labour, brought about? By a social contract of a quite original kind. “Mankind have adopted a … simple contrivance for promoting the accumulation of capital,” which, of course, since the time of Adam, floated in their imagination as the sole and final end of thier existence: “they have divided themselves into owners of capital and owners of labour. This division was the result of concert and combination.”[1] In one word: the mass of mankind expropriated itself in honour of the “accumulation of capital.” Now, one would think, that this instinct of self-denying fanaticism would give itself full fling especially in the Colonies, where alone exist the men and conditions that could turn a social contract from a dream to a reality. But why, then, should “systematic colonisation” be called in to replace its opposite, spontaneous, unregulated colonisation? But—but—“In the Northern States of the American Union, it may be doubted whether so many as a tenth of the people would fall under the description of hired labourers.… In England … the labouring class compose the bulk of the people.”[2] Nay, the impulse to self-expropriation, on the part of labouring humanity, for the glory of capital, exists so little, that slavery, according to Wakefield himself, is the sole natural basis of Colonial wealth. His systematic colonisation is a mere pis aller, since he unfortunately has to do with free men, not with slaves. “The first Spanish settlers in Saint Domingo did not obtain labourers from Spain. But, without labourers, their capital must have perished, or, at least, must soon have been diminished to that small amount which each individual could employ with his own hands. This has actually occurred in the last Colony founded by Englishmen—the Swan River Settlement—where a great mass of capital, of seeds, implements, and cattle, has perished for want of labourers to use it, and where no settler has preserved much more capital than he can employ with his own hands.”[3]
We have seen that the expropriation of the mass of the people from the soil forms the basis of the capitalist mode of production. The essence of a free colony, on the contrary, con-
