326 Allen on Home Colonisation. 



" Nevertheless, the benefit to the country must depend upon the direc- 

 tion of the labour ; and there can be little doubt that a rich man may do 

 more good by employing a hundred men in making a commodious public 

 road than by indirectly occupying them to form some useless article of 

 luxury. In this case, however, the object furnishes the employment, and 

 not the employment the object." 



It has often forcibly struck us, that it was unnecessary and 

 preposterous to encourage emigration, and to aid it at a great 

 expense, for the purpose of settling our unemployed labourers 

 on waste land two or three thousand miles distant, while at 

 home, in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, and in each 

 individual county of each of these portions of the British em- 

 pire, there were such numerous and large spots which might 

 be improved at much less expense than is requisite to send 

 emigrants to America or New South Wales, and, when there, 

 to enable them to clear and render fertile the wastes in which 

 they take up their abode. We are well aware of several ob- 

 jections to a plan of home colonisation, if the phrase may be 

 allowed. Most of our wastes would not repay the labour and 

 expense of cultivation. Granted : but several would ; and we 

 could point out many thousand acres, within fifty miles of the 

 metropolis, which answer this description. Let any person 

 open his eyes when he passes along commons, and he will 

 scarcely fail to perceive small houses built near their edge, 

 and small gardens attached to them ; encroachments, indeed, 

 but evidently proving that such commons are worth cultivating, 

 and are cultivated to the advantage of the encroachers. 

 Another objection is, that agricultural produce being already 

 too abundant for the demand, the settlement we recommend, 

 by rendering it still more abundant, would make the con- 

 dition of the farmer still worse ; and thus, while it benefited 

 one class, it would injure another. This objection is plausible. 

 The practical refutation of it might be difficult, but we think 

 it might be overcome. Let us suppose one hundred families 

 settled on some waste land in this country, part of them em- 

 ployed in raising corn and other articles of food, and the rest 

 in the manufacture of the rude and simple articles which men 

 in the lowest rank require : in this way, there would be an 

 interchange among themselves, but no additional supply of 

 any kind brought into the market ; consequently, their labour 

 would not interfere with the labour of any other part of the 

 community. We have not time, nor room, to dwell on the 

 details of such a plan ; but we are convinced, not only that it 

 is practicable, but that all objections to it might be obviated. 



Mr. Allen, in his pamphlet, " Colonies at Home," to which 

 we adverted in our last Number, strongly recommends a similar 



