From Edward Gibbon Wakefield, A View of the Art of Colonization in Present Reference to the British Empire in Letters between a Statesman and a Colonist. London: John W. Parker, 1849. Rpt by NY: Augustus M. Kelley, 1969.
The practice of colonization has in a great measure peopled the earth: it has founded nations: it has re-acted with momentous consequences on old countries, by creating and supplying new objects of desire, by stimulating industry and skill, by promoting manufactures and commerce, by greatly augmenting the wealth and population of the world: it has occasioned directly a peculiar form of government --the really democraticÑand has been, indirectly, a main cause of the political changes and tendencies which now agitate Europe (92-3).
The emigrants would be producers of food; of more food, if the colonization were well managed, than they could consume: they would be growers of food and raw materials of manufacture for this country: we should buy their surplus food and raw materials with manufactured goods. . . . Thus, employment for capital and labour would be increased in two places and two ways at the same time; abroad, in the colonies, by the removal of capital and people to fresh fields of production; at home, by the extension of markets, or the importation of food and raw materials. It is necessary and very interesting to observe, that colonization has a tendency to increase employment for capital and labour at home. When a Hampshire peasant emigrates to Australia, he very likely enables an operative to live in Lancashire or Yorkshire. Besides making food in the colony for himself, he makes some more to send home for the manufacturer, who in his turn makes clothes or implements for the colonist. Accordingly, if colonization proceeded faster than capital and people increased, hurtful competition would be at an end; and yet capital and people might increase here in Great Britain faster than they do now.
"To appreciate," says Mr. Mill, "the benefits of colonization, it should be considered in its relation not to a single country, but to the collective economical interests of the human race. The question is in general treated too exclusively as one of distribution; of relieving one labour-market and supplying another. It is this, but it is also a question of production, and of the most efficient employment of the productive resources of the world (93).
The extent and glory of an empire are solid advantages for all its inhabitants, and especially those who inhabit its centre. . . . For by overawing foreign nations and impressing mankind with a prestige of our might, it enables us to keep the peace of the world . . . The advantage is, that the possession of this immense empire by England causes the mere name of England to be a real and a mighty power (98).
