NEW.

In the article Australasia (vol. iv. p. 215) we have already given a general description of New Zealand, sufficiently comprehensive for the degree of importance which that belonged to the subject. But within the last two years the New Zealand group has been made the theatre of an extraordinary movement in colonization, that we are induced to devote to the subject a greater space than would otherwise have been justifiable; and we avail ourselves of a license which the name furnishes, to give in this place a brief history of the recent proceedings for the colonization of these interesting islands.

It may, in the first place, be proper to describe the complete revolution which of late years has taken place, both in the practice of colonization, and in the state of public opinion respecting it.

Until within a very recent period, it was the custom of the British government to give away the waste lands in our colonies to all applicants. System there was none; but several hundred different modes of granting land have at different times been recognised by the government, all of them however agreeing in rendering land as cheap as possible. Every labouring man who applied for land had a certain number of acres allotted to him: although conditions were sometimes imposed, they were easily evaded; and, in practice, land may be said to have been given unconditionally away. The effect of this upon men of the labouring class may easily be conceived. In the country which they had just quitted, to own land was to be great and powerful. The idea of wealth was inseparably united with that of land; and the prevailing desire of nearly every emigrant is to become an independent freeholder. The consequence of this very natural desire was, that no man would labour for hire, but would rather content himself with scratching up the soil by the aid of some rude help to labour, which scarcely deserved the name of capital.

Now, where labour cannot be obtained, capital is not very prone to establish itself; and even if it did perchance find its way into such a country, a considerable portion of it must have remained unproductive, and must frequently have rotted for want of hands to use it. In a country, in short, where the temptation to take land is very great, the capitalist can offer to the labourer no inducement to labour for hire, equal in force to the inducement to occupy land. On the other hand, the land-owning labourer cannot pre- sent to the capitalist's mind any motive to induce him to part with his capital. Thus that degree of co-operation between the capitalist and labourer, which effects such wonders in this country, cannot exist in a country where land is excessively cheap; and production, wanting that co-operation, is reduced to the minimum. The labourer certainly gets the whole produce of the soil; he has nothing to pay to a capitalist for the use of his implements; but then it is a very small whole that he secures. In like manner, the capitalist may perhaps felicitate himself on having nothing to pay for labour. In his turn he secures all the produce of his fields, but that all is extremely scanty.

Another evil of the excessive cheapness of land is, that there can be no combination of labour wherever it exists. There may be some degree of skill, together with many other valuable qualities, generated by the labourer's habit of independent exertion; but that exertion is isolated, and results which require the combined exertion of numbers can never be attained.

It must be further evident, that where each individual possesses a considerable breadth of land, only a small portion can generally be brought under cultivation. The cultivated spots are therefore scattered over a vast extent of country; dispersion of population necessarily exists; and barbarism prevails throughout the country. In a country so circumstanced, a man scarcely knows his neighbour; schools cannot be maintained; and the very rudiments of the social state become extinguished, if indeed they ever appeared.

Into a country in such a condition, capital would speedily cease to flow, because there would be nothing to attract it; and the country would soon exhibit the phenomenon of a population of pauper land-owners. There would be no colonization, properly so called; there would simply be the emigration of masses.

