The Sun.
London, England, 1849-05-25 00:00:00

acres on the Australian Agricultural Company.
Well, he supposed that as many gentlemen as were
then present in that House—although the number
was not very large—with friends and some
mountaineers chose to transfer themselves into
some portion of the million of acres possessed by the
Australian Agricultural Company. Suppose, atter a
favourable voyage, they landed in Australasia, and find-
ing themselve. in an admirable climate, they asked them-
selves where they were. There was no provision, no
legislative protection for those English emigrants in any
portion of that dominion, and he begged his Hon. Friend
the Under-Secretary for the Colonies, to remark that.
There was no law, no Government, whereby they would
be protected thereafter. He asked, was that assertion
true; and if it were so, was it not a most extraordinary
and lamentable fact, that in their vast colonial empire,
there should be no rule or legislative principle on which
a bsnd of emigrants could know how to act. If they
went to Canada, Nova Scotia, or the colonial possessions
of North America, they might find there both laws and
government in existence; but within a few miles of Eng-
lish territories, on the waste lands of North America, in

the wilds, and new part of the world, a different result
would ba found. Ho wanted the colony of North America
to extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific. He wanted

not only Nova Scotia to be inhabited, but the opposite
shore of the Pacific as well. He wanted that Van-
couver's Island, which they had given away, should, by
a proper system of government, be put in such a stal.e
as to be able to stand in comparison with what tie
neighbouring United States t:,rr►tory of Oregon would
speedily be. But, from the present system of go-
vernment, there was no hope of that being done. Let
the House consider how far they were behind the United
States in their system of colonization. In 1783 the
principle of American independence was cone ailed,
and by the treaty of Paris the boundaries of
what was afterwards termed the United States were
marked. Since then, however, the United Stat.es had
increased in dies to four times the extent of the bounda-
ries recognised by that treaty, while its people, which
at the passing of that treaty, in 1783, numbered three
millions, had increased to twenty-five millions. In Canada
the population at that time was 200,000, but with a
much larger and more fertile territory than the United
States. The population had since increased only by two
millions. Now, how was that? It was said the United
States had increased by the combination of large
tracts of territory into smaller departments, as if the
population of the counties of England were located in
one, and had increased in number in that respect ;
but the fact was, the increase in the population was
not composed of Americans, it .was composed of
English, Irish, and Scotch, who had emigrated

to the United States. That increase of p‘Opuls-
don was still going an. He had himself received the

other day a letter from parties in Sheffield, who stated
that they were a portion of his constituents, and that
they were about leaving this country for Texas, and the
purport of the letter was a request that ho should com-
municate with Mr. Bancroft, the American Minister at

;his Court, and endeavour to get that gentleman to use

his influence with the Presid;rit of the United States to

give them a grant of 4,000 acres of land. There was
established in Sheffield, he believed, what was called the

Sheffield Free Emigration Society, and these people
were going out under its auspices. But he would ask
why should they go to the United States, why not to
their own colonies? The reason was, that should they
do so, they would leave this country in a state of doubt
and uncertainty. There was no rule or law laid down
for their guidance, by which they could by any means
shaduw forth to themselves the means of future subsist-

ence, and they knew well that were they, to lose their
present position, and go to a country where they were
unknown,. whgre no means were taken to
,render their
position such as they could subsist on, they would be
running upon utter...ruin to themselves and their fatni-
lies. If there was a rule or law.whiohtextended over all

the colonies, to give people an idea of wbai position they
would occupy, or what they might expect should they go
to, any of them, the case would be altered; but there was
no such law.—(Hear, hear.) There was nothing but the
mere will of the Colonial.otfice, and that will never even

put on paper; for if it once made a fixed rule, it would
be so far beneficial, but it was not so. _ That, then, was a

matter which ought first to be attended to. Now he was
aware that to attempt by one Act to apply a general rule

for all the colonies would be injudicious: St;ine of them

he did not consider colonies in the sense he meant, such us
.1141 ca and the lonian Islands. These were not places
where they sent the English people to mike new
homes and occupations for themselves. That was a

colony, in his view of the case, which was planted
by Englishmen, who had gone there with the intention
of making that colony their home; and to such colonies
it was the Bill he would Propose to introluee would

- -
refer. It would not interfere with the West IndiAn colo-
--

Dies, for there the difference of population was so great;
the slave, though now free, was so different in habits
and feelings, from the white man, that special legisla-
tion was required for so special a state of society. The
colonies his measure would have reference to, therefore,
would be the North American colonies, South Africa,
Australasia, and New Zealand. One system of law he

considered applicable to all these, and lie would describe
it. He had already said that England had reaped con-
siderable advantages from her colonies, but she could not

expect to do so longer under the old system, for the old
cry of ships, colonies, and commerce, was no longer the
order of the day. The navigation-laws being repealed,
or he hoped would be so, the species of trade carried on
under them would no longer work, and that being the

case, what species of tradeought they to have recourse
to in order to render their colonies prosperous, and
from which the country could derive any benefit?

