The stream which, diverted into 20 or 30 channels, would enrich and fertilize a whole continent, would if confined to one or two channels burst its banks and become a desolating flood.
We shall ourselves become the leaders of the coolies, and dig out channels in Ceylon, in Africa, in South America, and other countries, building up from entirely new centres new colonies and territories and kingdoms where the Indian colonist would find himself not a stranger in a strange land, unwelcome, neglected, or illtreated, but at home in a new India, more prosperous and happy than the one he had left behind,—a colony peopled and possessed and managed by those of his own race and language.
Emigration carried on simply in the interests of those who promote it and derive a profit out of it, without regard to the needs of the districts to which they are exported, and with absolute disregard to the comfort and convenience of the emigrant, and often attended with heartless cruelties, must necessarily be fraught with grave evils. These we believe we should largely be able to obviate. In vessels chartered by ourselves or in some way under our direction, and with every comfort and convenience which can be secured for the limited sum available for cost of transit, for men, women, and children, under the direct superintendence of our own trained officers, what a curtailment of human suffering and shame there will be in the transit of the Colonist alone! On his arrival he will be met by those who, if strangers, are his friends, and who will secure for him comfortable quarters, communicate, or enable the emigrant to communicate, with his friends at home, introduce him to the particular industry to which he is assigned, and who will not cease their personal care of him until he is happily settled in his new home, and who will afterwards be available for advice and counsel. He will find himself, not amongst people who are eager to secure their own profit at his expense, but a part of a commonwealth where each is taught to seek the good of his neighbour, and where the laws are framed to secure and perpetuate this desirable condition of things. A community where the blessings of home and education and sanitary laws and religion are valued and made available for all, and where liberty, which nowhere shines so sweetly as amongst a frugal, industrious, intelligent, simple and godly people, reigns in truth.
Moreover, our widely extended operations, our connection and oneness with the great social movement of the Army in various lands, and the regulations which will control the movement, will enable us invariably to convey our colonists to fields where their labours will be of the greatest value, and instantly to check any tendency to excess of labour at any given centre, and even at times to greatly relieve temporary gluts in the labor market arising from unforeseen circumstances.
In short, it is scarcely possible to overrate the blessings likely to flow from Colonies where drink and opium will be unprocurable, where vice will be repressed, where greed will receive little encouragement and have few opportunities to grow, and where the comparative absence of poverty on the one hand, and of extreme wealth on the other and the general contentment of the people, will make life on earth a joy to those who were once nearly starved out of it.