The gone; a more noble ambition is afloat to confirm and enlarge our territory. The redemption of land from the sea, or forcing the powers of the earth, can never meet our wants. Our territory can only be made commensurate with our wants, by filling up our southern continents, and by possessing the islands of the sea. smallest of these will be jewels in the British crown, and the field of honourable competition in them is open to our people. Borneo, in a few years, might be made to contain millions of Chinese as British subjects, adding immensely to our wealth and power. Limitless as the ocean, may be our dominion. Gold is of universal estimation, and British justice, energy, and intelligence, stamped by religion, will cause our sway to extend from sea to sea, from the river to the world's end, until Christ come, when all nations shall do Him service. Colonization, as a moral and economical science, offers the greatest field for the first statesman of the day. The subject can be barely alluded to in this publication. But there is land enough in our colonies to give every man, woman, and child of British birth, 1,000 acres of good land. It is to be regretted that nothing efficient is done. No nation has so many paupers, and yet no nation has so many acres. Officials are not without feeling, but they do not contemplate the scope there is for their talent and energy, and they consequently deny themselves the greatest of all pleasure, that of benefitting individuals and aggrandizing the nation. Let us begin now, without reflecting on the past. Let the honest pride of public virtue, and the exquisite delight of beholding the general happiness increased by their means, inspire public men with greater activity. Let colonial lands be rendered cheap to the poor; let means be devised for placing them there. Let government not deny respectability to the colonies. Confer self government; bestow titles of honour, create an order of merit, and raise colonists, at the same time, to the highest positions. Let the offices of governor, &c. be bestowed for talent and ingenuity, not for party, or with the spirit of patronage. Let the governor be beloved as the representative of Her Majesty, and let him grant to the colonists every privilege which Her Majesty bestows upon her subjects at home. Let all royalties and litigation with the crown cease. The crown bears no losses sustained by landowners; let not the crown claim any of the labours of its emigrating people. This is the remnant of an unjust law, which should be expunged from the statute books of all the colonies. Send industry, morality, intelligence, and religion to the colonies; but as sin is a shame to any people, let not England be so shameful as to commit the greater sin of inoculating a pure colony with the vices, the crimes, and the horrors of conviction. If she does it, she will entail upon herself an immense expenditure without result; and in the end she will be beaten, and bring disgrace upon herself. Loyal people should not be worried either to expatriate themselves or to rebel. The introduction of sin is a political crime, and constitutional resistance to it is patriotism and godliness. Island of St. Helena, 20th August, 1849.-Since the above was written, I find, by the annual report of the poor law commissioners, that the rates collected in England and Wales, in 1848, amounted to £6,180,765! upwards of six millions pounds sterling! and that this relief was given to 1,876,541 people! which gives £3 5s. 10d. to each! Thus nearly a twelfth part of the population are paupers! Pro Scotland, in 1848, paid £544,334. The number of people partaking of that sum was 227,647! at the rate of £2 7s. 94d. each! portion of the population receiving relief, nearly one-ninth! Unhappy Ireland paid £1,216,679! (exclusive of the parliamentary grants.) 1,457,194 people received relief, at the rate of 16s. 8d. each! Thus the proportion of people to the whole population receiving relief, amounted actually to one-sixth! And taking the whole complex of the united kingdom, there are now 3,561,382! (three and a-half millions of people!) receiving poor law relief! or nearly one-eighth of the whole population of the kingdom! The historian, Gibbon, in the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, observes-That the ablest politicians have limited the number of troops that any nation can bear without being soon ruined, to one hundredth part of the population. The expence of supporting a body of men beyond that proportion, although an army is necessary for protection, would ruin the finances of any nation. Let us apply this: the army of Great Britain amounts only to one man in every 285. This, therefore, according to the best politicians, will not ruin us; but an army of paupers, 3,561,382 strong, at an expense of £8,182,293! will ruin the kingdom, if something effectual is not soon accomplished. The goodness of God our Saviour in withholding famine and disease from us, we can never be sufficiently thankful for. If they were added to our troubles, it would be as overwhelming to England, or more so, than the late famine in Ireland. A rate in aid bill, would then be required for the whole kingdom; that is to say, the nation would be called on to keep people upon their landed property, or to buy the land from them at a song, and send the occupiers either to the colonies or to the Union! Let politicians beware, or it will come. Without emigration being extensively directed to our colonies, some of our recent measures are of questionable policy; but if undertaken, our trade would offer more advantages than any nation could reciprocate, and then we might dictate instead of being dictated It is very unwise to disparage the colonies and the colonial trade, to call the first an incubus, and the last unprofitable. With much more truth might it be said that England has been an incubus to. to the Cape of Good Hope. Through misgovernment, England has lost millions of the property of the colonists, and no compensation has yet been given for it. But we will put this aside for the present. The colonial trade is also disparaged and regarded as nothing. But people who do so should not look at the number, or the vast extent of our lands in the colonies, which doubles that of all Europe; but look to the extent of the trade created by a very limited number of colonists. If emigration had been conducted as it becomes England to conduct it, we might have done something towards making some of our colonies as populous as the continent of Europe. Were that the case, and we had a hundred and eighty millions of people of British origin in our colonies, I ween our trade with them would be something far more