Page:Two speeches of Robert R. Torrens, Esq., M.P., on emigration, and the colonies.djvu/10

6 except under pressure of circumstances amounting to something like necessity. Upon revival of trade, or any other cause supplying permanent employment at adequate wages, emigration would cease of its own accord; but, pending the contingency of increased employment from that source, they were not justified in leaving in indigence and misery thousands of their fellow-countrymen who, if removed to a position of competency in the Colonies, would, as customers for our manufactures, be largely instrumental in bringing about that revival of trade so earnestly desired. Again, it had been urged that that class of men were not suitable colonists, and that the demand for skilled labour was limited. There was some truth in that objection; but, after the experience of many years as a colonist, he dared assert that its applicability had been greatly exaggerated. He had known hundreds of artizans whose strong limbs and determined hearts had overcome whatever there was of difficulty or irksomeness in the change of avocation. He must, however, admit that there was a considerable degree of truth in that objection; and therefore it was desirable that any continuous or extensive emigration promoted or directed by the Government of this country should be of the agricultural class. The wisdom of this course would appear manifest when it was remembered that experience proved that new inventions and devices for increasing the efficacy of human labour when applied to manufactures did ultimately and vastly increase the amount of employment, insomuch that it might, without exaggeration, be said that wherever by such means two men were enabled to perform the task of 10 the result had been to cause 10 to be employed where two only found work before. This was so because manufacturing industry, co-expansive with the markets of the world, could not be circumscribed by the narrow limits of these islands. But as regards agriculture this was reversed. If the steam plough, the mowing machine, and the reaping machine, superseding the spade, the scythe, and the flail, enabled two men to perform the task of 10, no increased demand for labour ensued to absorb the eight thrown out of employment so long as the limits of these islands were allowed to circumscribe the area within which that industry was to be exercised. Hence it would be their true policy to divert to other fields of production the labour which constantly gravitated from the rural districts towards the towns, intensifying the competition for employment already excessive