COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.
We have already observed that a vast deal of discontent prevails in colonies. With all the natural advantages of a fruitful soil and a heavenly climate, colonists are always dissatisfied with their position; because, in a pecuniary point of view, they are always poor. And why are they so? The answer is a startling one. The excess of their abundance is the first cause of their poverty; the instability of their government, the second. They possess more than they can dispose of, and are borne down by the weight of their possessions. Place the markets of England and the labour of Ireland within their reach, and they would become millionaires were they to cease to be colonists; but so long as they continue to be colonists, governed by a Power altogether distinct from that which rules over Englishmen in their native land, they will continue to be helpless, oppressed, and poverty-stricken.
They alone, among British subjects, are living under an absolute Monarchy; the caprices of which render property insecure and of uncertain value; neutralizing industry, paralyzing enterprise, and crushing with fatal authority the energies and the spirits of the people.
In the absolute recklessness of colonial rule, no sooner does private enterprise raise its head, and throw out the first feelers on the way to wealth, than a watchful government steps forward, and careful only to secure gain to itself, crushes out (in the first feebleness of existence,) the germ of vitality.
In all new countries in which the sources of wealth are imperfectly developed, the expense of applying the means necessary to their development is so enormous, as to leave but small profit to the speculator. Labour is always dear in new countries, where there is so large an outlet afforded to the labourer to escape from the toils of servitude, and become himself an occupant or an owner of the soil. All that he gains by the exchange is an ideal independence; which is, unhappily, but too attractive to the uneasy spirit of modern improvement.
The prosperity of a colony is the aggregate of individual wealth. the prosperous advance of the colonist, is, therefore, the first duty of a superintending Government. But the first aim of that watchful guardian is ever to wring from the settler as much as may be extracted by pressure. The lowest demand for land, which would be dear at half-a-crown an acre, is eight times that amount. No sooner does the settler, by his science or industry, discover some lucrative opening, than government steps in with its restrictions, its taxes and duties, and at once cuts down the budding promise. If the design be to bring to light the mineral wealth of the country, royalties are immediately imposed; and no chance of profit is left to the speculator when the rents are raised according to the probabilities of success. It is the same with all other speculations; no one will embark, even in a timber-trade, when he knows that he is placing his capital at the mercy of a grasping and short-sighted Government.
How much more lucrative, and how much more statesman-like would it prove, were our rulers to display as much good policy as the peasants of Norfolk, who do not pluck their geese until they be well feathered! Colonists, like cabbages, should be allowed to acquire the necessary strength, and attain the proper dimensions, before they be seriously operated upon. You might then cut and nick them with reasonable hope of their sprouting forth anew.
But the worst evil of an absolute Government arises from the destruction in the minds of the people of all faith and confidence in its truth and honour.
One Secretary of State countermands the edicts of his predecessor; and as the Executive Government of a colony is composed of the paid servants of the Crown, and is merely the machine of the Secretary for the time being, the ordinances which it promulgates are distinguished by only one uniform feature—the announcement of broken promises and betrayed faith.
The inhabitants of colonies, disappointed and deceived, have no trust in their rulers, and dare not invest their capital in enterprises which may be ruined in a moment by an arbitrary edict. At one period, for instance, they may have been induced, upon the faith of the Government, to purchase remission tickets, which entitle the owner to a certain quantity of land wherever he may choose to select it. A succeeding Government confines this right of selection within certain narrow limits; whilst another decides that the holder shall be allowed to purchase with these tickets only land that is entirely valueless. At one period men are encouraged to attempt the production of colonial spirits; but no sooner is a large amount of capital expended, than it is made illegal to distil. Some parties are permitted to purchase land at a distance from the capital: and after years of toil and expense are deprived of all protection from the Government, and allowed no compensation for its withdrawal.
But it were vain to attempt to enumerate the acts of broken faith on the part of an absolute Government, from whose decree there is no appeal, and from whose oppression no redress. The moral evil to colonies is crushing and fatal.
