The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-07-04 00:00:00

SYSTEMATIC COLONIZATION.

The Colonial Church Chronicle* for the present month
contains an able article on this subject. The writer sets
out with showing the advantages which would arise to
" more than half the human race, crowding the empires
of India and China and the islands of the Eastern Seas,
if we could plant another England at the Antipodes."
Here we are too far from them, but the colonization of
Australia and New Zealand would furnish us with a lever,
at the right end of which we could effectually work, for
evangelising the millions of idalators in the East. 25,000
persons sent out annually would, at the ordinary colonial
rate, increase the amount in sixty years to 5,000,000,
nearly double the population of Scotland ; and the former
number may be'sent out annually with great benefit to
the erlony, to the mother country, acd to the emigrants
themselves. It -is proved from official sources that in
both the countries mentioned, employers suffer the very
greatest inconvenience from the paucity of farm servants.
female servants, mechanics, and that the demand
for labour is daily increasing. So great is the distress
experienced from this cause that the colonists have in
some instances imported Coolies from India, and savage
natives from the Polynesian Islands. New South Wales,
with a population of 200,000 souls, contains 8,000,000
sheep and 1,400,000 head of horned cattle, (forty sheep
and seven cows for each inhabitant,) and the colony pre-
sents the means of immediate employment during the
ensuing twelve months for 20,000 souls. As to the eff,!ct
of the projected emigration •on the mother country, we
will let the writer speak for himself :
.‘ The rate-payers are burthened with the maintenance of a
very large number of men, who come upon the rates merely
because they cannot find work. The sum expended for the
relief of the poor in England and Wales in the year 1815-0,
amounted, in round figures, to .e 5,000,000; and in the same
year the number of adult and able-bodied paupersye:ieved was
375,5 n : and the population is increasing with a rapidity hi-
therto unexampled, having been at the rate of eighty per cent..
between 1801 and 1841 ; by this time it must have nearly dou-
bled; and it is to be borne in mind, that if we proceed in the
same ratio for the next fifty years, the addition to the popula-
tion of England and Wales trill not be 9,000,00), as in the last
fifty years, but 18,000,000. The burthen of the poor rates,
though heavy every where, is not equally distributed. It is far
• the heaviest in the agricultural districts. In ten counties, in-
cluding those most distinguished for manufacturing and mining
industry, and the two metropolitan counties, namely, Cornwall,
Warwick, Middlesex, Durham, the West Riding, Chester,
Stafford, Surrey, Lancaster, and Monmouth, the poor-rates
have been at the rate of 4s. 9d. a head only ; whereas, in ten
which are strictly agricultural, namely, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex,
Cambridge, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Sussex,
Dorsetshire, and Wiltshire, the average charge has been about
9s. 6d. a-head. It results, from a comparison of that charge on
the ten most favoured counties with the rest of the kingdom,
that the kingdom pays above £1,000,000 sterling a-year more
in poor-rates than it would, if the average charge on it was no
heavier than on those ten counties. But though still great anti
alarming, the plethora of the agriculturists has been much re-
lieved by the manufacturers. Assuming the number of births
per cent, in the agricultural counties to have been as great as
in the kingdom at large, it results, from the greater increase of
numbers which has taken place in the manufacturing districts,
that between 1801 and 1841 they received from the former above
1,000,000 of their surplus population. It further appears, from
the census of 1841 as compared with that of 1831, that the num-
ber of men employed in agriculture is not increasing at, all.
And it is further probable that from the adoption of various
sanitary measures, and the general improvement of medical
science, the increase in future years will be in even a higher
ratio than in times past.. If. then, there shoal be that increase
which seems so highly probable, and if the land cannot employ
them, what is to become of them, or of the land either ? espe-
cially if, as must some day happen, the manufacturers should
come to a check, and not be able to receive the usual influx.
It really seems as if they must tail back upon the land till they
swamp all the rents, unless they be provided with a new home
in the Colonies, where they would not only cease to be burthen-
some to the land, but would become even beneficial to it by
their demand for manufactered goods, thus enabling the ma-
nufacturers to continue their usual drain of the waste water
from the land. Our export trade is already greatly indebted to
the Colonies, which, including the United States, take now
twenty-eight per cent. of our whole exports. Let us once
lodge a nation of 5,000,000 in New South Wales, which, by the
operation of natural laws, would soon become 10,000,000 and
20.000.000 and imagination can scarcely set bounds to the
demand which might arise for the products of our manufactur-
ing industry."
_ _ .

That the condition of the emigrants would be improved,
we need only refer to the extracts which we gave a week
or two since from Mr. Waghorn's pamphlet. The plenty
which is proved to exist in those distant rezions contrasts
tantalizingly with the want and misery from which too
many of the inhabitants of this country are unfortunately
suffering.

* A monthly publication, which ought to be extensively cir-
culated. It affords a valuable digest of all intelligence eon-
nected with the colonies, especially of an ecclesiastical charac-
ter.

THE COLONIAL SECRETARY AND THE SUP-
PRESSED AND GARBLED DESPATCHES.

