CADETS.

Press, Volume II, Issue 43, 8 March 1862, Page 1

CADETS.

••Tin-. Hippopotamus," said 1-lie classical showman in tlisplaving that monster to the British public, "is a l.nu.phibilious hanimal, as can't live on land and . | v -; lV s dies in the water." There is a class of human i in--.> in this country of whom this description forcibly reminds us—men who cau't get on in their own land, and arc always ruined in a colony. They continue to increase upon ns year by year, in the words of Burke, 4 * a flight of birds of prey and with appetite continually increasing for. a food -wasting-" Transportation to the colonies, except Western Australia, has been abolished as a legal punishment; hut social justice proposes for the higher classes a remedy which law has abandoned for ordinary criminals: the colonies, however, are not regarded generally as gaols, or houses of correction, but rather as reformatories or penitentiaries ; and Canterbury, having unfortunately acquired a high moral and socia character, seems to be regarded as the most fashionable reformatory now going.) This is the sole reason, so far as we can imagine, why Canterbury is becoming a sort of cave of Adullani for the spirited youths of England. If any young gentleman has kicked over the traces, scandalized his respectable parents, overdrawn on his mother's love, and his father's pocket; intruded on the elder son's vices of horse-racing and "ambling, or carried to an excess the younger son's luxury of drinking; has formed some unfortunate connection, or exhibited a brain impervious to learning, or a frame over addicted to repose; if in short there be one in a family, who, from natural infirmity, or vicious propensity, has frustrated all endeavors to lind a niteii for him in England, upon that youth a ] family council is forthwith held, aud it is determined in solemn conclave that he shall try his fortune in a colony; and, as they would subject him to the best influence which can be got for the money, that he shall go to Canterbury. So, as this faith progresses, the new " Canterbury pilgrimage " promises to become, at least to us, a very formidable affair. Dropping the language of badinage and speaking sober truth of a great public evil, it is the fact, that not a ship arrives that docs'not bring some one or more young men, brought up in the social rank of gentlemen, but without money, intellect, cultivation, learning, capacity for labor, good behaviour, or any feature of mind or body which can enable them to retain in England the position in li a , their fathers filled. These men are not only useless in a colony, they become the pests of its society. ¥c remember a distinguished general officer stating in evidence before a committee of the House of Commons, that the most worthless soldiers'in every regiment were broken-dewn gentlemen who had run away from their friends, and had enlisted. The gentlemen who have descended from their social station, and adopted a lower, are the most thorough blackguards that society ''•iv produce. Parents and guardians then should learn this truth }l y experience, if they could not arrive at it by the ordinary process of reasoning, that if any young man has v tendency to go wrong in England, he will be certain to do so in a colony: that all the restraints which the usages of polite society, the intercourse with friends, the influences of home, the company of refined and educated women, impose upon the manors mid conduct, of a young man. that all such restraints are greatly weakened in a colonial community. That the whole standard of social manners 1 s somewhat lower in a colony than in England,

