3o6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



6. Even in 'philanthropic colonies religion is an auxiliary. 

 Georgia was projected partly in the interests of " tlie persecuted Prot- 

 estants of Europe," and was promoted by tlie Society for Propa- 

 gating the Gospel. Wliitefield and the two Wesleys were among 

 its first evangelists, and a body of German Moravians formed a set- 

 tlement in its territory. These religionists even sought to turn it 

 into a religious society, but found their heterogeneous materials 

 refractory. It was the flame of philanthropy, burning strong and 

 clear in the breast of James Oglethorpe, that gave the colony its dis- 

 tinctive character. The relief of the poor and the oppressed is a 

 motive that places it higher than any ecclesiastical foundation. 

 Baron Hirsch's Jewish colonies may be equally religious and humani- 

 tarian. Miss Rye's and other Canadian settlements are the offspring 

 of pure philanthropy, still subsidized mainly by the orthodox and the 

 devout. 



7. Lastly, there is a type of colony peculiar to our own time and 

 impossible earlier, which we may call (for want of a better name) 

 sociological. It was the invention of one who to the reflective fac- 

 ulty of a De Tocqueville joined the executive capacity of a Turgot, 

 and who had the good fortune, denied to both, of seeing his concep- 

 tions realized. We shrink from the Darwinian ascription of so 

 much to '^ accident," but accident plays as large a part in history as 

 in nature, and it was accident which constrained Edward Gibbon 

 Wakefield to throw his energies into the work of colonization. 

 Having examined minutely and considered profoundly the origin 

 and circumstances of existing colonies, he came to the conclusion 

 that a colony, to be successful, must faithfully reproduce the essen- 

 tial members of the mother country — a conclusion in strict conform- 

 ity with the biological analogy. The superior classes had been 

 lacking to previous emigrations; to induce them to emigrate, and to 

 keep the whole administration in their hands, he proposed to abolish 

 the wholesale granting of lands, or the selling of them at a cheap rate, 

 and to dispose of them at a price which would reserve them for the 

 rich ; with the proceeds of the fund so raised the poor were to be sent 

 out as laborers and artisans. State churches and an aristocratic 

 form of government were necessary corollaries. Five colonies 

 were (1837—1851) actually founded on this basis in South Australia 

 and ]^ew Zealand. They were administered by men the most capa- 

 ble who have ever governed these countries; the settlers were of the 

 best kind; and they were powerfully aided in England. But the 

 circumstances were unfavorable. The natives in New Zealand 

 were hostile, and the local government was implacably opposed to 

 the growth of an imperiuni in imperio. The attempt to reproduce in 

 a new country a moribund artistocratic society was foredoomed to 



