TOPICS OF THE DAY.
EMIGRATION SCHEMES.
THE House of Commons swarms with a small fry of projectors, who agree only in evincing on all occasions the most generous contempt for the schemes of each other, and an utter incapacity of compre- hending the not very remote consequences of their own. Dear money —cheap corn—absenteeism--free trade—high taxes—political eco- nomy—and redundant population—have each, in turn, been held up as exclusively the causes of our distress. Each of the speculators can see but one colour in the rainbow, and turns away from the prism which would supply the deficiencies of his vision. Emigration is Mr. WriaroT HORTON'S panacea. A remission of taxes, he holds, would do nothing for the poor—while emigration on a large scale would set everything to rights. Of the possible, the abstract advantages of emigration, we have less doubt than we have as to how far Mr. WILMOT HORTON'S plan embodies them. To .remove the surplus population by the public money, would be frightfully expensive ; unless the rate of its increase could be checked, the country would gain nothing by all that expenditure. Mr. WILMOT HORTON does not seem to be aware of the scheme of emigration which the author of the Letter from Sidney has unfolded.* There it was shown how the advantages of emigration might be attained without expense. Let Government levy a tax on the lands which it grants to colonists ; let the tax be employed in carrying out cultivators for those lands. The tax, and a refusal to give a title to whole districts, will prevent the colonists from spreading too rapidly—will keep them civilized, and create rent. The tax will cost the colonists nothing, thr it will be more than compensated by the rent which will be its consequence, and by the command of labour which it will procure for them. To furnish labourers, will cost this country nothing ; while the labourers themselves will gain plenty of work at high wages. We look upon this scheme as one of the highest triumphs of human ingenuity. To Mr. Hoirrox's plan we have two objections—its expense, and its inefficacy. Could we at a great sacrifice remove our present sur- plus population, we should have a greater surplus population in a few years hence, with diminished means of effecting their removal.
* We have seen the manuscript of another admirable paper on Emigration, by this writer; and we have the prospect of being enabled to lay it before our readers, in the Number after next.
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