LAISSEZ FAIRE
had been carried out, partly at Government expense, in the
east of Cape Colony in 18201,
The condition of affairs which had been brought about in
England by the Industrial Revolution, predisposed several of
the leading economists of the time to look favourably on
emigration as the best remedy for existing evils. They made
a careful diagnosis of the ills that affected society, and came
to the conclusion that territorial expansion and emigration
would afford the greatest measure of relief. The leading
exponent of these new views was Mr E. G. Wakefield, and he
succeeded in rallying round him a very remarkable group of
men; expression was given to his views by Dr Hinds, the
Dean of Carlisle, by Mr Charles Buller in the House of
Commons, and most important of all by John Stuart Mill in
his Principles of Political Economy. Mr Wakefield and his
coadjutors were theorists; they arrived at their views on
a question of practical political administration by reasoning
based on accepted economic doctrines.
Since the time of Malthus it had become a commonplace
to maintain that there was a redundancy of population in
as a means the country’; but the colonising school maintained that this
i relieving : ’
ngland = Tedundancy was felt in every class of society, and not merely
JI nt among the poorest’. They also urged that England was
population gyffering from a plethora of capital; they argued that the
glethonef steady formation of capital, while no new fields for enterprise
capi v . . . “,.
PH Were available, led in an ordinary way to feverish competition
above, p. 845.) In this connection the following sentences are of interest.
“Towards 1825, the year of the organization of the Canada Company, the
reduced scale of the Army and Navy and the economy introduced into all
departments, withdrew many sources of income. Manufactures and trade were
only advantageous when carried on upon a large scale, with low profits upon
2xtensive capital. There remained only the learned professions, with clerkships
In banks, insurance companies and similar establishments, For these pursuits an
increased population, and the rapid growth of education, caused a keen com-
petition. This secured for national purposes a great degree of talent; but the
pressure on the middle classes grew yearly heavier. There were many who
possessed small capital—from five hundred to one thousand pounds—but it was
not everyone who possessed the judgment and industry required for a life in the
bush.” Lizars, In the Days of the Canada Company, 19.
1 Egertgn, A Short History of British Colonial Policy, 272.
2 Emigration seems to have been looked on as the best means of relieving this
country of paunperism (Reports 1826, Iv. 4), and an immense amount of attention
was given to it. See the Index in Reports 1847, Lv. pl. 4.
3 Wakefield, A View of the Art of Colonisation, 66, 74.
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