COLONIZATION—ENGLAND AND AMERICA.

IN " Colonization as it has been," we have seen that no care has 'been used in selecting the place at which to form a settlement; and that when a region has been pitched upon at hazard, the settiers have been systematically dispersed, rendered incapable of assisting each other, or making either capital or labour productive. 'The object of the present paper is to show Coionitation IW it ouglit to br:

'To point out the benefits that may accrue to the mother country ; those which may flow to the colonists themselves; and, indirectly, the effects which may be produced on society at large. Assuming that an unexceptionable place has been selected, we proceed to consider the best mode of locating the settlers. And here we must bespeak the patience of our readers. The importance of the subject is on a par with its difficulty and extent. The object of the inquiry is to see whether all men cannot be made much richer; or, what is the same thing, whether all commodities cannot be made cheaper.

We will not pause to define wealth. It is enough to inquire what are its causes ? Not fertility of soil alone ; for Great Britain is enormously rich, though her soil, in the aggregate, is far from fertile ; and some of the most fruitful of countries are the most beggarly on the globe. Not more geographical position ; for Great Britain is rivalled by Turkey in Europe, and nearly equalled by Portugal, the Cape of Good Hope, and some islands in the Indian Seas. Freedom from taxation is not essential to the production of riches ; for no country is so heavily taxed : abstracting France and Holland, she pays as much, perhaps, as Europe, Africa, and America put together. Protection for property is not peculiar to our island ; property and persons are pretty well protected in all of what may be called first-rate civilized communities. If political liberty produced wealth, America ought to be richer. 'To talk of freedom of commerce, were farcical ; our fiscal and commercial codes are far behind Turkey, and very possibly the cid.evant Algiers. The botanical and mineralogical productions of Great Britain, though sufficiently valuable, are neither peculiar, rare, nor precious. Other countries ate as conveniently intersected by navigable rivers. Our climate few would praise; though its freedom from either excessive droughts, rains, or tempests, renders it favourable for the operations of regular industry. Labour, most of the economists would say, is the foundation of all wealth (and without labour, wealth doubtless cannot exist): but there are .places where mere labour, the mere exertion of muscle on the part of the labourers, is so great as to astonish Englishmen. We do not lay stress upon capital; for capital is wealth, and it is its enormous amount which is the subject of inquiry. We have no Wish to undervalue the natural or political advantages we possess ; but put together all the favourable points we have enumerated— Ireland enjoys nearly the same advantages; she has a very much lighter taxation, and more fertile soil ; she is not much injured by our protective systems, and is indeed benefited by the Corn-laws. What, then, is the essential cause of our extraordinary wealth? Nothing, says the great founder of British are—nothing is denied to well-directed labour. Whatever may be the truth of the assertion in reference to the fine arts, it is a golden sentence applied to the causes which create the wealth of nations ; or in other words —for to this it comes at last—which increase our creature comforts.

But how is this labour to be well directed ? Various rules have been given by various persons ; but, assuming non-interference with industry, it is most likely to be attained, according to ADAM SMITH and his followers, by division of labour. To this conclusion the author of England and America demurs. There is something he conceives still more irnportant,—combination of labour. At first sight, the difference appcurs to be merely verbal ; after a second consideration, there seems a fine distinction ; upon longer reflection, the phrase appears very like a definition going to the root of the matter. However, let the author state his own ease. All wealth being the produce of industry, it is evident that the wealth of a society must depend upon the degree in which the productive powers of industry are improved by that society. What are the greatest improvements in the productive powers of industry ; improvements, I mean, beyond that simple exertion of power, which in two individuals of equal strength, working separately in the same way, would raise equal amounts of produce? Adam Smith has said that the greatest improvement in the productive powers of industry is division of labour; others have dwelt on the great effects of machinery; and some, again, have taken pains to show, what is self-evident, that the productive powers of industry are greatly increased by the use of capital. Unquestionably capital, machinery, which is capital, and " division of labour," tend to increase the quantity of produce in proportion to the number of hands employed ; but none of these improvements are primary causes, as some of them, and especially "division of labour," have been considered by political economists; each of them, on the contrary, though an immediate cause, is the effect of some antecedent cause.

