COLONISATION.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.") SIR,—The honour of being unintentionally misrepresented by
the Spectator is sufficient in most cases to enable one to bear such laurels in silence. When, however, your reviewer un- wittingly prejudices a cause I humbly think he fails to under- stand, a word of correction may perhaps be allowed. Your
reviewer says, a propos of my Contemporary article :—" Mr. Arnold White pleads strongly for State-aided emigration, especially to South Africa." So far from this being the case, I stated in so many words that " arguments employed in support of State-aided emigration undertaken with philanthropic inten-
tions are equally cogent in support of the establishment of ateliers nationam ;" and I go on to urge that the only circum- stances under which the State can intervene with advantage, are where colonisation may be expected to obviate military operations, otherwise unavoidable.
Then your reviewer hazards the assertion that " no Colony in which white men and dark men are to perform physical labour side by side has ever succeeded yet." Surely every schoolboy knows that the Grahamstown settlement of 1820, and the Kaffrarian settlement of 1857, have been signally successful, and that under the very conditions my critic says are im- [Mr. Arnold White is a little too abrupt with us. We said nothing about the object of the emigration. He, of course, knows his own meaning best ; but here are his own words :—
" Sir Charles Mills, the able and indefatigable representative of the Cape Government, himself organised the settlement of the German Legion in Kaffraria, which has proven of incalculable benefit to the Cape Colony. It was a work on which any man may be proud to look back. Mr. Spring Rice, in 1820, moved the Government of Lord Liverpool to place the sum of 250,000 on the estimates of the year for the settlement of the Eastern province of the Cape Colony. What has been the result P The British taxpayers have never since 1857 been called on to pay a penny-piece for the defence of a stretch of country repeatedly attacked by a numerous and a courageous foe. Arguing from these premises, and looking both to the unsettled state of Bechuanaland and of Zululand, and to the probability of fresh ex- penditure becoming necessary within the next few years, it would be imprudent not to repeat that which is no longer an experiment, and to colonise both Bechuanaland and Zululand with young men and young women from Great Britain."
If that does not mean that emigration should be aided by the State, words have no sense. As to the experiments quoted by Mr. White, they arc too small. Take a broader illustration. We have owned Cape Colony for eighty years, and there are still within it nothing like half-a-million whites. Why ? For one reason, because in the Colony dark labour competes with white.— ED. Spectator.]
Previous page