and that a young man may do many things here without losing the respect of his equals which he could not have done at home. The peculiar feature of this colony is to dcvelope aud ripen rapidly; and vice seems subject to the same law which is applied to all other physical and social phenomena. X a man has a tendency to drink in England, he will probably die of delirium tremens here ; if he has accumulated debts which he could not pay in England he will acquire money under false pretences here?. In short, whatever a man is at home he will be ' more so ' here. i But the melancholy truth is, that in many cases ! parents and guardians do not consider these things, because they do not care about them. It is too often the case that all they want is to get rid of the boy altogether. They see absolutely no career for him in England. He has been put into the army, and tho} r have been compelled to sell his commission to pay his debts ; or he has been sent to the university, and compelled to leave owing to perpetual breaches of college discipline ; or he has been articled to an attorney and wants to marry his master's cook ; or he has been sent to sea, and has half killed the captain for slanging him; in fine, he has become a family difficulty—he draws on the family purse like a blister, they are ashamed of him; his sisters speak of him as " poor John," his father "has done all he caii for him," and his mother heaves a deep sigh when his name is mentioned ; they all live in perpetual dread of some fresh ! escapade. The feeling is, let him carry himself, and his vices, and his difficulties, where they may be heard of no more. " He must fight his 'ow!s way now in the world" says the father. " He shall start with a good supply of shirts," says the mother. The sisters work him a purse and a cigar case, and off he goes. They have buried their dead out of their sight. If the man have something iv him after all, and rises in the new world, they take credit for their sagacity in finding the right career for him; if he becomes a brutal, drunken, blaspheming, godless, bullock-driver, and at last dies iv a ditch —then it is " poor John; we did all we could for him." But there is another chapter in the story ; there must be letters of introduction got for the youth The father has got a friend in the colony, or a friend of his has got a friend who has got a friend who has a friend in the colony. A letter is written to ask the colonial friend to take the young cub into his home, or see that he is put somewhere where he will get looked after. We have seen numbers of such letters, and the coolness with which scapegraces are consigned to colonial families in the assumption that they will be welcome guests is amazingly complimentary to our Christian hospitality. Let us reverse the picture. Imagine a colonist writing to a friend in England—"l have sent my boy to England; he is a ' : drunkard, swears like a bullock-driver, has been " detected cheating at cards, is dirty in his person. " and obscene in his language. I have not thought " it right to trust him with any money, but enclose " you a bill for £50 on Snooks & Co. I trust to " old friendship that you will look after him, ami put " him in some station in which he may get a living } and give him the £50 as he may want it." That is, exaggerated in language but absolutely not in meaning, the sort of introductions which we have sent to the colony. Now we protest against this colony being made the receptacle for the transported social criminals of Great Britain and Ireland. At all events we are resolved that, so far as we can prevent it, such men

shall not come out here without knowing what they are going to. A man landing here without money is in nine cases out of ten a day laborer; if he be 'a gentjeman' he is worse oil' than a day laborer. For nine out of ten such there is no career at all, and no prospect at all but the labor of their hands. God forbid that we should undervalue the labor of the hands! If they take to it honestly, soberly, and earnestly, they are far bettor off, and far higher in the scale of manhood, than if they were hanging on at home, eating the bread of idleness, and drinking the waters of discontent. But real labor is what this class of men shirk. They go as cadets on stations, getting no pay and 'lazying' about doing little work; abandoning the ordinary wages of* labor in consideration of being esteemed gentlemen; or they take to rough-riding— horse-breaking they call it—horse-sitting, or horsespoiling, would be more appropriate terms. They pick up odd jobs at sheep driving, cattle driving, or bullock punching ; and withal they drink every sixpence they can command at the public-houses which now cover the country; and we meet them, ten years after they arrived, with every murk of a gentleman effaced — hard featured, coarse-grained, vulgartongued men, whose whole talk is of bullocks, and sheep, and horses; not a penny richer; not a whit the better off in externals, bnt far lower in all those i internal qualities— " High thoughts, and amiable words And worthiness, „nd tho desire of fame And lovu of truth, and all that makes a man," than when they left their father's house. Let us not be understood to apeak indiscriminately. A young man who has a small capital, or will have a small capital at some future time, has a distinct career before him. His work is to learn how to invest his money, and how to manage the concern in which he invests it; and, the increase of capital judiciously managed is audi, that, in a variety of investments, he may look for a successful career. But for young men of the higher classes without fortune, there is absolutely no career but daily labor. Even here we do not say there ia no career for them. There are men so strong in character, sober, and careful, that they will readily convert the labor of their hands into an estate, as hundreds have already in this country, even in its short history. But such men would have got on in England or anywhere. Men who have risen from notlnng to become the proprietors of vast wealth in the colonies, have mostly done so by rising from cadets or shepherds to become managers, and ultimately partners of sheep stations; such a career is open to many, even now; but how many of these lads who are sent from England are, or ever will be, fit to be trusted with" the management of men and of property ? Of young men of good family, good education, health and strength, vigor and determination, with a will to work and a capacity for work, we can never have too many. In a country where capital increases so rapidly, there is always a great deficiency of managing powers; such men therefore will always get on, hut it is idle to imagine that, because great fortunes have been made, and because great general prosperity exists, any share will fall to the lot of those who are devoid of all the qualifications essential to secure it. Such men had far better put up with the smallest and meanest situation in a country town in England, where, if they can do themselves little good, they can do others little harm, than attempt a colonial life, where they add nothing to the common stock by the labor of either

hands or brain, but where their influence for evil becomes the greater, in proportion to the smallness of the sphere in which it is exercised.