• Sir Joshua Reynolds,

Clue cannot us, ualM11 merely, by wishing to use it, nor can a single ,,iiikaan practice ri division mi.labour ; ' but the use of capital and " division of labour" result from some oaten.or improvement. What, then, is the first imp. ovsment 4 industry—that improvement on which others depend? in the productive .powers

In the most simple ope savages perfarm when they ration of industry,—in that, for example. which savages perfarm when they ,liunt for subsistence,—two persons assisting each other would obtain more game .in a given time than two persons hunting each by himself without concert ; just aa two greyhounds, running together, will kill more hares than four greyhoulad.a running separately. The very first haprovenient, therefore, in the producti Ye powers of industry, seems to he not division, but combination of labour. Seism! individuals, by combining their labour, procure more food than they want,-1sehold the second stage of social im. provement ; the society has obtained a capitol. The possession of capital leads to the institution of property ; it also leads to the division or emphryments. Some members of the society still cooperate in the production of food ; others in making instruments which facilitate the produetion of food ; and between these two parties an exchange takes place of their re.spective productions: corn. merce has begun,—the power of exchanging, on which all economksts agree, de_ pends the division of employments. But now, as food is produced with less ond

less laboLr, the wants of the society increase, and a still further distribution off employments takes place,—some build houses, some make clothes, and some become dealers. Thus far it is plain, every step in • civilization, every improve-, ment in the productive powers of industry, including distribution of employ.: merits, has rested on concert or combination amongst all the members of the society, But, thus far, all the members of the society are supposed to possess admitses egua

portions of capital, Such a state of things, if if were to last, wouldn much further improvement in the productive powers of industry. No maa would find others willingto einploy his capital for his advantage as well as their own, rather than their own capital for their own exclusive advantage ; no man, consequently, would have a motive for accumulating more capital than he could use with his own hands, This is to some extent the case in new American settlements, where a passion for owning land prevents the existence of a class of labourers for hire ; and where, consequently, half the crop is sometimes left to rot upon the ground. In the next place, so long as the capital of the society was equally divided amongst all, it would be impossible to undertake any of those works which require the employment of many hands and a fixed capital.It would be quite impossible, for instance, to build a ship or a bridge; for, even if a sufficient number of workmen to admit of that division of employments which takes place in building a ship or a bridge, should possess the right sort of capital, and a sufficient quantity of it to enable them to wait for distant returns, by what means could that scattered capital be combined ? and how could the profits be divided ? Only, it would appear, by the institution of a jointstock company ; a contrivance for the combination of capital in particular works which is used only in the most advanced societies. Mmkind have adopted a much more simple contrivance for promoting the accumulation of capital, and the use of capital, when required, both in large masses "and in a fixed shape : they have divided themselves into owners of capital and owners of labour. But this division was, in fact, the result of concert or combination. The capitals of all being equal, one man saves because he expects to find others willing to work for him ; other men spend because they expect to find some man ready to employ them ; and if it were not for this readiness to cooperate, to act , in concert or combination, the division of the industrious classes into capitalists and labourers could not be maintained.

A baker and a tailor who deal with each other, are said to divide their la

bour if they did so in reality, each of them would make both the bread and the clothes which he wanted, and there would be no intercourse between them. Cooperating dealing with, depending on each other, they combine their la bour: it is the '

e employments which they divide ; and, what is more, the divi sion of their employments results from the combination of their labour. The two men divide the whole work which is to be performed by their united labour for their common advantage. The workmen of a pin-factory are said to divide their labour : if they did so in reality, each of them would make all the parts of a pin. As it is, each pin is the produce of many persons' united labour,—many persons whose labour is united in order that the work which it is to perform may be easily divided amongst them. In this case, also, a division of employments is an effect of combination of labour. In what case is a work divided amongst many without combining the labour of those who are to perform the work ?

But it may be said that this is a question of terms merely; that though there

be a marked difference between the work performed and the labour which performs it, still, as either labour is divided amongst the several parts of a work, or the several parts of a work are divided amongst several labourers, it is indifferent whether we say division of work or division of labour. If so, by what terms are we to express that minute division of labour which takes place amongst the cottiers of Ireland, the small farmers of France and most free settlers in new colonies? a state of things under which each labourer works by himself, and for himself only, with no larger capital than his own hands can employ, without exchange, or nearly so, and producing, even in the most favourable case—that of the settler—not much more than enough for his own subsistence. If this be a dispute about terms only, how are we to express that combination of labour on an English farm, or a tobacco plantation in Virginia, which enables the English workmen or American slaves to raise so much more produce than they could possibly consume? The reader who may take the trouble to find an answer to these questions, will, I cannot help thinking, perceive, that "division of labour" 19 an improper term as commonly used-; and, what is of far greater consequence, that the use of this improper term has kept out of sight the first great improvement in the productive powers of labour, —namely, combination of power.