The London Times on Tuesday volunteered a defence
of the officials of the Colonial-office from the charges
brought against them by Lord George Bentinck ; and read
a lecture to that nobleman for the alleged crime of accus-
ing men without proofs to support his accusations. The
explanation (!) given on Tuesday night, however, in the
House of Lords, and the able statement of the case by
Lord Stanley, appears to have wrought a change in our
'contempary's opinions. Admitting the possibility of an
accidental mistake, with respect to Sir C. Grey's despatch,
he coincides with Lord Stanley in condemning the conti-
nued withholding of the despatch in question, after the
error committed had been discovered, and the total sup-
pression of an important paragraph in Governor Higgin-
son's despatch. Upon the subject of the misrepresentation
of the substance of the memorial from Jamaica our con-
temporary is rather severe ; and we give his view of that
transaction at length, as confirmatory of those which we
have ourselves already expressed :
" With regard to the West Indian memorial—on which
after all, the substantive charge against Earl Grey rests—
the case is equally clear. The tendency of Earl Grey's
statement was absolutely to lead the house into gross
error. All the peers present, all who read Lord Grey's
speech, must on the strength of this memorial, so ex-
pounded to them, have arrived at the conclusion that a
number of planters were investing
capital in Jamaica—
and doing well."
" The unhappy memorialists had but little idea of the use
to which their complaints would be applied by the Colo-
nial Secretary.
" Earl Grey at the time he addressed the house VW in

possession of the following figures with which he had beers
furnished by the memorialists. They did not expect any
return for the £142,000 they had been foolish enough to
expend upon a West Indian investment. The then price
of sugar would only give them a gross return of .C 60.800
to be placed against an annual expenditure of £60,300,,
leaving a balance over expenditure of only a'iout £5OO to
go against the interest of the annual outlay, and preclud-
ing the recovery of a single shilling of the original invest-
ment. It was the memorial of these unfortunate persons
that Earl Grey used for such a purpose as the one quoted
above ! The answer of the English Secretary of State for
the Colonies, when charged with this distortion of an im-
portant document to support his own views, is this—' I ac-
cepted the testimony of the memorial as to the facts of
the case, but I did not abide by its authority in matters of
opinion.'

"The public must be left to form its own judgment ort
this state of facts. It is deplorable to find an English
statesman's name mixed up with such a transaction.
Nothing, one should imagine, but an inborn sense of
honesty and uprightness is needed in order to arrive at a.
correct decision upon this case. Who amongst our read—
ers would have taken a letter from his pocket and used its
contents in the course of business as Earl Grey did this
West Indian memorial ?"

SUICIDE OF A LADY.—At Bideford, on Wednesday
week, Mrs. Mary Madeline Bourmaster Douglas, aged
39, wife of Major Douglas, of the Royal Infantry, and
daughter of the late Gen. Sir William Dixon, committed
suicide by taking prussic acid. She had been married to
Major Douglas about 21 years. and was the mother of ten
children, seven of whom are living. The deceased, who
had been in India with her husband almost ever since
their marriage, returned to England about twelve months
ago. Major Douglas landed at Southampton some three
weeks since, and having joined the deceased at Exeter,
they repaired to Bideford, where they were lodging when
the fatal event occurred. The deceased had appeared as
usual up to the afternoon of Wednesday, although the
parsons with whom she lodged deposed that she was fre-
quently much dejected, and that her manner often sug-
gested to them doubts of her sanity. Major and Mrs.
Douglas and three of their children dined together, and
deceased seemed in good spirits, and talked with het:hus-
band, with apparent pleasure, of their proposed embarka-
tion for India in October. Soon after dinner she sud-
denly rose from the table, and after the lapse of about
half a minute returned hurriedly, and rushed into the
drawing-room, where she fell senseless on the floor.
Messengers were despatched for a surgeon, who arrived
within five minutes, when he found life not suite extinct,
but death occurred within a minute of his arrival. A bot-
tle was found on deceased's dressing table, which had con-
tained prussic acid, which it appears she had procured in
two separate quantities under pretence of poisoning cats.
A BILL STEALING AND THREATENING-LETTER Es-
TADLISHMENT.—Mr. Robinson, the Superintendent of
the P division of Police, waited on Wednesday on Mr.
Elliott, at Lambeth-offiee, to report to the Magistrate the
result of his inquiries respecting a gang of swindlers in the
Albany-road and Kent-road, who appear to have carried
on a system of fraud to a most incredible extent. The
transactions being carried on in writing, the persons
duped never saw the face of the sharpers by whom they
were swindled, and cannot therefore identify them. From
the amber of names assumed by the swindlers, it seems
almost hopeless to bring home any specific charge to
them. The " firm" had agents in various parts of the
country, to ascertain who were the most, needy tradesmen ;
to these circulars were sent, offering " good" bills in ex-
change for goods. One of the body, whuse name has
been ascertained to be Roulledge, had a large warehouse
in the Kent-road, and flour, furniture, and other property
were frequently brought there, and immediately after re-
moved again. Money was also extorted by the gang
from timid persons, particularly clergymen, by threats of
exposure. In one case a baronet in a northern county
had been duped to the amount of nearly one thousand
pounds, without ever seeing the party by whom he had
been swindled. The trades in the neighbourhood, though
well acquainted with the practices of the swindlers, re-
fused to give the slightest information regarding them, on
the ground that they were good customers, who paid re-
gularly, and that they had nothing to do with their private
affairs. From documents forwarded to the officers, it ap-
pears that the parties were engaged in Loan Societ'es, and
in railroad and other speculations. George Roulledge, or
Captain Roulledge, is the registered promoter of the
Great Anglo-China Railway and Dock Company ; his
name is to the scrip of the Grant Southern of Madras
Railway Company as a director. The co-register of Cap-
tain Roulledge in the first mentioned Company, kept a
small butcher's shop in Hoxton sour) years ago, and at
present rides in an elegant carriage, and has his country
mansion, with a retinue of servants.