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 ancients, says Dr Hind, "began by nominating to the honourable
office of captain, or leader of the colony, one of the chief men, if
not the chief man of the state--like the queen bee leading the
workers. Monarchies provided a prince of the blood royal; an
aristocracy its choicest nobleman; a democracy its most influential
citizen." In order to entice some one of our gentry--some one of
wealth, station, and cultivated mind, to act as "queen bee" of the
colony--seeing that a prince of the blood royal, or a Duke of
Northumberland, would be hard to catch--the Doctor proposes to bestow
upon him a patent of nobility. Wealth he has already, and wealth would
not bribe him, but honour might. We see nothing ridiculous whatever in
the suggestion. A patent of nobility might be much worse bestowed;
but, unless we err greatly in our notion of what colonisation really
is, the bribe would be lamentably insufficient. The English gentleman
of fortune and of taste, who should leave his park and mansion in the
county of Middlesex, to share the squabbles and discomforts of a crowd
of emigrants--too often turbulent, anxious, and avaricious--would have
well earned his earldom. He would be a sort of hero. Men of such a
temper you may decorate with the strawberry leaf, but it is not the
coronet, nor any possible bribe--nothing short of a certain thirst for
noble enterprise can prompt them.
The other ideal of what colonisation might be is quite the reverse,
presents a picture every way opposite to this of our classical dean.
Many energetic and not uncultured spirits, wearied with the endless
anxieties, cares, hypocrisies, and thousand artificialities of life,
are delighted with the idea of breaking loose from the old trammels
and conventionalities of civilisation. Their romance is to begin life
afresh. Far from desiring to form a part of the little model-England,
they would take from the Old World, if possible, nothing more than
knowledge, seeds, and tools. To a fresh nature they would take a fresh
heart, and a vigorous arm. Fields rescued by themselves from the waste
should ripen under their own eyes. Thus, with a rude plenty, care and
luxury alike cut off, no heartburnings, no vanity, a cultivated temper
and coarse raiment--they and their families, and some neighbours of
kindred dispositions, would really enjoy the earth, and the being God
had given them. Not theirs the wish to see a matured society spring
from the new soil. They regret to think that their own rustic
community must inevitably advance, or decline, into some one of the
old forms of civilisation; but they and their children, and perhaps
their grandchildren, would be partakers of a peculiar and envied state
of social existence, where the knowledge and amenity brought from the
old country would be combined with the healthy toil and simple
abundance of the new; where life would be unanxious, laborious, free;
where there would be no talk of wars, nor politics, nor eternal
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