Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

colonies contain an area of 276,355,880 acres-the British Isles only contain an area of 75,399,040. The whole extent of our North American Colonies alone is more than twice as great as that of all France, but France has a population of 35,000,000 of people, these provinces have only a united population of 2,000,000. Vast tracts of untrodden land, except as the beasts fit for food roam there. In many districts animal food is so abundant that thousands of sheep are melted down every year for tallow, as a portable article of commerce; the flesh that would feed thousands of our hungry artizans is literally thrown away.*

Colonization is one of the best and readiest means of relief to the mother country. The convulsions of the continent preclude the hope that, for a long course of time, equanimity can be restored to our continent. Lord Ashley has had a conference with a large deputation from the thieves of London, desirous of removal to some place where they are unknown, and where, by independence and industry, they may work out for themselves a position and a character in life. Our expenditure on paupers and criminals is about £5. per head, a sum that would carry the whole of them to Quebec or New Orleans, provisions included. What benefit do we confer on these persons or ourselves by punishing them; but if removed to the provinces of North America, instead of paupers and vagabonds, they might every one become a productive purchaser. The expenditure of

* Buckingham's National Evils.

£10,000,000. in feeding the Irish people is but a paltry staving off the starvation. The relieving the pauper perpetuates the race-enable him to cease to be a pauper. "506,000 colonists, who have during this and the last season departed from this country, probably taking with them £2,000,000. sterling, will earn four times as much before a year has ended, and will remit quite as much as they have taken away in less than eighteen months."* For the relief of the country, there should be a large, and noble, and worthy scheme of colonization; while the more wealthy emigrant should be allowed to follow the inclinations of his own will. The terrors of the wilderness can only be well and successfully, not to say happily, grappled with, by the large band of settlers. Those who would be inclined to accept the opportunity afforded them of thus colonizing the desert, would be best fitted for the rough work of civilization, and would consist of a class of whom it would be most desirable to relieve the country. The expenses of the transmission of these people should be equally shared by the Colonial Government, the Home Government, and the localities relieved; the counties should pay the cost to the place of embarkation, the Home Government to charge itself with the cost of conveying them across the Atlantic, and the Colonies to defray the expense of their journies from the place of their landing to the territories to be occupied by them. But these few pages are not intended to be a digest of the question of Emigration. It comes only within * Sydney Smith.

the compass of this volume to note it as a fact of the age, the most significant fact-all the discussions about colonization or emigration are minor. The fact is, there the tide has begun to pour upon the New World, and in the course of a few years, it will wonderfully accelerate in rapidity. On a large proportion of the children in the schools of our country we look as future men and women, destined to fight out their lives and to end their days in the New World. It is a mighty prophecy for democracy these scattered bands, poured through the forest, over the prairie, and by the bank of the river and the lake. What WILL will be nourished in those men !how indisposed will they be to wear the yoke of authority and power! May it not be hoped that they will re-create on that great continent the noble humanity of our Cumberland and Westmoreland. May we not hope that the republican spirit will grow there to maturity and power, before any emergency shall demand a consolidated opinion. It is impossible not to notice the immense advantages the future must derive from the method of colonization and conquest. It seems to us now that the great curse of our country has been its feudalism, that arose from the method of territorial acquisition. Feudalism included the law of primogeniture: thus there was perpetuated, from age to age, a chief-man system, an aristocracy more unquestionably ridiculous in its outline character than any of the nations of the earth has known, an aristocracy who may present as their representative the King of men to-day, and the Dunce of men to-morrow. From this most serious evil the new

colonies of the world will be saved. In the attempt to thread the future; it is impossible not to be cheered by the growth of power in the west; it is, indeed, the new chapter in the great book of Time. Comparing the demon violence of the builders of the castles of the middle ages with even the worst of those who are building their homes in Texas or Iowa, which are, we take it, the great metropolitan cities of rascaldom and knavery, there is hope for the world; the strength which fights and struggles with the swamp and the morass, the mountain and the wood, is not one whit inferior to that which conquered Northumbria or formed the Heptarchy, while the influences of a generous refinement may be expected to prevail eventually over the rough, and rugged, and primitive Saxonism of manner. But in colonizing we have yet to learn much. Government might with advantage imbibe more of the ancient Roman spirit and wisdom in its aids to the colonist; that it must aid, is now, by most whose opinion is worth consulting, a settled matter; and when it shall come forward, and surrender its battle-ships to "bridge the ocean" over, and make its soldiers pioneers for the future adventurers-when it shall attempt the yet unattempted work of colonizing India and Africawhen, in the spirit and manner of a workman needing not to be ashamed, it shall meet the difficulties at home by creating a market abroad, thinning the population here, and opening the boundless infinitude of resources there-there will be at once a blessing conferred on this despairing land and a happy augury for the future.

CHAPTER X.

MODERN UTOPIAS.

PROLOGUE OF QUOTATIONS.

"Men, my brothers, men, the workers ever reaping something new; That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do.

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,

Saw the vision of the world and all the wonder that would be.

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,

Pilots of the purple twilight dropping down with costly bales;
Lo! the war drums throb no longer, and the battle flags are furled,
In the parliament of man, the federation of the world."

TENNYSON.

"We are on the eve, it seems to me, of what may be called the constructive era of society."

[merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

"To work, then, one and all; hands to work."

CARLYLE.-Latter Day Pamphlets.

« ZurückWeiter »