But, even if practicable, if carried out into complete execution, it remains to be considered whether the measure proposed would really have the effect contemplated by our theorist--that of supplying the capitalist with the labour he needs. With a certain number of _labourers_ it might,--but of what character? It is not a remote possibility that will influence a common day-labourer to save his earnings. It is one of the terms of the proposition that high wages are to be given; for without these there would be no emigration, and certainly no fear of a too speedy promotion to the rank of proprietor. It follows, therefore, that you have a class of men earning high wages, and not under any strong stimulus to save--a class of men always found to be the most idle and refractory members of the community. A journeyman who has no pressing motive for a provident economy, and who earns high wages, is almost invariably a capricious unsteady workman, on whom no dependence can be placed; who will generally work just so many days in the week as are necessary to procure him the enjoyments he craves. One of these enjoyments is indolence itself,--a sottish, half-drunken indolence. Drinking is the coarse pleasure of most uneducated men: it is so even in the old country; and in a colony where there are still fewer amusements for the idle hour, it becomes almost the sole pleasure. How completely it is the reigning vice of our own colonies is known to all. Imagine a labourer in the receipt of high wages, little influenced by the remote prospect of becoming, by slow savings, a proprietor of land--and feeling, moreover, that he was retained in a dependent condition, arbitrarily, artificially, expressly for the service of the capitalist--what amount of _work_ think you the capitalist-farmer would get from such a labourer? Not so much in seven years as he would have had from him in two, if, at the end of that two, the man had calculated upon being himself a farmer. Recollect that it is not slave labour, or convict labour, that we are here dealing with: it is the free labour of one man working for another man, at wages. He gets all the wages he can, and gives as little labour as he can. If the wages are high, and the inducement to save but feeble, he will probably earn by one day's work what will enable him to pass the two next in idleness and debauchery. What boon will Mr Wakefield have conferred upon the capitalist? The theory of a "sufficient price" is, therefore, placed in this hopeless predicament:--1. It would be almost impossible to enforce it; and, 2. If enforced, it would fail of its purpose. It would supply the capitalist with inefficient, profligate, and idle workmen, on whose steady co-operation and assistance he could never calculate.