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In the years which followed the peace of 1815, the population of Great Britain increased rapidly. The first accurate census appeared in 1801 and the subsequent decennial returns furnished a basis for calculating the rate of increase. The population of England, Wales, and Scotland was 12,596,803 in 1811; 14,391,631 in 1821; and 16,539,318 in 1831—an increase in each case of about 15 per cent. Between 1821 and 1831 the total population of Great Britain and Ireland rose in numbers from 21,193,458 to 24,304,799. [1]

After 1815 alarm began to be felt at this rapid growth, and population which had been looked upon as the strength of the nation was coming to be considered its curse. With the end of the war, too, there was an increasing amount of pauperism and distress. The large public debt, the cessation of war expenditure and the natural reaction after the war, together with two successive bad harvests, dislocated trade and industry, and threw numbers out of employment. The expenditure on poor relief in 1801 amounted to £4,017,871, or 9s. 1d. per head in England and Wales, and in 1831 to £6,798,838, or 9s. 9d. per head." [2] Porter calculated that "the weight of pauper expenditure, in proportion to the population at the two periods was as seven in 1831 to four in 1801." [3]

Malthus had in 1797, and again in 1803, called attention to the fact that population, unless checked, tended to increase faster than the means of subsistence. The census returns appeared to verify his conclusions, and his doctrines grew in popularity until they dominated the minds of economists and statesmen haunted by the spectre of over-population. [4]

In these circumstances the "condition of England question," as Carlyle called it, pressed for a solution. Remedies were sought both for the relief of pauperism and distress, and for lessening the "pressure of population upon the means of subsistence." Among these one resource, which found much support, was emigration. In the eighteenth century no one had talked of a surplus population. Population meant national strength, and emigration was not encouraged. There was "no surer way to condemn a colony than to show that it tended to diminish the population of the mother-country." [5] But in the early nineteenth century the removal of the redundant population to the colonies and elsewhere was urged as a means of relieving paupers, of reducing the poor rate, and of lessening the supply of an overstocked labour market.

James Mill's article on "Colonization" in the Encyclopædia Britannica in 1822 was a Malthusian essay on population, an economic argument against the monopoly of colonial trade, and a denunciation of the government of the "many" in the interests of the "few," rather than an account of the principles and practice of colonization. He gave a cautious adherence to emigration as a remedy for over-population, recommending it on two conditions: first, that the land colonized yielded a better return to labour than that left by the emigrant; secondly, that the expense of removing emigrants was not so great as to cause more loss by the expenditure of capital than was gained by the diminution of numbers.

Among the most zealous advocates of emigration was Robert John Wilmot Horton, [6] who had entered the House of Commons in 1814. In 1822 [7] he became Under-Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, when he immediately associated himself with colonial questions, particularly in relation to Canada and to emigration. It was he who, in 1822, introduced into the House of Commons the abortive Bill for the Union of the Canadas which was so vigorously opposed in the Lower Province. [8] Though possessed of little ability, he was a man of great energy and perseverance, [9] and he was doomed to spend seven or eight years—from 1823 to 1830—in urging on the British public a scheme of emigration which had many obvious defects and received some official but little popular support. Speaking, in 1858, of colonization and emigration in 1826, James Stephen said: "They who participate with me in the melancholy advantage of being able to remember the progress of public events so long as thirty-two years ago, will call to mind how, at that time, Mr. Wilmot Horton (the pleasantest of companions and the most restless of politicians) wedded himself to that great cause; how enthusiastic was the garrulity of those espousals, and how they gave birth to a progeny of reviews and articles and reports and books and pamphlets either fugitive or motionless, without number and without end." [10]

