XXXVIII. 1839. 13. ment of onists in land. CHAP direct representation into the imperial legislature, exposed the colonies without any shield to the rule of adverse interests in the heart of the empire, they must soon have broken off from British connection had they not been rendered practically self-governed, and thus retained in their allegiance by the firm and enduring bond of mutual interest. The year 1839 is remarkable as being the first in First settle- which a body of emigrants landed. from the British British col- shores to establish a settlement in NEW ZEALAND. In New Zea- October of that year the "Tory" sailed from the Clyde with some hundred emigrants on board, bound for that distant and then almost unknown land. It was known to be intersected by lofty mountains, which gave promise of mineral riches, abounding in grassy vales, watered by pure and perennial streams, and blessed by a genial climate, equally removed from the snows of the arctic or the heats of the torrid zone. But it was known also to be inhabited by a race of savages who had acquired an unenviable celebrity all over the world as cannibals, and to whose real dangers imagination for long had added visionary terrors. It required no small courage in a small body of men to make more than half the circuit of the globe to settle in this distant and phantom-peopled realm; but the spirit of adventure indigenous in the Anglo-Saxon race, and which then existed in peculiar vigour in the British Islands, was equal to the undertaking; and the hardy emigrants, amidst the tears and knowledge. prayers of their relations and friends, took their departure from the banks of the Clyde.1 1 Personal 14. Glasgow to the New Zealand emigrants. Amidst the whirl of party politics and the struggle for Speech at political power, this event excited little attention in London. But it was otherwise in the provinces, where its importance was more clearly appreciated; and at a public dinner given in Glasgow to the emigrants previous to their departure, a gentleman present thus addressed the assembly: "Let us no longer strain after the impracticable attempt to disarm the commercial jealousy of XXXVIII. 1839. European states, but, boldly looking our situation in the CHAP. face, direct our main efforts to the strengthening, consolidating, and increasing our colonial empire. There are to be found the bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh; there the true descendants of the Anglo-Saxon race; there the people who, already imbued with our tastes, our habits, our artificial wants, must be chained for centuries to agricultural or pastoral employments, and can only obtain from the mother country the immense amount of manufacturing produce which their wealth and numbers must require. There is no one circumstance in the present condition of Great Britainnot even those which are justly considered as pregnant with danger and alarm-that may not be converted into a source of blessing, if a decided and manly course is taken by the nation and its Government in regard to its colonial interests. Indeed, so clearly does this appear, that one is almost tempted to believe that the manifold political and social evils of our present condition are the scourges intended by Providence to bring us back, by necessity and a sense of our own interests, to those great national duties from which we have so long and unaccountably swerved. Are we oppressed with a numerous and redundant population, and justly apprehensive that a mass of human beings, already consisting of twenty-five millions, and increasing at the rate of a thousand a-day, will ere long be unable to find employment within the narrow space of these islands? Let us turn to the colonies, and there we shall find boundless regions capable of maintaining ten times our present population in contentment and affluence, and which require only the surplus arms and mouths of the parent State to be converted into gigantic empires, which may, before a century has elapsed, overshadow the greatness even of European renown. "Are we justly fearful that the increasing manufacturing skill and growing commercial jealousy of the VOL. VI. 2 C XXXVIII. 15. CHAP. Continental states may gradually shut us out from the European market, and that our millions of manufacturers 1839. may find their sources of foreign subsistence fail at a Continued. time when all home employments are filled up? Let us turn to the colonies, and there we shall see empires of gigantic strength rapidly rising to maturity, in which manufacturing establishments cannot for a very long period take root, and in which the taste for British manufactures and the habits of British comfort are indelibly implanted in the British race. Are we overburdened with the weight and the multitude of our paupers, and trembling under the effect of the deeprooted discontent produced in the attempt to withdraw public support from the starving but able-bodied labourers? Let us find the means of transporting these robust labourers to our colonial settlements, and we shall confer as great a blessing upon them as we shall give relief to the parent State. Are we