Excursion, book 9.
How best to colonise; how far Government should undertake the regulation and control of the enterprise; how far leave it to the spirit and intelligence of private individuals, separate or banded together in groups, or companies; and especially under what terms it shall permit the occupation of the unappropriated soil—all these have become highly interesting topics of discussion.
For ourselves, we will at once frankly confess that we have no faith in any model colonies, in ideals of any description, or in any "Art of colonisation." What has been done, may be done again; what America is doing every day on the banks of the Mississippi, England may do in her Australian continent. With regard more particularly to the last and most important matter that can affect a new settlement, the mode of dealing with the land, it appears to us that the duties of Government are few, simple, and imperative—as simple in their character as they are indispensable. A previous survey, a moderate price, lots large and small to suit all purchasers—these are what we should require. The land-jobber, who interposes between Government and the emigrant, to make a cruel profit of the latter, must be kept out, either by laying a tax (as they do in America, under the denomination of the "Wild-land Tax,") on all land not reclaimed within a certain time, or by declaring the purchase forfeited, if, within that time, the soil is not cultivated. Government also must restrain its own hands from large grants to favoured individuals, who are no better than another species of land-jobbers. This, though a merely negative duty, will probably be the last performed, and the most imperfectly. Few readers are perhaps aware of the criminal ease with which the Government has been persuaded into lavish grants of land to persons who had, and could have, no immediate prospect of making use of it; enormous grants unjust to other settlers, and ruinous to the young colony, by dispersing the emigrants, interposing between them wide tracts of barren property. We ourselves read with no little surprise the following statement, which we extract from the work before us, Mr Wakefield's Art of Colonisation:—
"There are plenty of cases in which mischievous dispersion has taken place, but not one, to my knowledge, in which the great bulk of settlers had a choice between dispersion and concentration. In the founding of West Australia there was no choice. In disposing of the waste land, the Government began by granting 500,000 acres (nearly half as much as the great county of Norfolk) to one person. Then came the governor and a few other persons, with grants of immense extent. The first grantee took his principality at the landing-place; and the second, of course, could only choose his outside of this vast property. Then the property of the second grantee compelled the third to go further off for land; and the fourth again was driven still further into the wilderness. At length, though by a very brief process, an immense territory was appropriated by a few settlers, who were so effectually dispersed, that, as there were no roads or maps, scarcely one of them knew where he was. Each of them knew, indeed, that he was where he was positively; but his relative position—not to his neighbours, for he was alone in the wilderness, but to other settlers, to the seat of government, and even to the landing-place of the colony—was totally concealed from him. This is, I believe, the most extreme case of dispersion on record. In the founding of South Africa by the Dutch, the dispersion of the first settlers, though superficially or acreably less, was as mischievous as at Swan River. The mischief shows itself in the fact, that two of the finest countries in the world are still poor and stagnant colonies. But in all colonies, without exception, there has been impoverishing dispersion, arising from one and the same cause."—(P. 433.)
Two very different ideals of colonisation have often haunted the imaginations of speculative men, and coloured very diversely their views and projects on this subject. Both have their favourable aspects; neither is practicable. As is usual, the rough reality rides zig-zag between your ideals, touching at both in turns, but running parallel with neither.
With one party of reasoners, the ideal of a colony would be a miniature England, a little model of the old country, framed here, at home, and sent out (like certain ingeniously-constructed houses) to be erected forthwith upon the virgin soil. A portion of all classes would sally forth for their New Jerusalem. The church, with tower and steeple, the manor-house, the public library, the town-hall, the museum, and the hospital, would all simultaneously be reproduced. Science would have its representatives. Literature with its light luggage, thoughts and paper, would be sure to hover about the train. Nobility would import its antique honours into the new city, and, with escutcheon and coat of arms, traditionally connect it with knighthood and chivalry, Agincourt, and the Round Table. There would be physicians and divines, lawyers, and country gentlemen "who live at ease," as well as the artisan and ploughman, and all who work in wood and in iron. Dr Hind, the present Dean of Carlisle, in an elegantly written essay, incorporated in Mr Wakefield's book, proposes and advocates this mode of colonisation. After remarking on the greater success which apparently accompanied the schemes of the Greeks and Romans to found new communities, Dr Hind thus proceeds.—The italics, it may be as well to say, are his, not ours.
