Extract from “Emigration Fields.”
Britain, at the present moment, exhibits man in a position altogether new, from the extensive application of steam power and improved machinery in aid of human labour. By means of these facilities to production, together with combined labour, the work of man has been rendered doubly efficient in raising food, and many times more efficient in fabricating clothing, and other human requisites. An immense available power and surplus labour supply has thus been developed, limited in the field of food production by our confined territory, restricted in the field of manufacturing production by our home food-monopoly. A great change in the relative proportion of labour and capital requisite for production has also taken place, and human labour, in part superseded by steam power and machinery, has undergone a comparative depreciation of value. The usual balance of demand and supply of labour being thus deranged, has caused occasional gluts, and it may require a time, and much further misery may ensue, risking political convulsion, before the social economy adjust itself, unassisted, to the new order of things.
One of the most prominent consequences of this new order, is the great comparative increase of number of the non-producing classes (the holders of accumulated wealth—the idle recipients of income) and the unprecedented extent of their comforts and luxuries, while the condition of the working-class, instead of improving, has deteriorated. Had the free-trade system been adopted contemporaneously with this available increase of power of production, the condition of the working-class would, no doubt, have improved in nearly an equal degree, as an almost unlimited demand for our manufactures, in exchange for the food and raw produce of the Continent, would have taken place. But as this system, however much to be desired, is awanting, and the mischievous effects of our restrictive system already in part irremediable, humanity calls upon us to endeavour to devise some other means of effecting an improvement in the condition of the working-class, but of such a nature, as not to impede the attainment of free trade.
Prevented by our trade-restrictive system from obtaining a market in foreign nations for the immense surplus fabrics which this vast increase of power is capable of producing, there is only one other available resource,—to transplant our surplus working-population to new lands. This would not only bring about a salutary balance in our home economy, but at the same time, by raising up new and most valuable customers, would afford wide and extending fields of consumption, commensurate with the future increase of our powers of production. In the present condition of Britain, it is even probable that a system of colonization, judiciously planned andsufficientlyfollowed out, would eventually be equally promotive of the comfort and happiness of the working-population of Britain,as if free trade were to give full scope to the employment of the whole working-population at home, and at the same time be more influential in improving the race of man generally. Change of place within certain limits of latitude, seems to have a tendency to improve the species equally in animals as in plants, and agricultural and trading occupations are far more congenial to health and increase, than manufacturing occupations. It cannot therefore be doubted that the increase of the British race (evidently a superior race), and their extension over the world, and even the vigour of the race itself, will be more promoted by this colonizing system, than by the utmost freedom of trade without the colonizing system, and the turning of our entire energies to manufacturing industry.
But our advocates of restriction and home monopolies exclaim—Why export workmen when so much improvement can still be made in Britain? Why import food and raw produce while we have full capacities of growing enough at home? Were Great Britain properly cultivated it would produce double what it now produces. The answer is, It is not what Britain is capable of producing, but what it in reality will be made to produce, which concerns us. Further improvement, and even the keeping up of the improvement already effected, depend upon the returns of the capital employed. If, from the less exhausted field for production abroad, we can obtain ten per cent. per annum for capital, while from the more exhausted, restriction-limited field at home, we can obtain only four per cent., capital will continue to be exported and British improvement will languish, or things will retrograde. This is the actual state of matters, and unless means are taken to bring about a more salutary state, the improvements they look forward to, and which Britain is indeed susceptible of, will never be attained. By a properly conducted colonization, in the first place, diminishing the labour-supply, and acting as a stimulus to our labour-market, and afterwards affording a continually increasing stimulus by means of the new-created, fast-extending colonial field of demand for British manufactures, and all this working in mutual reaction to excite industry, we may in reality go on improving till Britain produce ten times over what she now produces.
This attempt to draw attention to colonization proceeds from no wish to check the present national effort to obtain free trade! Colonial intercourse is in effect a circumscribed kind of free trade, under peculiarly favourable circumstances;and the amazing increase, and vast extent and advantage, of our colonial trade, is the most direct proof of the advantage, not only to Britain, but to mankind, which would result from free trade over all. Every enactment to prevent the exchange of the produce of labour between man and man, and nation and nation, if the article is not injurious to health and morals, is truly diabolic. All who have aided in these enactments ought to be held up to the detestation of mankind as repressers of industry, as promoters of misery, as ministers of evil, selfishly bent upon rendering abortive the good which a benevolent Providencehas designed for man, in forming one portion of the earth more fitted for the seat of manufacturing industry and trade, and other portions for the peculiar production of various kinds of food and raw material, thus calculated, by giving rise to a reciprocity of advantageous intercourse, to promote an enlightening and friendly connection, and to diffuse science, morality, the arts of life, all that conduces to improvement and happiness, over the nations.
