The Edinburgh Review, or Critical Journal, Vol. 91 : For October, 1849;;; April, 1850; To Be Continued Quarterly (Classic Reprint) by Unknown Author
Excerpt from The Edinburgh Review, or Critical Journal, Vol. 91: For October, 1849;;; April, 1850; To Be Continued Quarterly
There are still persons who deny that we suffer from a redundant population: but a larger number are contented to affirm that its removal would prove too arduous and costly an enterprise. The former class are the loudest in their opposition to colonization, the latter are the more efficient. It is well known, however, that mere difficulties of detail often retard the introduction of measures of obvious necessity. This has been the case with the question of Sanitary Reform, and with the yet more momentous question of Education: but such difficulties diminish as they are looked in the face, and vanish when closely confronted; so that, when the great measure, which has a hundred times been pronounced to be alike desirable and impracticable, is at last carried, men ask, as in the story of Columbus's egg, where the difficulty lay? Achievements in the political, like discoveries in the. scientific world, are for the most part heralded by precursive signs; and we have already had on the subject of Colonization those dawnlights which prognosticate the day.
Nor can we at all wonder at the growing interest with which this topic is regarded. The kindred subject of Pauperism has for a long series of years engrossed a large share of public attention: but, frequently as it has been the theme of the philosopher and the economist, no efficient remedy has as yet been devised. We can travel at the rate of fifty miles an hour, and send intelligence a thousand miles in a minute; we have not been able, however, to outstrip pauperism. Wealth has accumulated: social improvements have been carried out; and political changes have taken place, only less than revolution; but our national Genius yet stands rebuked before the one gaunt phantom which meets it on every path of triumph. A few years ago pauperism threatened to swallow up all property: the Poor-law was amended, and the disease in some measure checked; but pauperism has again for several years been on the increase. In Ireland distress has passed into famine, occasioned by the loss of the potato; and all that has been done for that country has failed to avert an unprecedented mortality, an enormous destruction of property, and (the consequence of such calamities) a deep-seated and wide-spread discontent. The potato was the staple of Irish agriculture, as cotton is that of the manufactures of Lancashire. What would be the consequence, if a less analogous to that which Ireland has sustained were to deprive England of her chief manufacturing material?
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