Page:Emigration - a paper read at the Burdett Hall, Limehouse.djvu/14

 ornaments of future buildings. They are like a swarm of bees in early summer, toiling in the fields, beneath the sun. Now you may see them leading out the young, or distending the cells with liquid nectar, or receiving the burdens of those coming home; or, formed into a band, driving the drones from the hive. The work glows, and the fragrant honey is redolent of thyme."

Tyre was another Phœnician colony. So was Leptis Magna, as we learn from Sallust. So was Hippo, Hadrumetum, Utica, and Tunes. The Greeks, at an early period, colonized the numerous islands and sea-coasts of the Mediterranean. The Athenians, Dorians, and Lacedaemonions, were all in the habit of easing the pressure of an over-grown population, by sending out well-equipped companies of colonizers—to Crete, Rhodes, Sicily, Chalcedon, Byzantium, and other places, too numerous to mention.

This great social subject of emigration and colonization is becoming, every day, of more pressing importance; of importance, not only to the laboring classes, who cannot find sufficient employment in this country, but of importance also to the State. We find there is both truth and significance in the words, Salus populi suprema lex.

It is to be regretted that social subjects very seldom excite the same interest, even in the House of Commons, as subjects of a purely political character. I remember but two great social subjects assuming their proper importance in Parliament during the last thirty-five years, namely, Negro Emancipation and Free Trade. If I were asked to define the difference between a political and a social reform, I should say, that the former is an altering, or a mending, or a tinkering—as the case may be—of the political machine; and that the latter is a working of the machine. Political reforms are not, for one moment, to be compared in importance to the alleviation of the actual and pressing wants of the people.

Now, do not misunderstand me: I am no enemy of reform in our political institutions. All I insist on is, that great social questions should take the precedence of purely political questions. The last Reform Bill may turn out a very good, or bad, or indifferent measure, for anything I know; but I do not see how any new arrangement of the franchise will give constant employment, wholesome food, good raiment, and comfortable houses to the poor people of this country.

"But, my dear sir," exclaims some purely political statesman, "it was never intended to do so."

That's the very reason I complain. Don't be eternally mending your machine—tinkering and hammering at it, till you make two holes in stopping one—but work it; don't be all day sharpening