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the waste a value equivalent to the cost? If this question can be answered in the affirmative, then it will necessarily follow, that the price which the settler is charged for his land is no more a deduction from his capital than is the money advanced by a farmer in the country for ploughing and cropping his fields. It would be absurd to say, that when a farmer advances £1000, and obtains crops possessing a marketable value more than equivalent to £1000, his capital is diminished by the amount of his advance. It is equally absurd to say, that when a colonist advances to government £1000 as the purchase-money of a colonial estate, which sum of £1000 the government expends in supplying the labour, and in effecting the improvements which give to the estate a marketable value more than equivalent to the purchase-money, the capital of the colonist is diminished. The two cases are exactly parallel. In each a previously existing value has been expended; and in each a new value, more than that expended, has been created. As regards the farm, the land has been ploughed and manured, fences and roads and buildings have been kept in repair, and the farmer and his family and labourers have been subsisted; and yet the farmer, instead of having his capital diminished, will have it returned to him with the ordinary rate of agricultural profit. As respects the colonial estate, the land will have been surveyed, roads opened, and labour sent out; and yet the settler who has advanced, as the purchasemoney of the estate, the necessary funds for this expenditure, will have his advance returned to him with increase, through the value imparted to his land by the process of colonization.

The reproducing process, though it may be disturbed, and for a time suspended, by accident and mismanagement, yet has its origin in permanent principles and in essential national laws which cannot be reversed. As population increases, additional land is required; and if the supply be limited in relation to the demand, the belt of additional land required for occupation will acquire marketable value. The price fixed upon wild land limits the supply, and the employment of the price in increasing the population heightens the demand. In a new country, in which the public lands are disposed of by sale only, and at a fixed uniform price, and in which the proceeds of the land sales are employed in increasing the population, the value of the location purchased by the settlers cannot, except during the temporary reaction produced by excessive speculation, be less than the original purchase-money advanced for them.

Systematic colonization not only replaces but creates. The locations occupied by inflowing settlers will be of different degrees of fertility. The least fertile tracts for which the in

creasing population creates a demand will acquire a marketable value equivalent to the government price, without the payment of which the demand cannot be supplied. But if the least fertile locations which it becomes necessary to occupy must be worth the government price, all the superior locations must be worth more than the government price. The purchasers of these will get more than they paid for-will possess a gradually increasing value, costing them nothing.

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Again: the surplus value created by systematic colonization is not confined to tracts of superior fertility, but, on the contrary, gradually extends to the most inferior soils, to which, at any given period of progress, it may be necessary to resort. the first instance the lowest quality of soil which it may be expedient to select in the belt of land nearest to the central market will be worth the government price, without the payment of which it could not be obtained. In the second instance, however, the last quality of soil selected in the nearest belt of land would become worth more than the government price. For when increasing population renders it necessary to occupy, in a belt of land one degree removed from the centre of civilization, a soil of the same quality as that which had been last selected in the nearest belt, then the value of the least fertile locations which had been selected in the nearest belt will exceed the government price by an amount proportionate to the advantage, as regards the cost of carriage, which the settler in the belt nearest to the market will possess over the settler in the belt more remote from the market.

While unappropriated wastes remain at the disposal of the Crown, no limits to the progress of systematic colonization can be assigned.

"If," to borrow the language of a writer of whose arguments we have freely availed ourselves, "the advance which is employed in planting a thousand souls in a new country can be replaced by means of the value thereby conferred upon the wastes, it can be re-employed in planting another thousand. If the principle be applicable to the planting of 1000, it will be found applicable to the planting of 100,000 -to the planting of 1,000,000. If self-supporting colonization can be carried on in one colony, it may be carried on throughout every foreign dependency of the Crown containing unappropriated wastes, and possessing a climate to which European labour may be safely conveyed. The means of bridging the ocean, of giving virtual extension to England, and of thus creating the circumstances under which the causes of distress would disappear, are placed in our hands. Our colonial wastes are mines of gold-millions of treasure slumber in our unappropriated lands."

Having now, as we venture to believe, succeeded in establishing the important principle, that colonization loans raised in anticipation of the proceeds of the land sales of a new country, and expended in supplying labour and in effecting improvements for increasing its efficacy, are capable of creating a marketable value amply sufficient to secure their ultimate and complete redemption, we will conclude with the suggestion of an illustrative arrangement, for the purpose of tracing out with more precision and distinctness the actual process through which the redemption might be accomplished.

We have seen that in the United States, during the period between 1795 and 1840, an average annual increase of population to the extent of 200,000 created a demand for additional territory which yielded an average revenue of 500,000l. Now the public lands in the United States are sold at the price of one dollar and a quarter per acre. Were the British government to fix the price of the crown lands in East Africa, laid out and intersected by roads as above detailed, at 31s. 3d. per acre, or six times the price obtained by the United States for the forests of the far West, then, according to the proportion in which, in the United States, increasing population requires additional land, the planting of a British population of 10,000 in the province of Natal would create a demand for nearly 100,000 acres of land, yielding, at the government price of 31s. 3d. per acre, 150,000Z.