"The main cause of this difference may be stated in few words. We send out colonies of the limbs, without the belly and the head; of needy persons, many of them mere paupers, or even criminals; colonies made up of a single class of persons in the community, and that the most helpless, and the most unfit to perpetuate our national character, and to become the fathers of a race whose habits of thinking and feeling shall correspond to those which, in the mean time, we are cherishing at home. The ancients, on the contrary, sent out a representation of the parent state—colonists from all ranks." And further on, after insisting on the propriety of appointing to the colony educated and accomplished clergymen, he says—"The same may be urged in respect of men of other professions and pursuits. The desirable consummation of the plan would be, that a specimen, or sample, as it were, of all that goes to make up society in the parent country, should at once be transferred to its colony. Instead of sending out bad seedlings, and watching their uncertain growth, let us try whether a perfect tree will not bear transplanting."
We apprehend that this project of "transplanting a perfect tree" is none of the most feasible. However the Greeks managed matters, we moderns find it absolutely necessary to begin "at the beginning," and with somewhat rude beginnings. If the Greeks had the art in the colony, as in the epic poem, of rushing in medias res—of starting with and from maturity—then indeed must colonisation be reckoned, as Dr Hind seems half to suspect, amongst the artes perditæ. Anything more lamentable than a number of cultivated men—"samples" of all kinds, physicians, and divines, and lawyers, with, of course, their several ladies—set down upon the uncultivated soil, on the long green grass, we cannot imagine. It seems to us quite right and unavoidable to send out "a single class," first—good stout "limbs," without much of "the belly"—which must mean, we presume, the idle folks, or much of "the head," which must mean the thinkers. That class, or those classes which cultivate the soil, and render the place somewhat habitable, had better surely precede, and act as pioneers, before the gentry disembark from their ships. Other classes must follow as they are wanted, and find room and scope. What would the physician do with his elaborate skill and courtesy, without that congregation of idlers on whose ailments he rides and dines? What need yet of eloquent barrister, or are his fees forthcoming, when a new estate could be purchased with less money than would serve to defend the old one by his pleading? Who would attend to the man of science, and his latest experiments on magnetic currents, when every one is trying over again the very first experiment—how to live?—where corn will grow, and what the potato will yield? Even your clergy must be of a somewhat different stamp from the polished ecclesiastic, the bland potentate of our drawing-rooms. He must have something more natural—"some rough-cast and a little loam" about him, be serviceable, accessible. And the fair "sample" partners of all these classes, what is to become of them? As yet, pin-money is not. There is nothing refined and civilised; men talk of marriage as if for prayer-book purposes. Very gross ideas!
The ancients, says Dr Hind, "began by nominating to the honourable office of captain, or leader of the colony, one of the chief men, if not the chief man of the state—like the queen bee leading the workers. Monarchies provided a prince of the blood royal; an aristocracy its choicest nobleman; a democracy its most influential citizen." In order to entice some one of our gentry—some one of wealth, station, and cultivated mind, to act as "queen bee" of the colony—seeing that a prince of the blood royal, or a Duke of Northumberland, would be hard to catch—the Doctor proposes to bestow upon him a patent of nobility. Wealth he has already, and wealth would not bribe him, but honour might. We see nothing ridiculous whatever in the suggestion. A patent of nobility might be much worse bestowed; but, unless we err greatly in our notion of what colonisation really is, the bribe would be lamentably insufficient. The English gentleman of fortune and of taste, who should leave his park and mansion in the county of Middlesex, to share the squabbles and discomforts of a crowd of emigrants—too often turbulent, anxious, and avaricious—would have well earned his earldom. He would be a sort of hero. Men of such a temper you may decorate with the strawberry leaf, but it is not the coronet, nor any possible bribe—nothing short of a certain thirst for noble enterprise can prompt them.
The other ideal of what colonisation might be is quite the reverse, presents a picture every way opposite to this of our classical dean. Many energetic and not uncultured spirits, wearied with the endless anxieties, cares, hypocrisies, and thousand artificialities of life, are delighted with the idea of breaking loose from the old trammels and conventionalities of civilisation. Their romance is to begin life afresh. Far from desiring to form a part of the little model-England, they would take from the Old World, if possible, nothing more than knowledge, seeds, and tools. To a fresh nature they would take a fresh heart, and a vigorous arm. Fields rescued by themselves from the waste should ripen under their own eyes. Thus, with a rude plenty, care and luxury alike cut off, no heartburnings, no vanity, a cultivated temper and coarse raiment—they and their families, and some neighbours of kindred dispositions, would really enjoy the earth, and the being God had given them. Not theirs the wish to see a matured society spring from the new soil. They regret to think that their own rustic community must inevitably advance, or decline, into some one of the old forms of civilisation; but they and their children, and perhaps their grandchildren, would be partakers of a peculiar and envied state of social existence, where the knowledge and amenity brought from the old country would be combined with the healthy toil and simple abundance of the new; where life would be unanxious, laborious, free; where there would be no talk of wars, nor politics, nor eternal remediless distress; but a disciplined humanity, in face of a kindly nature whose bounty had not yet been too severely taxed.