In his examination of the conditions of the labouring population of Great Britain, Wilmot Horton found a state of pauperism and distress, which, as a follower of Malthus, he ascribed to the fact that population was redundant. [11] Labour, he maintained, was merely a commodity, bought and sold in the market, and subject like every other commodity to fluctuations in value. [12] The price of labour was governed by the same laws that governed the prices or other commodities. [13] "No one would deny," he told the House of Commons in 1827, "that the principle which regulated the price of commodities also regulated the price of the labour of those who produced them; and that, whenever the supply became in either case in excess, as compared with the demand, the price must sink until the market was cleared of that proportion of the article, whether a commodity or labour, which was really in excess." [14] Wages, then, depended on the proportion which capital bore to labour. [15] With labour in excess came depreciation, a consequent fall in wages, and unemployment. While to the labourers this "inconvenient excess of population" [16] meant, he considered, destitution; to the rest of the community it meant a large and increasing expenditure in maintaining an army of non-producers. [17] The problem and its solution he stated in these terms: low wages were the cause of pauperism; redundancy of population the cause of low wages. The remedy, then, was to raise wages by readjusting the proportion between capital and labour. [18] This could be done either by increasing the relative amount of capital, or by decreasing the amount of labour. To increase the supply of capital in its relation to labour was, he thought, a practical impossibility, so that the removal of labour by emigration was the only feasible way of raising wages. [19] "If, therefore, the market could by any means, such as emigration, be cleared of those hands which were at the present moment superabundant, it followed that the remainder would find the wages of labour increased to such an amount as would afford them an adequate remuneration." [20] For Ireland additional measures were necessary, because in that country the evil of redundancy was intensified by the great number of small landholders who were living in a state of extreme poverty, and fast increasing their numbers. He suggested not only that the surplus pauper population should be removed, but also that the small holdings should be thrown together so that it might be profitable to employ English capital in Irish agriculture. [21]

The one question of theory which he regarded as doubtful was whether the "vacuum" caused by emigration would not as quickly be filled again by an increase of population at home, which would cause wages to fall once more. Indeed, although he suggested some precautionary measures, he feared that all the evils of redundancy would set in again, but not before the cost of emigration was more than covered by the economy of sending paupers abroad instead of keeping them in idleness at home. [22] At the worst the ratepayers were no more heavily burdened, while many paupers would be better off.

Looking merely at the advantages which would result to Great Britain from the removal of her superfluous labourers, this plan would be equally efficacious whether the emigrants went to a British colony or to another country; but the interests of the whole empire, he thought, demanded that the colonies should have the advantage of this stream of emigration. In this respect he strongly opposed the eminent economist, J. R. McCulloch, who, though inclined to accept his plan, thought it immaterial whether paupers were sent to Canada or to any other country which had commercial relations with England. [23] In 1822 Wilmot Horton saw that the colonies were suffering for want of labour, and that they needed something more than the natural increase of population if they were to prosper. [24] Viewing the matter in this light he stated the problem to be that of "making the redundant labour and the curse of the mother-country, the active labour and the blessing of the colonies." [25] In emigration the interests of the two were reciprocal, for the colony would relieve the mother-country of her labourers, and by their aid would increase in wealth and provide a market for British manufactures. [26] Horton was no advocate of discontinuing colonial establishments. The prospective increase of population in Canada would, he thought, prevent those colonies from becoming part of the United States. [27] Indeed, his reason for returning to the fray of controversy in 1839, after an absence of seven years, was to urge the necessity for adopting an enlarged system of colonization in order to strengthen the connection between Great Britain and her American colonies. [28]

Colonization, however, was to him not an end in itself, but merely a means of ridding Great Britain of her redundant population. He wrote not on colonization, but on the causes and remedies of pauperism. "Colonization abroad," he wrote to Poulett Thomson in 1830, "as a remedy for the evils of a relatively redundant population is, and has been, with me, only a subordinate object of inquiry. I consider it only as the best and cheapest mode of disposing of that Abstraction of superfluous labouring population from the general labour market, which I contend to be the Main Remedy for the distressed condition of the labouring classes of the United Kingdom." [29] Could he have discovered a better means he would not have advocated colonization. "If it can be shown that the superfluous population so abstracted can be disposed of more economically and more advantageously at home than abroad, I shall never be found to press for a moment the remedy of colonial emigration." [30]

Wilmot Horton's plan was to have a state-controlled and a state-aided emigration. [31]

In the first place those paupers who wished to emigrate were to be provided by the Government with a free passage to Canada, and a free grant of 100 [32] acres of land there, subject to conditions of cultivation. After five years a small quit-rent of 2d. per acre was to be imposed, and the proceeds were to be applied to local purposes, such as improving the means of communication. The emigrants were also to be provided with farming implements, stock, and a sufficient supply of provisions to last them for one year.

