Emigration to fruitful new lands, where our superabundant capital and population would be employed to the greatest advantage and most rapidly enlarged, is in policy and humanity alike our interest and our duty, as being the clear and direct road to prosperity. Under a properly regulated colonization, the most sanguine can scarcely form a conjecture of the extent to which our manufacturing and commercial greatness might be carried; and the comfort and happiness to which all classes might attain.
Under a properly regulated colonization, to obey the common instincts of nature, “to increase and multiply,” instead of being, as it too frequently has been in Britain, a curse, will become, as in the United States, a blessing. Things have been so far misdirected hitherto, that the greatly increased facilities of production of what is necessary to the comfort and pleasurable existence of man, which, under proper direction, ought to have benefited all classes, has only administered to the luxury of a comparatively small number, the property class. So sensible are the working men in England of this, that they have considered facility of production their enemy, and have had recourse to the most pernicious and atrocious practices,—machinery-breaking, and burning of agricultural produce, to prevent it. The old system of English poor-law (perhaps the worst that could have been invented) and the new amendment, are equally ineffectual to accomplish the end desired,—the prevention of human misery,—the removal of those sufferings arising from inadequate employment or inadequate remuneration, evils for which there can be no effectual remedy save an increased or improved field of labour; and this, as formerly stated, is obtainable in Britain only by free trade or by extensive emigration, but most effectually by both. The prudential check, from which so much has been expected, is but an irksome and unnatural palliative, scarcely preferable to the natural destructive check itself. And in respect to gratuitous assistance, nothing can be more pernicious than poor-law contributions, and charitable givings, and bequests of all descriptions, at least as these matters have been conducted. It is merely a nursing of misery,—keeping up a vast number of unemployed people, ready at all times, should labour come a little more into demand, to compete with those in employment, and keep down wages to the lowest pitch that the animal machine can be kept working upon. It is the interest of the property-holders to have a very numerous population at this lowest pitch, and their poor-rate and charity contributions are virtually a mere pittance-supply to prevent their indirect slaves from perishing.
Charity is not less injurious as interfering with the great law of nature, by which pain and death are the established penalty of ignorance, idleness, and improvidence; enjoyment and life the reward of knowledge, industry, and forethought. Alms or relief to the poor is clearly an interference with, or a subversion of, this natural law, and though it does not prevent the suffering sequent to the former, it destroys the advantages sequent to the latter, and only promotes general misery. It is to the purposes of colonization that the English poor-rates and other charitable bequests, now worse than uselessly consumed in nursing up the improvident poor and keeping down the industrious, should be converted.
A sufficient emigration of the labour-classes would increase the labour-demand, and raise wages so high, that every one able and willing to work would obtain a competency for the support of a family, and even of a parent in infirm old age, in case of necessity; thus cutting up pauperism by the roots, and leaving the bastiles, the poverty-prisons in the south of England, untenanted. In the United States of America nearly all the marriageable people enter the marriage state, and find a family advantageous to the increase of their wealth and comfort. This arises from the favourable field for industry, and the social advantages they enjoy. Nothing hinders Great Britain from enjoying these, and even greater advantages, but her own stupid and guilty neglect. In many respects she is equally favourably circumstanced as America, in some much more favourably. Her climate is better, her capital beyond comparison greater, her machinery and aids of human labour and advantages of combined labour vastly superior, her new unpeopled territory more extensive and more favourably situated for trade, and equally easily reached. Why, then, should the condition of the working population of Britain not be as favourable as that of America? Simply because the field of labour, from our narrow home territory, dense population, and restrictive trade system, is more limited in proportion to the labour supply, and that we fail to profit by our opportunities of extending it. A sufficient emigration would render it equally, if not more favourable. Let the truly charitable—those who have the welfare of their suffering countrymen really at heart, reflect that ignorance is criminal, where knowledge is within their reach. Let them hasten to devote their exertions and wealth to purposes of utility, and not waste them in increasing the very evils they wish to remedy. Let them promote colonization. With an overflowing capital, and a population, notwithstanding our emigration, increasing at present nearly 400,000 annually, and as things are regulated beyond the means of full subsistence and labour-demand, Britain is placed under circumstances more favourable than ever occurred at any former period for carrying the principle of colonization into effect to its fullest, most salutary extent. The importance of emigration, as before stated, is proved by the immense and most advantageous trade we now carry on with the countries we have colonized; an almost unlimited extent of unoccupied territory is at our command; a very extensive emigration is necessary to render a poor-law practicable in Ireland, and to assist the working of the new poor-law in England (a sufficient emigration would soon render both unnecessary); the economy of transporting great numbers to distant countries in health and safety, and with celerity, is nearly perfected:—all these conspire, in an almost miraculous manner, to place the destinies of man at the disposal of Britain, and to render the present era the most eventful in the history of the world—the era of colonization.
Even although 450,000 (the present total yearly increase, including the present emigration of nearly 100,000) were exported annually, the future increase, from the improved condition of the great body of the people, would extend perhaps to double this number, say 1,000,000 annually, and that of our capital in a corresponding ratio; while at the same time the demand for manufactured produce, caused by the wants of the exported portion of our people, would greatly improve the home labour-demand, even with this great increase of hands. Thus our numbers would go on increasing faster at home than at present, while at the same time the country would increase in power, in a ratio still more rapid from the greater prosperity of all.
It is only within a few years that the immense importance of colonization has come to be appreciated; recently the most unfavourable prejudices existed respecting it, and the most erroneous and absurd doctrines were promulgated, to feed the popular odium, by political economists; who, in their wisdom, could never solve the difficulty how Britain continued the richest nation of the world, while her resources were being wasted upon numberless useless colonies. Let us contemplate the difference of results which the resources of Britain would have accomplished had they been so wasted,—had they been devoted to purposes of creation as they were to purposes of destruction during the American and French revolutionary wars. We did not then hesitate to lavish hundreds of millions in engaging in deadly feud the European and American nations. It seems hitherto to have been the principle of Government to hold any expense incurred for purposes other than rapine or destruction as a misapplication of the national resources. A change is at hand. The reign of Queen Victoria promises to be glorious for a victory over barbarism and human misery—Colonization is the means.
A tax of ten per cent. in Britain and Ireland upon land rental would be most profitably employed in carrying out labouring emigrants, and in locating them comfortably. This would be a humane and rational amendment of the English poor-law, and the best poor-law for Ireland that could be introduced. This fund, together with the proceeds of the sales of colonial lands, under judicious and economical management, would in the course of a few years have a most beneficial effect upon trade, and greatly ameliorate the condition of the working population; continued for half a century it would change the face of things over a great portion of the habitable world; and the extent of its effects, persisted in for several centuries, would be beyond even what we now can contemplate.
Independently of the communities formed by British emigration, were a good system of colonial government adopted, islands and inferior states would find it their interest to unite with us, and the whole of the multitudinous island-groups scattered over the vast Pacific, in number as the constellations of the heavens, might become incorporated as part of the British empire.