LORD GREY—EMIGRATION. [From the Times.]

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume V, Issue 373, 28 February 1849, Page 4

LORD GREY—EMIGRATION. [From the Times.]

There are many persons who know what were the views entertained respecting the colonies by the noble Secretary for that department when he contemplated its working from the benches of the opposition. There are others who knoM what the noble Lord's plans were after his inauguration in office. The former will not require to be told how completely his performances have disappointed the expectations of his friends;, nor the latter how^ far they have fallen short of his own. We believe that if the noble Lord's confidential correspondence with the Governors of our Australian and American colonies during the first year of his present tenure of the seals could' be made public, they would reveal as complete a failure of comprehensive plans, and as sad a disappointment of sanguine hopes, as ever were deplored by a people or a minister. Nor will the tone which prevailed throughout his speech on Thursday night, though it may mitigate, altogether remove the dissatisfaction which has been felt by both. It is clear that the advocates of " great, systematic, and comprehensive colonization" have at present nothing to hope from the Government. Nothing will be done in this direction beyond the standard and measure of that which is already doing. We believe we are wananted in expressing our conviction that no one regrets the state necessities which tie his hands and hamper his designs more than Earl Grey himself ; and that the assumed indignation of his apologetic reply to Lord Monteagle the other night does not disguise, though it may colour, his unwilling submission to the exigencies of a poor Exchequer and the dogmas of a Cobdenic policy. Lord Grey would do many things to aid, extend, and augment, the colonial enterprise of the age ; but his plans require money, and money is precisely the very thing which Sir C. Wood cannot spare. It is all very well for Earl Grey in one house, and Lord J. Russell in another, to content themselves with saying that colonization must depend upon individual exertion and spontaneous enterprise. This will, with certain conditions and under certain circum- j stances, do something. Given the AngloSaxon pith, pluck, sinew, ambition, and unoccupied lands, we may safely predict certain results. Some two or three thousand persons will set off to the ends of the earth, will land, settle, fight the natives, beat them, and be bbaten by them, plough the land, try experiments, and become exporters of guano, gutta percha, or ivory. At the end of a dozen years some few score out of the few thousand will return home with large fortunes, and rather queer accounts of their acquisition ; the rest will have been wrecked, ruined by speculation, or eaten by the savages. This is adventure. It is adventure conducted on the true principles, of laissez faire. It is in accordance with the doctrine* of Mr. Cobden and the economists. If such people wanted to go, why should they not go ? If they did not want to go, why should the state send them ? This is the true economical argument. Just in the same way, if people won't starve, why should they not work? If they can't get work, why should they not starve ? But we suspect the majority of the people are quite willing to waive theoretical verities for practical realities. Adventure is not colonization. What the population — what the country — what the present and the future interests of the empire demand, is' colonization. They demand a system which shall not merely make the fortunes of a few, but insuie the comforts of many. It is not wealth and opulence for a handful of lucky men, but subsistence for a great multitude that is required. The population is growing — perhaps not beyond the materials of a scant and niggardly sustenance, but certainly beyond those means of fruition and comfort which an age of civilisation and commerce identifies with the necessities of life. The rapid processes of machinery — the minute apportionment of work — the sudden demands for numerous hands — all accompaniments of our manufacturing system have crowded in our towns masses of population who are subjected to the vicissitudes of high remuneration and short work. The occasional pressure on one part of the community reacts upon another. The oscillations in employment of one class vibrate oil the oscillatory speculations of another. When the loom is busy; and the jenny working, and the wheel turning, and the hand of childhood bidden for by competing capital, prices rise, speculation flourishes, trade thrives, and all classes enjoy a transitory prosperity. When the change comes, it comes to all. Not only the artizan, but his employer ; not only the mercantile, but the professional man ; not only the manufacturer, but the doctor, the attorney, and the%h'oolmaster feel the rebound. The clerk who had lent his money at high interest to a respectable firm — the young lawyer who had paid his first calls to a railway or a jointstock company — the young tradesman who had bought and sold on credit with a fair prospect of quick returns — all are involved in

