Prospectus of the Scots New Zealand Land Company

by Scots New Zealand Land Company; Patrick Matthew

Extract from “Emigration Fields.”

Britain, at the present moment, exhibits man in a position altogether new, from the extensive application of steam power and improved machinery in aid of human labour. By means of these facilities to production, together with combined labour, the work of man has been rendered doubly efficient in raising food, and many times more efficient in fabricating clothing, and other human requisites. An immense available power and surplus labour supply has thus been developed, limited in the field of food production by our confined territory, restricted in the field of manufacturing production by our home food-monopoly. A great change in the relative proportion of labour and capital requisite for production has also taken place, and human labour, in part superseded by steam power and machinery, has undergone a comparative depreciation of value. The usual balance of demand and supply of labour being thus deranged, has caused occasional gluts, and it may require a time, and much further misery may ensue, risking political convulsion, before the social economy adjust itself, unassisted, to the new order of things.

One of the most prominent consequences of this new order, is the great comparative increase of number of the non-producing classes (the holders of accumulated wealth—the idle recipients of income) and the unprecedented extent of their comforts and luxuries, while the condition of the working-class, instead of improving, has deteriorated. Had the free-trade system been adopted contemporaneously with this available increase of power of production, the condition of the working-class would, no doubt, have improved in nearly an equal degree, as an almost unlimited demand for our manufactures, in exchange for the food and raw produce of the Continent, would have taken place. But as this system, however much to be desired, is awanting, and the mischievous effects of our restrictive system already in part irremediable, humanity calls upon us to endeavour to devise some other means of effecting an improvement in the condition of the working-class, but of such a nature, as not to impede the attainment of free trade.

Prevented by our trade-restrictive system from obtaining a market in foreign nations for the immense surplus fabrics which this vast increase of power is capable of producing, there is only one other available resource,—to transplant our surplus working-population to new lands. This would not only bring about a salutary balance in our home economy, but at the same time, by raising up new and most valuable customers, would afford wide and extending fields of consumption, commensurate with the future increase of our powers of production. In the present condition of Britain, it is even probable that a system of colonization, judiciously planned and sufficiently followed out, would eventually be equally promotive of the comfort and happiness of the working-population of Britain, as if free trade were to give full scope to the employment of the whole working-population at home, and at the same time be more influential in improving the race of man generally. Change of place within certain limits of latitude, seems to have a tendency to improve the species equally in animals as in plants, and agricultural and trading occupations are far more congenial to health and increase, than manufacturing occupations. It cannot therefore be doubted that the increase of the British race (evidently a superior race), and their extension over the world, and even the vigour of the race itself, will be more promoted by this colonizing system, than by the utmost freedom of trade without the colonizing system, and the turning of our entire energies to manufacturing industry.

But our advocates of restriction and home monopolies exclaim—Why export workmen when so much improvement can still be made in Britain? Why import food and raw produce while we have full capacities of growing enough at home? Were Great Britain properly cultivated it would produce double what it now produces. The answer is, It is not what Britain is capable of producing, but what it in reality will be made to produce, which concerns us. Further improvement, and even the keeping up of the improvement already effected, depend upon the returns of the capital employed. If, from the less exhausted field for production abroad, we can obtain ten per cent. per annum for capital, while from the more exhausted, restriction-limited field at home, we can obtain only four per cent., capital will continue to be exported and British improvement will languish, or things will retrograde. This is the actual state of matters, and unless means are taken to bring about a more salutary state, the improvements they look forward to, and which Britain is indeed susceptible of, will never be attained. By a properly conducted colonization, in the first place, diminishing the labour-supply, and acting as a stimulus to our labour-market, and afterwards affording a continually increasing stimulus by means of the new-created, fast-extending colonial field of demand for British manufactures, and all this working in mutual reaction to excite industry, we may in reality go on improving till Britain produce ten times over what she now produces.

This attempt to draw attention to colonization proceeds from no wish to check the present national effort to obtain free trade! Colonial intercourse is in effect a circumscribed kind of free trade, under peculiarly favourable circumstances; and the amazing increase, and vast extent and advantage, of our colonial trade, is the most direct proof of the advantage, not only to Britain, but to mankind, which would result from free trade over all. Every enactment to prevent the exchange of the produce of labour between man and man, and nation and nation, if the article is not injurious to health and morals, is truly diabolic. All who have aided in these enactments ought to be held up to the detestation of mankind as repressers of industry, as promoters of misery, as ministers of evil, selfishly bent upon rendering abortive the good which a benevolent Providence has designed for man, in forming one portion of the earth more fitted for the seat of manufacturing industry and trade, and other portions for the peculiar production of various kinds of food and raw material, thus calculated, by giving rise to a reciprocity of advantageous intercourse, to promote an enlightening and friendly connection, and to diffuse science, morality, the arts of life, all that conduces to improvement and happiness, over the nations.

In the event of our own Legislature adopting the free-trade system, the introduction of the colonizing, by rendering Great Britain more independent of foreign nations, will be a means of inducing these nations also to agree to a reciprocity of free-trade; whereas, were we soliciting the free exchange of commodities, and apparently dependent upon these nations for a market, there would be no end to the haggling of their selfish and ignorant governments. In this view, therefore, colonization is a step to the attainment of general free trade throughout the world; at any rate, the increase of our trade and manufactures, sequent to an extensive emigration, by diffusing intelligence and wealth, must sooner bring about the free-trade system.

The mind is almost overwhelmed in contemplating the prospects of improvement in the general condition of humanity, now opening through the medium of British colonization, and the consequent diffusion of the elevating and meliorating influences of British liberty, knowledge, and civilization. One great free naval people, aided by all the discoveries of modern science, and united under the attractions of a common literature, and the reciprocal advantage of the exchange of staple products, increasing rapidly in numbers, and ramifying extensively over numerous maritime regions, will soon overshadow continental despotisms, and render them innocuous.

From the unlimited supply of new land, colonies are especially fitted for a connection with Britain. Being in the opposite extremes of condition, they are in the highest degree mutually beneficial, the former affording the raw material in exchange for the more laboured products of industry of the latter, while at the same time the colonists are by habit great consumers of British manufactures. What is required is, that the extension of colonization should go hand in hand with the extension of manufactures, thus generating new markets in proportion to the increase of fabrics.

But, at the present moment, it is as a salutary drain to our overstocked labour-market, that colonization is so vitally necessary. To bring things to a healthy state, a vast exportation of working-population must in the first place be effected, and to keep them so, a constant great stream of emigration must be afterwards kept up. And in proportion as this efflux is properly regulated, will, at the same time, the condition of the people at home and abroad be prosperous, and the population progressive.