on, and to humankind. As soon as children begin to
be felt an incumbrance, and what was properly in ancient
times Old Testament blessings are no longer welcomed, parents
ought to provide for removal to parts of this wide world
where every accession is an addition of strength, and every
member of the household feels in his inmost heart, 'the more
the merrier.' It is a monstrous evil that all our healthy,
handy, blooming daughters of England have not a fair chance
at least to become the centres of domestic affections. The
state of society, which precludes so many of them from
occupying the position which Englishwomen are so well
calculated to adorn, gives rise to enormous evils in the
opposite sex,--evils and wrongs which we dare not even
name,--and national colonization is almost the only remedy.
Englishwomen are, in general, the most beautiful in the
world, and yet our national emigration has often, by
selecting the female emigrants from workhouses, sent forth
the ugliest huzzies in creation to be the mothers--the model
mothers--of new empires. Here, as in other cases, State
necessities have led to the ill-formed and ill-informed being
preferred to the well-formed and well-inclined honest poor,
as if the worst as well as better qualities of mankind did
not often run in the blood."

The idea of the colony quite fascinated Livingstone, and we find him
writing on it fully to three of his most confidential business
friends--Mr. Maclear, Mr. Young, and Sir Roderick Murchison. In all
Livingstone's correspondence we find the tone of his letters modified by
the character of his correspondents. While to Mr. Young and Sir Roderick
he is somewhat cautious on the subject of the colony, knowing the keen
practical eye they would direct on the proposal, to Mr. Maclear he is
more gushing. He writes to him:

"I feel such a gush of emotion on thinking of the great work
before us that I must unburden my mind. I am becoming every
day more decidedly convinced that English colonization is an
essential ingredient for our large success.... In this new
region of Highlands no end of good could be effected in
developing the trade in cotton and in discouraging that in
slaves.... You know how I have been led on from one step to
another by the overruling Providence of the great Parent, as
I be