Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 65, No. 403, May, 1849. Various
from ancestor to ancestor. Here, I am the ancestor!"
Tell such a man that a price is put upon the land in order that some companions whom he left starving in England may come over and partake the benefit of this unbroken soil, – he will see a plain justice here. He himself was, perhaps, brought over by the price paid by some precursor. What he received from one more prosperous, he returns to another less prosperous than himself. But tell him that a price is put upon the land, in order that he may serve a rich master the longer, – in order that he may be kept in a subordinate station, from which circumstances now permit him to escape – he will see no justice in the case. He will do everything in his power to evade your law; he will look upon your "sufficient price" as a cruel artificial barrier raised up against him; he will go and "squat" upon the land, without paying any price at all.
Indeed, the objection to his scheme, which Mr Wakefield seems to feel the strongest, – to which he gives the least confident reply, is just this – that, equitable or not, it would be impossible to carry out his law into execution; that if the price were high enough to answer his purposes, the land, in colonial dialect, would be "squatted" on, – would be taken possession of without any payment whatever. A moderate price men will cheerfully pay for the greater security of title: Englishmen will not, for a slight matter, put themselves wittingly on the wrong side of the law. But, if coupled with a high price, there is a rankling feeling of injustice: they will be very apt to satisfy themselves with actual possession, and leave the legal title to follow as it may. It is true, as Mr Wakefield urges, the richer capitalists will by no means favour the squatter; they will be desirous of enforcing a law made for their especial benefit. But they will not form the majority. Popular opinion will be against them, and in favour of the squatter. It would not be very easy to have a police force, and an effective magistracy, at the outskirts of a settlement stretching out, in some cases, into an unexplored region. Besides, it is a conspicuous part of Mr Wakefield's plan to give municipal or local governments to our colonies: these, as emanating from the British constitution, must need be more or less of a popular character; and we are persuaded that no such popular local government would uphold his "sufficient price," or tolerate the principle on which it was founded.
But, even if practicable, if carried out into complete execution, it remains to be considered whether the measure proposed would really have the effect contemplated by our theorist – that of supplying the capitalist with the labour he needs. With a certain number of labourers it might, – but of what character? It is not a remote possibility that will influence a common day-labourer to save his earnings. It is one of the terms of the proposition that high wages are to be given; for without these there would be no emigration, and certainly no fear of a too speedy promotion to the rank of proprietor. It follows, therefore, that you have a class of men earning high wages, and not under any strong stimulus to save – a class of men always found to be the most idle and refractory members of the community. A journeyman who has no pressing motive for a provident economy, and who earns high wages, is almost invariably a capricious unsteady workman, on whom no dependence can be placed; who will generally work just so many days in the week as are necessary to procure him the enjoyments he craves. One of these enjoyments is indolence itself, – a sottish, half-drunken indolence. Drinking is the coarse pleasure of most uneducated men: it is so even in the old country; and in a colony where there are still fewer amusements for the idle hour, it becomes almost the sole pleasure. How completely it is the reigning vice of our own colonies is known to all. Imagine a labourer in the receipt of high wages, little influenced by the remote prospect of becoming, by slow savings, a proprietor of land – and feeling, moreover, that he was retained in a dependent condition, arbitrarily, artificially, expressly for the service of the capitalist – what amount of work think you the capitalist-farmer would get from such a labourer? Not so much in seven years as he would have had from him in two, if, at the end of that two, the man had calculated upon being himself a farmer.
Recollect that it is not slave labour, or convict labour, that we are here dealing with: it is the free labour of one man working for another man, at wages. He gets all the wages he can, and gives as little labour as he can. If the wages are high, and the inducement to save but feeble, he will probably earn by one day's work what will enable him to pass the two next in idleness and debauchery. What boon will Mr Wakefield have conferred upon the capitalist?
The theory of a "sufficient price" is, therefore, placed in this hopeless predicament: – 1. It would be almost impossible to enforce it; and, 2. If enforced, it would fail of its purpose. It would supply the capitalist with inefficient, profligate, and idle workmen, on whose steady co-operation and assistance he could never calculate.
That it may be desirable to tempt the capitalist abroad by securing him an abundance of hired labour, something like that which lies at his door in England, we do not dispute. But the thing is impossible. You cannot manage this by direct legislation. You cannot combine in one settlement the advantages of a new and of an old country. It is not in the wit of man to bring together these two stages of society. Our political economist is in too great a haste to be rich: he forgets the many lessons he has given to others against bootless and mischievous intermeddling with the natural course of things. Meanwhile "the attempt will confound us," – it will throw an unpopularity over the whole subject of emigration in the minds of the working classes. Already we hear it murmured that the land is to be made a monopoly for the rich; that the man of small substance is to be discouraged; that the sole object of the moneyed class is to make profit of the labours of others; and that they are bent upon creating, artificially, in the colony, those circumstances which put the workmen in their power in the old country. We would earnestly counsel those who are interested in the subject of emigration, to consider well before they teach or practise this new "art of colonisation."
Those who have not perused Mr Wakefield's book may, perhaps, entertain a suspicion that, in thus separating the objects for which a price is to be laid on land, admitting the one and rejecting the other, we are only engaging ourselves unnecessarily in a theoretical debate. If a price is to be affixed, the result, it may seem to them, is practically the same, whatever the object may be. But the practical result would be very different; for a very different price would be exacted, according to the object in view, as well as a very different motive assigned for imposing it. The price at which a considerable fund would be raised for the purpose of emigration, would be too low to answer the purpose of restraining the labourer from soon becoming a proprietor of land. Those, however, who are familiar with Mr Wakefield's book, know well that this last purpose forms the very substance of the plan it proposes; and that hitherto no price – although it has ranged as high as 40s. per acre – has been considered sufficiently high to effect the object of the theorist.
"There is but one object of a price," says Mr Wakefield, (p. 347,) "and about that there can be no mistake. The sole object of a price is to prevent labourers from turning into landowners too soon: the price must be sufficient for that one purpose, and no other." "The sufficient price," he says, (p. 339,) "has never yet been adopted by a colonising government." And a little further, (p. 341,) he thus continues: "There are but three places in which the price of new land has had the least chance of operating beneficially. These are South Australia, Australia Felix, and New Zealand. In none of these cases did the plan of granting with profusion precede that of selling; but in none of them did the price required prevent the cheapest land from being cheap enough to inflict on the colony all the evils of an extreme scarcity of labour for hire. In these cases, moreover, a large portion of the purchase-money of waste land was expended in conveying labourers from the mother-country to the colony. If this money had not been so spent, the proportion of land to people would have been very much greater than it was, and the price of new land still more completely inoperative. More facts might be cited to show the insufficiency of the highest price yet required for new land."
We will continue our first quotation from p. 347. The manner in which Mr Wakefield himself exposes the difficulties of fixing the "sufficient price," and the very inadequate expedient he points out for obviating, or avoiding, these difficulties, may throw some further light upon the matter.
"The sole object of a price is to prevent labourers from turning into landowners too soon: the price must be sufficient for that one purpose, and no other. The question is, What price would have that one effect? That must depend, first, on what is meant by 'too soon;' or on the proper