CAPITAL FOR COLONIES.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume III, Issue 148, 4 January 1845, Page 176

CAPITAL FOR COLONIES.

[From the Atlas] Capital is indispensably necessary to open out the resources of all new countries. It is molt especially so in reference to the colonies. It may be a very wise, generous, and patriotic arrangement on the part of the rulers of an old country, the inhabitants of which increase more rapidly than the means of subsistence, to send out occasionally a portion of their surplus popu- 1 lation to occupy and improve new and distant lands ; and the inhabitants who thus emigrate to foreign countries may have the prospect of more happiness and independence than they enjoyed at home. But if the mother country is merely at the expense of sending them away from her own shores, and if they are without any means of improving the new land they are about to occupy — if they have nothing to depend upori but their own manual industry, there is reason to believe that their supplies of subsistence will be extremely scanty, and that they will be compelled to struggle with the most discouraging, perhaps overwhelming, difficulties. It is not enough that emigrants be exported, and that unimproved land be granted to them. A man may possess an extensive tract of the best and most fertile land in the world, but if he -has no implements and materials with which to clear and cultivate it, if he has no subsistence for himself and family until the fruits of his labour can be reaped, it is clear that the land can be of no value to him ; it is clear that he is placed in a situation where he may starve while the natural elements of wealth and abundance are scattered around him. He is therefore not benefited, but may be hopelessly injured, by being sent to a foreign country, unless provision is made for the proper reward and encouragement of his industry. It is thus evident that the mother country must do something more for the emigrant than merely send him beyond the seas, and allot to him a portion of uncultivated land. Before the land can be of any use it must be cleared, fenced, drained, manured, and planted. While his labour is expended in effecting these objects, he must be furnished with the means of existence. His land, however, wul still be of little value unless he can find a market for its produce. If it merely supplies food to his family and himself, he can enjoy no advantage from it except his daily bread, and that, without other resources, may become precarious. It is of the utmost importance, therefore, that the land should produce more than is necessary to his own subsistence, and that markets should be obtained for the consumption of its surplus produce. No market can be reached without the means of transit, roads, canals, rivers, as well as carts,- wagons, boats, ships, and other modes of conveyance. The towns, of course, present the best, and and generally the only markets for agricultural produce. These towns cannot be erected without capital, nor inhabited without trade. The country also requires supplies, which can only be furnished by the towns. The relation of the town to the country, and of the country to the town, is therefore one of mutual dependence ; but it is necessary to the advancement and improvement of both that there should be something more than a naturally fertile and luxuriant soil, and advantageously situated rivers. Land cannot be cultivated, nor towns built and inhabited, without capital. Thus, in respect to colonies, it is evident that emigration and the allotment of land merely is not all that must be done by the mother country. That portion of the population which goes annually forth to people and improve distant countries, does not include the wealthy capitalists and the rich tradesmen. These classes are too well provided for, too happy and independent at home, to be induced to encounter the dangers of the deep, the desertion of relations and friends, the distant and unimproved solitudes of foreign countries. It is the unemployed farm labourer, the poor mechanic, and the destitute manufacturer who chiefly swell the ranks of emigrants, and annually increase the number of our colonists. "While, however, wealthy persons are not generally emigrants to new colonies, they possess at home the means, the resources, and the opportunity to advance the trade and improvement of these colonies. It has been said that the first colonists are usually poor and dependent, and it is evident they must continue to remain so, unless they can be furnished with the means of developing the resources and advancing the interests of their adopted country. For this purpose capital must be obtained at the very first settlement of any colony, and expended in clearing, fencing, draining, manuring, and cultivating the land ; in forming roads, canals, and harbours ; in erecting houses, laying out and building towns, ships, and all other requisites for the prosecution and advancement of trade and commerce. Money for all these necessary but extensive purposes is not usually obtained at the first formation of a colony. Its application can only be partial and progressive, and therefore the demands of the colonists will be in proportion to the nature and extent of their improvements, and the encouragement afforded to their trade. They must naturally look to the mother country for the supplies of money they require, and they thus often present to capitalists the means of investing their wealth to great advantage — to much greater advantage, at least, than it can usually be invested at home. Capitalists may, however, in some cases feel disinclined to advance money on the credit of the colony alone, and in such cases the guarantee of the mother country may be required. This, aa a matter of political wisdom and prudence, ought never to be withheld when the colony can show a sufficiently satisfactory and cound reagpn for borrowing. When money is thus adttlnbed through the interposition of the credit ol the mother country, the colonists obtain the money at a lower rate than they could have

done upon their own credit only ; the lender hat a safe and unexceptionable investment, and all parties are benefited by the additional impulse which may thus be given to the general advancement and prosperity of the colony. The mother country having interposed her credit to ■ecure the loan, will naturally look after its application, and her interest in the welfare and prosperity of the colony will be, to the same extent, so much the more increased.