considerable than we now have with foreign Europe. In Natal, we intend to consume from £7 10s. to £10 worth of British manufactures per man. Natal will hold four or five millions of people. Now when the Natalians number four millions of people, they will do more trade with England than all Europe together, they will consume £30,000,000 of British manufactures; whereas our foreign trade only amounts to twenty-six millions. But did they consume at the rate of Capesters, Australians, or Natalians, even now there would be a demand for £1,830,000,000 of British manufactures! England and her politicians should look forward to this. I hear the reply, "first catch your hare." Truly: and perhaps I should hardly be justified in offering my sentiments to the public, if I did nothing towards accomplishing this desirable result. An essay on such a subject, unless some practical plan is offered for adoption, is almost a nuisance. Where evils are openly displayed, some remedy should be proposed. Well, I offer my own plan at once, than which no better has been laid before the public, to a limited extent, because the land is offered cheap, and because prospectively it promotes emigration. Besides which there are the following plans for general adoption, which I beg respectfully to suggest to Government, to the Emigration Commissioners and the Poor Law Commissioners. Let these be tried, one or both (for they will work simultaneously,) and we may conquer the evils of poverty, check this drain upon the general resources, and give to the poor, contentment and plenty in our colonies. Plan A. Grant a loan of a million sterling to Natal, on security of the colonial revenues. It can, under government guarantee, be negociated at 3 or 4 per cent. At £10 per head it will introduce 100,000 people. 1st.-100,0000 people consuming £10 worth of goods, British and foreign, at an average of 7 per cent. customs duty, will bring a revenue of 2ndly.-Deduct the interest payable on the loan. Annual profit to the Natal government This shows that the interest could be safely guaranteed. £75,000 40,000 £35,000 Now 3rdly. For the principal. The arrival of such a number of settlers would cause at least two millions of acres to be sold. This at 4s. (it should be 2s.) per acre, would amount to In another two years, through the prosperity of the colony, private emigration, and natural increase, at least three millions of acres more would be sold, at 4s. (should be 2s.) that amounts to Thus the whole loan would be repaid. £400,000 600,000 £1,000,000 Thus also the whole Cape Colony would be rendered impregnable against Caffers, and the home government might be saved the expense of supporting five hundred soldiers in Natal. Give the emigrants, and then withdraw the troops; but don't withdraw the troops, ruin all the colonists, and only talk about emigration. This will never do for England's interests or England's honor. Plan B. Pass an Act of Parliament, and allow arrangements for emigration to be made between poor law guardians and rate-payers. Take an instance, and see the working of the plan. A. B. is a farmer and rate-payer of £20 a-year. He sees no £10 10 £20 The operation of this is not simply to enable one person receiving relief to emigrate, but inasmuch as many take the assistance of the poor law because they have no work. G. H., who is in the union, comes out of the union, and gets the work which E. F. used to get from A. B. Thus Two men are taken out of the union. Details cannot here be entered into, but the thing can be done extensively and advantageously, for rate-payers might coalesce, and send one, ten, or a hundred emigrants together. If a man's rates amounted only to £2 per annum, and he paid £20 on this plan, his property could be exempted for ten years. I avail myself of this opportunity to suggest the removal of an existing impediment to emigration. An engagement entered into in England by a labourer, to serve a capitalist who is emigating, is not binding in the colony; so that after he has landed, and his passage been paid, he may decline to serve. People are not inclined to promote emigration, having such a fragile tie upon the labourer. They therefore rarely take servants with them. To remedy this evil, pass a When short act to allow labourers to engage themselves here to serve in the colony, for two or three years. I do not ask for more, though captured negroes are, I believe, bound for seven years. capitalists emigrate, they will then feel a confidence that their operations will not be thwarted. The present law renders a benevolent man's efforts to benefit his poorer neighbour null and void; it exposes him to a heavy loss and disappointment, because his dependence upon the labourer, either in tillage, herding, or other calling, has prevented his getting other hands, and his crop, or his stock, have been injured or lost. The subject confined even to one colony opens more and more, but I have already far surpassed the bounds I had placed to this part of my work. I will therefore merely say, that if it was a noble act on the part of parliament to pay £20,000,000 sterling to emancipate the slaves in all our colonies, such a grant or such a loan to emancipate our industrious poverty-stricken white labourers, who wish to emigrate, would be much more noble and quite as politic. Humanity calls for this, or for something quite as equivalent. Landowners and rate-payers all call for some relief; and if England acts boldly and promptly, she will save money and make money. Her colonies, at the same time, being the greatest employers of her manufacturing population at home, and great producers of the raw materials, both of cotton and sheep's-wool, &c.; and in war they will pour forth legions of auxiliaries, to protect the British dominions in her own time of need. There is now an Indian navy, and in time every colony will not only be able to protect its own land, but its own seas. England has but just entered upon her duties, let her pursue them with energy and wisdom, and her destiny is, increased power of greatness through the prosperity of her colonies. ON CRIME. THE Connexion between poverty and crime is so intimate, that I must be allowed the reader's attention a little longer. The following extracts, from the published criminal returns, will be enough painfully to excite attention to the fearful condition of the country in this respect. The total number of offenders in England and Wales, in 1848, was 30,349; convictions, 22,900; acquitted on trial, 7,423. In the analysis of the above returns, there is an average increase of the following crimes against the person,-murder, maiming, unnatural offences, rape, and assaults, of 10 per cent. |