FREE IMMIGRATION.

Grey River Argus, Volume 21, Issue 3058, 4 June 1878, Page 2

FREE IMMIGRATION.

On ihe proposed resumption of free immigration, the Napier Telegraph says : Some three weeks ago we published a telegram from Wellington which informed

us tbat the Government had resumed the system of free immigration. The telegram further stated that free passages had been ordered. to be provided for 5000 immigrants, so as to enable the first

batches to arrive in this colony by the spring. The information that was thus circulated throughout the country is of no little importance, and it is difficult to account for the fact that it has scarcely attracted any attention. That the Go-

vernment should have resolved upon such . a course without in any way having previously advised Parliament of their inten-

tion is sufficiently strange, but it is still

more so when it is considered that there has been no demand throughout the colony for an infl ux| of labor. At the present moment, it is safe to say there are more hands than enough to do the

work of the country, and that by springtime, if there should be plenty employment for all, with :a slight increase of wages, it will be nothing but what the

working man has a right 'to expect at the end of a winter. To flood the labor market at that time would be a cruel wronsj to thousands of families ; and it would be as unjust to the new comer 3 a3 to the old hands. The immigrants would, as certainly as in the times gone by, have been induced to leave England by glowing accounts of the golden prospects of the j laboring classes in this colony, and as surely they would be undeceived when they came to realise their position. The late Government did not discover the mistake any too soon of introducing in« discriminately all and sundry who applied for free passages to New Zealand. TbAr pernicious system was stopped in conse** quence of the outcry it raised throughout the country, and the system of giving assisted passages to nominated immigrants wasadopted. This latter plan has answered admirably; it has supplied all demands, and we have no hesitation in saying that it has been the means of bringing out here an excellent and useful class of inindustriously disposed settlers. The syshad also the additional merit of being within the means of the colony to sustain. Now, the introduction of 5000 free immigrants means a cost to the country, at the very lowest computation, of L 75,000, and we should like to know where such a sum is to come from. All the loans for public works and immigration have been ex* hausted, and there does not seem any likelihood of the new two and a-half million loan being raised until its receipt has been anticipated. With the pecuniary difficulties that beset the Government, with the commercial depression in Europe affecting the value of colonial produce, and the gloomy aspect of politics at home, to talk of introducing free immigrants to supplement our labor market is the most quixotic idea that could emanate from the most quixotic of Ministries.