The scheme was confined to paupers. Only those "entirely destitute of all means of subsistence" [33] were to be sent. The emigrants and their children were to forfeit all claims upon parochial support. But there was to be no compulsion on anyone to emigrate. Only those who "ardently desired" [34] to go were to be taken. He thought that paupers would be attracted by the prospect which a new country offered them of escaping from their unhappy situation at home. "It is considered as unquestionable, although this measure is not in the slightest degree compulsory, that the poor man who offers his strength and energy as a labourer, but who, finding no demand, or at least no adequate demand for his services, is compelled to receive "parish relief" for the preservation of his own existence and that of his family, will accept this opportunity of bettering his condition, by laying the foundation for future independence, with eagerness and gratitude; when sufficient time has elapsed, and proper pains been taken to make him understand the true nature and character of the change that is proposed for him." [35]

Wilmot Horton always insisted on the importance of that part of his scheme which related to settling the emigrants on the land and making provision for them after their arrival. He distinguished between this plan and the unsystematic and unregulated emigration which was at that time going on from the British Isles to Canada; between "emigration where the individuals were fixed to the soil, and that desultory kind of emigration which consisted in merely conveying them to a certain place and then leaving them to make their way as they could." [36] Emigrants, he thought, should not be treated merely as prospective labourers. It was a mistaken notion that "emigration should be conducted on the principle of supplying labourers only to the colonies—that the expense should be limited to the carrying of the emigrants out, and landing them on the shores to be disposed of as chance or circumstances might direct." [37] In his view such emigration, while it might serve the purpose merely of getting rid of a redundant population yet exposed the emigrants to worse evils; [38] for, as was the fact then and afterwards, labouring emigrants to Canada, before they could reach the places where work might be found, suffered great hardships, [39] and were passing over in large numbers to the United States. [40] Under his scheme the pauper emigrant was to be established at once as a landholder and a prospective employer of labour. [41] "The settler would be firmly fixed in the soil, instead of taking his chance of obtaining subsistence: instead of being like a plant thrown down upon the earth, either to take root, or to be withered by the sun, he would be like a young and vigorous tree set by a careful hand, with all the advantages of soil and climate." [42]

In the second place, for the expenses of emigration, the Government, which was to manage the undertaking, was to advance money by way of loan to the parishes on the security of the poor rate, which was to be mortgaged for the purpose. The sum advanced by the Government would, then, be repaid by the parish by means of a terminable annuity. His earliest proposal, in 1823, did not contemplate any repayment by the emigrants of the cost of their location. Later, however, he suggested that they should bear part, [43] and the principle or repayment was strongly recommended by the Select Committee on Emigration in 1827. [44] Still later he recurred to his former plan, and abandoned the principle of repayment on the grounds that it would be unpopular in the colonies and with the emigrants themselves, and that the expense incurred in emigration was a small price for the parish to pay compared with the cost of maintaining those emigrants as paupers at home. [45] Indeed, the chief argument which he brought forward in support of this part of his plan was that parishes would, by emigrating their paupers to Canada, save considerably by the resulting diminution in the amount of poor relief which they would need to dispense. The redundant pauper, unable to procure employment, however able to work, was a tax upon the community, and his removal could be carried out at such a cost as to relieve the community from this burden, without incurring so much expense as was necessary to maintain him at home. [46] Wilmot Horton calculated what would be the annual charge on the parish necessary to repay the expenses of emigration, and he compared it with the actual annual cost to the parish of supporting those emigrants at home. The capital sum necessary to settle a family of four in Canada according to his plan he estimated at about £80, [47] while the annual cost of maintaining that family as paupers at home was about £10 per head. [48] The annual charge which would repay the sum of £80 was very much less than £40, and the difference was so much clear gain to the parish and to the community.

This plan of loan and mortgage of the poor rate was, as it stood, not applicable to Scotland or Ireland, but there would be little difficulty in applying it, he thought, if a fund could be raised as security for the loan, either by public or private subscription in those countries. [49] He believed that landlords there would find it to their interest to pay the expenses of an emigration which would remove their surplus tenantry and enable them to throw small holdings together and carry on agriculture on a larger scale.

While the parish and private employer gained in this way by emigration, the pauper became in Canada a happy and prosperous independent proprietor. Emigration would mean for him the "transmutation of pauperism into comparative prosperity," [50] and, for his fellow-paupers at home, more and better-paid employment. This process, beneficial alike to mother-country and colony, might, he believed, go on indefinitely with advantage to all concerned.

"It must not be forgotten, in a comprehensive view of such a system, that the pauper, for whose labour no remuneration can be afforded at home, will be transmuted by this process into an independent proprietor, and at no distant period will become a consumer of the manufactured articles of his native country. Nor, on the other hand, can any calculable period be assigned for the termination of such a system, until all the colonies of the British empire are saturated, and millions added to those who speak the English language, and carry with them the liberty and the laws and the sympathies of their native country.

