Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/49

 of colonization could not be practised by those who could not carry with them slaves outnumbering ten times the citizens themselves.

The theory of Edward Gibbon Wakefield had not been propounded in the time of Pitt; and when it was made known, half a century later, it was scarcely understood, and only half-heartedly embraced by those who were unable to confute its propounder. To this day it is sometimes urged that its object was to do what Wakefield always denied to be even a necessary part of it. It is spoken of as if its main intention was to sell land at a high price, in order to create an immigration fund with which to import labourers and depress the cost of labour. Wakefield, on the contrary, declared that his object was to establish "a sufficient price" to prevent the unwholesome distraction of labourers from the employment most useful to the colony by the facilities afforded them in new countries to become prematurely land-owners and employers themselves.

"The putting of money," he says, "into the colonial exchequer would not have been designed by the government. The getting of money by the government would be the result of selling land instead of giving it away; but as the only object of selling instead of giving is one totally distinct from that of producing revenue-namely, to prevent labourers from turning into landowners too soon-the pecuniary result would be unintended, one might almost say unexpected. So completely is production of revenue a mere incident of the price of land, that the price ought to be imposed, if it ought to be imposed under any circumstances, even though the purchase- money were thrown away. This last proposition is the sharpest test to which the theory of a sufficient price can be submitted; but if it will not stand this test, if the proposition is not true, the theory is false. Assuming it not to be false, the money arising from the sale of land is a fund raised without a purpose, unavoidably, incidentally, almost accidentally. It is a fund, therefore, without a destination. There would be no undertaking, no tacit obligation even, on the part of the government to dispose of the fund in any particular way. But if the object were the utmost possible increase of the population, wealth, and greatness of our Empire, then I can have no doubt that the revenue accruing from the sale of waste land would be called an emigration fund, and be expended in conveying poor people of the labouring class from the mother country to the colonies. Altogether the effect of devoting the purchase-money of land to emigration would be to accelerate greatly the rate of colonization, and to augment more quickly than by any other dis- position of the fund, the population, wealth, and greatness of the Empire."

But to commence colonizing under Wakefield's theory, there is needed a desire on the part of many persons to