thing for younger sons to take their portion of the hereditary wealth and also the overflowing population of their fathers' estates to the colonies, as was formerly the case with the Spanish noble families who set out with some of each trade; in place of one America, we should have twenty Englands. And what an outlet for our produce! Here in England, unemployed poor are a negative quantity. They eat up what we raise. In Australia they are a positive quantity. They take our produce and pay for it.
Surely this matter of bringing the many lands in our colonies into direct relation with the multitude of strong arms, forcibly idle at home, must be one function of any good government administering a group of islands such as ours, while the population expands itself in so great a ratio, while there is no power of expansion in the soil.
This is the end of the whole matter: it is a fact that our population exceeds the means of labour, either because the material for labour does not exist, or because there are no means of bringing labour and material together.
It is a fact that our poor-rate is seven millions, and that seven millions are spent every year between charity and Poor Law relief in London alone, in the metropolis of the greatest empire the world has ever seen, and amongst the most practical people of the earth.
It is a fact that, notwithstanding all this transfer of the produce of industrious hardworking people to non-workers, distress and hunger are more clamorous than ever.
It is a fact that our trades' unions have increased the evil by interfering with the free course of the labour market, and have thereby driven away work to other countries.
It is a fact that the present amount of pauperism exists, notwithstanding free trade, trades' unions to raise the value of labour, poor law tests to compel people to find labour where there is little to be had, out-door relief to supplement low wages, and an unprecedented amount of private charity or almsgiving.
It is a fact that all this exists, notwithstanding an annual voluntary emigration.
It is a fact that, within the Queen's dominions, there are entire Europes waiting for settlement and ready to repay labour with such interest as no part of the old world can yield.
It is a fact that a very large proportion of our foreign commerce is made up of trade with the very people who, if they had never left England, would probably long ere this have converted it into a desert. A great many of our present population live by those who have formed a home beyond the seas.
These are the facts with which legislation has to deal, for which benevolent effort has to find a remedy. Is it not time that some attempt should be made to systematise and economise the rates and multifarious agencies, and almost imperial revenues with which private charity has failed to reach the evil?—nay, has increased it?
Legislation cannot do all. But it can do much of itself, and perhaps more by recognising and giving a proper direction to the never failing streams of private charity which at present end in a marsh.
The evils are as sorrowful as they are great. The evils no one denies. On the contrary, they are acknowledged to be the most pressing question of the day, a question which will not put itself off. But surely among us we can cope with it.
As Mr. Bright has said: a people which could dip its arm into the depths of the Atlantic and pick up the electric wire to bind two continents together, can surely do this thing.
