EMIGRATION AND FREE TRADE.
THE advance of Free-trade opinions has been gained in spite of difficulties which have seemed at times almost sufficient to over- whelm them. Not the least of those difficulties occurred last summer, when a tottering Ministry threw the whole weight of their alliance on the cause : they succeeded in converting it, in the po- pular estimation, to a mere party-measure, and loaded it for a time with their own disgrace. It has not yet shaken off that burden, when it sustains a new oppression, also at the hands of the same faction : it is mixed up with an odious clamour against another great coordinate measure for the benefit of the people, Emigration. The readers of this journal need not to be told that we have always contended for Free Trade, in the widest acceptation of the term. For the counterfeit Whig Budget, indeed, we had no affection ; and we repudiate it as any test whatever of the Free-trade opinions either of its friends or opponents. But we have ever maintained, and still maintain, that without free trade, the industry, energy, and capacity of the British empire, never can achieve their full great- ness. We never said that free trade alone could do it, any more than we now say that emigration alone could do it : they are mea- sures of economy which may meet certain of our heaviest econo- mical evils ; but we never would countenance the quackery which should recommend either as a panacea, applicable to all the many political and moral evils which beset our social system. They are parts of a whole, and let them perform their office. Free trade provides for the unimpeded supply of food to our dense popu- lation and the unimpeded egress of our inedible produce to the markets of the world : free trade means, the economy of the produce of the world, so that it may be turned to the most profit- able account by each and by all the races of the globe,—a noble purpose, which we never can relinquish. Emigration provides for the spread of our great population and the useful appropriation ofthe vast lands of our empire. There is a perennial deficiency in food and in employment for the multitudinous population crammed into these little islands : the Population-tables show that in our agricultural districts the number of inhabitants barely in- creases on the whole, and declines in parts, while the great increase takes place in the manufacturing portion of the country ; that there is no room for any further increase of the agricultural popu- lation. The growth of the multitudes in the manufacturing-towns is only to be provided for by the growth of the "factory system" : but that system, fraught with perils, is not to be pampered in its precocious growth more rapidly than we can devise the means of obviating dangers which none can as yet, without further examination, pronounce to be not inherent in the system. Even supposing, therefore, that the increase of our people could be pro- vided for at home, it were well to plant populations other than manufacturing, if not within these islands, within the empire, on our broad colonial domains. And yet again, even supposing that there were no such inducement to emigration, this alone would suffice : millions are cooped up here in poverty, helpless, without scope or choice in their mode of life, absolutely denied the power to acquire fixed property, (not individually, perhaps, but as a mid- titude,) while our rich untrodden colonial lands court occupation by a thriving proprietary. The boasted classes of England, its yeomen and small landowners, may be multiplied indefinitely ; for the unoccupied lands of the empire have room for any multiple of their present numbers. Such is the purpose of those who have advocated colonization on a scale commensurate with the exigency for these ten years past—long before the Whigs felt any interest in the exclusiveness of the Anti-Corn-law agitation. All at once, however, the notable discovery is made, that the former have begun a diversion to distract the Anti-Corn-law agitation ; and the pro- fessional agitators and Whig journalists set up a bowl. Of these factious assailants the most unscrupulous is the Globe; as our readers had ample proof last week. It affects to be scanda- lized because the only apt phrase was employed to designate its procedure—"fraudulent." The use of strong terms of condemna- tion can only be justified by the occasion, and by the offer of proof with the charge conveyed. The epithet was applied in no spirit of aimless abuse, but as the only one applicable to the offence; and the matter of the offence itself was submitted to the reader along with the condemnation, so that if it did not satisfy him he could
refuse his assent. There was no endeavour to influence any judg,- ment, beyond the simple statement of the facts. The fraud which we alleged, we understood to consist in this. Mr. WAKEFIELD had promulgated a scheme of emigration that might " be carried on without any cost to the Mother-country": the main principle of his scheme is, that land shall be sold at a "sufficient" price, in- stead of being granted freely ; and it was one condition to the fair trial of the emigrating-power of this system, that the proceeds of future land-sales should be anticipated, by loan on the security of the waste lands of each of those colonies separately, and without any other guarantee from Parliament"—" for the sole purpose of giving a free passage to that colony to persons of the labouring-class properly selected"; the Executive, ex necessitate rei, to act as the agent in raising and applying that loan, but incurring no respon- sibility on its own part for the payment of the loan.