PART III.

PRACTICAL OBSERVATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS.

THE practical merits of the several modes applied to relieve indigence in civil society will be best considered in the order in which they stand arranged at the conclusion of the first part of this Essay.

Civil society in Europe is too far advanced to adopt the practice of simple migration as a remedy for superabundant population, and consequent indigence. Man cannot now say to man, as Abraham did to Lot,-"Let there be no strife, I pray thee, between thee and me, and between my herdsmen and thy herdsmen; for we be brethren. Is not the whole land before thee? Separate thyself, I pray thee, from me; if thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if thou depart to the right hand, then I will go to the left *."

By emigration may be understood more precisely the act of private persons forsaking the country which gave them birth, and settling in another. This should not meet with impediments it should be permitted, but not encou* Gencsis xiii, 9, 10.

raged. But colonization assumes a higher character. In antiquity it was the solemn act of nations it is the process by which the as yet untrodden or thinly inhabited regions of the earth must be replenished; by which, in its widest extent, the great law of "Increase and multiply" can be fulfilled; the work to which peaceful activity may be well directed; an inheritance thrown into the lap of England, as mistress of that sea which divides her from, and connects her with, every unowned and unsubdued soil; where she may raise the standard of civilization, and plant, whether in the genial South or the hardy North, the blessed scions of her language, her manners, her laws, and her religion, as a memorial of her name, and a possession for ever *.

To such views as these may the attention of the statesmen of that country in which Cooke and Penn, and Oglethorpe and Selkirk, were born, be wisely and proudly directed. For the objects of the colonizers of Pennsylvania, and Georgia, and Prince Edward's Island, were equally wise and honourable, although not equally successful. But that same country will reject with contempt the visions of those sciolists, or the plots of those designers, who propose the agrarian system, under any modification, as an ef

* κτήμα ες αιει.

fectual remedy against the pressure of indigence. In the present state of political science, the bare enunciation of such a proposition carries with it its own confutation. But if a warning be necessary, France is sufficient, because the agrarian law is there unmixed. In Ireland it is in some degree combined with prædial servitude; and although the misery and the increase of a beggarly population be not less, yet, as the land is held by tenants and not proprietors, perhaps the instance is not so pertinent.

Mr. Malthus, in his reasoning upon the Spencean hypothesis, shows that, upon its own extravagant estimate of the annual rent of the land of Great Britain, &c. at 150 millions, (three times its real amount,) the division to each individual would not exceed four pounds, after the proposed allowances to Government were taken from it *.

The Baron Dupin, in arguing against a similar system, upon a general division of all the lands in France, assigns to each person a revenue of 41 francs 86 cents (not quite 35s.). Unfortunately, the French revolutionary code respecting the descent of landed property tends to augment and perpetuate the misery consequent on this

* Malthus on the Principle of Population, book iii. ch. 3. fifth edit. vol. ii. p. 280.

Histoire de l'Administration du Secours Public, p. 409.

system*. My own testimony on this subject may perhaps be unwillingly admitted; but Mr. Birkbeck, who, at the commencement of his book, asserts, "that there is no wretched peasantry in France," (Notes on a Journey through France, page 12,) may be fairly adduced to disprove, as he does in almost every page of his book, his own assertions. Page 31, 33, 35:"Poor," says he, " they are from generation to generation, and growing continually poorer as they increase in numbers, by the division and subdivision of property. Such a people, instead of proceeding from the necessaries to the comforts of life, then to the luxuries, as is the order of things in England, are rather retrograde than progressive." In page 19 of the Appendix to his second edition, he says, "I am fully aware of the deplorable consequences of the division and subdivision of property in France.”

But the positive evidence of the Baron Dupin, whose attention was exclusively turned to the subject, deserves more weight than the inconséquence of Mr. Birkbeck. These wretched pro-. prietors, who can with difficulty maintain themselves, are scarcely to be expected to assist their neighbours." While our anxious wishes are directed to the obtaining a good organization of domiciliary relief in the country, we cannot con

* Malthus: Political Economy, p. 433, &c.

ceal the great difficulties which it presents. The extreme poverty of most of the rural communes renders all improvement impossible. This is a disease too deeply seated to admit a remedy *."

In 1822 Ireland presented the apparent anomaly of a country superabounding in grain, and the great mass of inhabitants in an utter state of inability to purchase it. Yet, as the circumstances of the cultivators of the soil vary in France and Ireland in the manner above stated, it is to be hoped some remedy may be found applicable to the case of the latter country.

Domestic slavery has in a great degree passed away in the more civilized parts of Europe. In the less civilized, prædial servitude yet remains; but neither in its absolute or modified state does it claim respect or imitation. "In general," says Mr. Jacob, "the peasantry in Prussia are in a condition of great distress, and involved in debt to their lords. They are no longer slaves, or adstricti gleba,-by the constitution promulgated in 1791 they were declared free. The practical effect of the privileges thus granted has hitherto been very inconsiderable. The peasants can leave their lands, but must first acquit the pecuniary demands of their lords. Few of them are able to do this, as most of

* "C'est un vice radical, irremediable."-Dupin, p. 467.