“. . . . . There was a meeting of Cooperatives in
London in Nov., I think, the proceedings of which were printed in the News newspaper, and afterwards in a
separate form. The rankest levelling language was held and applauded there, and
the effect was to frighten one gentleman in this county, who, from Gooch’s paper in the Quarterly Review, was disposed to encourage such
a scheme in his own neighbourhood. The best heads among them are very likely to
take this wrong turn, and the
| Ætat. 56. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 83 |
“I should like to see the inquiry which you suggested, pursued as to the quantity of expenditure needed for keeping a community of some given number in well being, say five hundred persons. To know the rate of circulation and the quantity of the circulating medium, would seem something like knowing that rate, &c. in the human body,—a means, in some degree, of ascertaining when and how the system is disordered. But, in the social system, there is no danger of disease from overfulness. The circulation can neither be too free nor too fast.
“I do not know who wrote the article on Home Colonies. They appear to me very desirable; but I conceive a regular and also regulated system of emigration to be necessary, to do for us in peace more than can be done in war, by taking off the greater part of those who are restless at home, or who have no prospect of prosperity. I apprehend that in the Dutch poor colonies a great deal has been done by the best management of manures. The Dutch may have learnt this from the Japanese.
“God preserve us from a population such as is
devouring Ireland and threatening to devour us!
| 84 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 56. |
“The absolute necessity of discipline, and the outcry which would be raised against any exercise of it, are, doubtless, most serious difficulties in the way, yet I think superable ones, supposing the experiment to be wisely conducted, so that it might bear close, and full, and even hostile inspection.
“I am to review Ellis’s book. Pomare was probably a state convert, like Clovis and some of our first Saxon kings; yet not wholly so, for they were converted by politic missionaries, who, for the sake of such converts, made the new religion perfectly accommodating to all the practices which were tolerated by the old.
“God bless you and yours with a new year which may be prosperous in all things!
