EXTRACTS FROM MR. E. G. WAKEFIELD'S NEW WORK ON COLONIZATION.

New Zealander, Volume 5, Issue 367, 20 October 1849, Page 3

EXTRACTS FROM MR. E. G. WAKEFIELD'S NEW WORK ON COLONIZATION.

The Obstacles to thb Immigration of " Gentlemen." {From "A View of the Art of Colonization, with pre ent Reference lo the Biitish Empire," by Edward Gibbon Wakefield, Esq ) It has been my lot to become acquainted with a considerable number of the gentry class of emigrants ; and I declare, in the first place, that I never met with one who, when he first contemplated emigration, was not ashamed and afraid of his own purpose ; and secondly, that I know nut of one whose objects in emigrating have been lealized. I wish I did not know a great many whose hopes as emigrants have been bitterly disappointed. The caubes of the disappointment, as well as the shame and fear, may be easily explained. I will begin with the shame. You may have a difficulty in believing or understanding it, but much experience has made me confident, that the highest class who think of emigrating to whom the idea of emigration for themselves ever occurs, associate that idea with the idea of convict transportation, even more pain'ully than the poorest and meanest class do. This association of ideas is not deliberate, but undesigned, almost unconscious ; it is a consequence of the facts, and of the nature of the human mind. A case is within my knowledge, in which a gentleman of good birth and connexion contemplated emigrating to Australia Felix. He had a small fortune, a large family of children, and a hand, some wife, to whom he was tenderly attached, though eh« was not the widest of her sex. As the children grew up, the incorno seemed to grow smaller, though it remained the same ; the wants increased whilst the means of supplying them were stationary. The edu cation of the boys was costly ; that of the girls inferior to that of other girl* ia their station. To piuvide for both, one after another of th« parents' luxuries and of the outward marks of their station, was reluctantly laid down. In order to establish the sons in life, more money was required than could by any means be found ; and the two daughters had already entered on the miserable period between lively girlhood and old maidism. The father pa^ed from the state of fcelfsatisfied enjoyment, first into uneasiness, then into impatience, and at last into a diicontent at once angry and mournful : the mother fretted continually. They had married rery young, and were still in the prime of life. At last there was added to the inotbe 's troubles that of jealousy. She had reason to think that her huiband'i affections were estranged from her. He went to London without telling her for what. He returned without reporting whom he had seen, or what tie had done. At home, he took uo inteie i t in his usual occupations or amusements. He was absorbed with secret thoughts, absent, inattentive, and unaffectionate, but in apparent good humour with himself, and charmed with the subject of his secret contempla* tionu. He had a key made for hit post bag, which I) ad been without one foryeare ; and instead of leaving all his letters about as was his wont, he carefully put some of them away, and was caught once or twice in the act of reading them in secret with smiling lips and sparkling eyes. His wife did not complain, but now and then hinted to him that she perceived the change in his demeanour. On these occasions he protested tnat she was mistaken, and for a while afterwards put a guard upou his behaviour for the evident purpose of averting her suspicions. At last, poor woman, her jealousy exploded ; and it turned out that he had been all this time forming a plan of emigration for the family. Whilst be was so engaged, his mind had naturally fixed on the pleasant features of the project ; the delightful climate, the hue domain, tha pabtural life, the creative business of settling, the full and pleating occupation, the consequence which a person of his station would enjoy in the colony, the ample room for boys and girls, and the happy change for his harrassed wife. This explains hit smiling self-satisfac-tion ; his secrecy was deliberate, because he was afraid that if he disclosed fail scheme at home before it was irrevocably matured, his wife and her relations, and liis own relations as well, would call it a scheme of transportation, and worry him into abandoning it. They did worry him by talking about Botany Bay. In vain be protested that Australia Felix is not a penal colony : they found out, that though convicts are not •ent out to Port Phillip to undergo punishment, as convicts, they are sent thither as " exiles ;" and that airaxms of emancipated convicts resort thither from Van Diemen'i Land and New South Wales ; the lady's brother, the rector of the parish, explained that Lord Grey's plan of convict transportation is a plan of emigration for convicts ; the very plan contemplated by the brother-in-law for himself and family. They got hold of a Hobart Town newspaper, which contained the report of a public meeting held for the purpose of laying before Her Majesty's Government a description of tbe social horrors inflicted on Tasmania by the plan of exiling convicts to that i&land, and starting them out of the ship on their arrival at free as any other emigrants, or ai thieves in the Strand. The would be ejmigrant so far gave way to this domestic storm, as to offer that New Zealand instead of Australia Felix should be their destination ; but they proved to him with the aid of a cousin who is in the Colonial Office, that convict boys from Parkhurst prison are sent to New Zealand, and that Lord Grey contemplates making those islands a receptacle of convict " exiles.' 1 In the end they taunted him into giving up bis gchtme, and

