Robert Richard Torrens

“ Upon revival of trade, or any other cause supplying permanent employment at adequate wages, emigration would cease of its own accord; but, pending the contingency of increased employment from that source, they were not justified in leaving in indigence and misery thousands of their fellow-countrymen who, if removed to a position of competency in the Colonies, would, as customers for our manufactures, be largely instrumental in bringing about that revival of trade so earnestly desired. ”

“ Nowhere more than in New Zealand does there exist a stronger feeling of loyalty to the Crown, and of devotion to Her Majesty, or a higher value attached to its position as an integral part of the Empire; and Ministers feel assured that throughout the Colony there will arise a universal feeling of regret that the tone and purport of Earl Granville's despatch (written at a time when he must have known the Colony to be in the greatest distress) , are scarcely susceptible of any other explanation than a desire to abandon this country, and to sever its connection with the Empire. ”

“ Such men do not need to be told that the result of free trade in rendering England the workshop of the world has been to concentrate a population vastly greater than can be fed upon the produce of these islands, and so has brought it to pass that the very life of our people is dependent upon our retaining command of the seas, the high road for the transport of the people's bread and of the manufactures with which it is purchased. ”

“ They ask England for no pecuniary sacrifice; they do not appeal to her compassion; but they do appeal to those eternal principles of justice, which are as much the duty of the strong as they are the heritage of the weak, and which even the most powerful nation should never withhold from the feeblest suppliant," That the stability of the Empire had received a severe shock through the harshness and the injustice of the course adopted towards New Zealand, was undeniable. ”

“ Hence it would be their true policy to divert to other fields of production the labour which constantly gravitated from the rural districts towards the towns, intensifying the competition for employment already excessive in those great centres of industry; and by that means, rather than by any extensive emigration of their skilled labourers, they might indirectly and gradually, but safely and effectually, relieve the distressed condition of their artizans and mechanics. ”

“ If the Colonies will undertake the duties as well as the privileges of British citizens, we may go on together as members of one great Empire, each part habitually maintaining itself, and the whole ready to rally round any threatened point. ”

“ Every man of practical experience would acknowledge the immense advantage of personal interviews for preventing difficulties and irritations, and for smoothing them away when they arose, and he firmly believed that if either of the Colonial statesmen now in this country on a special mission from New Zealand, had been authenticated from the commencement, and before the Secretary for the Colonies had committed himself to a particular course, that course would have been modified and the heartburnings and alienation of feeling, which all must deplore, would have been avoided. ”

“ That our possessions, if regarded as military posts, must be abandoned, because in these days of free trade commerce no longer needs cannon to clear her path; but if regarded as Colonies they must be abandoned, because in adopting free trade we have destroyed the only motive for retaining our Colonies. ”

“ When they exceeded that limit they were not a strength but a danger and little less a burden than the aged and infirm. Thirdly, he would reply that the declaration of policy by Her Majesty's Minister for the Colonies in "another place" should go far to dissipate the idea that those who took up their abode in British Colonies ceased to constitute portion of the strength of the Empire. Large employers of labour need not be uneasy lest emigration be carried to such excess that upon a revival of trade they should find a scarcity of hands to avail of it. ”

“ But the time has passed away when our navies spread their sails to the wind as the only motive power; in these days the command of the seas means coals accumulated in secure and convenient depots where our steam navy may replenish; free trade therefore, so far from rendering it unnecessary to retain such of our possessions as afford advantages of this kind, places us under the strongest obligation of necessity to retain them. ”

“ Probably no one would be found to deny that the distress which they deplored would at once be alleviated if only it were possible to interpose Nova Scotia or New Zealand in the ocean space between Great Britain and Ireland, so that the labour and capital here in excess might pass over to fertile lands inviting cultivation. ”

“ He had also noticed that these conditions, so favourable for the purpose, were taken advantage of by men of great ability to propagate opinions adverse to the integrity of the Empire, opinions which were rapidly gaining a more tolerant if not a more approving assent in this country and in the Colonies, but which his experience had entirely satisfied him were as inconsistent with the true interests of those Colonies as they were incompatible with the future greatness of this Empire. ”

“ Earl Granville, speaking of this war in the House of Lords, on the 25th July, 1864, said—
"It was impossible for the mother country to divest herself entirely of responsibility for her Colonies, especially in case of war. ... With regard to the origin and commencement of the war now being waged in New Zealand, he believed it to be a just war;" and the present Prime Minister, being at that time Chancellor of the Exchequer, declared that—
"He did not see how England could with justice throw the whole responsibility of the war on the Colony;" ”

“ As the immediate consequence of Earl Granville's expressions and his declaration of the Imperial policy towards New Zealand, the expediency of declaring the independence of the Colony, of refusing to maintain the viceregal establishment, and even of annexation with the United States has been freely discussed, and it is only because the case of the Colony appears to have attracted considerable attention, and called forth the sympathy of a large and influential section of the English people, that no decided steps have been taken in one of these directions. ”

“ I think the lands thus acquired may properly be employed in meeting the expenses of carrying on the war; nor do I see any objection to using them as sites for military settlements." "We find the same policy endorsed by Mr. Cardwell, who succeeded the Duke as Secretary for the Colonies, in the following words:—
"We have accepted the principles upon which he (Sir George Grey) has acted—the chastisement of the guilty Natives—the exaction of a reasonable indemnity for the expenses incurred by the war, and a moderate security for the settlement and future protection of the colonists." ”

