What has
tempted free emigrants to bring capital into the settlement? The true
stories that they heard of fortunes made by employing the cheap labour
of convicts. But here are questions and answers enough. The case is
plain. Nearly all that we possess has arisen from the happy influence
of penal emigration and discipline, on production, distribution, and
consumption. Thanks to the system of transportation, we have had cheap
labour and a ready market; production, consequently, has exceeded
consumption; and the degree of that excess is the measure of our
accumulation--that is, of our wealth.
The transportation of at least ten males for one female, maintains a
great disproportion between the sexes. This is the greatest evil of
all.
_A Rover_.
On the banks of the Illinois, I met with a labouring man, who was always
tipsy without ever being drunk. Enervated by dram-drinking, he had not
the courage to obtain a bit of forest and settle; but he could earn
seven shillings a day by his labour. When I spoke to him, he complained
of low wages. "At New York, friend," said I, "five shillings a day are
thought quite enough." "I know that," he answered; "I was born there,
and came here to get eight shillings a day, which, I was told, was the
lowest rate hereabouts." It turned out that he never worked more than
three days in the week, and that, in order to obtain twenty-four
shillings a week by three days' labour, he had made a circuitous voyage
of some thousand miles from the place where he was born, and where he
could have earned thirty shillings a week by working every day.
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