disquieted by the rapid progress of corruption in our great towns, and the enormous mass of female profligacy which now infests those great marts of pleasure and opulence? Let us look to the colonies, and there we shall find states in which the great evil experienced is the undue preponderance of the male sex; and all that is wanting to right the principle of increase is the transfer of part of the female population which now encumbers the British Isles. Are the means to transport these numerous and indigent classes to those distant regions awanting? and has individual emigration hitherto been liable to the reproach that it removes the better class of citizens, who could do for themselves, and leaves the poorest a burden on the community? The British navy lies between; and means exist of transporting, at a trifling cost to the parent State, all that can be required of our working population from that part of the empire which they overburden, to that where they would prove a blessing. "Powerful as these considerations are, drawn from XXXVIII. private interest or public advantage, there are yet greater CHAP. things than these; there are higher duties with which 1839. 16. man is intrusted than those connected with kindred or country; and if their due discharge is to be ascertain- Continued. ed by statistical details, it is those which measure the growth of moral and religious improvement rather than those which measure the increase of commerce and opulence. What said the Most High, in that auspicious moment when the eagle first sported in the returning sunbeam, when the dove brought back the olivebranch to a guilty and expiring world, and the robe of beams was woven in the sky which first spoke peace to man?''God shall increase Japhet, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.' God has multiplied Japhet, and well and nobly has he performed his destiny. After conquering in the Roman legions the ancient world, after humanising the barbarism of antiquity by the power of the Roman sway and the influence of the Roman law, the audax Japeti genus has transmitted to modern times the far more glorious inheritance of European freedom. After having conquered in the British navy the empire of the seas, it has extended to the utmost verge of the earth the influence of humanised manners, and bequeathed to future ages the far more glorious inheritance of British colonisation. But mark the difference in the action of the descendants of Japhet-the European race-upon the fortunes of mankind, from the influence of that religion to which the Roman empire was only the mighty pioneer. The Roman legions conquered only by the sword; fire and bloodshed attended their steps. It was said by our own ancestors on the hills of Caledonia, that they gave peace only by establishing a solitude: Ubi solitudinem fecerunt pacem adpellant.' 17. "The British colonists now set out with the olivebranch, not the sword, in their hands-with the cross, not Concluded. the eagle, on their banners; they bring not war and XXXVIII. 1839. CHAP. devastation, but peace and civilisation, around their bánners, and the track of their chariot-wheels is followed, not by the sighs of a captive, but the blessings of a liberated world. He shall dwell,' says the prophecy, in the tents of Shem.' Till these times that prophecy has not been accomplished. The descendants of Shem-the Arabic race-still held the fairest portions of the earth, and the march of civilisation, like the path of the sun, has hitherto been from east to west. From the plains of Shinar to the isles of Greece, from the isles of Greece to the hills of Rome, from the hills of Rome to the shores. of Britain, from the shores of Britain to the wilds of America, the march of civilisation has been steadily in one direction, and it has never reverted to the land of its birth. Is, then, this progress of civilisation destined to be perpetual? Is the tide of civilisation to roll only to the foot of the Rocky Mountains, and is the sun of knowledge to set at last in the waves of the Pacific? No, the mighty day of four thousand years is drawing to its close; the sun of humanity has performed its destined but long ere its setting beams are extinguished in the West, its ascending rays have glittered on the isles of the Eastern seas. We stand on the verge of the great revolution of Time; the descendants of Japhet are about to dwell in the tents of Shem; civilisation is returning to the land of its birth; and another day and another race are beginning to shed their influence upon the human species. Already the British arms in India have given herald of its approach, and spread into the heart of Asia 1 Speech of the terrors of the English name and the justice of the Oct. 15, English rule. And now we see the race of Japhet lected Es- setting out to people the isles of the Eastern seas, and Mr Alison, 1839; Col says, iii. 472. the seeds of another Europe and a second England sown in the regions of the sun." 1 Less momentous in its ultimate consequences than this all-important subject of colonial emigration, but far more interesting at the time to the inhabitants of the dominant |