349 



obvious, because the wages of labor, like the prices 

 of all things, are regulated not by contracts, but 

 by the circumstances of markets. The plan of 

 contracts for labor in like cases, has been tried 

 over and over again, and in every instance and 

 latest in the province of Assam it has been found, 

 as above shown, to be wholly inoperative, for this 

 very simple reason, that the trouble, the delay 

 and expense, of enforcing labor contracts, has 

 always far exceeded the gain to be anticipated 

 from a successful civil suit. From the moment a 

 Contract system such as that contemplated by the 

 bill lately introduced by the Indian Legislature, but 

 which the Secretary of State vetoed, is made law, 

 the free laborer 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 off-spring* 



The m )st 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 con- 

 tinuous and ever increasing stream of the over-flow 



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