“The outflowings of Chinese emigrants and produce, which have gone towards the East, will now move to the West; the commercial enterprise of Australia and New Zealand has acquired a new field of exercise and encouragement; the markets which Chili and Peru have found in Europe only, will be opened nearer to their doors; the north-west shore of America will obtain all the personal and material means of organization; the Islands of the Pacific will take the place in the career of civilization for which the labours of the missionary have prepared them; and even Japan will not be able to withhold itself from the community of nations.
“This is worth more to our merchants and manufacturers, and to the people employed by them, than even the gold mines can be; for this is the statement of certain results, and the working of the gold mines, however productive they may prove, must be attended with all the incidents of irregularity and uncertainty, and great commercial disadvantages.”—(Wyld’s Geographical Notes.)
Surely then there would be no difficulty with Parliament to encourage and facilitate the formation of an Atlantic and Pacific Railway Company, by obtaining its sanction to the loan of £150,000,000 in such sums as might be required (to be issued under the sanction of a board appointed for that special purpose), particularly when it is recollected that the expense of the greater part of her own convicts could be provided for by that advance.
It will easily be seen that it would be impossible to complete this Atlantic and Pacific Railway, without at the same time giving great encouragement to the emigration of labour; and this “is only practicable when its cost is defrayed or at least advanced by others, than the labourers themselves. Who then is to advance it? Naturally it may be said, the capitalists of the colony, who require the labour, and who intend to profit by it. But to this there is the obstacle, that a capitalist, after going to the expense of carrying out labourers, has no security that he shall be the person to derive any benefit from them.” To those who would object to Government interference in a case like the present, we can only say, in the words of Mr. Mill, that “the question of Government intervention in the work of colonization involves the future and permanent interests of civilization itself, and far outstretches the comparatively narrow limits of purely economical considerations; but, even with a view to these considerations alone, the removal of population from the overcrowded to the unoccupied parts of the earth’s surface, is one of those works of eminent social usefulness which most require, and which at the same time will best repay, the intervention of Government.” “No individual or body of individuals could reimburse themselves for these expenses.” Government, on the contrary, could take from the increasing wealth caused by the construction of this Railway and consequent great emigration, the fraction which would suffice to repay with interest the money advanced. These remarks apply equally to the governments of the North American provinces as to those of the Hudson’s Bay Company and Great Britain. [see Note [57]]
Let us now personify our Atlantic and Pacific Railway, and endeavour more immediately to apply some of the reasoning as regards colonization to the money part of the question as regards the Railway. As regards colonization the question—Who is to advance the money? has, I think, been very clearly answered by Mr. Mill. As regards the undertaking of this Railway, and the answer to the question, Where is the money to come from? let us first suppose then that “there is an increase of the quantity of money, caused by the arrival of a foreigner in a place with a treasure of gold and silver; when he commences expending it, he adds to the supply of money and by the same act to the demand for goods. If he expends his funds in establishing a manufactory, he will raise the price of labour and materials; but, at the higher prices, more money will pass into the hands of the sellers of these different articles; and they, whether labourers or dealers, having more money to lay out, will create an increased demand for all things which they are accustomed to purchase, and these accordingly will rise in price, and so on, until the rise has reached every thing.” Now let us for a moment suppose this foreigner to be represented by our friend the Atlantic and Pacific Railway, (imagined, for the sake of our argument, to be completed), and we will no longer consider him a foreigner, but a brother. This brother, on his arrival in England finds that he has unfortunately forgotten to bring with him his purse, that in fact he has neither gold nor silver, the representatives of wealth, and here, be it remembered, that wealth is any thing useful or agreeable, and that money is a commodity. We will then suppose this North American brother to say, My good brother of England, I am here without gold or silver, or without any kind of wealth; the commodities I have left behind me are of such a nature, that without much labour I could not put them in such a shape as would enable me to bring them to this country, nor could I obtain silver or gold enough to represent them; unless, therefore, I send some labouring people and machinery to my country, I am afraid I cannot obtain all the commodities I wish to have. Now you have plenty of spare labourers, and plenty of spare machinery and other useful materials, and for which you would be glad to receive valuable commodities in my country; and if you will only send the labourers and machinery out, I will order that in return you shall be allowed to bring away all the useful and agreeable things, that is, all the wealth that may be found, and have the use of such things as you may prefer to keep in my country. Now if you will make this agreement with me, I will return with you to my native land, and will not only assist you to obtain all these commodities, but I will engage also to pay you a certain annual income out of my saving; and I will show you the short way to the most extensive region of wealth ever known to any nation in the world; and you can then travel that road, so that at no future period (at least within the imagination of man) shall you ever again complain of too great a population on your soil, or too small a market for your labour.
