Colonization Policy
Torrens contributed rather more to colonization policy, and in particular to the colonization of South Australia, than to colonization theory, where he was chiefly an ardent expounder of Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s ideas.
In Colonization of South Australia (1835) he expounded Wakefield’s principles of “systematic colonization”, based on “selfsupporting emigration”, “a hired labour price for land”, and “self-supporting colonization”. Following Wakefield, he argued that colonial immigrants should not be supplied with free land because this would lead to too much dispersion of population, landholdings of sub-optimal size, and low agricultural productivity. Instead, the price of land should be set sufficiently high to prevent emigrant workers from becoming independent farmers until after they had worked for some years as labourers for hire. Moreover, the proceeds from the land sales could be used as a means of financing the expenses for sending out emigrants. Torrens’s fervent support of colonization was primarily based on his view that it could counteract the falling rate of profit from decreasing returns in agriculture. Colonization was seen as a remedy for improving the living conditions of the Irish peasants and of preventing them from moving to England, and thereby causing a fall in the standard of living of the English working class.