Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 65, No. 403, May, 1849. Various
who go to labour with their own hands on property they shall call their own. It is the labour of such men that has converted into corn-fields the dark forests of America. That ardent and indefatigable industry which has been so often admired in the peasant proprietor – the man who has all the hardy habits of the peasant and all the pride of proprietorship – is never more wanted, never more at home, than in the new colony. We have a sympathy with these men – we like their hearty toil, their guiltless enterprise. This is not the class of men we would disgust; yet it is precisely this class who go forth with their little store of wealth in their hand, or with hope soon to realise it, whom the "sufficient price" of Mr Wakefield would deter from entering the colony, or convert, when there, into unwilling, discontented, uncertain labourers.
The rights of every class must, of course, be determined by a reference to the welfare of the whole community. The poorer settler must have his claims decided, and limited, according to rules which embrace the interest of the empire at large. We hope we shall not be misunderstood on so plain a matter as this. We do not contemplate the settler as arriving on the new land unfettered by any allegiance he owes to the old country. He belongs to civilised England; carries with him the knowledge and the implements which her civilisation has procured him; lives under her protection, and must submit to her laws. But in limiting the rights of the settler in a land spreading open before him – where nothing has taken possession of the soil but the fertilising rain, and the broad sunshine playing idly on its surface – you must make out a clear case, a case of claims paramount to his own, a case which appeals to that sense of justice common to the multitude, which will bear examination, which readily forces itself upon an honest conviction. It must not be a mere speculative measure, a subtle theory, hard for a plain man to understand – benevolently meant, but, intricate in its operation, and precarious in its result – that should come betwixt him and the free bounty of nature. Not of such materials can you make the fence that is to coop him up in one corner of a new-found continent. Laudable it may be, this experiment to adjust with scientific accuracy the proportion of capital and labour; but a man with no peculiar passion for political economy, will hardly like to be made the subject of this experiment, or that a scientific interest should keep his feet from the wilderness, or his spade from the unowned soil. It would be an ungracious act of parliament, to say the least of it, whose preamble should run thus – "Whereas it is expedient that the labouring population emigrating from England should be 'prevented from turning too soon into landowners,' and thus cultivating the soil for themselves instead of for others, Be it enacted," &c. &c.
Although this theory of a "sufficient price" is the chief topic of Mr Wakefield's book, yet there are many other subjects of interest discussed, and many valuable suggestions thrown out in it; and if we have felt ourselves compelled to enter our protest against his main theory, we are by no means unwilling to confess our share of obligation to one who has made colonisation the subject of so much study, and who has called to it the attention of so many others. It was he who, struck with the gross error that had been committed of stocking certain of our colonies with too large a proportion of the male sex, first pointed out that the period of marriage was the most appropriate period for emigration. Do not wait till want drives out the half-famished children, but let the young married couple start whilst yet healthy and vigorous, and not broken down by poverty. Some might be disposed to object that these will do well enough in England. They might, but their children might not. It is wise to take the stream of population a little higher up, where it yet runs clear; not to wait till the waters have become sluggish and polluted.
In a literary point of view, Mr Wakefield's book is an extremely entertaining one. It is difficult to believe what we are told in the preface, and hear with regret, that it was written in ill health, so elastic a spirit is observable throughout. The work assumes the form of letters passing between a statesman, who is in search of information and theory on the subject of colonisation, and a colonist who has both to give. One would naturally conclude, from the letters themselves, that both sets were written by the same author, and that the correspondence was but one of those well-understood literary artifices by which the exposition of certain truths or opinions is rendered more clear or interesting. The letters of the statesman have that constrained fictitious aspect which responses framed merely for the carrying on of the discussion are almost sure to acquire. At all events, it was hardly necessary for Mr Wakefield to describe himself in the title-page as "one of the writers;" since the part of the statesman, in the correspondence, is merely to ask questions at the proper time, to put an objection just where it ought to be answered, and give other the like promptings to the colonist.
With many readers it will add not a little to the piquancy of the work, that a considerable part is occupied in a sharp controversy with the Colonial Office and its present chief. Mr Wakefield does not spare his adversaries; he seems rather to rejoice in the wind and stir of controversy. What provocation he has received we do not know: the justice of his quarrel, therefore, we cannot pretend to decide upon; but the manner in which he conducts it, is certainly not to our taste. For instance, at p. 35 and p. 302, there is a littleness of motive, a petty jealousy of him (Mr Wakefield) attributed to Lord Grey as the grounds of his public conduct – a sort of imputation which does not increase our respect for the person who makes it. But into this controversy with the Colonial Office we have no wish to enter. So far as it is of a personal character, we can have no motive to meddle with it; and so far as the system itself is attacked, of governing our colonies through this office, as at present constituted, there appears to be no longer any controversy whatever. It seems admitted, on all hands, that our colonies have outgrown the machinery of government here provided for them.
In the extract we lately made from Mr Wakefield's book, some of our readers were perhaps startled at meeting so strange an appellation as Mr Mothercountry. It is a generic name, which our writer gives to that gentleman of the Colonial Office (though it would seem more appropriate to one of the female sex) who for the time being really governs the colony, and is thus, in fact, the representative of the mother country. The soubriquet was adopted from a pamphlet of the late Mr Charles Buller, in which he very vividly describes the sort of government to which – owing to the frequent change of ministry, and the parliamentary duties of the Secretary of State – a colony is practically consigned. We wish we had space to quote enough from this pamphlet, to show in what a graphic manner Mr Buller gradually narrows and limits the ideas which the distant colonist entertains of the ruling mother country. "That mother country," he finally says, "which has been narrowed from the British isles into the Parliament, from the Parliament into the Executive Government, from the Executive Government into the Colonial Office, is not to be sought in the apartments of the Secretary of State, or his Parliamentary under-secretary. Where are we to look for it?" He finds it eventually in some back-room in the large house in Downing Street, where some unknown gentleman, punctual, industrious, irresponsible, sits at his desk with his tape and his pigeon-holes about him. This is the original of Mr Mother-country.
That which immediately suggests itself as a substitute and a remedy for the inefficient government of Downing Street, is some form of local or municipal government. As Mr Wakefield justly observes, a local government, having jurisdiction over quite local or special matters, by no means implies any relinquishment by the imperial government of its requisite control over the colony. Neither does a municipal government imply a republican or democratic government. Mr Wakefield suggests that the constitution of a colony should be framed, as nearly as possible, on the model of our own – that there should be two chambers, and one of them hereditary. The extreme distance of many, of most of our colonies, absolutely precludes the possibility of their being efficiently governed by the English Colonial Office, or by functionaries (whether well or ill appointed) who have to receive all their instructions from that office. Throughout our colonies, the French system of centralisation is adopted, and that with a very inadequate machinery. And the evil extends with our increasing settlements; for where there is a "seat of government" established in a colony, with due legislative and executive powers, every part of that colony, however extensive it may be, has to look to that central power for the administration of its affairs.
"In our colonies," says Mr Wakefield, "government resides at what is called its seat; every colony has its Paris, or 'seat of government.' At this spot there is government; elsewhere little or none. Montreal, for example, is the Paris of Canada. Here, of course, as in the Paris of France, or in London, representatives of the people