The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1880-09-18 00:00:00

AN ENGLISH COLONY IN TENNESSEE.

Writing from Philadelphia on the 31st of August, the
Correspondent of Ths Tintss says a—

"Mr. Thomas Hughes, M.P., is at prasent in the
United States in a mission on behalf of the English
Emigration Association to foufid its first American
colony. The association has bought 300,000 acres
of land, the tract extending through four counties
of Eastern Tennessee. It is a fertile plateau in the
valley of the Cumberland rivgx,; and Mr. Hughes
willinaugurate the colonizAcn project during
September by visiting the locality and delivering
an address. The land has been surveyed and laid
out in farms; some settlers are already there;
hotels, nurseries, and fruit orchards have been
started; towns are planned with extensive reserva-
tions for parks; and the colony is starting under
favourable auspices. The colonists are not expected
to be of the poor classes, but will be English tenant-
farmers, well-to-do tradesmen, manufacturers and the
Ounger sons of the gentry. Mr. Hughes desires to
bind the colony together, give it a motto, and
establish an esprit cIC corps thlt will take pride in
justifying English pluck and stimulate the colonists
in their work. His mission has been warmly welcomed
bey the American Press, and it is understood that the E ng-
hsh colony will probably be supplemented by another i
of New England people formed n Boston. There is
some friendly criticism, however, expressed as to the
supposed design of the English colony to remain ex-
clusively English and not assimilate with the rest of
the people. The New York Tribune is particularly
anxious on this score, and says that such a policy will
not be judicious. It warns them against making the
colony too exclusively English either in spirit or in
material. No matter what help be given the colonists
it home the hard fact remains that they have the
virgin soil and unbroken forest to conquer and must
fight their way through difficulties of which the Eng-
lish tradesman and tenant-farmer have known
nothing, and under laws, among customs, and in a
eommunity totally different from those they leave
behind. The sooner they forget they are English trades
men or gentry and become simply colonists and Ameri-
cans the more likely they will be to succeed. The Tribune
points out the many colonies in the United States
which at the beginning were exclusively German,
Scotch, Norwegian, or French, and where the
customs, prejudices, and language of their native
lands were retained. This plan may have made the
colony a more comfortable home for the earlier emi-
grants, but it was only when their children began to
feel themselves to be Americans and began to compete
with Americans in their own ways and spirit that the
colonies held their ow" among the neighbouring com-
munities. Mr. Hughes is, in most friendly language,
warned against the disadvantage of fostering an ex-
clusive spirit in his colony, the project being one
which requires something more than capital—a sound
theory and rhilanthropy to carry out."

Mr. Hughes has called
.the first town of his new
colony Rugby.

Th,e Times has a leader on the project of Mr.
Hughes, from which we make following extracts :

