EMIGRATION.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume II, Issue 83, 7 October 1843, Page 332

EMIGRATION.

We have received, by the William Stoveld, the Anti- Bread-Tax Circular for the 11th of April — a newspaper published under the sanction of the Anti- Corn-Law League. The article subjoined is one of its leaders, and is a fair specimen of the style and manner in which writers for the periodical press often speak of colonial matters without possessing the slightest knowledge of the subject. Had the author of the article in question taken the smallest trouble to make himself acquainted with facts, he would have learned that the settlements founded by the New Zealand Company on the Wakefield system have in reality been " self' supporting, and free from all expense to the mother country, and what is more, have contributed largely towards the wasteful expenditure of the Government settlement, for which the grant of £61,000 is exclusively required. " SEND AWAY THE PEOPLE! " Mr. Charles Buller brought on his motion on Thursday in favour of a ' systematic plan of colonization.' What that plan really is does not appear very clearly in the terms of the motion; but he hints at a loan, which, in such cases, generally means a Government grant. It is somewhat new to find a member of Parliament professing popular views and advocating popular interests, coming forward to press upon an aristocratic administration the expenditure of the people's money in furtherance of a scheme calculated to yield increased patronage; and it is a still more novel circumstance to see such a motion resisted by the head of the colonial department. Yet such was the spectacle on Thursday. " From what we can gather from Mr. Buller's speech, he proposes a remedy for our distress in a new system of colonization, upon what he calls the * Wakefield plan/ That js, the Government is to sell the waste land of the colonies upon condition that the proceeds shall be expended in conveying such labourers. In furtherance of this plan, several colonial land companies have been formed — such as the Canadian, the South Australian, and the New Zealand associations — which have purchased large tracts of land in those colonies, the shareholders in which are interested of course in sending out more and more people at the expense of the mother country. Now, these shareholders are chiefly City jobbers, or jobbing members of Parliament, some of whom are to be found .always on both sides of both houses. This new system of colonization was put forth originally with this especial recommendation — that it should be self-supporting, and free from all expense to the mother country. Let us see how far it was successful. The South Australian colony was founded about eight years ago by a company, the original prospectus of which is now before us, and amongst the names of the provisional committee there appears that of Charles Buller, Esq., M.P. This prospectus distinctly promises that this colony shall cost the mother country nothing, and it makes out the finest possible prospects for the labourers who may emigrate there. What has been the result ? The colony has cost the tax-payers of this country from three to four hundred thousand pounds, and last year Parliament voted £24,000 to support its paupers, which comprised two thousand out of a gross population of sixteen thousand souls! Well, next came the New Zealand Company, and that was positively to be self-supporting, and to cost the country nothing. Yet, this year, Parliament has voted £61,000 for the year's expenses of the government of that colony, whilst the population only amounts as yet to ten thousand souls ! ! " It is with these examples of Mr. Buller's own model colonies on the ' Wakefield principle' before us, that we are called upon by that gentleman to lend more money to extend the system — a proposition which Lord Stanley wisely repudiated, and, in so doing, in no very measured terms he utterly demolished another of those false pretences under which the monopolists seek to divert our attention from the subject of the corn laws. The idea of relieving the distress which pervades all classes, by sending away a few thousands of the working people at the expense of the rest of the community, is so utterly chimerical, that all our charity is necessary to induce us to believe that any rational man can be honest when he founds a motion for government colonization upon the plea of relieving the distress of the country."

