141
A View of the Art of Colonization
ing New Zealand, which had in the meantime been colonized
on the same principles, amounted to 104,487, or 10,448 a-
year, being an increase of more than sevenfold. Nor must you
regard this as at all subtracted from the general amount of
unassisted emigration, inasmuch as during the first period the
total emigration to all other parts was 352,580, giving an av-
erage of 44,072 a-year; and in the second 661,039, giving an
average of no less than 66,104 a-year; and this, though dur-
ing a considerable portion of the latter period emigration to
the Canadas was almost stopped by the disturbances in those
colonies. And it is also put beyond a doubt, that the fund thus
derivable from the sale of lands is a very large one. The sum
raised by sales of land in Australia, during a period of nine
years, beginning with 1833, and ending with the end of 1841,
including the New Zealand Company’s sales, which are on
the same principle, and may be reckoned as effected by the
government, through the agency of a company, amounts to a
few hundreds short of two millions; a sum saved out of the
fire—a sum which has been received without making any body
poorer, but actually by adding immensely to the value of
everybody’s property in those colonies — a sum which, if
applied entirely to emigration, would have carried out com-
fortably more than 110,000 emigrants. The results in one
single colony—that of New South Wales—have been most
remarkable and most satisfactory. In these nine years, the land
fund has produced £1,100,000; and though only partially
applied to emigration, has been the means of carrying out as
many as 52,000 selected emigrants, making two-fifths, and
two valuable fifths, of the present population of the colony,
added to it in the space of little more than three years.
The possibility, however, of raising a very large fund by the
sale of land required no proof from actual experience in our
colonies; because that fact, at least, had been ascertained by
a long and large experiment in the United States. In 1795, the
federal government put an end to gratuitous grants; and com-
menced the plan of selling the waste lands of their vast terri-
tory at a system of auction, which has, however, in fact, ended
in their selling the whole at the upset price, which for some
years was two dollars, and latterly a dollar and a quarter per
acre. The proceeds of these sales has, during the whole pe-
riod, amounted to the vast sum of £23,366,434 of our money;
being an average of more than half a million a-year for the
whole of that time. In the last twenty years of this period, the
total sum produced was nearly £19,000,000, giving an aver-
age of more than £900,000 a-year. In the last ten years of the
period, the total amount was £16,000,000, and the annual
average £1,600,000; and in the last seven years of which I
can get an account—the years from 1834 to 1840, both in-
cluded— the total amount realized was more than £14,000,000
of our money, or upwards of £2,000,000 a-year.
19
This is what
actually has been done in the United States; and done, let me
remark, without the object of promoting emigration, almost
without that of getting revenue: for it is very clear that the
primary object with which the system of sale was established
was not that of getting money, but of preventing that jobbing
and favouritism which cannot be avoided where the govern-
ment has the power of making gratuitous grants of land. The
experiment cannot be regarded as a test of the largest amount
which could be got for the land, consistently with a due re-
gard to other public objects, because, in the first place, there
have been large exceptional grants, which have brought a great
amount of unbought land into the market. There has been a
large amount of additional land, not under the control of the
general government, and which had been sold by the old states,
particularly Maine. And, above all, the price has, as I said,
never been fixed with a view to getting the greatest amount
of revenue. There is not the slightest reason to doubt that the
same amount of land might have been sold at a higher price.
Indeed, we know that the amount of land sold did not in-
crease in consequence of the great diminution of price from
two dollars to a dollar and a quarter in 1819; but actually fell
off very considerably, and did not recover itself for the next
ten years. I have very little doubt that the same amount of
land would have been sold at our price of a pound; and that
the sum of eighty millions might thus have been realized in
forty-five years as easily as that of twentythree millions actu-
ally was.
I tell you what has actually been done, and what we may safely
infer might have been done by a country, which, with all its
vast territory, possesses actually a less amount of available
land than is included within our empire; which has now a
much less, and had when all this began, a very much less
population than ours; and with a far less proportion even of
that available for emigration; and which, with all its activity
and prosperity, possesses an amount of available capital ac-
tually insignificant when compared with ours. Imagine what
would have been the result, had we at the period in which the
American government commenced its sales, applied the same
principle with more perfect details to the waste lands of our
colonies, and used the funds derived from such sales in ren-
dering our Far West as accessible to our people as the valleys
of the Ohio and Missouri to the settlers in the United States.
Hundreds of thousands of our countrymen, who now with
their families people the territory of the United States, would
have been subjects of the British Crown; as many—ay, even
more—who have passed their wretched existence in our work-
houses or crowded cities, or perished in Irish famines, or pined
away in the more lingering torture of such destitution as Great
Britain has too often seen, would have been happy and thriv-
ing on fertile soils and under genial climates, and making
really our country that vast empire which encircles the globe.
In every part of the world would have risen fresh towns, in-
habited by our people; fresh ports would have been crowded
by our ships; and harvests would have waved where the si-