Various - Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 65, No. 403, May, 1849

"The main cause of this difference may be stated in few words. We send out colonies of the limbs, without the belly and the head; of needy persons, many of them mere paupers, or even criminals; colonies made up of a single class of persons in the community, and that the most helpless, and the most unfit to perpetuate our national character, and to become the fathers of a race whose habits of thinking and feeling shall correspond to those which, in the mean time, we are cherishing at home. The ancients, on the contrary, sent out a representation of the parent state – colonists from all ranks ." And further on, after insisting on the propriety of appointing to the colony educated and accomplished clergymen, he says – "The same may be urged in respect of men of other professions and pursuits. The desirable consummation of the plan would be, that a specimen, or sample, as it were, of all that goes to make up society in the parent country, should at once be transferred to its colony. Instead of sending out bad seedlings, and watching their uncertain growth, let us try whether a perfect tree will not bear transplanting."

We apprehend that this project of "transplanting a perfect tree" is none of the most feasible. However the Greeks managed matters, we moderns find it absolutely necessary to begin "at the beginning," and with somewhat rude beginnings. If the Greeks had the art in the colony, as in the epic poem, of rushing in medias res – of starting with and from maturity – then indeed must colonisation be reckoned, as Dr Hind seems half to suspect, amongst the artes perditæ . Anything more lamentable than a number of cultivated men – "samples" of all kinds, physicians, and divines, and lawyers, with, of course, their several ladies – set down upon the uncultivated soil, on the long green grass, we cannot imagine. It seems to us quite right and unavoidable to send out "a single class," first – good stout "limbs," without much of "the belly" – which must mean, we presume, the idle folks, or much of "the head," which must mean the thinkers. That class, or those classes which cultivate the soil, and render the place somewhat habitable, had better surely precede, and act as pioneers, before the gentry disembark from their ships. Other classes must follow as they are wanted, and find room and scope. What would the physician do with his elaborate skill and courtesy, without that congregation of idlers on whose ailments he rides and dines? What need yet of eloquent barrister, or are his fees forthcoming, when a new estate could be purchased with less money than would serve to defend the old one by his pleading? Who would attend to the man of science, and his latest experiments on magnetic currents, when every one is trying over again the very first experiment – how to live? – where corn will grow, and what the potato will yield? Even your clergy must be of a somewhat different stamp from the polished ecclesiastic, the bland potentate of our drawing-rooms. He must have something more natural – "some rough-cast and a little loam" about him, be serviceable, accessible. And the fair "sample" partners of all these classes, what is to become of them? As yet, pin-money is not. There is nothing refined and civilised; men talk of marriage as if for prayer-book purposes. Very gross ideas!

The ancients, says Dr Hind, "began by nominating to the honourable office of captain, or leader of the colony, one of the chief men, if not the chief man of the state – like the queen bee leading the workers. Monarchies provided a prince of the blood royal; an aristocracy its choicest nobleman; a democracy its most influential citizen." In order to entice some one of our gentry – some one of wealth, station, and cultivated mind, to act as "queen bee" of the colony – seeing that a prince of the blood royal, or a Duke of Northumberland, would be hard to catch – the Doctor proposes to bestow upon him a patent of nobility. Wealth he has already, and wealth would not bribe him, but honour might. We see nothing ridiculous whatever in the suggestion. A patent of nobility might be much worse bestowed; but, unless we err greatly in our notion of what colonisation really is, the bribe would be lamentably insufficient. The English gentleman of fortune and of taste, who should leave his park and mansion in the county of Middlesex, to share the squabbles and discomforts of a crowd of emigrants – too often turbulent, anxious, and avaricious – would have well earned his earldom. He would be a sort of hero. Men of such a temper you may decorate with the strawberry leaf, but it is not the coronet, nor any possible bribe – nothing short of a certain thirst for noble enterprise can prompt them.

The other ideal of what colonisation might be is quite the reverse, presents a picture every way opposite to this of our classical dean. Many energetic and not uncultured spirits, wearied with the endless anxieties, cares, hypocrisies, and thousand artificialities of life, are delighted with the idea of breaking loose from the old trammels and conventionalities of civilisation. Their romance is to begin life afresh. Far from desiring to form a part of the little model-England, they would take from the Old World, if possible, nothing more than knowledge, seeds, and tools. To a fresh nature they would take a fresh heart, and a vigorous arm. Fields rescued by themselves from the waste should ripen under their own eyes. Thus, with a rude plenty, care and luxury alike cut off, no heartburnings, no vanity, a cultivated temper and coarse raiment – they and their families, and some neighbours of kindred dispositions, would really enjoy the earth, and the being God had given them. Not theirs the wish to see a matured society spring from the new soil. They regret to think that their own rustic community must inevitably advance, or decline, into some one of the old forms of civilisation; but they and their children, and perhaps their grandchildren, would be partakers of a peculiar and envied state of social existence, where the knowledge and amenity brought from the old country would be combined with the healthy toil and simple abundance of the new; where life would be unanxious, laborious, free; where there would be no talk of wars, nor politics, nor eternal remediless distress; but a disciplined humanity, in face of a kindly nature whose bounty had not yet been too severely taxed.

A charming ideal! which here and there is faintly and transiently realised. Here and there we catch a description of this simple, exhilarating, innocuously enterprising life, either in some Canadian settlement, or in the forests of America, or even in the Bush of Australia. There is rude health in all the family; housekeeping is a sort of perpetual pic-nic, full of amusing make-shifts; there is rudeness, but not barbarism; little upholstery, but wife and child are caressed with as much amenity and gentle fondness as in carpeted and curtained drawing-rooms. If the tin can should substitute the china cup, the tea is drunk with not the less urbanity. Such scenes we have caught a glimpse of in this or that writer. But alas! that which generally characterises the young settlement, let it be young as it may – that which would so wofully disappoint our pastoral and romantic emigrant, is precisely this: that, instead of leaving care behind them, the care to get rich, to get on , as it is disgustingly called – our colonists take a double portion of this commodity with them. Comparatively few seem to emigrate simply to live then and there more happily. They take land, as they would take a shop, to get a profit and be rich. And then, as for the little community and its public or common interests, it is the universal remark that, if politics in England are acrid enough, colonial politics are bitterness itself. The war is carried on with a personal hatred, and attended by personal injuries, unknown in the old country.