ERRORS OF IMMIGRANTS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume I, Issue 43, 1 November 1851, Page 6

ERRORS OF IMMIGRANTS.

No. 3. DELAY. In No. 2 of these Papers we regarded, as eminently necessary to the immigrant's success, the earnest pursuit thereof in strict accordance with some plan previously formed in his mind. This recommendation may appear to some superfluous, as if all classes were not habitually inclined to this very thing. The student, it may he said, selects at the commencement of term, the authors who shall come under his examination during that period of time. The former has already allotted to each field its crop for the current agricultural year, and taken a mental sketch of certain and sundry alterations and improvements he is bent upon accomplishing. The very nature of things pre-disposes men to anticipate mentally every gradation of their more immediate undertakings. But to disprove this reasoning, and to shew the necessity of persuasion in this case, we need only point to the numbers of cureless, free-and-easy, undisciplined shagro'ons, which infest every colonial port town ; men who live from hand to mouth, whose employment is generally precarious, and whose earnings have an evident tendency towards the pocket of the publican, or of the tobacco merchant. It is of the danger of gradually sinking into such characters as these that we have warned the working-man, for the purpose of directing him to that which they have slighted, and consequently fallen, namely, method. Enough on this point. We would now warn him of the danger and folly of unnecessary delay in commencing his active colonizing operations. And we do so on the ground, that his first days in the colony are his most valuable ones, and his future prosperity chiefly dependent upon the use he makes of them. Several instances of grievous procrastination flash across our mind at this moment. Although they include the acts of working men, they are not confined to them. We have seen laud-owners sitting down upon theirrural sections for months,app!u'ently in ignorance that New Zealand soil requires ploughing and sowing, if it is to be productive. We have seen others wasting days in seeking to cheapen articles of which they stood in need to commence operations, whole days lost in a fruitless endeavour to wage war against market combinations, to which they must ultimately yield; or even if some small advantage lias,been gained, forgetting that the time was worth more than the vantage ground. And we have seen labourers, brawny, skilful, and with all the leisure that the colonial hours of labour afford, living in miserable huts, which a day would suffice to build, and an hour to pull down, making not a single attempt to obtain a plot of ground to cultivate, or any employment for spare hours which would enable them to rise a step above the level of impending poverty, wasting their mornings in bed, and loitering away their evenings with some group of idlers in the close vicinity, or within the walls, of the grog-shop. We are no land-sharks, and have no ends of our own to serve by endeavouring to direct the immigrant. We have no rural sections to dispose of, nor any interest in advising him to engage in the cultivation of the soil on his own account, save that interest which all should feel in their fellow-men, and that interest which every colonist has in the well-doing of his own settlement. But to this point our advice must tend. In entering a colony, we have gone back, as it were, through centuries of social progress. Our condition has become more primitive, and our habits and occupations must become so too. We have few manufactures, and those of the simplest kind. The artizan from the manufacturing district must work upon raw material, if he works at all at his proper trade. The attention of the great mass must be directed to the land, and its cultivation, unless to pastoral pursuits.

Now if the immigrant be compelled by his necessities, to till the ground for some one else, he should be also induced by considerations of prudence, to till it for himself. He will, probably, be able to obtain a lease of an allotment sufficient for his purpose, on reasonable terms ; a suggestion, by the way, for the land-owner, ■who should be actuated by principles of liberality in transactions of this nature. The immigrant's lack of means on entering the colony need be no obstacle to this, any moderate rent may be saved from his first quarter's earnings. On this allotment he should at once build his cottage, sufficiently substantial and comfortable

to be called "home," and lay out, as quickly as possible, his '«kail-yard." Even if the immigrant be among the unemployed, we recommend him to follow precisely the same course. No recommendation from former employers, no letter of introduction, will do him half the good that the quiet, unostentatious exhibition of his skill and strength in this way will effect for him. While in barracks he is very judiciously and very necessarily prohibited from accepting employment,- —if he does, he must find some other shelter. In such cases, men often leave their wives and families in huts, not only erected on the unsafe and undig-

nified plan of "squatting," but so hastily run up as to be insufficient for keeping out the weather. Their wives, who might have been expected materially to assist their endeavours, and keep them in heart, are thus disheartened and disgusted, and the health of their children undermined. There can be no excuse for this, the period during which they were allowed barrack room having been generally amply sufficient for the selection of a piece of ground and the erection of at least a complete shelter, but for that spoiler of men's fortunes—delay. We want to press upon the immigrant that this should be among his first acts on arriving. He will get paid employment quite as soon for it, in most cases sooner. In the town the labourer is lost among the crowd —employers, in urgent need of men, as often happens, pass him by, being ignorant of his character, capabilities, and desires. Even the Register is inefficient'; his name may be there, and his calling,—John Jones, ploughman or ditcher, may appear in all its explicitness, but the man is wanted, not the name, and it may prove difficult to find him. But the agricultural labourer who is on his allotment is not only in the very market-place or highway of his kind of labour, as plainly to be hired as the carter with his whipcord, or the stable-man with his wisp of hay, at a country fair, but he is making proof of his fitness, and writing, in every spit of earth he disturbs, his own letter of recommendation. This man will find employment, and that of the most advantageous kind, while others are vainly seeking it, it may be anxiously, but by a wrong method. He will profit by thus avoiding procrastination, and will, with those dependent on his progress, have the satisfaction of commencing his colonial life with some degree of independence, of being the sought instead of the seeker, and of tasting the fruits of his industry at a much earlier period than those who choose the contrary order of procedure, one whichjinust inevitably involve delay.