"Such a system would direct the tide of emigration towards parts of the British empire, which must be considered as integral, though separated by geographical position. The defence or these colonial possessions would be more easily supplied within themselves, and their increasing prosperity would not only relieve the mother-country from pecuniary demands that are now indispensable, but that prosperity in its reaction would augment the wealth and the resources of the mother-country itself." [51]

Throughout the discussion which these plans evoked, Wilmot Horton and every one else seems to have looked upon the problem under consideration as one concerning a large mass of individuals whom they lumped together under the name of paupers. There was no appreciation of the fact that one pauper might differ essentially from another, that one might be a competent but unfortunate labourer, while another might be an incapable who had broken down hopelessly in the struggle for existence. From all that was said and written it might have been thought that the receipt of parish relief made its recipients resemble one another in all respects. Wilmot Horton wrote as if paupers were a homogeneous class, and they were anything but that. No doubt many of them were out of work agricultural labourers, but there were also many who had come by various roads of inefficiency to the dead end of parish relief.

Nor was there any consideration of the question whether the actual individuals whom it was proposed to send out were qualified to earn their living in a new country. The problem of dealing with paupers was stated in abstract terms such as "excess of population," "demand and supply of labour," and "surplus labour," as if unemployed labourers necessarily resembled one another in anything else but unemployment. It shows a curious difference from modern ways of thought, for one of the first questions which would arise now in such a scheme of emigration would be "What kind of people is it proposed to send out, and what are they capable of doing in a new country?" It was impossible for such a scheme as this, depending so largely on the success of the emigrants in agriculture, to succeed without a careful examination of, and discrimination between, the various types of paupers with a view to selecting those only who would be suitable to the conditions of a new country. Wakefield, indeed, was the only critic who pointed this out when he showed that the type of emigrants sent out under this system was unsuitable.

In 1823, and again in 1825, attempts were made on a small scale to put Wilmot Horton's plan into practice. In each case a grant of money was made by Parliament—£15,000 in 1823, [52] and £30,000 in 1825, [53] for the purpose of settling paupers in Canada. There had been some earlier grants for emigration both to Canada and to the Cape of Good Hope. In 1819 £50,000 was voted for emigration to the Cape, and in 1821 £68,760 for emigration from the south of Ireland to Canada and the Cape. [54] But the grants of 1823 and 1825 differed from these in that they were advisedly made to carry out experiments on the lines advocated by Wilmot Horton. The settlements which were established by these means were attempts to discover whether paupers might be located in Canada at a less cost than was necessary for their maintenance at home; and the object of the Government was "to show, by a few trials, to those who might be interested in forwarding such a system, and in removing a redundant population, the ease with which it might be carried into effect, and the good consequences resulting from it." [55] The settlements were made only upon a small scale, and were intended to test the practicability of removing population rather than to cure any existing redundancy. The experiment of 1823 was carried out "not from any expectation that the small emigration which then took place could produce any sensible effect upon the superabundant population of the south of Ireland, but merely for the sake of having before them the effect of an experiment tried upon a small scale, before they ventured upon a plan of emigration upon a large one." [56]

The grant of 1823 was devoted partly to emigration to Canada, and partly to emigration to the Cape. By its means 350 labourers were sent out to the Cape at the Government's expense to meet the demand there for labour. They were not located on the land, nor were they furnished after their arrival with provisions or stock. "This emigration," said Wilmot Horton in 1823, "evidently has not the least of the character of the emigration to Canada, being founded merely on the demand for labourers at the Cape." [57]

But the greater part of the grant was spent in sending 571 pauper emigrants [58] from the south of Ireland to Canada, under the charge of Mr. Peter Robinson, and in settling them on grants of land. In accordance with Wilmot Horton's plan the emigrants received a free passage, provisions for one year, farming implements, and stock; while to each head of a family was given seventy acres of land, subject, after five years, to a quit-rent of 2d. per acre. By paying an amount equal to twenty years' purchase of the quit-rent the freehold of the land might be obtained at any time. [59]

The Select Committee on the Condition of the Labouring Poor in Ireland, which sat in 1823, after examining into the particulars of this experiment, expressed their approbation of the principles on which it had been conducted and their hope that it might lead to satisfactory results. [60] After this recommendation, and the reports as to the success of the settlement, another grant of £30,000 was made in 1825, which was expended altogether on pauper location in Canada. The expense of the experiment of 1823 had been about £22 per head, [61] and it was calculated that the grant would be sufficient for the location of 1,500 people. Actually 2,024 were sent, and the additional expense was met by another grant of £20,480 in 1827, of which, however, half was to be spent in making thhe necessary surveys and inquiries in Canada before any large body of emigrants could be introduced. [62] These paupers were settled in Canada on the same terms as those of 1823, but at the slightly less cost of £20 per head. [63]

