SYSTEMATIC COLONIZATION, ITS DETRACTORS AND SUPPORTERS.
THE modesty of the Globe is hurt because we have not reprinted all that it has published about emigration and Mr. WAKEFIELD'S letter : it complains that we have quoted only " a few brief re- marks" as containing " the whole" of the journalist's views. Now we printed two whole leading articles of the Globe ; and, though we expressly mentioned that it had put forth more, we believe that our readers are in possession of its entire case, such as it is. But the reproach comes with a strange grace from one who has not given a single paragraph, or a single ungarbled sentence, of the writings which he has impugned. It is true that we had an advan- tage in quoting the very words of the adversary, in that they dis- played, better than any which could have been substituted, the bad spirit and swaggering flippancy with which important questions were treated by this writer. Besides quoting two entire articles, each the first of its series and the one most directly following our own humble lucubrations, we met and disposed of the points in the unenumerated articles—and a great deal more. If this writer fancies he has contributed any new matter to an old discussion, let us undeceive him : he has but travelled over beaten ground : all his "reasons"—the very best of them—have been encountered years ago ; and he has only been indulging in an unavailing display of verbal cleverness—spinning smartish paragraphs out of vagrant suggestions picked up from day to day.
The favourite point in his last holding-forth is the following, where he announces the not quite new revelation, that " lands are not rendered really worth high prices merely by the process of shooting masses of pauper labour on them "—
" A vast deal more remains to be done, and done most expensively to some- body, to make up the difference between a new and an old and improved settlement, so as to render land in one of the former description really valuable. Now then, who is to do all this? Who is not only to survey the land, but to make all those improvements upon it of lines of communication, and establish- ment of all sorts, which are essential to all settlements, and render new ones so expensive a business ? The Wakefield system won't defray all this. It thinks it has done wonders when it has landed emigrants at the Antipodes. Who is to do all the rest " Who but the capitalists ; who do the same thing here, and in all civilized countries. One of the very things that, concur- rently with the excess of people in an old rich country, suggests the necessity of emigration, is overflowing capital. The competi- tion of capital with capital in the search for employment beats down profits, till many, in all lines of industry, complain that they labour for years without adequate return, and without a prospect of doing better. The withdrawal of one quarter of the gross capi- tal of a staple trade, the iron-trade, in Wales and Scotland, is but the newest instance. Such capital seeks, and is willing to take the risk of finding, more profitable use in new colonies. Even in the warning case of South Australia, the capitalists will pay the money which, through an error of administration, is temporarily charged upon the Imperial funds; and so little are capitalists in London alarmed at the prospect of such tasks, that a disposition has been hinted among them to redeem the whole debt of South Australia, upon condition that they shall be allowed to undertake, in one lump, the function of a colonizing company. Disengaged and redundant British capital wants no guarantee of repayment for its advances in colonial enterprise : it simply requires to know the terms on which it is to be advanced ; and to be assured—and it can only be so assured by a Government—that those terms will be fixed. British capital will flow into any spot where laws are established for its protection, but much more where virgin lands and chosen bands of labourers invite the investment. " We believe coloniza- tion, in its first stages, involves outlay without profit," quoth the Globe, solemnly : we believe so too; and moreover we believe the same phsenomenon is observable in all investments on a great scale.
The censor's approval is nearly as infelicitous as his condemna- tion. There is one part of the Wakefield system which he accepts as possessing merit—" the leading suggestion, that colonial lands should be sold for fair prices, and not given away ; and that one good use which might be made of the proceeds was the aiding of emigration." This bungling sentence does not state the " leading suggestion" of the Wakefield system : its leading suggestion is, that the excessive appropriation of land in the Colonies should be restricted so as to secure a due proportion between the three ele- ments of wealth—land, labour, and capital. As that suggestion is not comprised in the specification of what the Globe accepts, of course it is among the rejected. But if that, the real "lead- ing suggestion " of the Wakefield system, was to be denounced, the denunciation should have come long ago, before the principle was adopted far and near. It can only be in ignorance of the actual position of the question, that a writer in a single paper of middling influence can be blind to the utter idleness of setting up his mere ipse dixit against a system, which he never questioned while it was
still a mooted theory, and which is now coming into practical ap-
plication, stamped with wide approval and official authority. The Globe cannot arrest opinion already obtaining in the most opposite countries of the world; nor can it avail against the formally-de-
clared conviction of the last public body under whose consideration the system came in this country—a Committee of the House of Commons named by the late Ministry in the last session of Par- liament. It came before them in all the disadvantage of being
mixed up with the oft-cited case of Colonel GAWLER s expendi- ture in South Australia. The Committee was composed of the leading authorities in Colonial affairs on both sides of the House— of Mr. VERNON SMITH, then Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord Howlett. and Mr. WILLIAM GLADSTONE, who had filled the same post, Lord STANLEY, formerly and since at the head of the Colonial Office, with Mr. GEORGE HOPE, now his Under Secretary ; besides Sir WILLIAM MOLESWORTH, Lord MAHON, Mr. GEORGE WILLIAM WOOD, and Mr. Joins PARKER. The Committee thus formed, after a deliberate inquiry, passed the following as one of the resolutions finally reported to the House- ., 13. That the minimum price of land in one of the Australian colonies must necessarily be governed to a great extent by the minimum price of land in the
other of those colonies; but that, in the opinion of this Committee, the mini- mum price of land in South Australia may safely be raised above the present amount of 1/. per acre ; and that in fixing such minimum, it is desirable to keep in view the principle of maintaining such an amount as may tend to re- medy the evils arising out of too great a facility of obtaining landed property, and a consequently disproportionate supply of labour and exorbitant rate of wages."
