TOPICS OF THE DAY
PROGRESSING BACKWARDS.
ON Monday last, in Committee of Supply, Mr. Fox Maule ac- quainted the House of Commons that the Government has formed a plan of military colonization, and will immediately carry it into effect in New Zealand. He mentioned scarcely any particulars, except that the emigrants are to be " a body of pensioners," and " located" at the public cost. The subject has not been other- wise noticed in Parliament ; nor is there any allusion to it in the Colonial Office blue books : but this dearth of formally official statement is in some measure semi-officially supplied by the Times newspaper ; which describes and eulogizes the plan as follows- " Certain soldiers will, on completing their period of fifteen years' service, and receiving good characters from their Colonels, be entitled each to one or two acres of land in New Zealand. Their passage will be paid, they will be provided with , and they will be guaranteed an adequate amount of wages. They will cottages, to be called on to do duty as out-pensioners, and will wear the out-pen- sioner's uniform; they will after seven years residence be entitled to the fee- simple of their cottages reel lard. Their locations will be under the supervision of retired military officers. Such is the outline of the plan; to which, as to any other plan, it would be easy to start objections; 'but it has many good points. It bears on it the impress of order, arrangement, and discipline. It bestows a permanent reward for labours often poorly requited in proportion to their length and importance. It makes a good character a condition absolutely necessary to insure the reward. It associates the possession of property with the discharge of duties, and makes the protection of the colony and the defence of the Crown the natural services of a military tenure. It .provides the nucleus of a militia for a growing colony; but it also prevents the Inconvenience and danger which would arise from the residence of a disorderly, licentious soldiery. It is the plan which was originally prepared for, but, unfortunately, not carried out in British North America. In the colonies of the latter country, inefficiently as it was executed— bad as were the soldiers selected for locations—still the good that was done by it can only be appretiated by men who remember the rebellion in Canada, and the gallant loyalty of the volunteers from Upper Canada and New Brunswick. And the generous and gentlemanly feeling which has strayed into the young locations in the district of Toronto—the true English sentiment which startles the traveller from ' the States' in the forests of Canada—the gallant bearing which shows itself in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia—can all be traced to the military set- tlements which a judicious policy devised, but which official neglect did not per- mit to be developed into maturity."
The description is meagre in proportion to the fulness cf the praise ; but the reference to a previous experiment of the plan furnishes us at last with the desired information. On turning to Lord Durham's Report to the Queen, and to a subsidiary Report from Mr. Charles Buller to Lord Durham, we find this plan of military colonization very fully and particularly delineated. Lord Durham says-
" The most striking example, however, of the want of system and precaution on the part of Government, is that of the old soldiers, termed commuted pen- sioners, of whom nearly three thousand reached the colonies in the years 1832 and 1833. A full description of the fate of these unfortunate people will be found in the evidence of Mr. Davidson and others. Many of them landed in Quebec before the instructions had been received in the colony to pay them the sums to which they were to be entitled on their arrival, and even before the Provincial Govern- ment knew of their departure from England. Many of them spent the amount of their commutation-money in debauchery, or were robbed of it when intoxicated. Many never attempted to settle upon the land awarded to them; and of those who made the attempt, several were unable to discover whereabouts in the wilderness their grants were situated. Many of them sold their right to the land for a mere trifle, and were left, within a few weeks of their arrival, in a state of absolute want. Of the whole number who landed in the colony, probably not one in three attempted to establish themselves on their grants, and not one in six remain set- tled there at the present time: the remainder generally lingered in the vicinity of the principal towns, where they contrived to pick up a subsistence by begging and occasional labour. Great numbers perished miserably in the two years of cholera, or from diseases engendered by exposure and privations, and aggravated by their dissolute habits. The majority of them have at length disappeared. The situa- tion of those who survive calls loudly for some measure of immediate relief: it is one of extreme destitution and suft. ing. Their land is almost entirely useless; and they cannot obtain any adequate employment either as farm labourers or as domestic servants. At the commencement of every winter, therefore, they are thrown upon the charity of individuals. In the Upper Province their situation is equally deplorable; and numbers must have perished from absolute starvation if they had not been fed by the Provincial Government. I confidently trust that their pensions may be restored; and that in future, whenever the Government shall interfere directly or indirectly in promoting the emigration of poor persons to these colonies, it will be under some systematic arrangements calculated to prevent the selection of classes disqualified from gaining by their removal, and to guard the other classes from the misfortunes into which they are now apt to fall tthrough ignorance of the new country and the want of all preparation for their
arrival."