* Now, every British taxpayer knows that there are things called "loans," which Government contracts, and afterwards pays off, or adds to the Na- tional Debt; in the one case providing for the payment of the perma- nent interest by means of fresh taxation ; in the other, providing the principal and the short interest by the same means. The Globe en- deavoured to confound this ordinary State-loan with the Colonizing- loan : it asserted Mr. WAKEFIELD to have declared that ".he should not admit that his 'principle' has been fairly tried, till Government shall resort to a system of borrowing money to carry it into effect"; and then it talked of Government "lavishing public treasures." On the face ofit, that gross misrepresentation of the Colonizing-loan was a fraud, and a very gross one.f The reproach of fraud is now ex- claimed against, in a tone of injured innocence, though the misre- presentation is neither retracted nor explained away in the articles which have followed one another in daily succession. Such a dis- claimer raises a curious question. Is it possible that during the ten years in which Mr. WAKEFIELD'S system has been actively discussed, this writer has suffered himself to remain ignorant of the progress of the discussion, though at times he affected to take note of it, with rather a leaning towards the system now decried ? There are appearances which almost make us doubt whether it really is not the fact that the writer is so ignorant. But even with that miserable alternative to the charge of fraud, he cannot be acquitted of it. There is fraud in pretending to a knowledge which is not possessed, and employing the pretence to prejudice the minds of others alike ignorant : that is usually the fraud of which quack-doctors are guilty, for no one would suspect them of the deliberate intention to poison their species. And there is another kind of fraud, in the man who voluntarily remains ignorant, in order to evade a conviction which would inevitably follow a knowledge of the truth, lest it should prove an encum- brance in partisan-pleading. Of one fraud or another the Globe is convicted by its own words; for on those alone, and on nothing that we have said, must the case rest.
One of the appearances which indicate a real ignorance of the discussion, is the deprecation of " forced " emigration—in what- ever sense the word may be used ; for the whole effect of the Wakefield system is permissive. An objection is raised to the public "forcing the export of their best men and spare money." The objection is nugatory. The system proceeds upon the pre- mises that there is so great a number of persons willing to emigrate that systematic emigration of well-disposed labourers is possible ; and that there is so much capital in the country Reeking employ- ment, that money will readily be advanced on the security of the lands to which a value is given as soon as it is known that the tide of emigration sets towards them. Those two conditions wanting, the failure of the system would not be a matter of speculation ; it would be frustrated at once—not a single step could be taken. If there is not capital in the country seeking new vents for profitable employment, the Wakefield system suggests no means of com- pelling, or even encouraging the export of capital : if there are not numbers who know that their condition would be bettered by emi- gration, the system must remain an unpractised theory, for it sup- plies no means of compulsory exile. There is nothing compulsory about it.
But our new Colonial economist would persuade us that he is friendly to emigration, after his own fashion ; which he says was BURKE'S also,—emigration to "countries where capital is more abundant than labour.' Where are there such countries to receive emigrants ? in what geography are they indicated ? It is not to be supposed that such an emigration is meant as that which takes place among our skilled artisans to Belgium and Germany : of course, that, the great dread of the Anti-Corn-law manufacturers, is not intended to have the recommendation of the ex-official Whig journal. Nor can it be understood that the recommendation ap- plies solely to the United States, the only foreign country which has something of the character of a colony. We take the phrase
• The reader will find the nature of this loan and its objects and relation to the whole scheme fully explained in the paper headed "Mr. Wakefield on the Means of National Emigration," Spectator, 4th December.
For the entire article in which this misrepresentation occurred, see Spec- tator, 11th December ; to which it is transferred from the Globe. We may here notice one of many petty incidents to the fraud. It is as- serted that MW _r. AKEFIELD declared that he would not admit his " prin- ciple " to have a fair trial without a loan. Be does not say so : be stipulates that the cost of emigration shall be thrown on the Colonies to which labour is conveyed ; and he mentions several conditions, the loan being one, as indis- pensable "to a fair trial of the system—to such a trial, I mean, as would have exhibited its greatest power of emigration, without cost to the Mother-country:" By using the term principle for system, it is made to appear that the loan IS the cardinal point of the bcheme, and not a mere condition to its fullest deve- lopment. It is by a namber of such little false colourings, which we pees un- noticed, that the Globe ekes out its misrepresentation.