In the event of our own Legislature adopting the free-trade system, the introduction of the colonizing, by rendering Great Britain more independent of foreign nations, will be a means of inducing these nations also to agree to a reciprocity of free-trade; whereas, were we soliciting the free exchange of commodities, and apparently dependent upon these nations for a market, there would be no end to the haggling of their selfish and ignorant governments. In this view, therefore, colonization is a step to the attainment of general free trade throughout the world; at any rate, the increase of our trade and manufactures, sequent to an extensive emigration, by diffusing intelligence and wealth, must sooner bring about the free-trade system.
The mind is almost overwhelmed in contemplating the prospects of improvement in the general condition of humanity, now opening through the medium of British colonization, and the consequent diffusion of the elevating and meliorating influences of British liberty, knowledge, and civilization. One great free naval people, aided by all the discoveries of modern science, and united under the attractions of a common literature, and the reciprocal advantage of the exchange of staple products, increasing rapidly in numbers, and ramifying extensively over numerous maritime regions, will soon overshadow continental despotisms, and render them innocuous.
From the unlimited supply of new land, colonies are especially fitted for a connection with Britain. Being in the opposite extremes of condition, they are in the highest degree mutually beneficial, the former affording the raw material in exchange for the more laboured products of industry of the latter, while at the same time the colonists are by habit great consumers of British manufactures. What is required is, that the extension of colonization should go hand in hand with the extension of manufactures, thus generating new markets in proportion to the increase of fabrics.
But, at the present moment, it is as a salutary drain to our overstocked labour-market, that colonization is so vitally necessary. To bring things to a healthy state, a vast exportation of working-population must in the first place be effected, and to keep them so, a constant great stream of emigration must be afterwards kept up. And in proportion as this efflux is properly regulated, will, at the same time, the condition of the people at home and abroad be prosperous, and the population progressive.
Emigration to fruitful new lands, where our superabundant capital and population would be employed to the greatest advantage and most rapidlyenlarged, is in policy and humanity alike our interest and our duty, as being the clear and direct road to prosperity. Under a properly regulated colonization, the most sanguine can scarcely form a conjecture of the extent to which our manufacturing and commercial greatness might be carried; and the comfort and happiness to which all classes might attain.
Under a properly regulated colonization, to obey the common instincts of nature, “to increase and multiply,” instead of being, as it too frequently has been in Britain, a curse, will become, as in the United States, a blessing.Things have been so far misdirected hitherto, that the greatly increased facilities of production of what is necessary to the comfort and pleasurable existence of man, which, under proper direction, ought to have benefited all classes, has only administered to the luxury of a comparatively small number, the property class.So sensible are the working men in England of this, that they have considered facility of production their enemy, and have had recourse to the most pernicious and atrocious practices,—machinery-breaking, and burning of agricultural produce, to prevent it. The old system of English poor-law (perhaps the worst that could have been invented) and the new amendment, are equally ineffectual to accomplish the end desired,—the prevention of human misery,—the removal of those sufferings arising from inadequate employment or inadequate remuneration, evils for which there can be no effectual remedy save an increased or improved field of labour; and this, as formerly stated, is obtainable in Britain only by free trade or by extensive emigration, but most effectually by both. The prudential check, from which so much has been expected, is but an irksome and unnatural palliative, scarcely preferable to the natural destructive check itself. And in respect to gratuitous assistance, nothing can be more pernicious than poor-law contributions, and charitable givings, and bequests of all descriptions, at least as these matters have been conducted. It is merelya nursing of misery,—keeping up a vast number of unemployed people, ready at all times, should labour come a little more into demand, to compete with those in employment, and keep down wages to the lowest pitch that the animal machine can be kept working upon. It is the interest of the property-holders to have a very numerous population at this lowest pitch, and their poor-rate and charity contributions are virtually a mere pittance-supply to prevent their indirect slaves from perishing.
Charity is not less injurious as interfering with the great law of nature, by which pain and death are the established penalty of ignorance, idleness, and improvidence; enjoyment and life the reward of knowledge, industry, and forethought. Alms or relief to the poor is clearly an interference with, or a subversion of, this natural law, and though it does not prevent the suffering sequent to the former, it destroys the advantages sequent to the latter, and only promotes general misery. It is to the purposes of colonization that the English poor-rates and other charitable bequests, now worse than uselessly consumed in nursing upthe improvident poor and keeping down the industrious, should be converted.