As for building a ship or making a road, so in the manufacture of pins, it is necessary to employ a large capital. A large capital applied to one purpose may be said to be combined. A minute division of capital, such as takes place amongst the small farmers of France, the cottiers of Ireland, and most settlers in new colonies, is as unfavourable to production as the minute division of labour practised in those cases. Combination of capital and labour, or combination of productive power, seems to be of two distinct sorts,—first, that general combination which, if there were no restrictions on trade, would render mankind one vast cooperative society ; general combination, on which depends that general distribution of employments, or division of work, under which some men grow tea, some dig for metals, and others build ships, some are farmers, some manufacturers, and others merchants; secondly, that particular combination, on which depends the use of large masses of capital and labour in particular works, and the most beneficial division of those particular works. Turning to the sources of the wealth of England, her agriculture, manufactures, and commerce, it will be seen that all these display in the highest degree the advantages of both sorts of combination of power. * * • * * From considering the increaseof productive power derived from combination, one perceives how various tenures of land in different countries, and in the same country, influence the production of wealth. Three examples will suffice. The poverty of French agriculture—the large proportion of the people of France who are engaged in agriculture leaving but a small proportion for other pursuits--is owing to the law of division, which at a Frenchman's death cuts up his estate into portions as numerous as his children. In Ireland, again, it is the minute

subdivision of land which causes a minute subdivision of capital and labour, and renders the produce of agricultural industry, in proportion to the hands employed, so much less than that of the same kind of industry in England. Lastly, a history of colonization would show, that all new colonies, having a vast territory at their disposal, have prospered or languished according as the governments by which they were founded took care or neglected to dispose of the land to be colonized with a view to combination of power amongst the colonists. In the case of the last colony founded by England, the greatest pains were taken to disperse the colonists, to cut up their capital and labour into the smallest fractional parts; whence a miserable failure with all the elements of success.

Such is combination of labour. We have all seen—at least we may all see, if we choose to look around us—what its skilful application has enabled England, though with long travail and suffering, to effect. Saying nothing of manufactures, there is land in England which in fiwourable years yields from forty to forty-six or forty-seven bushels an acre ; but the land whose pro duce determines the price of corn yields only from ten to twelve bushels. But of this scanty produce, the Church must be paid its tithe ; the poor have to be maintained at a cost of seven or eight millions a year, if not entirely by the corn-growers, yet at least by them and by those whose labour purchases the corn; and (omitting road-rates, jail-rates, paying-rates, and a long list of et

creteras, which may contribute to the general improvement of the country), about forty-six millions are annually drawn from us—

that is, from England and Scotland, excluding Ireland—by tax ation. Yet, notwithstanding the rugged soil we are compelled to till for scanty bread—notwithstanding the large demands which

the Church, the Poor, and the King make upon our industry—

notwithstanding the additional slices which are exacted by monopolists of various descriptions—people live in England : and why ? Look along that prairie, entirely free from incumbmnce, though bounded by a forest of trees and underwood. us natural fer

tility is greater than the most favoured land in England; the danger is that it may be too rich. The spot is intersected by a navigable river ; there is plenty of water, and facility of transport. In any part of Great Britain, a single acre of such land would be made to produce forty-five or fifty bushels of wheat. What will be its actual produce? Not more, perhaps, than one fifth of that amount. The land, you will perceive on looking narrowly, has been (in the words of WASHINGTON) scratched, not ploughed; and so slovenly has it been sown, that the grain is growing in patches. Such as it is, there is a question whether part of it may not rot upon the ground for want of labour to reap and carry it, .or for want of a market. Where is the farm-house? That loghut, which in England would be deemed a shed. The cattle are Jean kine: they have been allowed to run where they listed through the land ; and, having extirpated the natural grasses by cropping them too early, they live as they can. Ha! I see how it is, says a " truly British " observer, in a " truly British" spirit: the cultivators are Americans. By no means; they are emigrants. Suppose a few years to have passed, and look again. The spot is a barren common. How is this? The land has been exhausted by repeated cropping : fallows, rotation of crops, manuring, would not pay (if it were possible to accomplish the latter); the farmer has taken up his house and walked.