settling, poor fellow, at Boulogne, in order to b« somebody there instead of nobody at home. I do not pretend that the only argument of the wife and her supporters enlisted of tauntt founded on the late resemblance between emigration and tmnsporta* tion, on their preient identity, or on the state of society in the Southern colonies as it has been affected by convict colonization. They used other arguraeuts, but so far of a like kind, that however politely expressed in words, they consisted of sneers, taunts, and reproaches. Having themselves a lively antipuhy to the notion of a gentleman's family emigrating at all, they painted emigration in all iti most unfavourable and repulsive colours ; and some of the daikest of these are drawn from emigration as the result of burglary, biVamy, or murder, and from the moral and social pestilence inflicted upon colonies by convict emigration. But there are several dark colours besides these, in which emigration for respectable families may be truly described. The next that occurs to me has bat an indirect relation to the emigration of convicts. I would beg of you to exert your imagination for the purpose of conceiving what would be the public state of mind in this country, if the Emperor Nicholas, or President Polk, should ask us to let him send the convicts of his nation to inhabit this country as free exiles. Fancy John Bull's fury. His rajje would ariie partly from his view of the evils to which our country would be subjected, by continually adding to our own crimi* nals a number of Russian or American robbers and assassins ; but it would be partly, and I think chiefly, occasioned by the national insult of the proposal for treating this country as fit to be the moral cesspool of another community. We ihould feel that the Russians orAmeiicans, as the ease might be, mostco r _ dially despised us ; that as a nation or community w e were deemed inferior, low, base, utterly devoid of honourable pride, and virtuous srlf-respect ; that we ought instantly to g° to war and thrash the insolence out of the Yankees or the Cossacks. But jou can't thoroughly imagine the case, because so gross »n insult to so powerful a nation as this, is inconceivable. We put this affront on some of our colonies with as much coolness and complacency as if we thought they liked it. Without the ie»st compunction or hesitation, we degrade and insult a group of our colonies, by sending thither, a» to their proper home, our own convicts and those of our other dependencies. In many other ways we treat them as communities so mean and low in character, as to be incapable of feeling an outrage. Our own feeling of contempt for them was capitally expressed long ago by an English At* tomey»General under William end Mary. This high officer of the Crown was instructed to prepaie a charter for establishing a college in Virginia, of which the object was to educate and qualify young men to be ministers of the Gospel. He protested against the grant, declaring he did not see the slightest occasion for >-uph a co'lege in "Virginia. A delegate of the colo-ni-ts begged Mr. Attorney would consider that the people of Virginia h.id souls to be saved as well is the people of England. " Souls !'' said he ; " d — n your souls '. — make tobacco." That was long ago : well, but you will recollect.because it belnngi to the history of home politics, that letter which, in Lord Melbourne's time, Mr. O'Connell wrote to one of his "tHil," who had got himself banished from decent iocety in this country, saying in effect, though I can do nothing for you here, if you will retire hum Parliament for the sake of the credit of our pat ty , 1 will get you a place in the colonies. It would be easy to cite, if they h.id been published, ss Mr. O'Connell's letter was, very many casus in which, and quite of late years too, somebody has obtained a place in the colonies » not only in spite of his having lost his eharae'er here, but because he bad lost it ; somebody wanted to get rid of him, and anything is good enough for the coinnits. Some four or five years ago, a young clergyman, wishing to qualify for an appointment in the colonies, was under an examination by a bishop's chaplain ; the bishop came into the room, and presently observed to his chaplain, that he thought the examination was insufficient as a test of the proper qualities of a clergyman, when the chaplain excused himself by saying, " It is only a gentleman for the colonies;'' and the biihop seemed perfectly satisfied with the answer. Contempt for the colonies, a sense of their inferiority or lowness, pprvades society here. When it is proposed by a thoughtful statesman to bestow upon those colonies which have none, a considerable portion ef local self-government, the vulgar mind of this country is a little offended, and thinks that a colonial community is rather presumptuous in supposing itself capable of managing its own affairs as well as they can be managed by the Right Honourable Mr, or Lord Somebody, who sits in the great house at the bottom of Downing-street. The vulgar notion is, that, as in the opinion of William and Maiy's Attorney General, the Virginians had not souls to be saved, so colonists in general have not, and have no business to have politcal ideas ; that the only business for which they are fit, is to send home, for the good of this country, plenty of timber, or flourj or sugar, or wool. As anything is good enough for the colonies, so the colonies are pood for nothing but as they humbly serve our purposes. If we look with care into the causes of the revolt of the thirteen great English colonies of North America, we find that the leading coloniits were made disaffected more by the contemptuous, than by the unjust and tyranical treatment, which their country received at the hands of its parent. Franklin, the representative in this country of one of the greatest of those colonies, was shied and snubbed in London ; the first feeling of disloyalty was probably planted in the breast of Washington by the contemptuous treatment which he received as au officer of the provincial army. The instances of such treatment of colonists are without number. But that, you may say again, was long ago ; well, let us murk the present difference of the reception which we give to foreigners from that which we give to colonists when they vuit England. When a person of any mark in any foreign country comes to London on a visit o f curiosity, he has only to make known his ar« rival* in order to receive all kinds of attentions from the circles whose civilities are most prized ; if only a personage in some German principality, or small Italian state, he is sought out, feted, perhaps lionized, to his heart's content. When a distinguished colonial comes to London— one even, who»e name stands as high in his own community as the names of the leaders of the Government Opposition do here-— he prowls about the streets, and sees sights till he is sick of doing nothing else, and then returns home disgusted with his visit to the old country. Nobody has paid him any at entiou because he was a colonist. Not very long ago, one of the first men in Canada, the most important of our colonies, came to England on a mission with which he was charged by the Colonial House of Commons. He was a Canadian of French origin, ol most polite manners, well informed, a person of truth and honour, altogether equal to the best order of people in the luost important countries. O.i account of these qualities, and also because he was rich and public spirited, hs enjoyed the marked respect ot hid fellow-colonists. The delays of the Colonial Office kej t him ta Engla d for, I belierj more tha 1 two year* ; and

