DA.NOENOITS CONDITION OF THE AUSTRALIAS AND NEW ZEALAND.
Reigate, 18th May 1852.
Sm.-Two birds may be killed with one stone, by so examining the sug- gested remedies of social disorganization in Australia as to exhibit precisely the objects with which they are proposed.
These remedial suggestions are two : first, that British troops should be sent out in order to strengthen the authority- of law and government ; se- condly, that abundance of labourers should be sent out in order to supply With hands the great capital whirl is perishing for want of them. L It is plain enough that a large military force kept at the disposal of the Australian executives would enable the local legislatures to control and re- gulate the business of gold-finding. With powers of control and regulation, the governments might put such checks and limits on the work of gold-find- ing, as would preserve the ordinary labour of the colonies for ordinary Purposes ; and if a. large supply of labour were also ccntinually fur- nished from home, the gold-fields might be continually supplied with more hands, so as gradually to develop their utmost capacity of pro. duction without starving capital in any other employment. The govern,- manta being strong and the stream of immigrant laboitreeth large and eon- tinuous, laws might be easily devised, and as readily enflamed, which would preserve the due relations between capital and labour in all pursuits, and would therefore have the effects, not only of saving the old wealth of these colonies, but of enabling them to convert their new production—gold—into the old sorts of wealth. They would thus be elevated with unexampled rapidity to a height of greatness which it requires an effort of the imagism- tion to conceive. But all depends on the maintenance of the physical force to be placed at the disposal of the governments. Such a force could be placed at their disposal ; but could it be kept there ? I doubt it. May we not reasonably doubt whether in this country, where respect for the law is a na- tional habit, or even in France, where mere authority is paramount and mili- tary discipline perfect, soldiers could be hindered from throwing down their muskets and running after gold, if gold could be picked up with but little effort in a thousand places ? What could Under them, except other soldiers in greater numbers, themselves hindered by other soldiers in still greater numbers ? The extinguishers (see Tom Moore's Fables for the Holy Alliance) would take fire. But if that would probably happen in old countries accustomed to law and order, full of supplies for troops, and possessing every means of locomo- tion for regiments, what would be the case in the wildernesses of Australia, where the gold has turned up in regions more extensive than all England, and as hot and dry as North Africa - where roads are few and bad ; where provi- sions have pot been accumulated, still less accumulated in the great number of desert spots wide apart from each other at which supplies for troops would be needed ; where neither law nor authority is much respected, because self- government is both novel and incomplete ; and where, above all, the populace would have enjoyed for more than twelve months an absolute liberty with regard to the reeking up of gold ? The newly-imported soldiers would probably be quite unable to guard the gold-fields from the gold. hunters, and would more probably—certainly if they failed in a Snit en- deavour to enforce new and restrictive laws—rush themselves to share in the intoxications of the gold-field. The passions of greed of gold, of gamb- ling, of love of licence, of delight in a sudden change from the slavish lot of a common soldier to individual importance, and even to a kind of superiority over former superiors—all inflamed to the uttermost by extreme facility of gratification—would be too much for discipline. Setting soldiers to hunt gold-hunters in the wilds of Australia would be only setting them to hunt for gold. Considering what our soldiers are when their discipline breaks down the transportation of some British regiments to Australia would resemble passing upon our worst crimi. nab the sentence of a free passage to the gold-tliggings : it would be that species of doctoring which aggravates the malady. I am strengthened in
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this belief by finding that it s held by long-headed and experienced officers. We know that British troops in Canada are only prevented from deserting en masse to the States in pursuit of high wages, by keeping them away from the frontier, and rewarding settlers near the frontier for apprehend- ing deserters. What is the temptation of American wages compared with that of the Australian gold-fields ? The whole populace of Australia, hating the restraints which soldiers were intended to enforce, would stimulate and facilitate desertion. If the troops in New South Wales and Victoria have not yet deserted to the gold-fields, it is to be observed that there has hardly been time or it ; that military discipline never breaks down quite suddenly, but only after longing and discontent have fermented into the spirit of rebellion and that swarms of Californian Yankees are now finding their way to Austinlia, with ideas, habits, and experience in devices, which are utterly hostile to the administration of law by means of soldiers. I wish you had seen Sam Slicks engaged at Quebeo or Montreal in the regular business of seducing British soldiers to desert. No, Sir, if soldiers can be anyhow made available for the purpose in question, they must be men of a different stamp from ordinary British troops. I can imagine a force created, composed, like the body guard of the old French monarchy, of cadets of the gentry class, and paid accordingly, which would do all that arms and discipline could accomplish in the circumstances. Such a force might at least be preserved ; and there would be no difficulty in raising it ; but its cost would be enormous, and its efficiency small. I therefore difeniSa the soldier plan as inapplicable. At best, it would resemble the physic which empinos administer to remove symptoms, without ever thinking about the disease. IL A like quackery is manifest in the proposal to send out British la- bourers in sufficient numbers. Sufficient for what? To work the gold-fields more productivly, no doubt, but not to work the old kinds of capital, still less to augment their quantity by converting the new wealth into permanent and productive wealth. Of course the new labourers would go to the gold- fields with even more haste than those long-accustomed and prosperous ser- vants to whom the attractions of gold-hunting have proved irresistible. It is proposed to let water run in at the spiggot withuot stopping the bunghole. The suggested remedy is long away from the root of the evil. The root of the evil is this—that it is as easy to get gold as to take water from the rivers or to breathe the atmosphere. No human power can alter it. The Ame- rican founders of California tried for a moment to keep the diggings under the control of law as nubile property, but abandoned the attempt en- tirely as soon as they found it impracticable. Their practical common sense, nurtured to perfection in making war upon the wilderness, submitted with- out struggle or murmur to the force of laws more powerful than those of man. The Australian, like the Californian gold-fields, are free ground to all comers : and you cannot alter it. Let us take it, then, as the basis of our calculations. It would be well, nay highly useful, to send out plenty of la- bourers from this country, provided we had hit upon some other means of working ordinary capital in the colonies ; but, except on that condition, the measure would conduce to nothing but a more rapid and gigantic develop- ment of the gold-finding anarchy. That condition not attained, the sug- gested remedy of a great labour-emigration from this country seems as idle as that of sending out regiments to melt away in the gold-fields.
