EMIGRATION AND THE COLONIES 859 
among capitalists at a very narrow margin of profit, and A.D. 1776 
occasionally, by a not unnatural reaction, to outbursts of i850. 
wild speculation and consequent waste of capital’. From 
their point of view what we needed was additional land. 
“Neither by {provements of agriculture, nor by the im- 
portation of food, if these fall short of the power of the 
people to increase, is the competition of excessive numbers in 
all classes diminished in the least. By whatever means the 
field of employment for all classes is enlarged, unless it can 
be enlarged faster than capital and people can increase, no 
alteration will take place in profits or wages, or in any sort 
of remuneration for exertion; there is a larger fund, but 
a corresponding or greater increase of capital and people, 
50 that competition remains the same, or may even go on 
becoming more severe. Thus a country may exhibit a rapid 
growth of wealth and population—such an increase of both 
as the world has not seen before—with direful competition 
within every class of society, excepting alone the few in 
whose hands very large properties have accumulated. * * * 
We trace the competition to want of room; that is to 
a deficiency of land in proportion to capital and people or an 
excess of capital and people in proportion to land. * * * If 
we could sufficiently check the increase of capital and people, 
that would be an appropriate remedy, but we cannot. Can were ez- 
. pounded by 
we then sufficiently enlarge the whole field of employment Wakefield. 
for British capital and labour, by means of sending capital 
and people to cultivate new land in other parts of the world ? 
If we sent away enough, the effect here would be the same 
as if the domestic increase of capital and people were suffi- 
ciently checked. But another effect of great importance 
would take place. The emigrants would be producers of 
food; of more food, if the colonisation were well managed, 
than they could consume; they would be growers of food 
and raw materials of manufacture for this country; we 
should buy their surplus food and raw materials with manu- 
factured goods. Every piece of our colonisation, therefore, 
would add to the power of the whole mass of newvsountries 
t Wakefleld, Art of Colonisation, 76. Mr Wakefield's letters are well worthy 
of perusal, as the observations of a judicious and far-seeing man on the actual 
sondition of and probable changes in England. See especially pp. 64—105.