Summary of Principles illustrated in this Volume.
Two kinds of colonization have been adopted by the British Empire;—Colonization for the reduction of our home-population,—or Voluntary Emigration;—and Penal Colonization.
The term Colonization is by some applied to a third process, which they wish to see introduced into this country; viz.—Home Colonization.
The objects of Voluntary Emigration, directed by the state, are threefold.
1st. To improve the condition of those who emigrate, by placing them where they may obtain subsistence at less cost than at home.
2d. To improve the condition of those who remain, by increasing the ratio of capital to population.
3d. To improve the condition of the colonized region.
To fulfil the 1st of these objects, the colony must be so located as to insure health and abundance to its members; and it must be so organized as to secure the due co-operation of labour and capital.
To fulfil the 2d object, the removal of each individual must be less costly than his maintenance at home would be; and the selection must be made with a view to lessening the amount of human productiveness at home.
To fulfil the 3d object, the colonists must be selected with a view to their productiveness, both as regards capital and population; which includes a moral fitness to compose an orderly society.
It follows from all these considerations that a new settlement should be composed of young, healthy, and moral persons; that all should not be labourers, nor all capitalists; and that there should be a sufficient concentration of their numbers on the new lands to insure a facility of exchanges.
Home colonies may afford a temporary relief to a redundant population, and also increase the productiveness of the lands which they appropriate; but this is done by alienating capital from its natural channels; and with the certainty of ultimately injuring society by increasing the redundancy of population over capital.
Home colonization then, though less injurious than the unproductive distribution of the Charity-fund, is inferior to foreign colonization, inasmuch as the one yields temporary benefit to a few at the expense of ultimate injury to many; and the other produces permanent benefit to all.
The objects of Penal Colonization are,
1st. The security of society by the removal of the offender.
2d. The security of society by the effect of his example.
3d. The reformation of the offender.
There has hitherto been an entire failure of all these objects. And no wonder; since,
1st. The offender is only transferred from one portion of society to another: and besides, frequently returns to his old haunts.
2d. His punishment, as far as it is punishment, takes place at too great a distance to be conspicuous as a warning; and in as far as his lot does not involve punishment, the effect of his example is precisely the reverse of what is desired.
3d. Our convict arrangements tend to the further corruption of the offender, by letting him experience a great improvement in his condition as a direct consequence of his crimes.
The junction of penal with voluntary emigration tends equally to disappoint the purposes of the one, and to extinguish the benefits of the other; since convict labourers find themselves in a state of privilege, in a region where their labour procures them large rewards; and new settlers find their community deeply injured by the vice and disease consequent on the introduction of a convict population.