and practice too, as being of very easy application, and probably quite efficient to secure the great object in view:—

The labourers, then, who shall have found their way to New Brunswick, are well employed and well paid the moment they arrive in the colony. It is the certainty of work, and good payment for it, that has brought them thither. Well, then, in addition to this, as the great correction of further wandering, or location in another state, it is proposed to give them an immediate interest in the soil. Let the labourer, then, have one acre to begin with, at the current price of land, but to be paid for in five years, by instalments of increasing amount, as he shall have rendered his farm or freehold more productive; as it will be every year by his continued industry. The increasing amount of his payments, then, will be less felt in the conclusion than in the beginning; for in truth he will still have a greater accession of comfort and enjoyment as he goes on, and no other impediment in his way; but the master who thus disposes of the land has also increasing security for a diminishing debt, and the labourer retained cheerfully and heartily in his first and best location. We may go a step further, and as his family shall increase, and increase of population is the very thing of all others the most needed, let him

have a similar opportunity of adding to his freehold by the purchase of another, aye, and another acre on the same terms, and by the same mode of payment. If the first acre binds him to the soil, the second and the third are also stronger links in the chain, and surer guarantees of colonial advance and prosperity.

To make this plan more clear and determinate, let us apply it to a specific number, and see how it will work. Say, then, that a hundred labourers are to be dealt with in this way; a hundred acres, then, in the first instance will be needed for them; where shall they be meted out? This is a very important question; and, on the principle assumed as the best, the congregational, they should be as near as they can be had to the already-peopled part of the colony; first, for the more easy access of the labourers themselves, and the better improvement of their condition; and secondly, for that there will be the less interruption to their labour for others at their accustomed wages. Though contiguous, then, or nearly so, yet ought the hundred acres to be nearer the waste, so as thus gradually to make beneficial inroads upon it. Having advanced thus far, there is one other thing to be considered and provided for; that is, habitations for some, and tools and stock for all. Here, again, as much as possible should the parties so

to be located provide for themselves, and as they shall be individually inclined; but some means, some assistance, must in many cases be rendered. Now, what system can be better adopted there than that of the loan funds in this country-loans to such as need pecuniary assistance at first; and secured, as they will be well secured, in the future increase and prosperity of the labourer. This of itself would form a new link in the chain of benefits to all parties, and, if possible, still more closely unite their interests, and give more permanency to the increasing population.

Well, then, we have thus secured one hundred labourers on one hundred acres, which instantly assume a new feature in colonial advancement. Security and permanency are given in place of temporary increase of labour, and perhaps as sudden a withdrawal of it. Nothing of this kind is to be now apprehended: the evil is met; it is cured; it cannot again exist. The increase to the freehold, when needed, which will inevitably be the case as the population advances, may be made with increasing security and advantage, and another hundred acres added to those already so well disposed of, and added by again encroaching on the desert, to render them as productive as the former. The allotment system in this country is so decisive in all its bearings, that labour is thus better compensated, that

again and again reference is made to the Labourers' Friend Society, and the volumes of its proceedings, to prove beyond all question the value of the principle.

Unless the remedy above recommended, or some one founded on a like safe principle, be adopted, it is obvious that the existing evils will increase with the increasing emigration from the mother country. The emigrants leave their native country in a great measure because the link that binds them to the soil is destroyed or impaired. What is to bind them to the new location beyond better wages for a time, and no better bond of union, where, of all others, that pointed out is the most needed? But better wages, the first allurement, being secured, and with these the simultaneous allotment of an acre of land to each, to become his own, and by his own means and exertions, the double stimulus thus given to his industry will not be broken, nor run the risk of being broken, where even better wages are to be had, in the United States. He now looks more to his own resources, in his own labour, on his own land, than merely to an addition to his wages, which, after all, are subject to fluctuation. The very act of numbers going in the pursuit of higher wages, in time must lower them; not so the great, and decided, and increasing advantages derivable from his freehold. The wages

may fluctuate, or even diminish; the freehold advances, in proportion to the labour bestowed upon it. The variable tenure of wages only is not certain in any location or country. Changes may take place in the United States as well as in New Brunswick, and for the worse as well as the better; but they never lead him to independence. Quite the reverse is the benefit of his freehold, that is always improving under his hand, and with the improvement the binding obligation to continue on the soil,-to become, in heart and in truth, a citizen of his new and now better country; and, for the very best of all earthly reasons, because it gives to him increased security against want, increased comforts to himself and his family; and the certainty of the second or the third acre being to be had on the same terms, his means, by an increasing family, increasing therewith: a more satisfactory solution of the existing difficulty is not easily to be found. But my readers will be wearied out with the reiteration of the means given by the Author of all good, to be used by his creatures in the way he has pointed out, "Be fruitful and multiply; till the earth, and subdue it." How can this be done, that is, the earth be tilled and subdued, but by the adequate increase of population? There is no assignable limit to either, if, in correspondence with the