Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 65, No. 403, May, 1849Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 65, No. 403, May, 1849
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
The rights of every class must, of course, be determined by a
reference to the welfare of the whole community. The poorer settler
must have his claims decided, and limited, according to rules which
embrace the interest of the empire at large. We hope we shall not be
misunderstood on so plain a matter as this. We do not contemplate the
settler as arriving on the new land unfettered by any allegiance he
owes to the old country. He belongs to civilised England; carries with
him the knowledge and the implements which her civilisation has
procured him; lives under her protection, and must submit to her laws.
But in limiting the rights of the settler in a land spreading open
before him--where nothing has taken possession of the soil but the
fertilising rain, and the broad sunshine playing idly on its
surface--you must make out a clear case, a case of claims paramount to
his own, a case which appeals to that sense of justice common to the
multitude, which will bear examination, which readily forces itself
upon an honest conviction. It must not be a mere speculative measure,
a subtle theory, hard for a plain man to understand--benevolently
meant, but, intricate in its operation, and precarious in its
result--that should come betwixt him and the free bounty of nature.
Not of such materials can you make the fence that is to coop him up in
one corner of a new-found continent. Laudable it may be, this
experiment to adjust with scientific accuracy the proportion of
capital and labour; but a man with no peculiar passion for political
economy, will hardly like to be made the subject of this experiment,
or that a scientific interest should keep his feet from the
wilderness, or his spade from the unowned soil. It would be an
ungracious act of parliament, to say the least of it, whose preamble
should run thus--"Whereas it is expedient that the labouring
population emigrating from England should be 'prevented from turning
too soon into landowners,' and thus cultivating the soil for
themselves instead of for others, Be it enacted," &c. &c.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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