THE LANCASHIRE RELIEF FUND

Press, Volume III, Issue 283, 26 September 1863, Page 2

THE LANCASHIRE RELIEF FUND

The following papers from Mr. Selfe on the subject of the appropriation of the Lancashire Relief Fund have been forwarded to us for publication. We entirely agree with Mr. Selfe's view as to the propriety of spending the money in the manner he did. He was better acquainted with the circumstances than ourselves, and the event has shewn that he has exercised a wise judgment. Indeed he has done a general good in calling attention to emigration as a means of relief for the distress in the cotton districts. But if we were betrayed into any expression of doubt as to the use made of the money, it was from a feeling Of great jealousy for the fair name of this colony, and a dread lest anything should lower in the slightest degree tho character of the subsidy which wo made to our fellow countrymen. JfewZealand has been hardly enough spoken of in England to render us very tenacious on this point. 115, St. George's Square, London, S.W. July 25, 1863. Mr Deab Sir, —I am uracil obliged to you for your letter of the 12th May, enclosing copy of a resolution passed at a meeting of the Canterbury Lancashire Relief Committee on the 11th May, relative to my appropriation of the second £500 remitted to mc in payment of the preliminary expenses of emigrants from tho manufucttirin"districts, to whom frco passages had been granted by her Majesty's Emigration Commissioners.

I receive this expression of the opinion of your committee with much satisfaction. I should hare entertained no doubt that I had been satisfactorily carrying out the intention of the generous donors to the fund under the circumstances which had arisen, if it had not been for the l'emarks made in the Press newspaper of Thursday, Msiv 7. I think the writer of that article" (the latter part of it) has hardly taken into account that, bearing in mind how desirable it was to stir up tho public mind and the English Relief Committees to look to emigration as a means of relieving the existing distress, no better mode presented itself, than by mating a public appeal to them on this subject; and in the next placo he is quite in error in supposing that in writing to the Mansion House Committee, I proposed the £500 should go towards helping emigrants to Canterbury. I pressed on them the necessity and offered them the means for emigration generally, and I think that correspondence has not been without its use in drawing public attention to the subject, and inducing the Relief Committees, by inviting special emigration funds, to modify their previous decision.

I am encouraged by the resolution you have now forwarded to mc, to pursue a somewhat similar course with regard to the £336 Gs 8d the draft for which reached mc by the last mail, and which will mature August 19th. £150 will go towards outfits of emigrants from Carlisle, and the remainder for similar purposes for emigrants from other districts, but not necessarily to Canterbury, -v Yours, &cr.j (Signed) H. S. Sbzm. Joseph Brittan, Esq. P.S.—I take leave to forward you a memorandum relative to the appropriation of the £1000 vote for free emigration, -which you can make any use of you like.