Then the good brother of England says to this Atlantic and Pacific brother,—We believe all you say of your wealth, and we see the great advantage it would be to us to partake of it, and to have the command of the road you point out, but what security are we to have that when our labourers and machinery are sent to your country they will be employed; and if you have neither gold nor silver nor other commodities ready to give us in exchange for the work and the articles, how are we to pay the people to prepare the machinery, and all our other labourers, whose wages would in England of course become higher, as they would be less in number, and there would be a greater quantity of work to be done. The brothers, in talking over this matter, discovered that “credit is indispensable, for rendering the whole capital of the country productive. It is also the means by which the industrial talent of the country is turned to most account for purposes of production. Many a person who has no capital of his own, or very little, but who has qualifications for business, which are known and appreciated by some person of capital, is enabled to obtain either advances of money, or more frequently goods, on credit, by which his industrial capacities are made instrumental in the increase of public wealth.” The Pacific and Atlantic brother observed,—This is exactly my case. Only give me credit, and I will bind myself on my own personal security to give up whatever portion of my annual income you may consider necessary; and I will also secure the money advanced by you on my land, on the minerals thereof, and in any other way that may be deemed necessary. My brother of the Atlantic and Pacific Railway, says the Englishman, you have nearly convinced me; we will immediately appoint friends to draw up all the necessary agreements between us, that will enable me, if possible, to advance you such labour and machinery as may be required; and we will also proceed to appoint other friends, who shall take into consideration, in the first place, the expense incurred from your birth to a state of manhood, and the annual income that is derived from your business and your property; and leaving you sufficient to maintain yourself as a gentleman, we shall appropriate to ourselves whatever may remain, as a reward for our exertions and the risk to be incurred, and as a security for the interest of the money expended upon your account. The brothers having thus agreed in a general way, proceed immediately to appoint friends and to call upon their good old mother, Great Britain, to advance the money required, and their North American relations, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Canada, and Hudson’s Bay, to come forward and make a general family treaty for the security and payment of such advances. The brothers were then congratulating themselves on what they considered the success of their project, when it was whispered to them that something of a similar plan had been proposed for their relation Ireland, by one “whose loss is too great to be slighted, and too recent not to be felt;” and it had been suggested that for every £100 expended on Railways in that country, £200 should be lent by Government; upon which occasion it had been observed by one who has greatly influenced, whether for good or evil, will be hereafter known, the destinies of the British Empire, that “the public credit of the State is one of the elements of our financial strength, and that it was not possible to appropriate a great portion of that public credit to the encouragement of commercial enterprises, without, to the same extent, foregoing the power to apply that public credit in another direction, in the event of the national exigencies requiring you to do so.” The brothers replied, this is certainly true; but the proposed undertaking is not a commercial enterprise, although no doubt it would produce great commercial and colonizing results; but it is a grand national work,—a desideratum that has been wished for, looked for, and cared for, ever since the new world was discovered—that has repeatedly called forth great expenditure of money, great suffering, and loss of life in searching for it, to the north. It is, in short, the great high road between the Atlantic and Pacific—the expense of making which you are called upon to consider.
As regards Ireland, another bold measure has been suggested for that country; without giving any opinion upon it, I cannot help asking why we should not be as bold in peace as we were in war. Must we wait until
“The news is, sir, the Voices are in arms;
Then indeed—we shall have means to vent
Our musty superfluity?”
“Without raising one shilling out of the Exchequer,” says Lucius (see Morning Post, Jan. 31st), “boldly apply the national credit to relieve the national distress; at once authorize the Bank of Ireland, or a bank to be created for that purpose, to issue twenty or thirty millions in aid of the landed proprietors; secondly, for the judicious encouragement of emigration, transplant those who cannot earn a subsistence at home to a comfortable settlement in our colonies, and to promote such mercantile or other undertakings, let the notes issued be made legal tenders for all payments whatever, and let the entire soil of Ireland be pledged for their ultimate security.” Far be it from me to give any opinion on what is best to be done for Ireland, but certain I feel that what is here proposed and suggested regarding an Atlantic and Pacific Railway could not interfere with any plan Government might think right to adopt for the regeneration of Ireland, unless indeed by greatly facilitating all emigration plans and permanent employment.
But, independently of all this money question, “there is the strongest obligation on the government of a country like our own, with a crowded population and unoccupied continents under its command, to build as it were and keep open a bridge from the mother country to those continents.” Let us reflect that “the economical advantages of commerce are surpassed in importance by those of its effects, which are intellectual and moral. It is hardly possible to overrate the value, for the improvement of human beings, of things which bring them in contact with persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar. Commerce is now what war once was—the principal source of this contact. Commercial adventurers from more advanced countries have generally been the first civilizers of barbarians, and commerce is the purpose of the far greater part of the communication which takes place between civilized nations. It is commerce which is rapidly rendering war obsolete, by strengthening and multiplying the personal interest which is in natural opposition to it.”—(Mill, Polit. Econ.) In whatever point of view, therefore, we regard this subject—whether as one of duty by providing the means of healthy and legitimate employment to our numerous artificers and labourers now in a state of destitution—a domestic calamity likely to be often inflicted upon us—unless new fields, easy of access, are made permanently open to our continually increasing population—and “it would be difficult to show that it is not as much the duty of rulers to provide, as far as they can, for the removal of a domestic calamity, as it is to guard the people entrusted to their care from foreign outrage”—will they “slumber till some great emergency, some dreadful economic or other crisis, reveals the capacities of evil which the volcanic depths of our society may now hide under but a deep crust?”—or whether we view it as a means of assisting any general system in the penal code—or whether we view it as a point of individual or government interest, by turning all that extra-productive power, now idle, in the direction of our own colonies, and thus connecting and attaching them more strongly to the mother country—increasing their wealth, their power and our own:—or whether we consider it in a moral and religious point of view, as affording greater and quicker facilities for the spread of education and the Gospel of Christ[see Note [58]]—or whether we look upon it as an instrument for the increase of commerce, and (as an important consequence) the necessarily directing men’s minds, with the bright beams of hope from their own individual and immediate distress, as well as from the general excitement and democratic feeling and spirit of contention showing itself amongst many nations (an object greatly to be desired) for—