The Express.
London, England, 1848-06-15 00:00:00

utmost delicacy. It is rendered more difficult than it
would otherwise be by the circumstance that through-
out the far greater part of our colonial dominions we
cannot begin de nor° ; the measures taken to pro-
mote colonisation must in the greater part of our
colonies be adapted to institutions and economical
relationsalready existing. England's system of col°.
siltation, if ever it have one, can at best only be the
most efficient that the circumstances of our existing
colonies will permit us to adopt.
In tho British North American colonies a large
proportion of the waste lands—far exceeding what
the existing populations can profitably occupy—have
been thriftlessly and mischievously alienated from
the crown—the trustee which holds them for the
advantage of the general community. The remainder
have at different times been placed at the disposal of
the local legislatures ; and respecting their allotment
—respecting the manner in which emigrants are here-
after to be settled upon them—the imperial govern-
ment can in future exercise only an indirect and very
feeble influence. In those districts of our South
African Colonies which are situated to the east
of the Great Kai, the waste lands are still
vested in the crown : but in the western divi-
sion they have been granted away with even
more improvidence than in North America ; and
in the eastern the mode of settlement will be
complicated by questions of native title, and compacts
which the accredited agents of government have en-
tered into with the natives. At Natal, the relations
which exist between government and the families of
l)utch race, whose irregular settlement there has been
the main cause of our annexing the territory, will
proven fertile source of almost insuperable embarrass-
ments. lii great part of New Zealand the same difti•
cultie a will be found to exist, and to a still more for-
midable extent than slonit the eastern frontier of the
Cape colony. In Van Diemen 's Land the proportion
of available soil already allotted places the colony
almost in the same circumstances as British North
America; and the atter-workings of the con-
vict transportation systi m have introduced a
new element of disturbance. As to the Aus-
tralian continent, from Spencer's Gulf to con-
siderably north of Moreton Bay it will be
found extremely difficult, if not impossible, to intro-
duce and enforce a satisfactory system of colonisation.
Over the whole of that wide range of country, govern-
ment could scarcely assign a locality to a new band
of settlers without it:teetering with some stockholder
or stockholders who have already occupied its best
parts. It is all very well for the gentlemen of pens
and paper in Downing-street to say that these occu-
pants have no legal title—that they can at the utmost
lay claim only to a lease of a limited tract. They are in
possession ; they are at a great distance from this coun-
try; and, de f tete, it will be found impossible either
to oust them or bring them to conform to
any system of settlement the government
of the mother country may prescribe that they
may deem hostile to their interests. In Western
Australia there is scarcely any geed land, within
such a distance of the shipping ports as would
render it eligible or available fur settlement in the
present circumstances of the colony, that has not
already its owner, or at least a claimant advancing a
very termidable title.
We have confined this retrospect to our extra-
tropical colonies, for of such only is there any use is
talking with a view to the relief to the continually
recurring local pressure of population upon the means
of subsistence—or, more properly, upen the field of
profitable investment for capital and labour. And
it will be sufficiently apparent, even from this
cursory glance, that, although in some of these colo-
nies there are extensive tracts of yet unbroken
ground, where the task of settlement may bo begun
de maw, and in a systematic manner, in fully one half
of the yet explored portions of our dependencies any
arrange melts that may be contemplated for the settle-
ment of considerable bodies of emigrants must be en-
dertake n with great caution and due deference to the
interests and even to the opinions of organised com-
munities already established there. It will therefore
be necessary, with a view to ascertain satisfactorily
what can and ought to he done by government and
the people of this country at large to relieve its dis-
tress by pr.moting eidgention and colonisation on an
extensive scale, to censider separately the in part
already settled territories beyond seas belonging
to this country, and those which arc to all
practical inter. sty and cur ova yet unoccupied To
each of these topics w e will devote one article; and
as in the ease of the.partially settled regions the
main object will be to ssc stain the modifications to
which the general principles of colonisation must be
subj. Med, the best meth d of settling the yet un-
occupied regions will :laterally be the theme of the
first article.
Before concluding these preliminary remarks, it is
necessary to observe that the question of systematic
colonisation necessarily involves an inquiry as to
how far pur Culonial Department, as it is at
present organised, and as it stands related to the
Board of 'Dade cn the one hand, and to the Board of
Colonial Land and Emigration Commissioners on the
other, is comp tent to the tusk of superintending and
promoting the settlement of our colonial waste lands
by British emigrants in an efficient manner. But
seeing that we can only judge of its competency after
we have formed a distinct conception of the tan:, this
important subsidiary inquiry must of course be post-
, poned till we have discussed the two topics already
annourced—th : most eligible methods of colonising in
new and in partially-settled countries.

WHAT 16 Mr) body's business is nobody's, has 110(11
SO often illustrated of late j ears in the proceedings of
joint stock companies, that it has been found neces-
sary to subject such companies to the regulations of
an act of parliament, and the superintendence of a
public office. To that end two statutes have been
cnac'ed, 7 & R Vic., c. 110, and 10 & 11 Vic., c. 78,
which contain many defined conditions, to which all
joint stock companies, not regulated by special arts of
-e required to conform, and so conform-

Parliament, are rt (Duren to
tog, such companies have conferred upon them certain
benefits and ficilitier, which would not belong to them
as mere paitntrship combinations. We believe it ie
the unanimous opinion of ell persons conversant with
these acts that then is still too much latitude for the
registra'ion of ecliemes of doubtful utility and of more
than questionable propriety in methods of manage-
ment.
But there is one undoubted advantage which the
public derives from the Joint Stock Companies' Re-