Volltext Seite (XML)
Next to the influence of the State in promoting colo nization, is the efficiency of a great corporate body like the New Zealand Company, consisting of men of wealth, rank, and practical judgment, whose proceedings are marked by deliberation, and who can exert the power of capital and influence in concentrating a community of individuals in a selected spot. In founding a colony in a country which possesses, as New Zealand does, fertile land in abundance, the great object is so to proportion the amount of capital to the amount of labour, that there may be enough of capital for the profitable employment of all the labour, and enough of labour for the profitable employment of all the capital. It is a nice thing, a thing probably unattainable, with precision to hit the point of adjustment, in this proportion especially, as it is impossible to prevent mere speculators residing in England and not purposing to leave it, from investing money in the purchase of land, in the expecta tion that the land so acquired will rise in value from the improvements of others. According to the plan of the Company, a considerable part of the money paid to them by such speculators, as well as by all other parties, for land, will be expended in sending out labour to New Zealand; but it is obvious that in the case stated there will be no corresponding transmission of capital, and that consequently, in proportion as this cause operates, there is a hazard of there being a superabundance of labour in the Company’s settlement, which might shut the least eligible labourers out of employment. But the manner in which the Company proposes to employ a portion of its capital will tend to obviate this danger. As soon as the several settlements of the