They could only hope to derive such benefit by
m acing those colonies independent communities,
dependent, of course, on the Crown, but having
laws applicable to their state and position, such

as would create an increase of their means an'-!

population, and by that in, ans create a demand
among their population for that which this country
produced, thus giving rise to a system of reciprocal
trading, free in the indirect sense of the term.—(Bear,
hear.) Their desire ought, therefore, to be to make
these e)lones as large and populous as possible, and to

do that a regular law ou2hi io be !rained to aid and

direct those who might wish to go to them and to in-
duce people to do so. In the framing of that law he
saw no reason why they might not follow the example
of the United States. It might be said that the United

States bad a more fertile sal and better climate, and

therefore no comp!,rison could be made between the co

lonization of it and that of Canada. But both the climate
and the soil of Upper Canada were superior to that of the
United States, at least the corresponding parts of them.
No place, in fact, appeared mote advantageous to the
establishment of an extended trade than did Upper Canada;
and if they would only pass such measures as would give
an opportunity to bring out its resources, it would soon
assume a different aspect from what it now bore. He
would therefore propose to pass an Act of Parliatnent
something similar to that passed by the United States Con-
federation in 1787, for the pupose of effecting a similar
ead. The moment the people of the United States found
themselves an independent nation the Confederation
passed one comprehensive law, which regulated the
whole colonization of their vast north-western territory,
which now has divided into five sovereign states, told
included in the union. That Act provided for the gra-
dual appropriation and improvement of waste land, until
it should become such ati to be laid out in separate
settled communities, and by its operation five magnifi-
cent sovereign states had been carried out of that vast
territory since the year 1787. Across the river St.
Lawrence they saw all that doing; but though under a
better climate, and living in a more fertile soil, they had
failed to follow the example so nobly set them. He
would, therefore, have free trade and self-government,
and these were the two principal propesetons of the
measure he sought to introduce. He would wish in that
measure to lay down that no land should be parted with
by the Crown, unless it lay within the boundary of some
distant settlemeet, meaning by settlement a portion of
territory not included in any recognised state. In that
respect he was adopting the United States system. The
waste land he would have divided into settlements and
let out ace trdingly ; and when—say in the course of five
years—the Surveyor should report tbat the population
of such settlement had risen to 10,000, it should cease
to be a settlement, and become a province. That was
not the case now, for the colonies were lett to fight their
unhappy way against difficulties insurmountable in their
present state, and no care or attention whatever paid
them. Not long since a Bill passed in reference to New
Zealand, but even when it did pass, he did not believe
twenty Members in that House knew anything about it.
—(Hear, hear.) It was sent out to New Zealand, and
the Governor sent it back, stating it was of no use—it
would not work. And the Colonial Secretary, finding
out his error, came to that House, and asked it to can-
e elthe measure. That showed the base system of legis-
lation
objection
purswueads
entertained towards
en
those colonies.th e
part
eI
ft.
twhaes sa i dno
Govern-
ment as to giving,those colonies a system of self-govern-
ment, but that the
had
dloniste themselves. did not wish it.
oaweanvedr,
Canada,Australa shiZealand.
it. It was talked of in
of the objections to granti
New And what then became
call the attention of the Hong the system? He' would
of
Neuwsezfiernaltantdo, the opinions of
the Colonial Secretary which was well
known to be a fertile country and a goad climate
, at a
tents that 10,000 Englishmen made application to that
functionary to enable them to take land there. What
did they think was the answer of the Colonial officer?
I'he Secretary for the Colonies said that New Zealand
was a very troublesome sore; that he did not want to
have anything to do with it. What was the result?
Those adventurous Englishmen, with stubborn good
sense, quarrelled with the secretary, and put him down.
That should serve as an example to every Government
that colonists were worthy of the parental interest of
their own Government. Again, let them look to those
pilgrim fathers when they drew up their agreements on
the Thames, how they had th castea
off ti of
theh.eirall Colonialegianceto
the English Crown through apathy
Secretary.
Lord J. RUSSELL—No, no.
lr.lNlOnE,,,BhnUCtl(h—e•TlgeNivobtlheat LordNe(w LerdJ.
said ~ Zealandcountr
not then supposed to belong to
this
Longonsul afterand that
atetimewitthhisthecounathreyr'igsineenst aosut
C
independent an
eit a
n ni.Then,
state, and
after thenthis
y.
enteredtreat into
those Englishmen t h 'Treatye
were subjected to the greatest butailiition and dt s
are
sosi:
lt,g
the savage natives denying that they had made a.teldy
venant for the land that the emigrants possess
all
this was owing to the want of any rule or any law on
the part of the Government of this country in that
treaty to protect their fellow subjects. However, a
Governor was sent out, but where woe he sent to? Not
to that part where those 10,000 settlers located them
selves, but to where a few missionaries had settled, in
the north, three hundred miles distant from them.
Government then objected to their tit2e, though they
afflined that they had purchased it from the aborigines,
and the result was that they and the Government of that
time quarrelled about the land. In a word, the want of
some systematic rule or law checks any improvement