Their founder or leader is Mr. Thomas Hughes, and it is
from his own Rugby that the sacred fire has been brought
for the new, or future, or paulo post-future Rugby in
Tennessee. The example bids fair to be contagious. New
England is about to start her own colony in friendly rivalry
with that from the old country. There is room in Tennessee
for all of them, and for the first generation,sat least, there
will be no need for the specially devised shibboleth which is
to show which is which.
America is the land of experiments. From the days of the
Pilgrim Fathers downwards, she has ever been the nurse or
fruitful mother of societies of all kinds, with all sorts of
political and religious and social objects. Is equality the
aim? Where can it be looked for so hopefully as in a country
where all men are equal? For those who are discontented
under the laws of Europe there are shelter and toleration and
the promise of a warm welcome from some section or other in
America. The man who can do nothing under the hard condi-
tions of life which the crowded old world imposes may get a
fair start and wide elbow room in the broad unappropriated
regions which America still offers him. Does he wish for
two wives or five wives or fifty wives? It is to America that
he must look for the satisfaction of his bold requirements.
Does he wish to get rid of his one wife? He will have help
here, too. The rules of divorce are short and simple, and in
some of the States the mere utterance of his wish will be
enough. Socialism in all its forms is represented in the
United States. There are brotherhoods, in some places
of free property, in others of free love. In the possible
relations of human life what new change remains wirung,
what new experiment untried? We must look for an
answer to Mr. Thomas Hughes and to the prospectus of the
Tennessee colony. The scheme they represent is not en-
tirely new, but it is to be tried under new conditions.
The early settlers in New England came out with sub-
stantially the same ideas. But they came out to a waste
land which they could make in every way their own.
There was no busy life around them to tempt them from
their purpose, or to seek to incorporate them with
itself. Even so, they have not succeeded in the
end. Their artificial barrier have been so broken down, and
their special laws so forgotten or set aside that they are a
peculiar people no longer. The Tennessee colony will have
stronger influences to contend against. With whatever pur-
pose it may start, and however firmly it may keep itself to
Itself during the first few years of its life, it must be
beaten in the lorg run. In spite of its motto
and its esprit de corps, and the promised pluck of its
members, the great vortex will suck it in, and will fling it
back again in a pure American form. It is by its own
virtues that it must perish. It is not distinct enough to
survive. . . . It is a question of a few years at most. If the
children of the new settlers hold their ground at all, they
will hold it as Americans. It is well for every reason that
they should. It is no enviable lot that of aliens on a foreign
soil, with no country anywhere, and no political rights or
duties. Men of English race are not likely to be satisfied with
it or to submit to it. They will seek to have a voice with
thefrest, to assert themselves as citizens of some country,
and to take their share in the making as well as in
the obeying of its laws. From that moment they will
be doomed, and they will meet their fate gladly. We are a
little surprised that. with this certain prospect in view, Mr.
Thomas Hughes and his associates should have chosen the
United States as the place in which their settlement is to be
fixed. Central Africa would have served their purpose better;
or, if they shrink from such an expatriation as this, there are
English possessions in abundance with a soil as fruitful, as
that of Tennessee, just as little encumbered by over-settle-
ment, and with the special advantage of having English
and not American air to breathe. Does Mr. Thomas Hughes
think to produce an impression upon America and ta win
her back to her allegiance by the bright example of what
English pluck can do? The Wesleyan minister who went
out to convert the Pope had scarcely a more hopeless mis-
sion. Ile will find the Americans in no conscious need of
the example he offers them, or rather—as he may have
begun to see already—afore inclined to teach than to learn.
What, indeed, have they to learn? They, too, when they
crossed the Atlantic brought English pluck with them,
and together with pluck a full English capability
of hard work, and they have since developed more
than an English inventiveness in turning labour to
account. What example the Tennessee colony will
set is not known at present, and must be looked at with
the eye of faith. The example of America is patent to the
common gaze. America has done all, and more than all,
the Tennessee colony can hope to do. When the new Rugby
has been built and the new farms brought under the plough,
and when fruit has been gathered from the new orchards,
what will be the new lesson which all this activity is to
impress? What is there specially English about it? The
thing to be done has been done a thousand times over, and
as well done, possibly better. • . .

The colonists, we read, are beginning to arrive. Some are
there already. They are drawn, or to be draw, not from
the poor classes, but from the substantial middle classes.
The list of the expected looks well. They are just the sort
of people whom a colonizing agent might most wish to
seoure But, unfortunately, they are for the most part not
at all the sort of people to whom a colonizing agent would
address himself. Well-to-do tradesmen and manufacturers
are not likely to be so overcome by the spirit of enterprise as
to be tempted out to seek a living in Tennessee. If a bird
in the hand is worth two in the bush, two birds in the hand
are certainly worth one in the bush. Among tenant-farmers
there is more hope of converts. But here, too, the
same rule will hold good. It will not be the successful
tenant farmers, but the unsuccessful ones, not the brightest
specimens of what English pluck and skill can do, but the
examples of what want of pluck and skill can bring a man
to, who will follow Mr. Hughes to Tennessee. Last in the
list come the younger sons of the gentry. We have little
doubt that some of these may be caught, and no doubt what-
ever that they will be found capable of improvement after-
wards. . . . We make no question that they will bring the
needful pluck with them, and that when they. set to work
—possibly for the first time in their lives--they will address
themselves to it with a good heart. But they will be an
leexsa ms
np lleo,negv
age n
os,o
b,
unto to to
eirmoewrinc asnpse,
cwi
ehs who t hhaov
me
el.e the