during all this time, he reiided at a tavern in the city, the London Coffee House on Ludgate Hill, totally unknowing and unknown out of the coffee-room. He wai a Canadian, that is s colonist, and was le«s cared about here than a load of timber or a barrel of flour coming from the St. Lawrence. This is no solitary instance. Colonists, more esprcially if they are rich, intelligent, and of importance in their own country, frequently come to England, not merely as foreigners do, to »cc, but to admire and glory in the wonders of our great little country ; and I repeat, thoie who gome are generally the first people in the colony. Do you ever meet any of them in the houses of your friends ? Has ever the name of one of them beea upon your invitation list ? Certainly not, unleu by some singular accident. But I, in my obscure position, and as having been a colonist myself, see numbers of these neglected visitors of England ; and I see how others treat them, but take no sot of notice of thsm, because hey despise them as colonists. I am not thinking iv the least now of the national impolicy of such inhospitality and bad manners, but exclusively of the fact, that among the gentry rank of this country, colonies and colonists are deemed inferior, low, a baser order of communities and beings ; and that in this despicable light we regard them quite ai unaffectedly as William and Mary's Attorney- General did, though we do not express our opinion so emphatically. Is it surprising, then, that an English gentleman should feel somewhat ashamed of himself whwn he flr»t entertaini the idea of becoming a colonist? Is not the indiiposition of our gentry to emigrate juit what might have been expected ? What w warse, speaking generally, colonies and colonists are in fact, ■• well as in the estimation of the British gentry, inferior, low, unworthy of much respect, properly disliked and despued by people of refinement and honour here, who happen to be acquainted with the state of society in the colonies. But the proof of this must be reierved for another tleer.H