The coarse attack on Mr. Buller needs no observation from us ; but, to show the wilful misrepresentation it contains, we give the following extract from that gentleman's speech, which we are sure our readers will peruse with great satisfaction :—: — " If you mean to keep government or society together in this country, you must do something to render the condition of the people less uneasy and precarious than it now is [hear, hear]. I speak plainly, because nothing but harm seems to me to result from the habit which we have of concealing the apprehensions which no man of reflection can contemplate the future without entertaining. We are beginning to know something of our own people, and can we contemplate the state of things laid open to us without wonder that we have stood so long with safety on this volcanic soil [hear]? • * * The very improvements that have taken place make lesser distresses more intolerable than greater used to be ; the general elevation of the standard

of comfort makes each man feel privations to which he would have been insensible before. The increase of information respecting passing events diffuses over the entire mass a sense of sufferings which were formerly felt by few but the actual sufferers; and the irritation thus created is heightened by the contrast of luxuries which wealth never could command before, and by a disparity between the ease of the rich and the want of the poor such as no previous state of things ever presented [hear, hear]. It is idle, then, when we are discussing distress to make it a matter of statistical comparison between the present and other days, and to think we disprove the reasonableness of complaint by showing that men used to complain less when they had less of the external means of enjoyment [hear, hear]. Men do not regulate their feelings by such comparisons. It is by what they feel that you must measure the extent of their suffering; and if they now feel more acutely than they did the pressure of such occasional distress as has always been their lot, we must be more .than ever on our guard to better the general condition of the people, and to prevent the recurrence of these periods of extreme suffering. * * * I look to education as the great remedy on which we must rely for removing the evils of our condition ; I still say that simultaneous with our efforts for this purpose must be some efforts to better the physical condition of the people [cheers]. Without relieving them from the pressure of want and the undue toil which is now often required from them, you will in vain proffer the blessings of a higher moral state to those who can give no thought to anything but the supply of their physical wants. But that you never will do^ until, by laying open a wider field of employment, you can succeed in diminishing that terrible competition of capital with capital and labour with labour, which is the permanent cause of distress [hear, hear]. It is with this view that I propose that you should investigate the efficacy of colonization as a remedy against the distress of the country. I say as a remedy, because I do not bring it forward as a panacea — as the only, as an infallible, remedy for every ill — but as one among many remedies, which would be valuable, even if they could not go the length of entirely removing distress, provided they enabled us to render its recurrence less frequent, its operation less intense, and its pressure less severe [hear, hear]. I say distinctly that you will not effect your purpose of permanently and fully bettering the condition of the people, unless you apply a variety of remedies directed to the various disorders of their present state. * * * I propose colonization as subsidiary to free trade [hear, hear], as an additional mode of carrying out the same principles and attaining the same object. You advocates of free trade wish to bring food to the people. I suggest to you at the same time to take your people to the food [hear, hear]. You wish to get fresh markets by removing the barriers which now keep you from -those that exist throughout the world. I call upon you, in addition, to get fresh markets, by calling them into existence in parts of the world which might be made to teem with valuable customers [hear, hear]. You represent free trade as no merely temporary relief for the distresses of our actual population, but as furnishing outlets of continually extending commerce to the labour of our population, whatever its increase may be [hear, hear]. In these anticipations I fully concur; and I would carry out the same principle, and attempt to make yet more use of these blessed results, by also planting population and capital in the vast untenanted regions of our colonies [hear, hear] ; and calling into existence markets which, like those now in being, w6*uld go on continually extending the means of employing an increasing population at home [hear^Aear]. I must not, therefore, be understood to propose colonization as a substitute for free trade."

Exeter Hall. — Mr. Edward Dalton, secretary to the " Protestant Association," at Exeter Hall, is* sending circulars about from that holyytffiee, beg v ging for signatures to three several petitions. Onrf of them prays Parliament " to withdraw every kind of public support from the Popish College of Maynooth;" the second prays for " the exclusion of Papists from Parliament ; " and the third prays, " that the annual grant for national education in Ireland may be henceforth discontinued." The envelopes, which cover these precious documents, are sealed with a wafer bearing the following neat and appropriate device : — " The day is at hand." Pastoral Letter. — The Bishop of London intends issuing a pastoral letter to the clergy of his diocese, directing that collections shalfoe made in. every church and chapel on the Sunday after As-cension-day, in aid of the fund for providing religious instruction, in conformity with the principles of the Church of England, in China. A similar course is likely to be adopted by the other right reverend prelates.