The best informed among English statesmen know nothing of colonies: but their hardihood in legislating for them is, unhappily, equal to their ignorance. It was only last year (1846) that the bill for the government of Western Australia was (according to newspaper report) opposed in the House of Lords by a noble duke, on the ground, as his grace alleged in an animated and interesting speech, of the wretchedly immoral state of the colony, arising from the system of transportation, which so deluged the country with convicts that it was now a perfect hell upon earth! A noble lord, then Under-secretary for the Colonies, apologised, with the best grace he could assume, for this lamentable state of things, and assured the noble duke that the Government was quite aware of the evil, and was turning its attention to a remedy for it. Had any one of the noble lords present known anything at all about the subject of the debate, he might in a few words have relieved the anxiety of the Government, by informing it that Western Australia is not, and never has been, a penal settlement—that convicts are not sent thither for punishment; that even a single bush-ranger has never been known within the territory; and that, in the words of an Adelaide journal, "it is as free from stain as any of the rural districts of England."
Another Australian colony (that of Port Phillip) calls for the attention of Government more imperatively, perhaps, than any other of these settlements. At present an appendage to Sydney, but situated at a most inconvenient distance from that capital, it is compelled to remit thither between fifty and one hundred thousand pounds annually for rates, taxes, and duties, not a tithe of which ever finds its way back again. It is deprived of roads, bridges, and all public works of importance, solely because it is friendless at home, voiceless and unrepresented. Might Englishmen be made to feel that interest in colonies which in general they are ever ready to accord to the unfortunate, they would glow with indignation at the wrongs, the injustice, and the oppression under which the inhabitants of distant settlements bend in silence. "If you don't keep your colonies in a state of dependence," are the memorable words of Lord Stanley, in May, 1846, "of what use are they?" Such has ever been the narrow-minded and unstatesman-like policy of the British Government. And yet even the infant colonies of the empire, though fettered, cramped, and swathed like the young progeny of the Esquimaux, are useful still to the Mother Country. They afford the best market for her produce; and when freed from the pressure of their bonds, like plants released from the torturing confinement of their earthenware prison, and allowed to extend their roots abroad in the free soil of Nature, they will display new strength and viridity, and bring forth fruit in increased abundance. Her Majesty's present Secretary of State for the Colonies (Earl Grey) entered upon his office with truly liberal and right-minded views, which, we trust, will be carried out into operation wherever found necessary and practicable. "There can be no doubt," said his Lordship in the House of Lords, shortly before taking office, "that in our colonial empire we have the advantage of possessing warm friends and allies in all quarters of the world, who, commanding great natural resources, are united in heart and soul to defend our trade and our interests, and to take part with us in all contests against our enemies. We have garrisons of the cheapest kind in every quarter of the universe. On the other hand, the colonies have this inestimable advantage—they have the glory and security to be derived from an intimate connexion with the greatest, the most civilized, and the most powerful nation on the face of the earth. They have the glory—and they feel it to be a glory—of calling themselves British subjects, and feeling that in defence of their interests and best rights, the power and might of this country are ready at any moment to be called forth and exercised in their behalf. This is a substantial advantage of the most important kind to the colonies; and they are fully sensible of it. And if with this we pursue a liberal policy, and extend to them the dearest privilege of Englishmen—THE PRIVILEGE OF SELF-GOVERNMENT, AND DO NOT VEXATIOUSLY INTERMEDDLE WITH THEIR INTERNAL AFFAIRS; in short, if we pursue a liberal policy towards them, both commercially and politically, we shall bind them to us with chains which no power on earth may break, and the connexion between the parent state and those great dependencies may continue until they far exceed us in population."
These are generous sentiments and profound truths, and they have shed the bright beams of Hope over that vast colonial empire to which they refer.
In legislating for colonies, let it not be forgotten that one of the chief drawbacks to their prosperity is the want of confidence in the stability and permanency of existing regulations. There can be no success, and there can be no safety, whilst those regulations and laws are liable to the influence of peculiar views or individual caprice. It is the people themselves, for whose government the laws are intended, who should be allowed to impose, to modify, or to expunge them.
The predominating evil in colonies is THE WANT OF CONFIDENCE AND FAITH IN THE GOVERNMENT.