"emigration" in its usual and obvious sense, a colonial emigration. But then, what of the "capital more abundant than labour " ? There has at times been a migration to countries where capital has abounded : highly military races have migrated to countries as ad- vanced in civilization as themselves. The old kingdoms of Asia have both furnished and received such emigrants ; so has Greece ; Rome sent its emigrants to all parts of the Western world, and was itself the home for intruding hordes ; the Moors, who once spread over Southern Europe, now see the countrymen of CEIARLES MARTEL invade the scanty empire to which they have retreated on Northern Africa ; and India can point out in her cities many races who have successively migrated to her shores and subdued her wide regions, forgetful, indeed, of which was the indigenous race. But this is conquest, not colonization. The condition imposed by BURKE as cited by the Globe, would simply nullify all colonization whatsoever; for there is no site for it which comports with the condition. Not a single colony founded in modern times has possessed capital in greater abundance than labour : the most advanced of British co- lonies, the United States, do not possess it to this day, though they have promoted themselves to be an adult among the empires of the world. Those colonies which have exhibited the most rapid growth of capital, are the Australian settlements, to which there has been a "forced" migration of labour, in the coarsest sense of the word ; and that migration was in advance of the growth of capital. It is necessarily so. The three elements of colonization are land, labour, and capital : land exists in all colonies: labour will first be trans- ported thither, because labour even without capital, can wring some kind of rude profit from the land, the first instalment of capital ; whereas the treasury of the world poured out upon the richest lands in the colonial desert would only rot to waste, without the inter- vention of labour : but labour and land once brought together, or once perceived to be in process of being brought together, capital hastens to complete the profitable triad which produces colonial prosperity. This is the essential principle of colonization : how far our hostile writer is alive to it may be guessed from the loose way in which he enumerates "requisites" to "the growth of wealth in any country"—" labour and capital," leaving out the land. In fact, it can be only in the grossest ignorance that he gravely pro- mises to sanction a species of colonization which is impossible.
We have now given the caviller the full benefit of the doubt raised by these appearances of ignorance : but it cannot avail him, for though he might not be aware of the extent of the fraud which he was committing in the first instance, he has shown himself guilty of a very common and unmistakeable fraud. In the Times appeared the abstract of a commercial circular from Adelaide in South Australia, describing the financial embarrassments in that colony, and analyzing, so far as its writers could, the causes of that embarrassment. The embarrassment discussed by the circular was a monetary panic, common to all the Australian Colonies—a cur- rency question : the circular ascribed a multiplicity of causes, some arising without the pale of those colonies and reacting from distant countries, even in India and China, and some peculiar to South Australia : the Globe picks out the last only, as the efficient cause of all the embarrassment ! Thus the "fraudulent detractor" stands convicted of garbling the evidence.*
There is only one point in all the tissue of absurdities which wears even the appearance of strength ; and we gladly turn from the consideration of mere cavilling about words to something which is like, though it is only like, a reality. " It is clear," says our contemporary, "that the State, after having got into such en- gagements, is the only party that can be kept to them : after ex- porting labour by wholesale, it is the only party that can be come upon with certainty for its maintenance." Of course, in a success- ful settlement there can be no question about the maintenance of the labouring population : the consideration therefore presupposes the failure of the colony respecting which it is entertained. Now in order to the success of each colony, it is necessary, not only that the site should be well chosen and the settlement planted upon a good system, but that it should be well governed. We have seen in South Australia some of the most disastrous effects of misgovernment : evils from the same cause have yet to be averted in New Zealand. England can found colonies to an inde- finite extent : is she able also to govern them ?—a grave question, of which the history of the past furnishes no very promising solution. The Wakefield system indicates the means of founding colonies, but it does not provide for their government : it gives no security that proper rulers shall be placed over them: it gives no guarantee to the colonists that their local affairs shall be properly adminis- tered—none to the mother-country that the colonists shall tax themselves for their own local requirements, and so fulfil the duties of British citizens as to be an aid, not a burden, an honour, not a disgrace, to the parent land. If any extensive scheme of coloniza- tion be contemplated, this part of the subject, hitherto left in an unsettled state, must no longer be neglected. Many unbidden suggestions rush to the mind, how the provisions of our boasted constitution must suffice to provide for this new branch of govern- ment—how the rights and requirements of the colonists might be secured—how the immunity and dignity of the parent land : but they must not be discussed at the fag-end of an article on other topics. Suffice it to say, that the most zealous advocates of colo- nization are well aware of the importance of this supplementary and distinct branch of the subject ; and that they will be among the last to be satisfied with any comprehensive measure that does not comprise ample provision for the safe government and prudent administration of the colonies to be founded.
*lies page 1207,wbere both the garbled and the genuine statements are quoted.
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