LECTURE IX

Summary

I proceed, in the next place, to enter upon the more important division of my subject—the economical development of colonies, and the causes by which their advance may be retarded or accelerated.

In doing this, it will be necessary that I should pass over for the present the practical difficulties which always occur in the first foundation of such establishments, and consider the young community as already launched. On a future occasion we may, perhaps, be able to enter into some details respecting the first steps which are preliminary to the formation of new settlements. It is, I fear, next to impossible, that any first experiment in colonization should succeed; if history be consulted, it will be found that, in modern times, none ever has succeeded, in the way and at the rate which its projectors have expected. “Of the colonies “planted in modern times,” says Mr. Wakefield, “more “have perished than have prospered.” Either they have failed altogether, and it has been necessary to commence the work afresh, or they have struggled into prosperity through a long series of privations and discouragements. Far from the first settlers on a new soil being the most amply recompensed for their labours, they have almost invariably fallen victims in the cause, and served only by their own sacrifice to promote the success of some new band of colonists.