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Subject Area: Political Theory
Collection: The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill

261.: THE NEW COLONY [2] EXAMINER, 6 JULY, 1834, P. 419 - John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIII - Newspaper Writings August 1831 - October 1834 Part II [1831]

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The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIII - Newspaper Writings August 1831 - October 1834 Part II, ed. Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson, Introduction by Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986).

Part of: Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, in 33 vols.

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261.

THE NEW COLONY [2]

EXAMINER, 6 JULY, 1834, P. 419

This account is an answer to a leading article on the South Australia Association in The Times, 2 July, pp. 4-5, in response to the public meeting of 30 June organized by proponents of the emigration scheme (see No. 259). A leading article in the “Political Examiner,” headed as title, it is described in Mill’s bibliography as “An article headed ‘The New Colony’ and signed A.B., in the Examiner of 6th July 1834” (MacMinn, p. 41). In Mill’s copy of the Examiner in Somerville College, it is listed as title, with one correction: at 735.30 “had previously in view” is altered to “had in view”.

the times has declared war against the New Colony. Everything in the shape of an argument which is urged by the Times against this project, proves only that the writer has not read what has been written about it, nor understands the grounds on which it is supported. From the credulity with which he swallows a suggestion of a correspondent, that the Australian scheme is connected with the Poor Law Bill,1 we infer that he believes this plan of Colonization to be now for the first time brought forward. It has, on the contrary, been pressed upon the notice of the public with great perseverance for several years. It was under the consideration of Sir George Murray, when Secretary for the Colonies; his successor, Lord Goderich, for some time had in view the adoption of it; Mr. Stanley also was in communication with the South Australian Association, and was understood to be favourable to the project.2 The merits of the plan are indeed so clear and so striking to any one who will examine it, that it has triumphed over the strongest prepossessions. Except Mr. Wilmot Horton,3 almost every one who, beginning with an unfavourable opinion, nevertheless gave his mind to the subject, has ended by changing that opinion to a favourable one; of this fact, two of the speakers of the meeting last Monday, Col. Torrens and Mr. Poulett Scrope, are examples;4 and we believe that the same thing would happen to the writer in the Times, if he deemed the subject worthy, as it surely is, of attentive consideration.

The grand recommendation of this scheme of Colonization is, that it is a plan of making emigration pay its own expenses. Every one admits, and every one must admit, that if a portion of our labourers could be removed from the country, where they are now earning a scanty and precarious subsistence, and placed in a new and fertile country, under the best arrangements which could be desired for giving the greatest possible productiveness to their labour, the surplus of what they would there produce, above what they can produce in their present situation, would form a fund sufficient, in a year or two at farthest, to repay with interest the whole expense of their emigration. Now, this fund, by the present scheme, is to be taken hold of by the State, by a very simple mode of taxation, the sale of public lands. And thus the expenses of emigration will be paid for out of the increase to the general wealth of the world, produced by emigration itself; the increased produce of the emigrant’s own labour will be made available to pay the expenses of his emigration.

But for this purpose an advance of money is necessary; the emigrant’s passage cannot be paid for out of the funds which are to be afterwards produced by his labour. It can only be paid for out of monies raised by loan on the security of that future fund. And yet the Times cries out against the power given to the King’s Commissioners to raise money by loan, for carrying out the first emigrants.5 According to the Times, this proves that fraud is intended, and that the funds to be raised in the Colony will not be sufficient for emigration. The Times forgets that before any funds can be raised in the Colony, the Colony must exist, and that until the first emigrants go out, there is no Colony.

The working of the scheme will be as follows. A sum of money, say 100,000l., is raised on the security of the sale of lands. With this sum a great supply of labour is taken out; this certain supply of labour induces capitalists to emigrate (many have already expressed that intention); these capitalists will purchase lands, and the proceeds of the sale, after paying the interest of the loan, will be employed in carrying out more labour. This, again, leads to further purchases of land, and the price is applied to further emigration; and so the stream of emigration is perennially kept up, without any advance of money beyond the original one. The accumulation of capital in the Colony would take place with a rapidity unexampled in other Colonies, because in all other Colonies the settlers, being dispersed at great distances from each other, afford no market for each other’s produce; and the regular application of the proceeds of the sale of lands to the emigration of additional labourers will enable the increase of labour to keep pace with the accumulation of capital, however rapidly this may take place.

We shall not, at present, enter into the particular grounds on which the artificial concentration, proposed to be given to the settlers, by affixing a price upon all grants of land, is shewn to be eminently conducive to the prosperity of the Colony, and to the rapid growth of the fund for relieving this country of its surplus labourers. It is sufficient, for the present, that, for the first time in the history of overpopulation, emigration will now be made to pay its own expenses; and whatever relief it can allow to the pressure of population against subsistence in our own country, will be clear gain—pure, unalloyed good.

We shall return to this subject frequently; and we do not fear to encounter any scruples, and grapple with any objections, which we have ever heard, or ever expect to hear, urged against the principles on which the South Australian Colony is founded.

A.B.

[1 ]“Anglicanus,” “Poor Law Report—Emigration,” The Times, 8 May, 1834, p. 6.

[2 ]The Colonial Secretaries before the incumbent, Spring-Rice: Murray, 1828-30; Robinson (Lord Goderich), 1830-33; Stanley, 1833-34.

[3 ]Robert John Wilmot Horton (1784-1841), M.P. for Newcastle-under-Lyme 1818-30, Under Secretary for War and the Colonies 1821-28, an active pamphleteer, frequently aired his views on emigration in the Commons. See, e.g., PD, n.s., Vol. 18, cols. 1547-57, 1567.

[4 ]The speeches on 30 June by Scrope and Torrens are reported in “South Australian Association for Emigration,” The Times, 1 July, 1834, p. 4.

[5 ]Ibid., 2 July, 1834, pp. 4-5.