PAST AND PRESENT COLONIZATION.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume III, 28 September 1844, Page 3

PAST AND PRESENT COLONIZATION.

[From the Morning Chronicle.} f It is remarkable that, until we began to colonise with convicts, no body of Englishmen ever left their country to colonize, without taking along with them sufficient authority for managing their public affairs, or leaving behind them another body specially charged with that object, and empowered to carry it out. The charters of incorporation and self-government under which all the colonies of England, properly so called, have been founded are a monument of the " wisdom of our ancestors."

But let us not be mistaken. We are far from thinking the chartered company system of colonization was perfect; we do not forget that the colonizing companies often abused the trust reposed in them; we can readily understand that some better means might have been employed even then ; and we feel sure that present circumstances require a different system : but we do say that, as compared with the practices of the modern Colonial Office, the old English plan was orderly, provident, and highly effective. The old plantations cost the mothercountry nothing, whether for colonizing or civil government : the estimates annually laid before Parliament tell a very different tale now. The whole expense of civil government in the American colonies just before their independence, when their population amounted to three millions, scarcely-reached £100,000 a year — much less than the charge for many a present colony with only a tenth or twentieth of the population ; not much more than the cost of ridiculously bad government of a few petty settlements in New Zealand. But the expense of government would be of less importance if the other results of modern practice were satisfactory — if the vast regions of fertile land at the disposal of the state were turned to the best account ; if new colonies were rendered attractive by sufficient provisions for a due proportion between capital and labour; if we observed the necessity of careful preparation before any new settlement was formed ; if we enabled the settlers to transplant the institutions to which they are attached at home; if we so managed as to make our colonization an extension of the mother country without the evils that belong to an overcrowded state of society. But, instead of all this, we only " shovel out our paupers/ to use an expression of Mr. C. Butler's, utterly regardless of what becomes of them : we play a variety of tricks in the disposal of waste land, which is the basis of colonization. The derivable ends of colonization, whether at home or in the distant settlements, are so little attained, that common opinion is inclined to regard them as unattainable. We are really ashamed of our disorderly, slovenly, thoroughly planless doings ; and then we have the impudence to tell the world, by the mouth of our Colonial Minister, that " at this moment, and for many years, there has been going on, under the direct control, sanction, and superintendence of Government, an extensive and systematic colonization." Lord Stanley could not, we suppose, have alluded to the operation of the Passengers Act, and the employment of two or three emigrant agents on the banks of the St. Lawrence. Is there not still a lazaretto near Quebec, for the purpose of subjecting poor British emigrants to quarantine, as if they had come from the countries of the plague ? And does the small effort which the Government makes in " shovelling " pauper emigrants out of the cities where they land in Canada, on to bits of forest, where they struggle and stagnate, deserve to be called control, superintendence, and system ? This is all our " systematic colonization " as respects Canada and the other British-American possessions. Nor could Lord Stanley have been thinking of South Africa, naturally one of the finest countries in the world, where production languishes for want of labour, and the people cry continually, but in vain, for a system of immigration. The perfectly stagnant colony of Western Australia could not have been in Lord Stanley's mind ; though we have heard that the Colonial Office deems it the only one in a "wholesome state," meaning the one which gives them no trouble, because it is so stagnant that nobody here cares a fig about it. Lord Stanley must have had in view the very considerable emigration which, some years back, was going on to South Australia, Port Phillip, New South. Wales, and New Zealand, by means of funds derived from the sale of waste land. But that had nearly ceased when he spoke, and is now well nigh forgotten. ' Where be the emigrant ships destined for these settlements, whose advertisements used to fill columns of the morning papers ? Rotting in the docks, r Where the demand for all sorts of goods, and the services of all sorts of people, which that emigration of labourers occasioned, by encouraging capitalists also to emigrate? Where the gratifying advancement of the colonies to which both emigrations were directed ? Stopped, all stopped, since Lord Stanley succeeded Lord John Russell. We are far from pretending that Lord Stanley's predecessor set on foot anything like a perfect system of colonization ; but universal opinion out of " the office" deems him the best colonial minister of our day, because he was the most of a rebel against the indifference, procrastination, mystery, and jealousy of meddlers with any colonial subject, which constitute not merely the only system, but the habit of the permanent red tape of Downing Street. Whereas Lord Stanley with all his airs of independence and spirit, is singularly under their guidance, from his want of knowledge and application. This comparison is made for no party purpose (for the topic is happily out of the domain of party), but merely with a view of Bhowing how groundless was the boast about " extensive and systematic colonization under the direct control, sanction, and superintendence of the Government."