The evidence as to the success of these experiments is conflicting. Wilmot Horton always claimed that they had been entirely successful, and brought a good many opinions of independent observers in support of his contention. [64] Indeed, those who saw the settlements in their first few years were, with the exception of Lieut.-Colonel Cockburn, [65] of this opinion. [66] Although on Wilmot Horton's own showing the mortality amongst them was 25 per 1,000, [67] yet the majority of the emigrants did greatly improve their condition. The Emigration Commissioners of 1832 found that "the result, so far as the happiness of the settlers is concerned, has been most gratifying." [68] But as experiments in settling paupers on the land, the schemes were failures; for the conditions were rarely fulfilled, and the grants in many cases abandoned. In 1843 Lord Stanley complained that, of the loans necessary to establish these settlements, "not a single shilling had ever been recovered." [69] But this was not a fair test of success, for it was never intended that the expenses of settlement should be repaid. "The experiments of 1823 and 1825 were carried on by money absolutely voted by Parliament, without any view to repayment; they were instituted for the purpose of trying whether the details would succeed in practice, not for the purpose of considering the question whether it would be expedient, either to lend money upon security, or to vote it in large sums, as a national experiment." [70] A better test is round in the fact that, when five years had elapsed and the quit-rent began, many settlers left for the United States, while, of those who remained, many refused to pay rent, and few fulfilled the conditions on which they were to obtain their freeholds. [71]

In addition to obtaining these grants for experimental purposes, Wilmot Horton's activity caused two Select Committees of the House of Commons to be appointed to consider the subject of emigration. The first Committee sat in 1826, the second in 1827, and of both he was Chairman.

The Committee of 1826 in its Report [72] considered that the evidence before it had established the fact "that there are extensive districts in Ireland, and districts in England and Scotland, where the population is at the present moment redundant; in other words, where there exists a very considerable proportion of able-bodied and active labourers, beyond that number to which any existing demand for labour can afford employment." This led to destitution and misery, and a reduction of wages so great that in England the parochial rate threatened to absorb the whole rental of the country. In the next place the Committee found that the British colonies were capable of absorbing any proportion of the redundant population which might be sent to them. The national wealth would be greatly increased by the emigration of unemployed labourers, who, at home, consumed more than they produced, but in a new country would produce more than they consumed. They therefore recommended emigration "as one obvious and immediate measure for correcting in some degree this redundancy of population, and for mitigating the numerous evils which appear to result from its existence." They did not, however, suggest any particular scheme of emigration, but contented themselves with laying down the principles according to which it should be conducted. First, it should be voluntary; next, it should only apply to permanent pauperism; lastly, any expense incurred by the Government should be ultimately repaid, e.g., by emigrants or out of the poor rate.

The Committee of 1827 supported and confirmed without exception the findings and principles of the 1826 Committee. [73] They recommended emigration from Ireland and England in order to remedy redundancy, to save the cost of maintaining paupers at home, and to increase the general prosperity of the empire. "Emigration appears to your Committee to be a remedy well worth consideration, whether with reference to the improved condition of the population at home, and the saving of that expense which as it appears to your Committee is now incurred in maintaining a portion of them, or with respect to the prosperity of our colonies." They went somewhat farther than the earlier Committee in proposing that emigration should be financed by a loan to be repaid gradually by the emigrant, and that a Board of Emigration should be formed under the direct control of the Government. On two grounds they justified their proposals: "First, the real saving effected at home by the removal of pauper labourers, executing no real functions as labourers, and not contributing to the annual production; secondly, the probability of direct though progressive repayment from those labourers, when placed as emigrants in the colonies; and the indirect consequence of the increased demands for British manufactures involved in the circumstance of an increasing colonial population."

Fully convinced that his experiments of 1823 and 1825 had successfully demonstrated the economic advantage of emigration over home maintenance of paupers, and fortified by the reports of the Emigration Committees, Wilmot Horton proceeded to bring forward a scheme for emigration on a scale large enough to be a real remedy for redundancy.