A sufficient emigration of the labour-classes would increase the labour-demand, and raise wages so high, that every one able and willing to work would obtain a competency for the support of a family, and even of a parent in infirm old age, in case of necessity; thus cutting up pauperism by the roots, and leaving the bastiles, the poverty-prisons in the south of England, untenanted. In the United States of America nearly all the marriageable people enter the marriage state, and find a family advantageous to the increase of their wealth and comfort. This arises from the favourable field for industry, and the social advantages they enjoy. Nothing hinders Great Britain from enjoying these, and even greater advantages, but her own stupid and guilty neglect. In many respects she is equally favourably circumstanced as America, in some much more favourably. Her climate is better, her capital beyond comparison greater, her machinery and aids of human labour and advantages of combined labour vastly superior, her new unpeopled territory more extensive and more favourably situated for trade, and equally easily reached. Why, then, should the condition of the working population of Britain not be as favourable as that of America? Simply because the field of labour, from our narrow home territory, dense population, and restrictive trade system, is more limited in proportion to the labour supply, and that we fail to profit by our opportunities of extending it. A sufficient emigration would render it equally, if not more favourable. Let the truly charitable—those who have the welfare of their suffering countrymen really at heart, reflect that ignorance is criminal, where knowledge is within their reach. Let them hasten to devote their exertions and wealth to purposes of utility, and not waste them in increasing the very evils they wish to remedy.Let them promote colonization.With an overflowing capital, and a population, notwithstanding our emigration, increasing at present nearly 400,000 annually, and as things are regulated beyond the means of full subsistence and labour-demand, Britain is placed under circumstances more favourable than ever occurred at any former period for carrying the principle of colonization into effect to its fullest, most salutary extent. The importance of emigration, as before stated, is proved by the immense and most advantageous trade we now carry on with the countries we have colonized; an almost unlimited extent of unoccupied territory is at our command; a very extensive emigration is necessary to render a poor-law practicable in Ireland, and to assist the working of the new poor-law in England (a sufficient emigration would soon render both unnecessary); the economy of transporting great numbers to distant countries in health and safety, and with celerity, is nearly perfected:—all these conspire, in an almost miraculous manner, to place the destinies of man at the disposal of Britain, and to render the present era the most eventful in the history of the world—the era of colonization.
Even although 450,000 (the present total yearly increase, including the present emigration of nearly 100,000) were exported annually, the future increase, from the improved condition of the great body of the people, would extend perhaps to double this number, say 1,000,000 annually, and that of our capital in a corresponding ratio; while at the same time the demand for manufactured produce, caused by the wants of the exported portion of our people, would greatly improve the home labour-demand, even with this great increase of hands. Thus our numbers would go on increasing faster at home than at present, while at the same time the country would increase in power, in a ratio still more rapid from the greater prosperity of all.
It is only within a few years that the immense importance of colonization has come to be appreciated; recently the most unfavourable prejudices existed respecting it, and the most erroneous and absurd doctrines were promulgated, to feed the popular odium, by political economists; who, in their wisdom, could never solve the difficulty how Britain continued the richest nation of the world, while her resources were being wasted upon numberless useless colonies. Let us contemplate the difference of results which the resources of Britain would have accomplished had they been sowasted,—had they been devoted to purposes ofcreationas they were to purposes ofdestructionduring the American and French revolutionary wars. We did not then hesitate to lavish hundreds of millions in engaging in deadly feud the European and American nations. It seems hitherto to have been the principle of Government to hold any expense incurred for purposes other than rapine or destruction as a misapplication of the national resources. A change is at hand. The reign of Queen Victoria promises to be glorious for a victory over barbarism and human misery—Colonization is the means.
A tax of ten per cent. in Britain and Ireland upon land rental would be most profitably employed in carrying out labouring emigrants, and in locating them comfortably. This would be a humane and rational amendment of the English poor-law, and the best poor-law for Ireland that could be introduced. This fund, together with the proceeds of the sales of colonial lands, under judicious and economical management, would in the course of a few years have a most beneficial effect upon trade, and greatly ameliorate the condition of the working population; continued for half a century it would change the face of things over a great portion of the habitable world; and the extent of its effects, persisted in for several centuries, would be beyond even what we now can contemplate.
Independently of the communities formed by British emigration, were a good system of colonial government adopted, islands and inferior states would find it their interest to unite with us, and the whole of the multitudinous island-groups scattered over the vast Pacific, in number as the constellations of the heavens, might become incorporated as part of the British empire.