In England, this picture is reversed. By combination of labour, and skill arising from combination of labour, the poorest soils are forced to yield a return sufficient to supply the greater part of sixteen millions of people with food. Rotation of crops, manuring, draining, hedging, ditching, are practised with the greatest care, and carried to very considerable perfection. Nor is this all; sandy wastes, that would seem to many other people barren, are reclaimed by dint of labour and turnip-husbandry, first fattening our mutton, and then growing the John Barleycorn with which it is to be washed down. But our agriculture, admirable as it is, falls short of the results produced in other branches of industry. When the crop is housed, it is thrashed with the least possible waste : it is transported by canals or navigable waters, or along admirable roads, in waggons constructed with Mere care and skill than the pleasure-carriages of many countries, and drawn by animals specially adapted to draught and to draught only ; and reaches its final destination as corn at the least cost possible. It is cheaply ground into flour—it is cheaply made into bread ; machinery, economy of material in every successive process, combination of labour, with the small rate of profit, uniting to bring it to the consumer at a price astonishingly low, considering the soil from 'which it is forced, and the first cost of the corn. The same, or rather still more striking results, take place in manufactures and commerce ; where still greater effects can be produced by machinery,—every successive fall in profits having stimulated invention and sharpened ingenuity to retard in some measure the effects of their declension, and by continual improvements to enable an annually decreasing income to command something like, though in a makeshift and less agreeable way, the same necessaries and luxuries of life. But there is a limit—at all events in a heavily taxed society, and whose industrious operations are deranged by having been forced into artificial channels—beyond which these countervailing circumstances cannot pass ; and judging from all we see and hear, we are closely approaching this limit. The middle classes are gradually destroyed by the large capitalists, the very facility of communication in some measure operating to this end. The steadily-employed operatives are perhaps better off than many represent them; but they are toiling for the day that is passing over them, without any prospect for old age, excepting parish pay, With the dread that a temporary cessation of trade or the slightest

increase of workmen would effect a reduction of wages. Constantly increasing capital, without an increasing field for its employ ment, will reduce profits still lower than they are; and whenever this consummation approaches, a change of some sort or other will take place. Men may shift, but they will not starve ; or if they can only avoid starvation by descending from their position in society, they will descend in another country. We have reached the shifting a3ra—perhaps somewhat more than reached it. The question to be decided is, whether capital and labour shall leave the country to enrich other lands, or to be wasted altogether; or whether we shall so direct, or rather facilitate, the emigration of both, that it shall be equivalent to an extension of English territory—a source of wealth to those who go forth and to those who remain.

But how can this be accomplished? To jump to the conclusion —by bodily lifting up those who are now extorting a scanty return from a barren soil, or who, though willing to work, are altogether living on society ; and letting them down in a spot where the same combination of capital and labour would return them forty-fold ; affordinga field for the employment of capital and labour which is now employed for inadequate returns, or is altogether idle, the stirplus of that increased return giving additional supplies of food to the mother country, and receiving in exchange manufactures and

agricultural implements. For the minutim of the details by which the plan may be worked, we must refer to England and America. The principal points may be briefly told. They would bete select a fertile and unappropriated tract of country ; to procure a careful survey of the whole, accompanied with maps and plans, and all necessary information for settlers: and then, not to give, but to sell the land, at its fair value (whatever the competition of capitalists might determine that to be); and to use the proceeds of the sales in transporting labourers to the colony,—by labourers meaning young couples, who, just starting into life, would feel none of the compunction at change which attaches to old or middle age, and whose youth, whilst it secured the most efficient of workpeople for the settlement, would most effectually get rid of the surplus population of the mother country by removing the germs of future increase. By these means, the hitherto fataCbar to the prosperity of new colonies—dispersion—would be removed, as no one would buy land which he did not intend to cultivate ; the application of the purchase-money to the conveyance of labour to the colony (the funds themselves serving as a barometer of the demand), would enable it to take advantage of the combination Of labour; whilst land not being procurable without capital, no labourer could become a landowner immediately on his arrival, and waste his strength in various and desultory efforts. What is still more important, there would be unity and comprehensiveness in the plan ; the means would be adapted to a single end ; and the society would in a great measure be free from the indifferent morale and the improvident adventurers which are a besetting evil in most new settlements. That splendid success, compared with the fortune of other colonies, would await such a plan, there can be no reasonable doubt. Whether the full success which the project promises d priori might be attained, is matter for experiment,—for the last and ablest expositor of the principle of colonization seems scarcely to have seen its full extent. We have more than once endeavoured to point out, that absolute cheapness is at present non-existent ; that the well-trained and effective labour, the powerful machinery, the facile communication, and a lower rate of profit in an old and densely-peopled society, nearly counterbalance the teeming fertility of soil in a new country. But if the principle first fully announced by the author of England and America could be reduced to practice, the greater part of the advantages of an old and a new country might he combined, and an income command at least three times as much of the good things of life as it does at present. Let the reader fancy the soil of England miraculously rendered three times is fertile as it is now, and he may readily believe he could live in clover. The mad wars and the enormous expenditure they created have indeed prevented Great Britain from reaping the full benefit of any discovery that would not wipe off her debt ; but an agricultural country of the size of England, with all her agricultural science employed on a fertile soil, would furnish her with cheap bread, enabling her lands, now employed in forcing corn, to be turned to the feeding of cattle—take off in payment her cottons,. woollens, bard-wares, machinery, and furniture—and give her in return all the advantages that would be reaped if another England with a soil of vast fertility were suddenly to rise up out of: the sea.