The last colony deliberately established on the principle, if such it can be called, of rendering land as cheap as possible, was that of the Swan River in 1829. Mr Peel was the first grantee. He took five hundred thousand acres, and marked out his land around the port. This, says Mr Wakefield, in his evidence before the Waste-Land Committee in 1836, was as much as to say, "this is a desert; no man shall come here; no man shall cultivate this land." Other persons took large blocks; and so complete was the dispersion, that the settlers could not find each other. "That," continues Mr Wakefield, "was why some people died of hunger; for though there was an ample supply of food at the governor's house, the settlers did not know where the governor was, and the governor did not know where the settlers were. Then, besides the evils resulting from dispersion, there occurred what I consider almost a greater one, which is the separation of the people, and the want of combinable labour. The labourers, on finding out that land could be obtained with the greatest facility, the labourers taken out under contracts, under engagements which assured them of very high wages if they would labour during a certain time for wages, immediately laughed at their masters. Mr Peel carried altogether about three hundred persons, men, women, and children. Of these, about sixty were able labouring men. In six months after his arrival, he had nobody even to make his bed for him, or to fetch him water from the river. He was obliged to make his own bed, and to fetch water for himself, and to light his own fire. All the labourers had left him. The capital therefore which he took out, viz., implements of husbandry, seeds, and stock, especially stock, immediately perished. Without shepherds to take care of the sheep, the sheep wandered and were lost; eaten by the native dogs, killed by the natives and by some of the other colonists, very likely by his own workmen; but they were destroyed. His seeds perished on the beach; his houses were of no use; his wooden houses were there in frame, in pieces, but could not be put together, and were quite useless, and rotted on the beach. This was the case with the capitalists generally. The labourers, obtaining land very readily, and running about to fix upon locations for themselves, and to establish themselves independently, very soon separated themselves into isolated families, into what may be termed cottiers, with a very large extent of land, something like Irish cottiers, but having, instead of a very small piece of land, a large extent of land. Every one was separated, and very soon fell into the greatest distress. Falling into the greatest distress, they returned to their masters, and insisted upon the fulfilment of the agreements on which they had gone out; but then Mr Peel said, 'all my capital is gone; you have ruined me by deserting me, by breaking your engagements, and you now insist upon my observing the engagements when you yourselves have deprived me of the means of doing so.' They wanted to hang him, and he ran away to a distance, where he secreted himself for a time, till they were carried off to Van Diemen's Land, where they obtained food, and where, by the way, land was not obtainable by any means with so great facility as at the Swan River." (Report, &c. 53-4.)

That the semi-barbarous state of what are called new countries arises from the extreme facility of acquiring land, was first shown by Mr Wakefield, in a little work called a Letter from Sydney, published in 1829; but his views had been communicated to government, we believe, before the departure of the Swan River settlers. The remedies which he proposed have since been substantially adopted, and wherever they have been applied, they have been attended with singular success.

Facility of acquisition being the evil, the remedy consisted in removing it by placing a price upon the waste lands in our colonies, and by stopping all alienation except in consideration of a price.

The first consequence of requiring a price for land is, that the labourer is compelled to labour a while for hire, until he shall have saved a sufficient sum to enable him to become a purchaser; and by devoting the proceeds, or a considerable portion of the proceeds, to defray the cost of removing people from the country in which people are abundant to the country in which they are deficient, a continual supply of labour is kept up. The supply being thus guaranteed, the colony becomes at once attractive to the capitalist; capital flows readily into such a country; and combination of labour, with perfect co-operation between the capitalist and labourer, being secured, production is facilitated and accelerated.

The mode of expending the labour-fund is another point of importance which requires explanation. The object is to relieve the population of the old country, and to increase to the utmost that of the new country, at the smallest possible cost. How is this to be done? Evidently by selecting the emigrants as to age and sex. By confining the expenditure of the emigration-fund derived from the land, to equal proportions of both sexes between certain ages, say eighteen and thirty-five, we give the greatest relief to the old country, and provide for the rapid peopling of the new. In other words, we remove from the country where people are in excess, to the country where they are deficient, the greatest germ of future increase at the smallest cost.

"By removing the selected class," says Mr Wakefield,

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1 Edited by R. Gouger, Cross, Holborn, 1829. not only would you remove the greatest seeds of increase in the smallest number of people, but you would remove the greatest quantity of labour (using the term labour to express saleable muscular exertion) at the least cost. If there were a pressure upon the labour-market at home, by removing that class which was then commencing to work, as which had before it a long period of health and strength in labour, you would give the greatest relief to the labour-market with the least expenditure; and, in the next place, your object in the colony being the greatest possible labour at the least expense, by bringing to the colony a young man who had just arrived at his strength, but who in the prospect of a long life, you would give to the colony the greatest benefit at the least expenditure. Thirdly, there is in emigration the same sort of evil as there is in storms and floods. Emigration per se is an evil. It is the greatest evil to remove from the country of one's birth and one's affections. Now, by the proposed selection, since the greatest amount of emigration would really take place with the removal of the least number of people, you would obtain the maximum of good to be obtained by emigration, with the minimum of evil, whatever that evil may be. In the fourth place, there are great objections to any but young people; I will not say any but the narrow class to which I have adverted. Children suffer immensely in being removed. They suffer on board ship; they suffer from confinement; and when they arrive in the colony, they are either neglected, or are a great encumbrance. Old people suffer much more from being removed from the scenes to which they are attached, and they are also less able to bear the fatigues which necessarily attend upon a long voyage. Lastly, almost every young couple sooner marry in this country, or wherever they may be, than they look out for a new home. At the moment when they contemplate marriage, or at least when they are about to marry, they may be said to be on the move. You would catch them moving. You do not tear them from a place where they are fixed, but you would enable them to move to that place where their labour would be of the greatest possible value to them."

