THE

EDINBURGH REVIEW,

JANUARY, 1850.

No. CLXXXIII.

ART. I.-1. Report of the select Committee of the House of Lords on Colonization from Ireland, together with the Minutes of Evidence. 1847.

2. Ditto. 1848.

3. Emigration. Papers presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of Her Majesty. 1847-8-9.

4. A View of the Act of Colonization. E. G. WAKEFIELD.

1849.

5. The Colonies of England. By J. A. ROEBUCK, Esq. M. P. 6. Answer to the Question what is to be done with the unemployed Labourers of the United Kingdom. By JOHN ROBERT GODLEY.

7. Principles of Political Economy. By JOHN STEWART MILL.

TE

HE progress recently made by Colonization, as a question of public interest, cannot have escaped the least attentive observer. That progress has been rapid as well as steady; and may be measured from month to month as well as from year to year. Colonization has been the subject of numberless books and pamphlets, and has afforded a frequent topic to the periodical press. Public meetings have been held in many parts of England; tracts have been circulated; the attention of Parliament has been again and again directed to it: in short all those signs have been exhibited which commonly precede some important legislative proceeding. Yet hitherto legislation has done

VOL. XCI. NO. CLXXXIII.

B

but little in the matter: and the question is practically much where it was before the motion of the late lamented Mr. Charles Buller, or even before the earlier exertions of Mr. Wilmot Horton. There are still persons who deny that we suffer from a redundant population: but a larger number are contented to affirm that its removal would prove too arduous and costly an enterprise. The former class are the loudest in their opposition to colonization, the latter are the more efficient. It is well known, however, that mere difficulties of detail often retard the introduction of measures of obvious necessity. This has been the case with the question of Sanitary Reform, and with the yet more momentous question of Education: but such difficulties diminish as they are looked in the face, and vanish when closely confronted; so that, when the great measure, which has a hundred times been pronounced to be alike desirable and impracticable, is at last carried, men ask, as in the story of Columbus's egg, where the difficulty lay? Achievements in the political, like discoveries in the scientific world, are for the most part heralded by precursive signs; and we have already had on the subject of Colonization those dawnlights which prognosticate the day.

Nor can we at all wonder at the growing interest with which this topic is regarded. The kindred subject of Pauperism has for a long series of years engrossed a large share of public attention: but, frequently as it has been the theme of the philosopher and the economist, no efficient remedy has as yet been devised. We can travel at the rate of fifty miles an hour, and send intelligence a thousand miles in a minute; we have not been able, however, to outstrip pauperism. Wealth has accumulated: social improvements have been carried out; and political changes have taken place, only less than revolution; but our national Genius yet stands rebuked before the one gaunt phantom which meets it on every path of triumph. A few years ago pauperism threatened to swallow up all property: the Poor-law was amended, and the disease in some measure checked; but pauperism has again for several years been on the increase. Ireland distress has passed into famine, occasioned by the loss of the potato; and all that has been done for that country has failed to avert an unprecedented mortality, an enormous destruction of property, and (the consequence of such calamities) a deep-seated and wide-spread discontent. The potato was the staple of Irish agriculture, as cotton is that of the manufactures of Lancashire. What would be the consequence, if a loss analogous to that which Ireland has sustained were to deprive England of her chief manufacturing material? It is

In

1850.

Political Evils of Pauperism.

3

impossible not to ask ourselves, if pauperism continues to increase at a period of comparative tranquillity,-while our commerce thrives, and our unfinished railroads employ industrial armies, what may we not expect at those periods of disaster from which no wisdom can secure us? In what would then consist our defence? Certainly not in any of those convulsive political changes, which are rendered abortive by the same discontent that produces them.

'Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion, creeping nigher,

Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly dying fire.' When the calamity is upon us, it may be too late to provide for our safety.

But it is not only when we contemplate English or Irish pauperism, that we are reminded of the dangers arising from the pressure of population on the means of subsistence. Those dangers are illustrated by the condition of half Europe at the present day. We are far indeed from asserting that the recent wars of nation against nation, and of class against class, have been produced by that cause alone. Other agencies we know have been at work; But all other evil influences assuredly were aggravated by that chronic discontent which gives plausibility even to such agitators as the Red Republicans of Paris, and to such philosophers as her Socialists. Each of the three French Revolutions affected all Europe; but the disastrous infection of the last, spread over the Continent as flame spreads over the dry grass of the prairie. For so terrible an excitement there must have been predisposing causes; and the chief, we may assume, among those causes, was the galling uneasiness which frets a population too closely packed to find an easy subsistence. In the United States and in Russia, two countries with few points of resemblance, there is one thing in common a territory sufficient for all; and in each there is a common absence of those signs which forebode a social war. In the revolution of February, on the other hand, it is well known how largely the unemployed labourers of Paris contributed to the overthrow of the monarchy. Neither the minute subdivision of property, nor the boasted field which Algeria had long supplied to the émeutiers' of France, nor the slow rate at which for several years her population had been advancing, nor yet the growing power of that middle class whose interests are identified with peace, were sufficient to avert a revolution, the first effect of which was to increase distress tenfold. Heated populations are always

at the mercy of accidents; and in the body politic, a scratch may be fatal,-if the blood be diseased.

