predecessor in office -the fatal system of doing nothing at all! If truth and the public interest are to prevail, the House will surely accede to my motion, whether or not it be according to precedent.

One word more, and I shall no longer trespass upon the patience of the House. It has been suggested to me that my motion would have been more likely to be carried if it had applied, not to a particular member of the Government, but to the whole Administration. For the following reasons, I have not listened to that suggestion. The subject relates strictly to the Colonial Department, and I wish to confine myself to the subject. It may be true that the whole Cabinet should be held responsible for the errors and defects of the Colonial Office; that may be a good constitutional principle, but I am not aware of it. Not being aware of it, I have pursued the plain and simple course of attributing to the Colonial Minister alone his own errors and deficiencies. The other course-that of proposing a vote of want of confidence in the Ministry on account of the state of a single departmentwould have been far more agreeable to me in one respect, inasmuch as it would have relieved me from the suspicion (which, however, I trust that none who know me will entertain) of being actuated by personal hostility to Lord Glenelg. On that account alone I should have much preferred moving for a vote as respects the Cabinet; but I felt that my first duty was to place the subject before the House in the light best calculated to obtain their attention, and therefore have I confined to the Colonial Minister the proposal of a vote of censure 1 Lord Aberdeen.

for matters which are exclusively of a colonial nature. I have very likely erred through inexperience of the usages of Parliament and the Constitution; but I have acted according to the best of my judgment, and throw myself upon the indulgence of the House. I conclude by moving, "That a humble address be presented to her Majesty, respectfully expressing the opinion of this House that in the present critical state of many of her Majesty's foreign possessions in various parts of the world, it is essential to the well-being of her Majesty's colonial empire, and of the many and important domestic interests, which depend on the prosperity of the colonies, that the Colonial Minister should be a person in whose diligence, forethought, judgment, activity, and firmness this House and the public may be able to place reliance; and declaring, with all deference to the constitutional prerogatives of the Crown, that her Majesty's present Secretary of State for the Colonies does not enjoy the confidence of this House, or of the country."

ON THE WAKEFIELD SYSTEM OF DISPOSING OF THE COLONIAL LANDS.

JUNE 27, 1839.

[The resolutions seconded by Sir W. Molesworth were as follows:

1. That the occupation and cultivation of waste lands in the British colonies by means of emigration tends to improve the condition of all the industrious classes in the United Kingdom by diminishing competition for employment at home, in consequence of the removal of superabundant numbers, creating new markets and increasing the demand for shipping and manufactures.

2. That the prosperity of colonies and the progress of colonisation mainly depend upon the manner in which a right of private property in the waste lands of the colony may be acquired; and that amidst the great variety of methods of disposing of waste lands which have been pursued by the British Government the most effectual beyond all comparison is the plan of sale at a fixed uniform and sufficient price, for ready money, without any condition or restriction, and the employment of the whole or a large fixed proportion of the purchase money in affording a passage to the colonies cost free to young persons of the labouring class, in an equal proportion of the sexes.

3. That in order to derive the greatest possible advantage from this method of colonising, it is essential that the permanence of the system shall be secured by the Legislature, and that its administration should be entrusted to a distinct subordinate branch of the Colonial Department, authorised to sell colonial lands in this country; to anticipate the sales of lands by raising loans for emigration on the security of the land sales, and generally to superintend the arrangements by which the comfort and well-being of the emigrants are to be secured.

4. That this method of colonising has been applied by the Legislature to the new colony of South Australia with very remarkable and gratifying results, and that it is expedient that Parliament should extend the South Australian system to all other colonies which are suited to its operation.

The resolutions were finally withdrawn, Mr. Ward recognising the impossibility of legislation in that year, and the answers of Ministers (Mr. Labouchere and Lord Howick) not being unfriendly, although they refused to bind themselves to a hard and fast rule in dealing with the lands. It should be noted that a subsequent Act of 1842 gave statutory force to the practice of successive Secretaries of State, in selling the Australian waste lands by auction at a minimum upset price of 20s. per acre. Subject to a charge for cost of survey, half of the gross proceeds were to be spent on immigration to the colony in which the land was sold.]

In seconding the motion of my honourable friend, I need not, after his able speech, enter into any lengthened discussion of the principles upon which his motion is founded. My honourable friend proposes, first, that in every one of the colonies a certain price shall be affixed to its waste lands, that price to vary according to the circumstances of each colony; and, secondly, that the net proceeds of the land sales shall constitute an emigration fund, each colony to be furnished with emigrant labour in proportion to its own land sales.

The object of these regulations is first, by a fixed price to put an end to the favouritism and other abuses, which have always resulted, and must, in my opinion, necessarily result, from any system of free or conditional grants of land. Secondly, the fixed price ought to be a considerable one, in order to prevent individuals from acquiring large tracts of land without any intention to cultivate them, and merely in the hope that, at some future period,

they may become valuable by the increase of wealth and population. And here I may remark, that all experience and reason have shown, that such excessive appropriations are most injurious to a new community, by interposing deserts, and cutting off communication between its cultivated parts. And, lastly, the object of employing, in the promotion of emigration, the funds raised from the sale of land, is to afford a profitable field of employment for the surplus population of this country, and to provide the purchasers of colonial land with a steady supply of labour, wherewith to render their land productive, and worth the price put upon it. For land without labour to cultivate it is worthless. It is evident indeed that a few half sterile acres in this densely peopled country are, on account of the facility of obtaining hired labour, far more valuable than millions of the most fertile acres in a place where no labourers can be obtained to reap the fruits of the soil. Now, if the regulations of my honourable friend be adopted, the purchasers of colonial land would not merely purchase a certain number of acres, but would indirectly buy the services of a number of labourers proportioned to the amount of land bought.

As the chief object of putting a considerable price on waste land is to obtain a supply of labour, it is evident that the price of waste land ought to be so high as to ensure a sufficient supply of labour to cultivate the appropriated land in the most advantageous manner; that is, to raise from it the greatest amount of produce compared to the number of hands employed: for in that case wages and profits would be high, and the community flourishing.