Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 65, No. 403, May, 1849. Various
the executive departments, with the cabinet of ministers, are established. But now mark the difference between England on the one hand, and France or Canada on the other. The laws of England being full of delegation of authority for local purposes, and for special purposes whether local or not, spread government all over the country; those of Canada or France in a great measure confine government to the capital and its immediate neighbourhood. If people want to do something of a public nature in Caithness or Cornwall, there is an authority on the spot which will enable them to accomplish this object, without going or writing to a distant place. At Marseilles or Dunkerque you cannot alter a high road, or add a gens-d'arme to the police force, without correspondence with Paris; at Gaspé and Niagara you could not, until lately, get anything of a public nature done, without authority from the seat of government. But what is the meaning, in this case, of a correspondence with Paris or Montreal? It is doubt, hesitation, and ignorant objection on the part of the distant authority; references backwards and forwards; putting off of decisions; delay without end; and for the applicants a great deal of trouble, alternate hope and fear, much vexation of spirit, and finally either a rough defeat of their object or evaporation by lapse of time. In France, accordingly, whatever may be the form of the general government, improvement, except at Paris, is imperceptibly slow; whilst in Old, and still more in New England, you can hardly shut your eyes anywhere without opening them on something new and good, produced by the operation of delegated government specially charged with making the improvement. In the colonies it is much worse than in France. The difficulty there is even to open a correspondence with the seat of government; to find somebody with whom to correspond. In France, at any rate, there is at the centre a very elaborate bureaucratic machinery, instituted with the design of supplying the whole country with government – the failure arises from the practical inadequacy of a central machinery for the purpose in view: but in our colonies, there is but little machinery at the seat of government for even pretending to operate at a distance. The occupants of the public offices at Montreal scarcely take more heed of Gaspé, which is five hundred miles off and very difficult of access, than if that part of Canada were in Newfoundland or Europe. Gaspé, therefore, until lately, when, on Lord Durham's recommendation, some machinery of local government was established in Canada, was almost without government, and one of the most barbarous places on the face of the earth. Every part of Canada not close to the seat of government was more or less like Gaspé. Every colony has numerous Gaspés. South Africa, save at Cape Town, is a Gaspé all over. All Australia Felix, being from five hundred to seven hundred miles distant from its seat of government at Sidney, and without a made road between them, is a great Gaspé. In New Zealand, a country eight or nine hundred miles long, without roads, and colonised, as Sicily was of old, in many distinct settlements, all the settlements, except the one at which the government is seated, are miserable Gaspés as respects paucity of government. In each settlement, indeed, there is a meagre official establishment, and in one of the settlements there is a sort of lieutenant-governor; but these officers have no legislative functions, no authority to determine anything, no originating or constructive powers: they are mere executive organs of the general government at the capital, for administering general laws, and for carrying into effect such arbitrary instructions, which are not laws, as they may receive from the seat of government. The settlers, therefore, are always calling out for something which government alone could furnish. Take one example out of thousands. The settlers at Wellington in New Zealand, the principal settlement of the colony, wanted a light-house at the entrance of this harbour. To get a light-house was an object of the utmost importance to them. The company in England, which had founded the settlement, offered to advance the requisite funds on loan. But the settlement had no constituted authority that could accept the loan and guarantee its repayment. The company therefore asked the colonial office, whose authority over New Zealand is supreme, to undertake that the money should be properly laid out and ultimately repaid. But the colonial office, charged as it is with the general government of some forty distinct and distant communities, was utterly incapable of deciding whether or not the infant settlement ought to incur such a debt for such a purpose; it therefore proposed to refer the question to the general government of the colony at Auckland. But Auckland is several hundred miles distant from Wellington, and between these distant places there is no road at all – the only way of communication is by sea; and as there is no commercial intercourse between the places, communication by sea is either so costly, when, as has happened, a ship is engaged for the purpose of sending a message, or so rare, that the settlers at Wellington frequently receive later news from England than from the seat of their government: and moreover the attention of their government was known to be, at the time, absorbed with matters relating exclusively to the settlement in which the government resided. Nothing, therefore, was done; some ships have been lost for want of a lighthouse; and the most frequented harbour of New Zealand is still without one." – (P. 212.)
This is a long extract, but it could not be abridged, and the importance of the subject required it. Mr Wakefield has some remarks upon the necessity of supplying religious instruction and the means of public worship to our colonies, with which we cannot but cordially agree. But we rubbed our eyes, and read the following passage twice over, before we were quite sure that we had not misapprehended it: "I am in hopes of being able, when the proper time shall come for that part of my task, to persuade you that it would now be easy for England to plant sectarian colonies– that is, colonies with the strong attraction for superior emigrants, of a peculiar creed in each colony" – (P. 160.) We thought that it was one of the chief boasts, and most fortunate characteristics of our age, that men of different sects, Presbyterians and Episcopalians, Independents and Baptists, had learned to live quietly together. It is a lesson that has been slowly learnt, and through much pain and tribulation. What is the meaning of this retrograde movement, this drafting us out again into separate corps? Possibly the fact of the whole settlement being of one sect of Christians may tend at first to promote harmony – although even this cannot be calculated upon; but differences of opinion are sure, in time, to creep in; and the ultimate consequence would be, that such a colony, in a future generation, would be especially afflicted with religious dissensions, and the spirit of persecution. It would have to learn again, through the old painful routine, the lesson of mutual toleration. We suspect that Mr Wakefield is so engrossed with his favourite subject of colonisation, that, if the Mormonites were to make a good settlement of it, he would forgive them all their absurdities; perhaps congratulate them on their harmony of views.
We have hitherto regarded colonisation in its general, national, and legislative aspect: the following passage takes us into the heart of the business as it affects the individuals themselves, of all classes, who really think of emigrating. It is thus Mr Wakefield describes "the charms of colonisation: " —
"Without having witnessed it, you cannot form a just conception of the pleasurable excitement which those enjoy who engage personally in the business of colonisation. The circumstances which produce these lively and pleasant feelings are, doubtless, counteracted by others productive of annoyance and pain; but, at the worst, there is a great deal of enjoyment for all classes of colonists, which the fixed inhabitants of an old country can with difficulty comprehend. The counteracting circumstances are so many impediments to colonisation, which we must examine presently. I will now endeavour to describe briefly the encouraging circumstances which put emigrants into a state of excitement, similar to that occasioned by opium, wine, or winning at play, but with benefit instead of fatal injury to the moral and physical man.
"When a man, of whatever condition, has finally determined to emigrate, there is no longer any room in his mind for thought about the circumstances that surround him: his life is for some time an unbroken and happy dream of the imagination. The labourer – whose dream is generally realised – thinks of light work and high wages, good victuals in abundance, beer and tobacco at pleasure, and getting in time to be a master in his trade, or to having a farm of his own. The novelty of the passage would be a delight to him, were it not for the ennui arising from want of occupation. On his arrival at the colony, all goes well with him. He finds himself a person of great value, a sort of personage, and can indulge almost any inclination that seizes him. If he is a brute, as many emigrant labourers are, through being brutally brought up from infancy to manhood, he lives, to use his own expression, 'like a fighting cock,' till gross enjoyment carries him off the scene. If he is of the better sort, by nature and education, he works hard, saves money, and becomes a man of property – perhaps builds