In the beginning, the notion of the French government was, that its new conquest would colonise itself unassisted; that there would be a natural and steady flow of emigrants from the mother country. In any case this expectation would probably have proved fallacious--at least it would never have been realised to the extent anticipated; but the small encouragement given to such emigration, rendered it utterly abortive. The "stream" of settlers proved a mere dribble. Security and justice, Mr Thiers said, were all that France owed her colony. Even these two things were not obtained, in the full sense of the words. The centralisation system weighed upon Algeria. Everything was referred to Paris. Hence interminable correspondence, and delays innumerable. In the year 1846, Mr Borrer says, twenty-four thousand despatches were received by the civil administration from the chief _bureau_ in the French capital, in exchange for twenty-eight thousand sent. Instead of imparting all possible celerity to the administrative forms requisite to the establishment of emigrants, these must often wait a year or more before they are put in possession of the land granted. Meanwhile they expend their resources, and are enervated by idleness and disease. The climate of North Africa is ill-adapted to French constitutions. M. Desjobert has already told us the average loss of the army, and General Duvivier, in his _Solution de la Question d'Algérie_, fully corroborated his statements. "A man," said the general, "whose constitution is not in harmony with the climate of Africa, never adapts himself to it; he suffers, wastes away, and dies. The expression, that a mass of men who have been for some time in Africa have become inured to the climate, is inexact. They have not become inured to it; they have been _decimated by death_. _The climate is a great sieve, which allows a rapid passage to everything that is not of a certain force._" Supposing 100,000 men sent from France to Algeria for six years' service. At the end of that time, their loss by disease alone, at the rate of six per cent--proved by M. Desjobert to be the annual average--would amount to upwards of 30,000, or to more than three-tenths of the whole. The emigrants fare no better. "They look for milk and honey," says Borrer: "they find palmetta and disease. The villages scattered about the Sahel or Massif of Algiers (a high ground at the back of the city, forming a rampart between the Metidja and the Mediterranean) are, with one or two exceptions, a type of desolation. Perched upon the most arid spots, distant from water, the poor tenants lie sweltering between sun and sirocco." A Mississippi swamp must be as eligible "squatting" ground as this--Arabs instead of alligators, and the Algerine fever in place of Yellow Jack. "At the gates of Algiers, in the villages of the Sahel," said the "_Algérie_" newspaper of the 22d December 1845, "the colonists desert, driven away by hunger. If any remain,