On April 17th, 1828, and again on March 23rd, 1830, he introduced into the House of Commons a Bill "to enable parishes to mortgage their poor rates for the purpose of providing for their able-bodied paupers, by colonization in the British Colonies." [74] As before, the Government was to advance the necessary money by way of loan, and the poor rate was to be the security for repayment. Emigration was to be voluntary, and the emigrants were to be settled on the land and not merely sent out to provide labour for the colonies. But he had left office in 1828, with others of Huskisson's followers and, after some discussion, mainly by opponents, the Bill did not reach a second reading. [75]

On February 22nd, 1831, Lord Howick introduced a Bill into the House of Commons which was to all intents and purposes Wilmot Horton's Bill. [76] It provoked similar opposition, and in the troublous times of 1831 did not get as far as a second reading. [77] In the Poor Law Act of 1834, however, a section was inserted, allowing parishes to mortgage their poor rates for the purposes of emigration, [78] but this section remained a dead letter. [79]

In 1831 Wilmot Horton was knighted and made Governor of Ceylon, where he remained for seven years. On his return to England he tried to revive interest in his schemes by the publication of a pamphlet, Ireland and Canada, 1839, in which he urged pauper emigration to Canada as a cure for the condition of Ireland. But by that time the Wakefield theory held the field, and some of his former supporters had gone over to the rival camp, so that he was again unsuccessful.

Wilmot Horton's plan, though faulty in many respects, was meant seriously as an attempt to solve the difficult problem of pauperism in England, and to make the colonies more prosperous and more useful to the mother-country. He met, however, not only with opposition, but with a public indifference to colonization, even considered as a means of solving this problem, which Gibbon Wakefield afterwards was long unable to dispel. "Nothing," Wilmot Horton wrote in 1839, "but the conviction I feel of the imperative necessity at this moment for the adoption of vigorous measures, could induce me again to brave the indifference, to use the mildest term, with which the subject has been hitherto received." [80] As a cure for an admitted redundancy of population, emigration without reference to any particular scheme found considerable support. [81] In 1828 the Quarterly Review stated that "the remedy is as obvious as the necessity for having recourse to it is urgent." [82] In 1824 the Edinburgh Review, arguing against restraints on emigration, declared, "Whenever population is redundant and the wages of labour depressed, every facility ought to be given to emigration. Were it carried to a considerable extent, it would have the effect, by lessening the supply of labour in the market, to raise the rate of wages, and to improve the condition of the labourers who remain at home." [83] Again, in 1826, an article in this Review estimated the cost of conveying one million emigrants to America, and establishing them there, at about £14,000,000, and added, "We have no hesitation in saying that, though it were twice as great, it would be well and advantageously laid out in securing the object in view." [84] But even to those who agreed with him that emigration was a remedy for redundancy of population, his plan was so obviously defective that he gained little support. "I have never received," he wrote in 1830, "the assistance of any party in Parliament, nor have I experienced the support of the public Press." [85] Those who were interested in bettering the condition of the people found fault with his particular remedy. In the House of Commons "the proposition of colonization was at once scouted as theoretical, sneered at as visionary, and, above all, rejected as expensive." [86]

The existence of destitution and unemployment, and the consequent growth of pauperism was universally admitted, but it was by no means universally agreed that redundancy of population was the cause. There were many who accepted neither the Malthusian formula nor the proposition that labour was then redundant. [87] To them the problem was not how best to get rid of paupers. They agreed as to the evil of pauperism, but, disbelieving in redundancy, did not accept emigration as a remedy, but suggested other alternatives, e.g., that of employing labourers in colonizing the waste lands at home. [88] "The best colonies we could plant," said Michael Sadler, in 1831, "either with a view to the present or permanent advantages of the country, were those that might be planted on the deserts of our European empire." [89]

William Cobbett, denying redundancy, and thinking population a blessing and not a curse, strongly opposed Wilmot Horton's plan as being one for sending poor people out of their native country. [90] To him the proposed Act of 1830 was "An Act to refuse relief to all able-bodied persons who will not be transported to the swamps and rocks and snows of Nova Scotia or Canada." [91] The mortgage of the poor rate was an attempt to "pawn the whole of the land and houses of England, in order to raise money to hire ships to carry the working people out of the country." [92] There was, he considered, no redundancy either of population or of labour, but only of taxation. [93] The cause of the distress was not surplus population, but bad laws and heavy taxes, and his remedy was to remove these instead of removing paupers. [94]

Two main objections were made to Wilmot Horton's plan by those who were inclined to accept emigration as a remedy. First it was argued that, no matter on what scale it was carried out, the abstraction of population would leave a "vacuum" which would be filled up immediately by the tendency of population to increase beyond the means of subsistence. This would entail all the evils of redundancy in an accentuated form, because the capital spent in emigration would be abstracted from the fund necessary to furnish employment at home. [95]