This resolution involves the real " principle" of the Wakefield system—that means may be employed to regulate the apportion- ment of land, labour, and capital, in colonial settlements ; and that a sufficient price is a convenient and efficacious means of restrict- ing that ingredient of colonization which, unregulated, is uniformly in excess—land. The Committee, we see, even considered that the " high price " imposed in South Australia was too lour: and they argue the point in terms which would do credit to any " Wake- field systematizers"- " Nor can the price of land be determined by any natural or necessary value it possesses. In a colony where the extent of available land may, when com- pared with the population, be practically considered as unlimited, ordinary land, dell were allowed to appropriate what they pleased, would have no value what- ever ; and it only acquires an artificial value from the policy adopted of not al- lowing it to be appropriated except by those who purchase it on certain terms. As the value acquired by land under such circumstances is artificial, so it may be made higher or lower at the discretion of the authority by which it is cre- ated. The same description of land in New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land, which previously to the year 1831 was of very little value, became worth 5s. an acre when this price was imposed upon it by the Government ; and when the upset price was advanced to 12s., it was readily sold at this higher rate. The determination of the minimum price at which land is to be sold will in like manner determine the value which it will bear (or, in other words, the degree of facility for acquiring it which is to be allowed to exist) in South Australia. It appears to your Committee that this facility has hitherto been too great; that is to say, that the price imposed upon land has been too low. The evidence of Mr. G. Wakefield, whose authority upon this question is entitled to the greatest weight, will be found to support this opinion ; which is further confirmed by the fact stated by Colonel Gawler in his half-yearly Report, dated 30th June 1840, that land has already been sold sufficient to maintain at least 100,000 inhabit- ants, while their actual number does not exceed 15,000. Your Committee conceive that the first principle of the system of colonization originally recom- mended by Mr. Wakefield, (to realize which was the object of founding the colony of South Australia,) is that of maintaining a due proportion between the extent of land which is appropriated and the population by which it is occupied, by imposing such a price upon land as shall prevent a greater quantity from being bought than the number of the inhabitants is sufficient to make use of to advantage. Your Committee, persuaded of the soundness of this principle, consider the fact stated by Colonel Gawler to be conclusive as to the inadequacy of the price hitherto imposed upon land in South Australia, since the appro- priation of so much greater an extent of land than is required to supply the wants of the present number of inhabitants is altogether inconsistent with the attainment of the object justly considered of paramount importance by Mr. Wakefield—that, namely, of rendering the industry of the colonists as productive as possible, by maintaining in a newly-settled colony the same system of com- bination of labour and division of employments which prevails in older societies."
So says a Report the joint production of Mr. VERNON SMITH and other leading members ofthe Committee. On the opposite side, a writer in the Globe sets up his bare ipse &zit: for the whole tissue of his half-dozen leading articles resolves into nothing more —he disapproves of the Wakefield system, and he predicts that it will fail.
Now we have supposed the existence of a factious motive for all this ; and it lies on the surface. Is it really intended to give to poor families of the labouring class the means of an extensive emi- gration next year ? There is no money lying in any treasury which can be used for the purpose. There are but these alternatives, then,—first, a grant of really public money, paid out of the taxes ; secondly, a colonizing loan, on the security of colonial lands, neither advanced, guaranteed, nor paid by the public, according to the plan explained by Mr. WAKEFIELD; or thirdly, no emigration. As the first alternative will not be adopted, the last may be insured by the defeat of the second.
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