Having disposed of the two remedies in a manner which has laid bare the root of the evil to be cured, I proceed to my own suggestion. The basis of our calculations is, that we cannot hinder any free men, not even disciplined soldiers, from turning into gold-diggers. But we could hinder slaves. The Australias and New Zealand want a population so far
slaves as to be easily hindered from running to the gold-fields. I use the odious word "slaves, not inadvertently, nor in defiance of universal British
feeling, but in order to stimulate thought. A labouring population which could be kept away from the gold-fields, would serve every end in view, and yet would not be a slave population in any odious sense. China, and China only, offers us as hordes of emigrant labourers, who would cordially engage before embarking to keep away from the gold-fields, and whose deliberate contracts to that effect might be readily enforced, because they would be aliens
marked by face and language as labourers under contract to supply the de- mands of ordinary capital. Already this race is of. incalculable value in California : the American colony could hardly exist without them as a civilized community. But far more of them • be wanted there; and as many as shall be wanted will be obtained, because the Californians are used to the management of their own affairs, to the processes by which their public wants may be supplied, to the art of inventing means suitable to their objects. Whereas our Australian and New Zealand colonists are used to a total dependence upon their wretched governments, and are there- fore as helpless as children, op as tit.> moon despotisms whose existence has
forbidden them to elm comprehend the uses of popular responsibility and self-reliance in public affairs. The Imperial Government, therefore, which foss made these Colonial governments and communities so weak, is bound to gielp them in this emergency. It is an Imperial emergency also : for, to say mot]iing of the loss of our fine-wool importations, if we don't mind what we 'are about, our Colonies may be found some fine day within the fast-spreading realm of Yankeedom. The principle of American annexation, being that of .donquest without war by means of emigration and of decentralized but fede-
rated municipalities, is mightily agreeable to the circumstances of the inha- bitants of new countries. But your limits of space and my own inclination equally forbid me to dwell on this point. The Colonial emergency and the Imperial obligation to the Colonies; are motive enough for the Imperial effort proposed. I do not propose that the Mother-country should do any- thing for the colonies which they could do for themselves, but something -which it is wholly out of their power to do. Being what England has made them, they have not self-managing strength enough for setting on foot a large and systematic Chinese immigration. Neither have they lawful authority for the purpose. The revenue which their taxes yield is but partially at the disposal of their governments, and those governments are still in a great measure agencies of Downing Street. The government of New Zealand is entirely so. Their waste lands, by far the most important of their sources of revenue, and the best security they could give for immigration loans, are by law wholly under Downing Street management. Therefore it must not be said that I suggest any new Imperial "meddling" with Colonial affairs. Nay, I am persuaded that the Chinese remedy, which the colonists cannot yet themselves apply, would utterly fail if applied by our Parliament, unless at the same time every power of strictly Colonial government now reserved to Downing Street by Imperial acts were handed over to the Colonies. Under the pressure of the Colonial emergency, I suggest that be- fore the reserved powers be given up, they shall be used by us to save the Colonies. They would be so used, if for every colony money were raised on the security of its waste lands, and expended., to some extent perhaps in sending out British emigrants, but principally in setting on foot without delay an emigration of labourers from China to the colony. If the Chinese emigration were sufficient in amount, due precautions being taken with regard to contracts for labour in the colony, the emigration from this country would be at any rate unobjectionable. But the grand point is an ample supply of labour from China for ordinary purposes. This would cause an immense emigration from England. A sagacious and spirited Prime Minister would do the thing without much talking about it—would raise the money in a fortnight, and send two or three men of ability to several Chinese ports by the ensuing mail. Would not Pitt have done it, or Canning, though perhaps not the unoriginating Peel? I think that Lord Durham might have done it. I think that Lord Palmerston would do it out of hand if he were at the head of the Government. Lord Derby is perhaps incapacitated by his unsettled position as Minister. But no Minister would attempt it spontaneously. Therefore we should re- sort to the application of pressure on the Government. Hence the proposal of an Australasian Society or Association. If the Colonies can be saved without one, so much the better. But if not, as I for one cannot help fearing, the sole object and work of the Society would be to stir the question, to inform the ignorant public, to trouble the Houses of Parliament, to worry the careless Ministers—to do for this particular object what has been done at some time or other by every party and for every important public object, because in free countries it is only in the principle of association for getting things done, that parties live, and public objects find their means of success.
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