While this objection applied generally to any scheme of emigration, the second objection on the score of expense applied to Wilmot Horton's proposed means of carrying on emigration. The main assumption upon which his scheme was based, namely, that it was cheaper to locate paupers in Canada than to maintain them at home, met with no general acceptance. In 1839 he wrote: "Now, up to the present hour, notwithstanding an infinite variety of publications, notwithstanding the lectures which I gave publicly at the Mechanics' Institution, I have never been able to gain an assent to the proposition 'that home maintenance of paupers is a greater tax than the annuity necessary to repay the sum advanced for colonization.' This proposition has been placed by me, as I have already said, again and again, before the public; but except from scientific persons, with whom I have placed myself in close communication, I have never been able to obtain either from Government, from Parliament, from the Reviews, or from the public in general, anything like a satisfactory assent to a proposition which appears to me to be incapable of being denied." [96] The Emigration Commissioners of 1832, after admitting the success of his experiments of 1823 and 1825, as far as the happiness of the settlers was concerned, reported that "as a means of relief to the mother-country, the expense of such undertakings plainly rendered them unavailable, since, however beneficial to the parties actually removed, the measure was far too costly to be persevered in to any useful extent." [97] Indeed, expense was the chief rock on which his plan struck. The general feeling was that, although emigration, if conducted without too great an outlay, might be productive of great benefits to the emigrants and to the community as a whole, yet it was dangerous to lend money upon the security of repayment by emigrants. "If it can be clearly demonstrated that the expenses of sending out emigrants in the first instance can be repaid to the state, either by persons and bodies of persons interested in getting rid of the redundant portion of the population, or by the emigrants themselves, there would be manifestly a national gain from emigration. The condition of the emigrants themselves would be altered for the better, and by their abstraction, some relief, although slight and temporary, would be afforded to the rest of the population." [98] But it was feared that there was no certainty of repayment by the emigrants, and this fear was confirmed by experience. Nor was his plan of mortgaging the poor rate to secure the loan any less dangerous. In it his opponents saw "the commencement of a municipal national debt which is to overwhelm the country." [99]

Indeed, Wilmot Horton's plan carried within itself the seeds of failure. It contemplated a certain and permanent charge for a problematical future benefit. If the "vacuum" were to fill again, the rates would be burdened with the maintenance of two large classes of paupers, one at home, and one in the colonies. Even if the vacuum did not fill, and industry increased with a smaller population, the parish might find itself saddled with a debt incurred for removing pauper labour which was now badly needed at home. [100] The pauper's condition was not necessarily one of permanent destitution, but depended largely on the fluctuations in the labour market, which might easily improve and relieve the parish of the burden of his maintenance. A signal proof of the validity of this objection occurred in 1827. The Emigration Committee of that year, in view of the distress then existing amongst English and Scottish weavers, strongly recommended a grant of £50,000 from the national funds "in furtherance of an emigration from the manufacturing districts, at once as a relief from present distress, and as an important national experiment for the future." They based their recommendations upon "the urgency and the peculiarity of the case," [101] but, before the end of the year, conditions had so improved and the demand for labour so changed, that there were no claimants for the benefit. [102]

Wilmot Horton's chief opponents, though from widely different points of view, were Mr. Michael Sadler, and the advocates of systematic colonization under the leadership of Edward Gibbon Wakefield. The former was an uncompromising opponent of Malthus, and wrote books to prove that the Malthusian "principle of population" was wrong. [103] In addition, he was a man of deeply religious and humanitarian feeling, and this plan appeared to him to be irreligious and unnatural in that it sinned against the true law of population which was the law "of nature and of God." [104] Wakefield afterwards complained of him as one of "those unreasoning men who would determine questions in political economy by quoting scripture." [105]

Another objection he raised to emigration was that it drove people from their native land. Getting rid of paupers in this way amounted to making poverty a crime, and transportation its punishment. In the House of Commons and elsewhere he strongly attacked the plan, denying redundancy of population, advocating home colonization and poor laws for Ireland, and pointing to the mortality of the settlers of 1823 and 1825 as evidence of its failure. [106]