The Mr. Davidson mentioned by Lord Durham was at the head of the Crown Lands Department in Lower Canada, and manifestly disinclined to impugn any proceeding of the Govern- ment. Yet his testimony, confirmed by that of the other wit- nesses examined by Mr. Buller, represents this military coloniza- tion as utterly deplorable; and shows that its sad failure arose, not from inefficient execution only, but chiefly from the peculiar un- fitness of retired soldiers to become valuable settlers in a new country. The fatal error was in the selection, as Lord Durham says, of a class of emigrants "disqualified from gaining by their removal." Doubtless the class of old soldiers or pensioners con- tains men of good character; but of men possessing the three qualities the most essential to the success of settlers in a colony, it contains scarcely any ; and the great majority of the class are peculiarly deficient in such qualities. The first quality is habitual temperance ; for a love of drink is equally the bane of colonial life and the habit of the canteen and the barrack-room. The se- cond quality is habitual industry—not mere assiduity, but the love of hard work ; whereas old soldiers, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, are thoroughly confirmed in the habit of that idle- ness which they entered the Army to enjoy. The third qua- lity is habitual self-reliance and providence ; but old soldiers, having for years had everything provided for them by other.
without an effort of their own, are remarkably helpless and improvident. We are saying what must have been observed by every one who has come in contact with the class in this country. Another defect of military pensioners as settlers in a colony is their age; for it is remarked that emigrants who have passed the prime of life seldom prosper : they cannot "take to" the ways of the new country. Altogether, there is not, perhaps, with the exception of convicts, a less eligible or more objection- able class of emigrants than those with whom the Government is about to colonize in New Zealand at the public expense. But it may be said, that the object is defence rather than colo- nization. Was the former aim accomplished in Canada? Ac- cording to the semi-official writer in the Times, the "military settlements" in British North America, which " a judicious policy devised," produced " the gallant loyalty of the volunteers from Upper Canada and New Brunswick—the generous and gen- tlemanly feeling which has strayed into the young locations in the district of Toronto—the true English sentiment which startles the traveller from 'the States' in the forests of Canada— and the gallant bearing which shows itself in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia ": according to Lord Durham, Mr. Buller, and Mr. Davidson, nothing like a military settlement was ever formed ; most of the intended settlers had died miserably before the time in question ; and the remainder were dragging out a wretched ex- istence as beggars in the towns and on the roads. Even if Lord Durham's account had been contradicted, which we believe it never has been, it would be deemed the more probable of the two. It is very difficult to turn old soldiers into good colonists ; but very easy, by means of that attempt, to unmake the soldiers. If the pensioners became good settlers, they would form a better militia than settlers who had not been soldiers ; but the " if " is all in all. They will not become good settlers. Transplanted into a position for which they are pre'dminently unfit—in which the hopes of prosperity that have been held out to them are sure to be disappointed—in which their inevitable lot will be failure, poverty, and the contempt or dislike of their neighbours—those of them who do not die of despondency and drink will in a few years become feeble vagabonds and beggars, far less valuable for pur- poses of defence than the citizen soldiers composing a colonial militia, who have to fight for happy homes and a hard-won pros- perity. Meanwhile, the cost of the measure must be large ; for these helpless colonists will rely on the Government for every- thing; and the Government, having coaxed them to emigrate by gifts and promises, will be bound to take care of them: As a measure of defence, therefore, this military colonization is likely to prove no less dear than inefficient.
'Viewing the whole scheme in its several aspects of colonization, defence, and economy, it appears so like a dream of the fancy, that we should have doubted its existence as a settled project if Mr. Fox Maule and the Times had not assured us of its adoption by the Government. And yet it is not a mere conception of the imagination : it is founded on fact and experience ; it is delibe- rately intended to resemble in character, though not in execution, the miserable failure which took place in Canada fourteen years ago. As a colonizing nation we are progressing backwards.
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