Such are the principles of colonization, which have been successful wherever they have been applied, and the effects of which, in the colonization of New Zealand, we shall presently shew. They embrace a combination of the means which are requisite, not only for conveying masses, but for permanently establishing society in a new settlement. They perform their peculiar functions with the least possible disturbance of previous habits. They are the very opposite, the antagonist principles, as it were, of that useless practice which seems to have proceeded on the assumption, that to convey people to the new colony was the only thing needful. The example of Virginia has shewn, that the conveyance of mere masses alone to the fertile lands of new countries, is not sufficient to establish a colony. In Virginia, after twenty years of perseverance in colonizing, and after conveying 20,000 people, not above 2000 were to be found at the end of the period. There were people, there was wealth, there was intelligence, but all was directed. There was no system, and combined exertion was unknown. All our early efforts at colonization were disastrous. Under the new system, the causes of such disaster have been investigated and guarded against, with what success the following pages will shew.

Under the impulse of these principles, a complete revolution has taken place in the state of opinion on the subject of colonization. Persons to whom the bare idea of severing themselves from their native country was insuperably repugnant, now readily embrace a favourable opportunity of emigrating. Among the educated portion of the middle class, whose families are numerous, it is now not unusual to find some one or more of the sons seeking fortune in our distant possessions, and carrying to the antipodes those energetic habits which have made this country what she is.

Colum, non animus, mutant, qui trans mare currant.

Women of refinement, too, no longer object to emigration, if circumstances favour the step; and New Zealand affords many instances of the emigration of whole families who have been accustomed to a species of society of which the older colonies were destitute, but which in our newer colonies they themselves help to form.

In the article Australasia, to which we have already referred, and in the life of the great navigator Cook, are stated the geographical position and extent of the New Zealand group, together with the circumstances of its discovery. As early as the year 1814, the northern part of the northern island began to be the resort of ships engaged in the whale-fishery, and men would occasionally desert from their ships and take up their residence among the natives. About the same time, some few of the natives of New Zealand occasionally made their appearance at Port Jackson, and being seen and conversed with by the Rev. Samuel Marsden, he conceived the idea of establishing a mission in the islands, which he accordingly visited for the purpose; and although not immediately successful, the ultimate establishment of a mission was the result. Since that period, the Wesleyan Methodists and the Catholics have established missions, all of which have of late years extended their influence, bringing the natives into familiar intercourse with the Europeans, and generally promoting their civilization, in spite of certain questionable practices on the part of the church missionaries, which have brought them into some disrepute.

But the missionaries are not the only white men to whose influence the New Zealanders have been subjected. Up to the date of the commencement of the present movement, namely, 1839, the only colonizers of New Zealand were the very outcasts of an outcast population. Escaped convicts from the penal settlements; runaway sailors from whaling ships; needy adventurers, whose improvident habits and evil courses have made them men of no country; these, with a small admixture of worthy and energetic men, such as will find their way into all eligible fields, but who at that time formed too inconsiderable a minority to cure the vicious propensities and neutralize the evil passions of the majority, formed the bulk of the European population of New Zealand in 1839.

Dr Lang, principal of the Australian College at Sydney, who visited New Zealand during that year, thus describes the mass of the European population. "Of the character of the European population, now permanently settled in New Zealand, it is scarcely necessary to inform your lordship. With a few honourable exceptions, it consists of the veriest refuse of civilized society; of runaway sailors, of runaway convicts, of convicts who have served out their term of bondage in one or other of the two penal colonies, of fraudulent debtors who have escaped from their creditors in Sydney or Hobart Town, and of needy adventurers from the two colonies, almost equally unprincipled. In conjunction with the whalers who occasionally visit the coast, the influence of these individuals on the natives is demoralizing in the extreme. Their usual articles of barter are either muskets and gunpowder, or tobacco and rum. Most of them live in open concubinage or adultery."