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Auckland Star, Volume V, Issue 1306, 15 April 1874, Page 2

We really believed that the introduction of French ballet-dancers of the lowest class was a crowning feat in Dr Featherstone's mismanagement of immigration which would find no apologists. But we were mistaken The Government organ in Wellington (the Independent) thus speaks :—

" In some of the journals in the Colony an attempt was made to raise an outcry against the management of the immigration agency at home, by asserting that a number of the immigrants by the Queen of the Age to Auckland were French ballet dancers, and not the - tradesmen they had represented themselves to be. An enquiry was made, and it has been ascertained that the men are tradesmen, and before leaving for this Colony agreed to work at their trades. As it is probable that they will not find the.Can Can a profitable speculation, they will gladly fall back on their original occupations. The desire in some quarters to circulate charges against the conduct of the immigration agency causes some people to care very little whether their statements have a truthful foundation or the reverse."

These people, the Independent states, are tradesmen. Perhaps they are, but we should not like to state the nature of the trade by which they are at present making their living. It is not a trade that the colony is likely to largely benefit by, neither is it one which the Government should endeavour to promote by giving the artizajis free passages; ~ although the

class of immigrants now being landed on our shores has swelled the number of tL-Se engaged in the business to an alarming extent. Our contemporary, we believe, speaks correctly when it states that "they will gladly fall back on their original occupations." They have done so; but whether it would not have been equally as respectable and as conducive to the. public good had they remained in the Can Can business we leave judges of the degrees of immorality to decide. The Government organ tells us. that "an enquiry was made," when ? and by whom ? and what were the results? Had an enquiry been made I from the Auckland [police infonna**

tion might have been elicited of a character that would throw some light on the working of free immigration, unattended by a rigid system of inspection. The introduction of these people is a standing disgrace to the Immigration Department, which no attempt to mislead on the part of the Govern - ment organ can get over, and it is much more becoming that the mistake should be

acknowledged and steps taken to prevent its recurrence than that an effort should be made to hush it up. The statement made by the Independent, though so palpably

false as to fail in deceiving anyone in Auckland, may, .and'CQ do\ibi) WMUd, if iihc6ntradicted, mislead persons at a distance ; for this

reason we give it an unqualified contra

diction. The affair has been one of the most - scandalous that has ever disgraced the history of colonial immigration.