It is not, however, our intention to enlarge on either the political or the economical dangers of pauperism. Its Moral evils lie deeper; and for that reason, perhaps, have attracted less general attention. Had the insidious nature of those evils been duly appreciated, more energetic efforts would, doubtless, before now have been made to remove the disease from which they spring. At so large a subject, we can but glance. But we must be allowed to say a word on those moral relations at the very centre of our being, on which all others rest. In a nation vitiated and enfeebled by permanent pauperism, the domestic ties, if they can be said truly to exist, are too often reversed from their natural offices. We speak now of pauperism as it affects civilised communities. We have all heard of the Indian mother who day by day carried her dead child through the frozen woods, and night after night suspended his cradle of reeds upon the branches beneath which she slept, and nowhere could fix upon a spot in which to bury him! Among barbarous tribes, nature, which has neither been elevated nor vitiated by the conventions of society, may thus vindicate her rights to the last. But with those who are surrounded by a prosperity which they may not share, and upbraided by respectabilities sharply contrasted with their squalor, the case is far otherwise. The children of the actual pauper, habituated to the workhouse, may be no hindrance to him. They are orphans already. They are orphans already. But for every actual pauper there are many paupers in expectation; and it is in this fact that the most malignant evil of pauperism lies. If a man be still struggling upon the inclined plane beneath which lies that form of dependence which neither affection nor reciprocal service redeems, his children are his chief enemies. They are the chains about his feet, and the reproach before his eyes. He feels that if they did not exist he would be free; he could seek employment elsewhere; he could have the hill-side if not the valley; and if nothing belonged to him, he would at least belong to himself. Nor is this the worst. It is in the moral part of his being that he suffers most; and the less degraded he is, the more must he suffer. His wife and his children can but remind him of engagements unfulfilled and trusts betrayed. In that career of courage and of virtue, the dignity of which is perhaps greatest when exhibited in humble life, his sons and his daughters can have no part. They have been defrauded even of their opportunities, and have miserably lost the race they never ran.' The gin-shop, if it can shelter him from their looks, their words, or their silence, is his quietest asylum. For the wounds which

1850.

Effect of Pauperism on Domestic Relations.

6

5

the heart inflicts on itself, the heart takes a terrible revenge. Whether it be assailed wittingly or unwittingly, it arms itself against its persecutors, in hostility or in indifference. The offspring of the inferior animals are bound to them by no abiding tie. Too often the offspring of paupers are as little loved, though less easily cast off. They came undesired; they remained to oppress and insult; they never looked like children: - from infancy they were lawless as manhood, and querulous as old age; they grew up a greater burden to themselves than to others. Love, it is said, is stronger than death': It is not stronger than pauperism. Not long since public attention was attracted, less pointedly, perhaps, than it would once have been, by the case of a mother who had successively murdered every one of her children, applying arsenic to the breast which they sucked! She betrayed no signs of remorse; remarking merely that she had saved her children from the troubles she had herself endured. The aberrations of crime, like those of madness, are often ominous illustrations of tendencies still held in check. But even had that wretched woman restricted her wickedness within safer bounds, those children could never have been to her as children.

If that one of the affections which is most propped by instinct, can be thus subverted; if parents can, at periods of distress, neglect their children to the death, or at periods of large employment can live in sloth upon their labour, defrauding them of rest and education, it is impossible that the other human relations should escape the corruption. Children whose parents have not loved or ruled them with a true, parental heart, will, at the hearth itself, look round for parents in vain. Men and women are no doubt visible and palpable beings; but there is nothing in their merely outward semblance by which Father or Mother, brother or sister, can be truly recognised. As well might we endeavour to look beyond the mead, the lawn, and the wood, and behold our country, with the bodily eye alone. These sacred relations belong not to the material world; the senses take no cognisance of them: Like all things of inward significance and permanent worth, we discern them only through the immaterial part of our nature the affections, the moral sense, and religious faith. A child no more beholds an earthly than a heavenly parent, merely with the outward eye; but his heart inherits a belief in each; and with each he becomes acquainted through outward signs and symbols. Without a parental heart, a parent may be to his children as a relieving officer, or a schoolmaster, or a gaoler, or a guardian, or the union of all these but a father he cannot be; and not showing himself as such, all the devout impulses of filial love, reverence, and awe