration:
yet wherever it has been introduced at all, as in South Australia, Victoria, and New
Zealand, the restraint put upon the dispersion of the settlers, and the influx of capital
caused by the assurance of being able to obtain hired labor, has, in spite of many
difficulties and much mismanagement, produced a suddenness and rapidity of prosperity more
like fable than reality.
The self-supporting system of Colonization, once established, would increase in
efficiency every year; its effect would tend to increase in geometrical progression: for
since every able-bodied emigrant, until the country is fully peopled, adds in a very short
time to its wealth, over and above his own consumption, as much as would defray the
expense of bringing out another emigrant, it follows that the greater the number already
sent, the greater number might continue to be sent, each emigrant laying the foundation of
a succession of other emigrants at short intervals without fresh expense, until the colony
is filled up. It would therefore be worth while, to the mother country, to accelerate the
early stages of this progression, by loans to the colonies for the purpose of emigration,
repayable from the fund formed by the sales of land. In thus advancing the means of
accomplishing a large immediate emigration, it would be investing that amount of capital
in the mode, of all others, most beneficial to the colony; and the labor and savings of
these emigrants would hasten the period at which a large sum would be available from sales
of land. It would be necessary, in order not to overstock the labor market, to act in
concert with the persons disposed to remove their own capital to the colony. The knowledge
that a large amount of hired labor would be available, in so productive a field of
employment, would insure a large emigration of capital from a country, like England, of
low profits and rapid accumulation: and it would only be necessary not to send out a
greater number of laborers at one time, than this capital could absorb and employ at high
wages.
Inasmuch as, on this system, any given amount of expenditure, once incurred, would
provide not merely a single emigration, but a perpetually flowing stream of emigrants,
which would increase in breadth and depth as it flowed on; this mode of relieving
overpopulation has a recommendation, not possessed by any other plan ever proposed for
making head against the consequences of increase without restraining the increase itself:
there is an element of indefiniteness in it; no one can perfectly foresee how far its
influence, as a vent for surplus population, might possibly reach. There is hence the
strongest obligation on the government of a country like our own, with a crowded
population, and unoccupied continents under its command, to build, as it were, and keep
open, in concert with the colonial governments, a bridge from the mother country to those
continents, by establishing the self-supporting system of colonization on such a scale,
that as great an amount of emigration as the colonies can at the time accommodate, may at
all times be able to take place without cost to the emigrants themselves.
The importance of these considerations, as regards the British islands, has been of
late considerably diminished by the unparalleled amount of spontaneous emigration from
Ireland; an emigration not solely of small farmers, but of the poorest class of
agricultural laborers, and which is at once voluntary and self-supporting, the succession
of emigrants being kept up by funds contributed from the earnings of their relatives and
connections who had gone before. To this has been added a large amount of voluntary
emigration to the seats of the gold discoveries, which has partly supplied the wants of
our most distant colonies, where, both for local and national interests, it was most of
all required. But the stream of both these emigrations has already considerably slackened,
and though that from Ireland has since partially revived, it is not certain that the aid
of government in a systematic form, and on the self-supporting principle, will not again
become necessary to keep the communication open between the hands needing work in England,
and the work which needs hands elsewhere.