The price of public land in the province of Natal being fixed at 31s. 3d. per acre, let us assume that Exchequer Bills to the amount of 100,000l. are issued as a colonization loan for preparing the land and sending out settlers; that the surveyorgeneral has instructions to lay out 100,000 acres of the most eligible land in District No. I., nearest to the centre of government, and another 100,000 acres of the most eligible land in District No. II., in the next degree remote from the centre; that the proceeds of the sale of the 100,000 acres in District No. I. are appropriated to paying the interest of the Exchequer Bills, and to sending out additional settlers; and that the proceeds of the sale of the 100,000 acres in District II. are appropriated, first, in paying off the Exchequer Bills, and then in sending out a further supply of labour. The adoption of these arrangements would, upon the principles already established, lead to the following results :

1st. It is stated in the masterly speech of Mr. Buller, already so frequently alluded to, that the land sales in New South Wales, amounting to 1,000,000l., would have been sufficient to plant in that colony a population of 100,000. On this calculation the colonization loan of 100,000l. would not only convey a population of 10,000 to the much nearer settlement of Port

Natal, but would give a large surplus fund for surveys, roads, and public buildings.

2nd. According to the proportion between the increase of population and the demand for additional land which has prevailed in the United States for a period of forty-five years, the conveyance of the first 10,000 settlers to the Province of Victoria would create a demand for the 100,000 acres laid out in District I., the proceeds of the sale of which 100,000 acres would yield, at the government price, a new colonization fund of upwards of 150,0007. This sum would be sufficient not only to effect further surveys and other preliminary improvements, but to convey to the colony 10,000 additional settlers; and this increase of the population would create a demand for the 100,000 acres which had been reserved in District II. as a sinking fund, and the proceeds of which would pay off the loan of 100,000l. advanced in Exchequer Bills, and leave a surplus of 50,0001. for effecting further surveys and further preliminary improvements. The first colonization loan would be wholly discharged, and the province would have a population of 20,000, with 200,000 acres of appropriated land.

3rd. The process might be repeated so long as there remained any considerable extent of fertile and unoccupied territory at the disposal of the Crown. A second colonization loan of 100,0007. would again increase the population by the 10,000, and this increase of population would create a new demand for land to the extent of 100,000 acres, and the proceeds obtained by the sale of these 100,000 acres would liquidate this second loan. Should 20,000 settlers, consisting of a due proportion of capitalists and labourers, be disposed to migrate to the new province, government might advance a colonization loan of 200,000Z., because an increase of population to the amount of 20,000 would create an additional demand for public land to the extent of 200,000 acres, yielding at the government price 300,000l. The only precaution which would be necessary in order to give the imperial treasury complete security, would be to ascertain that for each and every colonization loan there remained in the colony a sufficient extent of fertile and unappropriated land to yield, at the government price, proceeds exceeding by some considerable proportion the amounts of the loans advanced. This precaution being duly observed, it would be a matter of perfect indifference, as far as regards the security of the imperial treasury against ultimate liability, whether the Exchequer Bills advanced as colonization loans should amount to 100,000l. or to 1,000,000l. While the Crown continues to possess, or can acquire through purchase, and treaties with native tribes, fertile and unoccupied territory in climates congenial to

the European constitution, and while a tendency exists to migrate from a confined to an expanding field of employment, no limit can be assigned to the extension of colonization, or to the acceleration of its progress.

In conclusion, we have only to repeat, that the practical arrangements which we have thus ventured to detail are purely suggestive, and have been resorted to only for the purpose of presenting an illustration of the principle, that the expense of colonization may be defrayed out of the value which it creates. The discovery of that principle we regard as amongst the most important improvements which have hitherto been effected in the science of human society. We are impressed with a deep conviction, that by its extensive application, not only to East Africa, but to Canada, Newfoundland, New Holland, and New Zealand, the predisposing causes of distress might be removed, and England raised to a degree of prosperity and power hitherto unexampled, while becoming the favoured instrument in working out the design of Providence, and causing Christian civilization to cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. To your ships, O England! "Awake, and meet the purpose of the skies."

ART. IX.-1. 5 & 6 Victoria, c. 47, entitled "An Act to amend the Laws relating to the Customs." July 9, 1842.

2. Thoughts on Traits of the Ministerial Policy. By a very quiet Looker-on. London.

1843.

3. Lord Stanley's Speech on the Canada Corn Bill in the House of Commons, May 19, 1843. (Published by authority.) 4. 6 & 7 Victoria, c. 19, entitled "An Act for reducing the Duty on Wheat and Wheat Flour the Produce of the Province of Canada, imported thence into the United Kingdom.” July 12, 1843.

THE very favourable geographical position of Great Britain in relation to other countries-the great fertility of the soil-the vast extent of the sea-coast-the numerous rivers by which it is intersected-and the valuable minerals with which it aboundsseem to have early pointed it out as equally adapted for the seat of commerce with any other country in Europe. From the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth, the English legislature has accordingly anxiously directed its attention to the affairs of commerce, for the purpose of advancing, by every possible means,

VOL. III.-NO. I.

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