Illustrations of political economy, Volume 9 (of 9)Martineau, Harriet
General
Illustrations of political economy, Volume 9 (of 9)
Martineau, Harriet
Didactic fiction, English; Political fiction, English; Social problems -- Fiction
Home colonization then, though less injurious than the unproductive
distribution of the charity-fund, is inferior to foreign
colonization, inasmuch as the one yields temporary benefit to a few
at the expense of ultimate injury to many; and the other produces
permanent benefit to all.
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All provisions for rewarding forethought and economy, and
especially all for the diffusion of sound moral and political
knowledge, approve themselves by this test. All contrivance and
care in the production and economy of capital approve themselves
also; but Emigration is conspicuous in its merits, since it not
only immediately reaches the seat of the evil in the mother
country, but affords the greatest of blessings to the colonized
regions. If regulated by a due regard to the infallible test, it
is scarcely possible to conceive of an arrangement more apt to all
the purposes of society. Where it has failed, the reason of
failure has commonly been that one link in the chain of operating
causes has been wanting. Land and labourers cannot mutually
prosper without the capital which has too often been deficient. We
have not yet made the experiment of sending out small societies
completely organized, and amply provided to settle down at once in
a state of sufficient civilization to spare the mother-country all
further anxiety about the expedition. It can be no objection to
this that it abstracts capital and the most useful species of
labour from the mother-country: since the capital so sent out will
yield a more rapid and ample increase to us in a new market for
commerce than it could have done at home; and the labour is that
which we least want at home,—however good its quality may be,—and
that which we most want in our possessions on the other side the
world. Such an organized society, however, would be able to bear a
much larger proportion of children than a similar society could
take charge of at home,—the labour of children being of as much
more value than their maintenance abroad, as it is less at home.
If for every old person naturally belonging to such a company,
left behind, two children were taken out, this country would be
immediately compensated for the abstraction of prime labour, and a
provision would be made for the future contraction of the
population. All details, however, from the greatest to the least,
will be arranged with infinitely less trouble than our parochial
mismanagements have cost us when we have once, as a nation,
surveyed the dreary haunts of our pauperized classes, and then
taken a flight in spirit to the fair regions abroad which invite
their labour with a sure promise of rich recompense. The time must
come when it will be a matter of wonder how we could so long be
oppressed with a redundancy of labour at home, while our foreign
lands were dreary only for want of labour, while an open sea lay
between, while we had shipping to spare to traverse it, and while
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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