the present era the most eventful in the history of the world--_the era of colonization_. Even although 450,000 (the present total yearly increase, including the present emigration of nearly 100,000) were exported annually, the future increase, from the improved condition of the great body of the people, would extend perhaps to double this number, say 1,000,000 annually, and that of our capital in a corresponding ratio; while at the same time the demand for manufactured produce, caused by the wants of the exported portion of our people, would greatly improve the home labour-demand, even with this great increase of hands. Thus our numbers would go on increasing faster at home than at present, while at the same time the country would increase in power, in a ratio still more rapid from the greater prosperity of all. It is only within a few years that the immense importance of colonization has come to be appreciated; recently the most unfavourable prejudices existed respecting it, and the most erroneous and absurd doctrines were promulgated, to feed the popular odium, by political economists; who, in their wisdom, could never solve the difficulty how Britain continued the richest nation of the world, while her resources were being wasted upon numberless useless colonies. Let us contemplate the difference of results which the resources of Britain would have accomplished had they been so _wasted_,--had they been devoted to purposes of _creation_ as they were to purposes of _destruction_ during the American and French revolutionary wars. We did not then hesitate to lavish hundreds of millions in engaging in deadly feud the European and American nations. It seems hitherto to have been the principle of Government to hold any expense incurred for purposes other than rapine or destruction as a misapplication of the national resources. A change is at hand. The reign of Queen Victoria promises to be glorious for a victory over barbarism and human misery--Colonization is the means. A tax of ten per cent. in Britain and Ireland upon land rental would be most profitably employed in carrying out labouring emigrants, and in locating them comfortably. This would be a humane and rational amendment of the English poor-law, and the best poor-law for Ireland that could be introduced. This fund, together with the proceeds of the sales of colonial lands, under judicious and economical management, would in the course of a few years have a most beneficial effect upon trade, and greatly ameliorate the condition of the working population; continued for half a century it would change the face of things over a great portion of the habitable world; and the extent of its effects, persisted in for several centuries, would be beyond even what we now can contemplate.