Few who thoroughly comprehend the subject, but will see that this is one of the most important problems ever submitted to mankind. Seeing that Government, within these few years has lavished millions on regal palaces—has squandered hundreds of: thousands on official residences and "public works "—has spent two millions on building churches—lent another two millions toOTHO King of Greece—advanced a million to the Irish clergy—and. given twenty millions, and the continuance of a monopoly which. fairly taxes us in two millions more per annum, to the West Indians—it might fairly be expected that it should have advanced.

something towards effecting a solution. But the problem might have been in a fair way of being solved by this time, if Govern

ment would have merely permitted the experiment. In 1831, as the readers of the Spectator may remember, a company was formed to colonize a part of Australia, lying on the Southern side of the island, and between Swan River and New South Wales. • The colony was to have extended six hundred miles in one direction, in the other it was without limit. The situation was good ; the soil was pronounced exceedingly fertile; the harbours commodious and accessible; the land intersected at all events by one river, and by estuaries, or rather gulfs. The principle of colonization to be adopted, waN that which we have now endeavoured to describe. Some preliminary surveys had been made, perhaps neither so complete nor so full as might have been advisable ; but much more carefully and thoroughly than had ever been made by any government. The expectations of the projectors were very sanguine — more saneuine than cold and case-hardened men of the world ever indulge in ; but they had given what GIBBON terms a sure proof of earnestness— they had engaged to part with their money. Some of the founders were men of consideration—bankers, merchants, and Members of ParliaMent—who were willing to risk their property with the view of trying an experiment of surpassing importance; others were capitalists, who looked to a profitable return for their outlay ; others were settlers, who intended to purchase land and establish themselves in the colony ; a number of" yopng couples" were to have gone with the first departure, in the character of labourers ; a highly respectable committee was appointed, and an office was established to furnish all necessary information to settlers. The Company asked nothing from Government, but a charter; on the contrary, they offered them 125,000/. in hard money. Lord HOWICR, we believe, approved of the plan, but was cautious not to commit himself. Lord GODERICH not only approved of the plan, but he promised a charter when the plan was sufficiently matured; at least the gentlemen concerned understood him to promise, and they gave the best proof of their belief by sacrificing their time and spending "their money. Every thing, apparently, was proceeding prosperously, when the business was transferred from Lord Howlett to Mr. Under-Secretary HAY. From that moment, the experienced in these affairs predicted the overthrow of the whole scheme. " Free trade with all the world," "self-government," and "the absence of patronage," would, it was alleged, be words of dire import to a Tory hack of the CASTLEREAGH school. The prophecies were too correct. Lord GODERICH yielded to the official plausibilities of the mere Ministerial subaltern, whom it was his business to control. For the disreputable doubles to which this " untoward" event gave rise, we must refer to the Appendix in the last volume of the work before us. It is enough to add, that after some money had been expended, many anxious hopes excited, and alterations made in the prospects of life of several individuals, on the faith of an understood promise of a nobleman and a Minister,—that promise was withheld, unless conditions were submitted to (the grant of land never seemed to be an object) which would have militated against the plans of' the founders. This little affair is not chronicled in the Ministerial Book of Wonders. We therefore in a small way supply the omission. To the parties whose property has been lost, or whose hopes have been blighted, the injury is irreparable. The failure will t ot, however, be without its use, if this narrative should teach Mr. STANLEY the necessity of studying the policy and principles of colonial science and practice, so as to be the master of his instruments and not their tool ; more especially, if it should induce him to keep subalterns to subalterns' duty, and in all cases that may come before him to decide for himself: In bringing to a clo .e this very long and unusually protracted exposition, we again refer the student, for fuller proofs and clearer views, to the vigorous and graphic pages from which our materials are drawn ; a work which, taken altogether, throws more light on the state of England, in her vitally important relations, than any book that has appeared in our time.