"
"I should be too glad of the opportunity," replied Sir Charles,
sturdily, "but in truth there is an incubus of excessive numbers
that no revival of trade will provide for, even if it is beyond
our extremest hopes, and I for one will not be guilty of the
inhumanity of keeping fellow-creatures in misery till we can find
a use for them. You have forgotten that there are other economic
laws besides those you glance at. Several millions of acres of
unoccupied land belonging in a sense to the people of this
country are to be kept untilled in defiance of the plainest
policy that nature and God have indicated to us, namely, that
labor should come in contact with land! For want of this
conjunction our colonies are to be checked, while at home
miserable millions are gaping for work and food."
"Oh! let them take themselves out. There are too many going
already. They will follow natural laws, and where labor is
required thither the stream will flow."
"Mere surface talk, my clever friend," replied the other, "the
men who are trooping out at their own expense are our most sober,
careful, and energetic workmen. Else they could not go. They go
because here so many indifferent ones are weighing down their
shoulders.
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