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the moment a Contract system, such as that con- 

 templated by the bill lately introduced by the Indian 

 Legislature, but which the Secretary of State vetoed, 

 is made law, the free labourer is reduced to a state of 

 bondage ; and such complications are certain to arise 

 where legislators address themselves to surface sores, 

 instead of to the deep-seated disease of which they 

 are but the offspring-. 



The most approved plan that which has been 

 attended with so much success in Australia and 

 New Zealand, is that called the Wakefield system, 

 in which the sale proceeds of unoccupied land are 

 formed into a fund to defray partially, or in full, the 

 expenses of emigration. But this excellent system, 

 by which it seems possible to create a sympathy, as 

 it were, between the surplus of one country and the 

 deficiency of another, and thus maintain a conti- 

 nuous and ever increasing stream of the overflow of 

 population to those places where there is a super- 

 abundance of land ready to absorb it, would seem to 

 have been unknown, or altogether set aside in Ben- 

 gal. It is singularly to be regretted that this very 

 serious question, involving as it does considerations 

 of the highest national importance, was not, from 

 the commencement, treated philosophically : and 

 taking into account the great increase to our know- 

 ledge of the true principles of colonization within 

 the last quarter of a century, it seems almost incom- 

 prehensible, that, with such very willing helps as 

 the tea planters of Assam and Cachar, no attempt 



