not. It must depend much upon the rapidity of immigration into the colony. If the second batch of immigrants is slow of coming in, the first must be kept labourers the longer. If the stream of labour flow but scantily into this artificial canal, the locks must be opened the more rarely. But how is the "sufficient price" to be determined until this period be known? It is the sum the labourer can save from his wages, during this time, which must constitute the price of so much land as will support him and his family, and enable him to turn proprietor. Thus, in order to regulate the sufficient price, it will be necessary to find the average rate of wages, the average amount of savings that a labourer could make (which, again, must depend upon the price of provisions, and other necessaries of life) during an unknown period!—and, in addition to this, to determine the average produce of so many acres of land. The apparent simplicity of the scheme resolves itself into an extreme complexity. The author of it, indeed, proposes a short method by which his sufficient price may be arrived at without these calculations: what that short method is, and how fallacious it would prove, we shall have occasion to show.

But granting that, in any manner, this "sufficient price" could be determined, the measure has an unjust and arbitrary character. It is not enough that such a scheme could be defended, and shown to be equitable, because for the general good, before some committee of legislators; if it offends the popular sense of justice it can never prosper. "I know," the humble emigrant might say—"I know there must be rich and poor in the world; there always have been, and always will be. To what is inevitable one learns to submit. If I am born poor there is no help for it, except what lies in my own ability and industry. But if you set about, by artificial regulations, in a new colony, where fruitful land is in abundance, to keep me poor, because I am so now, I rebel. This is not just. Do I not see the open land before me unowned, untouched? I well enough understood that, in old England, I could not take so much of any field as the merest shed would cover—not so much as I could burrow in. Long before I was born it had been all claimed, hedged, fenced in, and a title traced from ancestor to ancestor. Here, I am the ancestor!"

Tell such a man that a price is put upon the land in order that some companions whom he left starving in England may come over and partake the benefit of this unbroken soil,—he will see a plain justice here. He himself was, perhaps, brought over by the price paid by some precursor. What he received from one more prosperous, he returns to another less prosperous than himself. But tell him that a price is put upon the land, in order that he may serve a rich master the longer,—in order that he may be kept in a subordinate station, from which circumstances now permit him to escape—he will see no justice in the case. He will do everything in his power to evade your law; he will look upon your "sufficient price" as a cruel artificial barrier raised up against him; he will go and "squat" upon the land, without paying any price at all.

Indeed, the objection to his scheme, which Mr Wakefield seems to feel the strongest,—to which he gives the least confident reply, is just this—that, equitable or not, it would be impossible to carry out his law into execution; that if the price were high enough to answer his purposes, the land, in colonial dialect, would be "squatted" on,—would be taken possession of without any payment whatever. A moderate price men will cheerfully pay for the greater security of title: Englishmen will not, for a slight matter, put themselves wittingly on the wrong side of the law. But, if coupled with a high price, there is a rankling feeling of injustice: they will be very apt to satisfy themselves with actual possession, and leave the legal title to follow as it may. It is true, as Mr Wakefield urges, the richer capitalists will by no means favour the squatter; they will be desirous of enforcing a law made for their especial benefit. But they will not form the majority. Popular opinion will be against them, and in favour of the squatter. It would not be very easy to have a police force, and an effective magistracy, at the outskirts of a settlement stretching out, in some cases, into an unexplored region. Besides, it is a conspicuous part of Mr Wakefield's plan to give municipal or local governments to our colonies: these, as emanating from the British constitution, must need be more or less of a popular character; and we are persuaded that no such popular local government would uphold his "sufficient price," or tolerate the principle on which it was founded.

But, even if practicable, if carried out into complete execution, it remains to be considered whether the measure proposed would really have the effect contemplated by our theorist—that of supplying the capitalist with the labour he needs. With a certain number of labourers it might,—but of what character? It is not a remote possibility that will influence a common day-labourer to save his earnings. It is one of the terms of the proposition that high wages are to be given; for without these there would be no emigration, and certainly no fear of a too speedy promotion to the rank of proprietor. It follows, therefore, that you have a class of men earning high wages, and not under any strong stimulus to save—a class of men always found to be the most idle and refractory members of the community. A journeyman who has no pressing motive for a provident economy, and who earns high wages, is almost invariably a capricious unsteady workman, on whom no dependence can be placed; who will generally work just so many days in the week as are necessary to procure him the enjoyments he craves. One of these enjoyments is indolence itself,—a sottish, half-drunken indolence. Drinking is the coarse pleasure of most uneducated men: it is so even in the old country; and in a colony where there are still fewer amusements for the idle hour, it becomes almost the sole pleasure. How completely it is the reigning vice of our own colonies is known to all. Imagine a labourer in the receipt of high wages, little influenced by the remote prospect of becoming, by slow savings, a proprietor of land—and feeling, moreover, that he was retained in a dependent condition, arbitrarily, artificially, expressly for the service of the capitalist—what amount of work think you the capitalist-farmer would get from such a labourer? Not so much in seven years as he would have had from him in two, if, at the end of that two, the man had calculated upon being himself a farmer.

Recollect that it is not slave labour, or convict labour, that we are here dealing with: it is the free labour of one man working for another man, at wages. He gets all the wages he can, and gives as little labour as he can. If the wages are high, and the inducement to save but feeble, he will probably earn by one day's work what will enable him to pass the two next in idleness and debauchery. What boon will Mr Wakefield have conferred upon the capitalist?

The theory of a "sufficient price" is, therefore, placed in this hopeless predicament:—1. It would be almost impossible to enforce it; and, 2. If enforced, it would fail of its purpose. It would supply the capitalist with inefficient, profligate, and idle workmen, on whose steady co-operation and assistance he could never calculate.

That it may be desirable to tempt the capitalist abroad by securing him an abundance of hired labour, something like that which lies at his door in England, we do not dispute. But the thing is impossible. You cannot manage this by direct legislation. You cannot combine in one settlement the advantages of a new and of an old country. It is not in the wit of man to bring together these two stages of society. Our political economist is in too great a haste