TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 471 
and generalised from the special conditions of his own day.’ There was, to 
Wakkefield’s mind, one, and one only, method of successful colonisation ; all others 
were to be condemned in so far as they departed from the true system which he 
had devised. Wakefield, too, was the victim of unconscious assumptions; the 
type of colony he had in mind was a white man’s country, in which raw produce 
might be obtained for export. He showed under what conditions Australia, 
Tasmania, and New Zealand might be most successfully developed ;* but 
his scheme is certainly unsuited to tropical regions, and it need not necessarily 
be preferable to the alternative of developing a community on the lines of 
subsistence farming. On this point at least we can make a very definite com- 
parison: Virginia, Carolina, and Georgia have all been colonies which raised such 
commodities as tobacco and rice and cotton for export ; they started more rapidly 
than the New England colonies, where the settlers were engaged in subsistence 
farming ; but as we look at these States at the present time, we can hardly say 
that the type of community to which Wakefield devoted exclusive attention is 
that which has given rise to the most healthy and vigorous economic life. 
Even Adam Smith, in writing of the growth of societies, fell into a similar 
error: he passed out of the region of actual life, where he showed himself such a 
master, and attempted to discourse in a pseudo-philosophical strain on the manner 
in which countries ought to have developed, but never had. He allowed himself 
to elaborate an account of a supposed natural progress of opulence, which might 
have occurred in an isolated state. There is scope for a pretty play of fancy and 
much elegant writing in such a theme, but no attempt was made to show that 
isolated states ever do develop, so long as they remain isolated. Much may 
be said for the view that the chief stimulus to deyelopment is supplied by contact 
with communities on a different plane of economic conditions. In the history 
of England there are long periods of apparent stagnation and decline, and 
occasional epochs of rapid advance; but, whether in the days of the Danes or 
the Norman kings, of the Edwards or the Georges, the opening up of new trading 
relations has been the impetus to internal development. Economic experts are 
not even yet acquainted with philosophical principles as to the manner in which 
communities oueht to develop, and therefore we are not justified in pretending to 
train up a young country in the economic way it should go. 
IV. Every undeveloped country presents a network of fresh problems, each of 
which must be studied separately ; but they must also be considered as interrelated 
and viewed in their mutual dependence. There is a mass of experience in the past 
which may be drawn upon as ahelp; we may appropriate it, and save ourselves the 
expense of buying fresh experience in a costly fashion; but in order to reap the 
fruit of human experience in the past we must be prepared to take a great deal 
of trouble; it is not lying about for anyone to pick up at haphazard. The teachings 
of history as to the rise of great nations from small beginnings, or as to the causes 
which have led to premature decay, do not lie on the surface. Since the days 
when Lord Burleigh recognised that the mineral wealth of the Spanish conquests 
in the New World did not really add to the strength of the monarchy at home, 
there has been a tendency to disparage extractive industries. ‘Moile not too 
much underground,’ said Lord Bacon, ‘ for the hope of mines is very uncertain, 
and useth to make the planters idle in other things’ ; * and Adam Smith does not at 
all dissociate himself from this view. It appears to have been thought that mining 
for the precious metals, however attractive it might be for atime, could never be a 
secure foundation for the building up of stable society. But, after all, it would be 
wise to discriminate a little before we adopt this conclusion, and to examine the 
condition of different parts of Spanish America separately.’ The richest mines ct 
all, those of Peru, were situated on the arid slopes of the Andes, where cultivation 
1 Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce in Modern Times, 
p. 740. ; 
2 KE. G. Wakefield, Art of Colonisation. 8 Essay on Plantations. 
4 Wealth of Nations (Nicholson’s Edition), 71, 73. 
6 Merivale Colonisatian and Colonies (1861), 25 27, 