The outlay of capital does not merely benefit the colony, as was shown in the case of British India, alluded to in the Atlas of last week ; the introduction of capital is of the greatest possible advantage to the general trade of the country. The consumption in India of one-tenth part of the quantity of our manufactures, in proportion to the population, consumed by our Negro subjects in the West Indies, would much more than double the present export trade of Great Britain. Extensive and important improvements in the trade with other colonies are also capable of being made, and it appears only necessary that the attention of capitalists and of the Government should be seriously turned to the subject in order to effect, at no very distant date, a very great revival in the trade of the country. It has been stated by Adam Smith that the common advantages that every empire enjoys from its colonies, consist in the military force which they furnish for its defence, and in the revenue which they furnish for the support of its civil Government. Thus the Roman colonies furnished occasionally both the one and the other. The Greek colonies furnished sometimes a military force, but seldom any revenue. But whatever may be thought of these advantages as they relate to colonies, either ancient or modern, the fact is not to be overlooked, that to a manufacturing and commercial country, such as Great Britain, colonies ought to be contemplated in a commercial point of view as much, if not more, than in any other. They may furnish troops and revenue to the mother country ; or the latter may, to a greater or less extent, furnish these to her colonies. But it must be a short-sighted policy that is confined merely to the strengthening of the empire, by military stations ; and if a colony can be of no more service than to furnish troops, it becomes a grave question in political economy to what extent or upon what principles such colonies can be or ought to be maintained. As regards revenue, no colony can supply, or at least continue to supply, revenue to the mother country, except by means of its trade" and commerce. Some countries afford greater facilities for engaging in trade and commerce than others. Great Britain enjoys peculiar advantages in this respect, more so perhaps than any other country in Europe. She at present possesses abundance of capital — albeit the Birmingham philosophers may not think so — and all that is required to improve her trade is to direct that capital into legitimate channels of employment. She has already irrecoverably thrown away masses of money in unprofitable foreign loans, and left her colonies, her millions of dependent subjects, to struggle on as they best could, under all the disadvantages arising fron\ want of capital and waut of proper encouragement from the parent state. It is not too late to rectify this error, and, by giving capital its proper bias, not for the prosecution of wild and absurd speculation, but for the encouragement of legitimate trade, Great Britain may advance alike the prosperity of her colonies and her own wealth and greatness. The recent Canada loan of £300,000 is one step in the proper direction, and it ought to be borne in remembrance that whatever advances the proiperity of the colonies adds to the commerce and independence of Great Britain. It is not necessary that capitalists should be at a loss for sources of investment, when such extensive fields are presented by our colonial possessions, where their money may not only be turned to their own profit, but where it may largely contribute to the extension of the trade and commerce of the mother country. Every investment of money in the colonies must, therefore, be contemplated as so much added to their resources, and as contributing to develop the general trade of the empire. Whether we consider the immense capabilities of British India, or the more limited but still extensive fields of Canada, Australia, and other portions of our territory, it must be evident that the men who would augur nothing but ruin to Britain from the present aspect of her commercial affairs, labour under a gross and pitiable delusion. She possesses within herself, and in the resources of her own coloniet, all the elements and materials of commercial greatness and invincible political power.

Scotch Thrift. — A young lady, who is a zealous non-intrusionist and an active canvasser for bawbees and bodies in support of the Free Presbyterian Church, called the other day upon a poor man in the Links of Kirkaldy to solicit his mite ; and, after in vain trying her ingenuity to find some means by which he might save a penny a week, to be given for the sustentation of the minister, she asked,, " Do you shave yourself ?" — " No, madam.'* " How much does your shaving cost you ?" — " Twopence a week." " Could you not learn to 6have' yourself, and then save the twopence, which you might give to the sustentation fund ?" — " Deed, I'm ower auld to learn ; but I'll tell you what I'll do, if your minister will come and shave me, I'll give him the tippence." A' subscription is in contemplation at Folkestone, ta erect a monument to the memory of the celebrated Dr. Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood. Meyerbeer's opera, the " Huguenots," which has been performed for many years at the theatre at Wurzburg, has just been, interdicted, upon a representation of the clerical authorities of that city.