the ruin. With each periodical panic the circle of distress widens ; and it would not be too | much to say. that during a time of commeri cial distress now-a-days one half of the middle classes in the north and in the metropolis suffer great privations. It if,, wo repeat, to the middle classes, no test*, than, tp the lowest class, that colonization is, or should be, a. boon. The middle classes require an outlet, a vent, a new field of employment, as much as those below them. They are multiplying without the prospect of adequate! subsistence struggling without the, chance of commensurate success, and working without the. receipt of corresponding reward. It is to them that the colonies should be open. We often hear of America. Some economists can' never cease dinning into our ears the blessings of a Yankee polity and Yankee resources. But America has her " Far West." Sights an immense tract of rich and fertile soil to decoy her growing population from, the crowded cities of the East. For years to come the plains of Michigan and the country south-west of the Rocky Mountains will afford food and employment to millions of her citizens. England has no continental " Far West." She is " bound in with the triumphant sea." But — by a wise and vigorous policy — her colonies might be made to her what the Far West is to the United States. She might bridge the vast ocean which separates her from her distant possessions. Her crowded and) competing industry might find work and wage enough in the uncultivated wastes of Australasia, or the unhewn woods of Canada. But as long as the present system of obstruction prevails in the Colonial Office this is impossible. We. don't question Earl Grey'si facts. But what do they amount to ? That a certain number of capitalists have settled in N,ew South Wales and South Australia ; and that they have employed a certain amount of labour. We don't doubt it. What we complain of is, that none but large«capitalists and poor labourers can go out with advantage under the present system. Men who can't afford to give £1 an acre for pasture land (a price which Mr. Wakefield says he never intended to fix for any but arable land), and who are not accustomed to agricultural labour: — i.e., three-fourths of the middle classes are debarred by the regulations of the Colonial Office from buying land in Australia. Thus, a. most numerous and valuable body of small capitalists is excluded from conferring or receiving the benefits of " regular colonization." Again, we complain bitterly of the negligence or the weakness which the colonial administration^ either at home or abroad, manifests, and of the worse than weakness that the colonial assemblies exhibit in their mode of dealing with the property of private individuals, and enforcing the contracts of labour. Proprietors who let land cannot get their stipulated rents for it ; any efforts to enforce payment are neutralised by the members of the Provincial Legislature, and the government at home is forced to connive at this legalized robbery by its colonial subjects. On the impediments that such scandalous repudiation throws in the way of capitalists anxious to invest their money in the North American colonies it is unnecessary to enlarge, and we believe its fruits have already been reaped by the provinces of Prince Edward's Island and New Brunswick* Against such drawbacks it is difficult to get companies or individuals to contend. And thus has been defeated a plan which Lord Durham, Lord Stanley, and Earl Grey himself, successively conceived, of planting villages at certain distances in the least populous districts of Canada and New Brunswick to. serve as nuclei of a future population. This was prevented by the squabbles and divisions of land companies, the Provincial Assembly, and the Colonial Office. We are bound to say, on a review of these cases, that if the imputation of weakness reals on " the office," that of collusive dishonesty must rest on the colonies. The mischiefs arising from the failure to accomplish so wise a policy .are thus described by Lord Durham in his- report : — " On the side of the' United- States- all is activity. The forest has beea widely cleared ; every year settlements; and, thousands of farms created out of the waste ; the country is intersected by roads, canals, &c; good houses, warehouses, mills, inns, villages, are seen to spring almost out of 5 the desert. * • On the British side of the: line, with some few favoured exceptions, all seems waste and desolate. This painful truth is manifest foe 1000 miles !" Yet who can say what the honest and judicious expenditure of some £50,000 or £100,000" might not have done when we had a surplus' revenue. ' '