But even this opposition excited little interest. Wakefield wrote in 1849, "Twenty years ago colonization was in no respect a subject of public opinion; the public neither knew nor cared anything at all about it. There existed indeed at that time, a controversy between Mr. Wilmot Horton and Mr. Michael Thomas Sadler concerning emigration, which the infinite zeal of the disputants forced into some public notice; but as the only question between them was, whether, as Mr. Sadler contended, paupers ought to 'dwell in the land' in order to be fed, or, as Mr. Wilmot Horton proposed, be sent abroad out of the way, the public took no real interest in the dispute. Still less did Mr. Horton, notwithstanding his singular perseverance, excite a general interest in his plans of mere pauper emigration." [107] Nor was Wilmot Horton under any misapprehension as to his success. In 1830 he wrote, "I have heard that men of high reputation have expressed their regret 'that I would continue to bore the House of Commons with my absurd opinions.'" [108]

The advocates of systematic colonization always looked on Wilmot Horton's plan by way contrast to their own. They objected in the first place to the mother-country spending money on emigration to the colonies when, by adopting their system of sales of colonial waste land, a fund might easily be raised which would give the same advantages without any expense to the mother-country. [109] In the next place they objected to mortgaging the poor rate, and creating a permanent charge for a temporary relief. In their eyes not only was Wilmot Horton's plan ruinously expensive, but it was inadequate to its purpose. [110] The experiments in "the cruel art of pauper location" [111] had failed because of their expense, and because paupers were not suitable colonists. [112] "Though Mr. Horton rode his hobby so as to induce Parliament to try on a small scale a costly and deterrent experiment of his well-meant suggestions, he soon rode it to death." [113] They seized on the provisions depriving emigrants of parochial support as a proof that the authors of the plan expected failure. If the experiment were successful, they argued, there was no need for the pauper to lose his settlement as he would only return to the parish in case of failure. [114] In short, they considered the plan "the most expensive and least effective" [115] that could be devised. It was an "irrational scheme—a mere shift in haste and alarm, occasioned by the present truly alarming condition of the peasantry." [116]

More important than all this, it was not a plan of colonization at all, but one of mere emigration. It was "not founded on any principles of colonization; he does not regard emigration as, what it plainly is, but one, and only the second, element of colonization." [117]

It overlooked the most important, namely, the disposal of colonial waste lands. Emigration was only one ingredient of colonization, and its function merely was to supply colonies with labour. [118] In the same way as Wilmot Horton had distinguished between desultory, unregulated emigration and his plan of regulated and systematic emigration, so they distinguished between his plan of mere emigration and their own of systematic colonization. Their condemnation may be summed up under the phrase coined afterwards by Charles Buller—the whole scheme was nothing less than "shovelling out paupers." [119] They blamed Wilmot Horton and his plans for making emigration generally distasteful. In this respect pauper-location was as much a deterrent as transportation. [120] They complained that in his plan the advantage, not of the pauper emigrant, but of the ratepayer, was prominent; and that this, together with the fact that the settlers of 1823 and 1825 had suffered hardships, created a dislike to pauper emigration, and therefore to all emigration. [121] Again, they complained of the "language of apathy or disgust in which public opinion speaks concerning all measures for the promotion of colonization," [122] and for this indifference they blamed Wilmot Horton's activities. Indeed, they expressed their opinion of him in no measured terms. He was an "insufferable political bore"; [123] his seven years' advocacy of emigration had disgusted people with the mention of the word; [124] and "until that zealous and persevering, but ignorant and meddling pretender in political economy, shall cease to torment the public and the Colonial Office with his 'preparations to show' there will be difficulty in establishing rational views on this deeply interesting subject" of colonization. [125] Wilmot Horton's name served Wakefield long afterwards as a contemptuous phrase to express the antithesis of true colonization. In 1848, when Lord Grey had come into office again, with Benjamin Hawes and Charles Buller to assist him in colonial reform, and was disappointing the expectations of the systematic colonizers by proposing a loan for emigration on lines of which they disapproved, Wakefield wrote, "It is a scheme for nothing else than the shovelling out of paupers at the public expense. Lord Grey, Buller, and Hawes having failed in all their promises with respect both to colonization and government, fall back upon Wilmot-Hortonism." [126]

Wilmot Horton's failure to excite interest in his plans, or to get them carried into effect upon any large scale, disclosed the fact that the mother-country was not then prepared to spend any considerable amount of the public funds in emigration, even as a cure for redundancy of population. Voluntary emigration would not be discouraged as it furnished an outlet for population, and helped to make the colonies prosperous. It might even be regulated by Government, but it would not be carried on at the public cost. In this way the ground was cleared for the favourable reception of the Wakefield system, which in practice possessed the great attraction of providing a fund for emigration in a comparatively simple and inexpensive manner.