“ The New Zealand colonists saw in the policy thus attempted to be forced upon them consequences so disastrous that even the cruel necessity of separation from the mother country would be a preferable alternative. In the language of the Memorandum of the New Zealand Government, in replying to the despatch of the 2nd October —
"They claim that the Colony should be practically recognized as an integral portion of that Empire, and not be thrust out beyond its pale as of infinitely less consideration than a British subject in foreign lands. ”

“ The most frequent objection against England maintaining her Imperial position as the central cohesive power amidst the free communities which she has brought into existence is based upon the alleged costliness of that position, and a heavy bill is made out by including the expenses of military posts and convict establishments in the same account with expenditure on account of Colonies properly so called. ”

“ There might be—he wished it were in his power to say confidently there were—reasons for believing this calamitous distress to be but temporary as regarded the condition of the artizan class; but as regarded the agricultural labourer, the case throughout a great part of the country was undoubtedly chronic. When there was employment for two there were three seeking for it, and by this competition wages were kept at a scale which barely sufficed to supply food, clothing, and lodging essential to sustain a single man in vigor. ”

“ Peaceful settlements—without the slightest provocation given, or even alleged to have been given—were attacked by savage fanatics, the women outraged, infants and young children ruthlessly slaughtered, the homesteads, created out of the wilderness by the labour of half a lifetime, given to the flames, implements and materials destroyed, the cattle and horses driven off as plunder. ”

“ The competition in the market for each would be relieved—the Irish land famine would be appeased—and the previously impoverished, because inadequately employed, labourers would, with their families, become largely customers for the manufactured products of those whom they had left behind in the old locations. The beneficial agency of such a migration would therefore be two-fold—immediate in reducing competition for employment, and ultimate in increasing the amount of employment for those who remained. ”

“ The wisdom of this course would appear manifest when it was remembered that experience proved that new inventions and devices for increasing the efficacy of human labour when applied to manufactures did ultimately and vastly increase the amount of employment, insomuch that it might, without exaggeration, be said that wherever by such means two men were enabled to perform the task of 10 the result had been to cause 10 to be employed where two only found work before. ”

“ Whilst in the interests of the mother country he thus earnestly advocated the emigration of large families at the cost of ratepayers and the general public, he must in the interests of the colonists and with equal earnestness protest against any scheme that could have the effect of transferring to them the burden of supporting our habitual paupers, or persons not capable of earning subsistance for themselves and families. ”

“ Wages had been forced up to 6s. or 7s. per day; but the previously rapid advance in population and wealth had been arrested, and the working classes of this country, without their knowledge or consent—and he ventured to add without the cognizance of their representatives—had been deprived of that fund which, at a period of severe distress like the present, would have been available to transport them to lands where liberal wages and a fair future prospect would reward their industry. ”

“ In the case of the married labourer, therefore, that amount of food must be curtailed that the wife and children might be clothed and not starve. Lassitude and depression, induced by insufficient sustenance, created a craving for ardent spirits to arouse the system, or for the drugged beer of the pot-house to stupify and deaden the sense of suffering. ”

“ If the steam plough, the mowing machine, and the reaping machine, superseding the spade, the scythe, and the flail, enabled two men to perform the task of 10, no increased demand for labour ensued to absorb the eight thrown out of employment so long as the limits of these islands were allowed to circumscribe the area within which that industry was to be exercised. ”

“ The dwelling of the labourer seldom afforded sufficient accommodation to admit of separation of the sexes and observance of the ordinary decencies of civilized life. The conditions of such an existence were inconsistent with moral or intellectual culture—and the labour of a man thus enfeebled in body and almost brutalized in mind was dear even at the paltry wages paid for it. Disease and premature decay induced by those causes incapacitated for labour at a comparatively early period of life ”

“ That, in order to arrest the increase of Pauperism, and to relieve the distressed condition of the working classes, it is expedient that measures be adopted for facilitating the Emigration of poor families to British Colonies. ”

“ In New Zealand the severance is being accomplished under very painful circumstances." It was passing strange to find such concurrent testimony arriving simultaneously from such authorities, separated from each other by half the earth's circumference, and each professing to have derived his information from the same authentic source—Her Majesty's Colonial Ministers—and yet to be assured by Her Majesty's Ministers themselves that they entertained no such views, and utterly repudiated the policy attributed to them. ”

“ But as a district which once relieved of its surplus labourers by the procedure he had been recommending would be liable to be again overburdened by the influx of indigent workmen from other districts, attracted by the improved state of the labour market, it was desirable to encourage simultaneous action wherever the number of labourers was in excess. ”

“ Applied to such communities the precedents of the past assume the character of partiality, inconsistency, liberality, and an offensive assumption of superiority intolerable to communities which claim incorporation in the Empire on terms of equality or not at all. ”

“ The waste lands of the Crown, so far as they were placed at the disposal of the local governments, were so placed to be alienated by sale only, and the proceeds held subject, as regarded one moiety, to lien in the interests of the people of England, available for generations to come, to relieve this country of surplus population. ”

“ The colonists, in Australia at least, had serious grounds for complaint on this score in times past, and in order to guard against the revival of any such abuse, it would be necessary that all emigrants sent out at public expense should, before embarkation, be passed by the emigration agents of the several Colonies in this country. ”