Page:Two speeches of Robert R. Torrens, Esq., M.P., on emigration, and the colonies.djvu/11

7 in those great centres of industry; and by that means, rather than by any extensive emigration of their skilled labourers, they might indirectly and gradually, but safely and effectually, relieve the distressed condition of their artizans and mechanics. He believed he had now made out a sufficient case to establish the expediency and the efficacy of emigration as a remedy for the distress so deplorably prevalent. It remained to consider from what sources the funds requisite for the application of that remedy might be derived. The Colonies, as they would benefit at least equally with the mother country by any well-considered system of emigration, had naturally been looked to as a source from whence aid might be expected. Speaking with a very intimate knowledge of the facts, he regretted his inability to entertain any sanguine expectations of material aid from that quarter. The Government of the Dominion proposed to afford some small aid in looking after the emigrants when landed on their shores, and, not without a fair show of reason, excused themselves from further contribution, by pleading that their money would be availed of by emigrants en route to the United States. Throughout Australia, prior to 1837, the Wakefield system of colonization had been more or less operative; the principle of which was that the value which population conferred upon land on which it was located should constitute a fund for defraying the charges of emigration. The waste lands of the Crown, so far as they were placed at the disposal of the local governments, were so placed to be alienated by sale only, and the proceeds held subject, as regarded one moiety, to lien in the interests of the people of England, available for generations to come, to relieve this country of surplus population. He lacked words wherewith to convey to the House an adequate idea of the beneficial working of this system. In an evil hour, no less for the Colonies than for this country, the Colonial Minister of the day conceived the idea of bestowing upon these small communities the vast estate of the people of England in these lands, without any reservation of the emigration moiety; and, at the same time, a form of government, the most purely democratic the world had ever known, was introduced into them. An immediate consequence of throwing the entire control of this land revenue into the hands of the class of hired labourers had been the abandonment of the Wakefield system—they withdrew the bridge by which themselves had passed to independence—and