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New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4119, 2 June 1874, Page 2

We presume that the telegram from the Premier to Major Atkinson, laid before the Provincial Council of Taranaki, represents the determination at which the Government has arrived in the matter of immigration. That conclusion appears to be that, for the remainder of the year, the seven months between .Tune and December, both inclusive, the number of free immigrants introduced to the Colony shall be limited to twenty-live thousand, or something over three thousand five hundred per month. The decision, probably, is a prudent one. We shall not stop to inquire whether the late proceedings of a lady immigration agent had anything to do with it, though it must be admitted that it was a little startling to find that it was necessary to apply to the guardians of an Irish Poor-Law Union to furnish this Colony with young women to help to equalise the sexes ; and to know from the report of the meeting of intelligent guardians that they were not at all certain that in sending to Now Zealand a number of the poor creatures whom adverse fortune had put in their charge they were doing a wise thing for the Union, or a humane thing for the girls themselves. There is no doubt that Mrs. Howard’s proceedings, however much they might have been inspired by zeal, were of a somewhat questionable character. We want immigrants, and perhaps an excess of females is not undesirable, but it may bo greatly doubted whether the generations that are to follow would much rejoice over the fact of being able to trace their descent on the female side fipm ancestors who had been familiar with the walls of a charitable institution, although there may have been nothing more in the case than honest poverty. ' The decision of the Government to limit free immigration cannot have been arrived at through any doubt of the capacity of the Colony to absorb all the immigrants who might find their way hither, who were of a class desirable to receive. The Southern Provinces have been more fortunate than the Northern ones hitherto, in the share that has fallen to them of the strangers who have come to us from the old country. They were the first to take advantage actively of the liberal system introduced by the Government. They first saw the desirability of introducing immigrants in numbers, because they 7 first felt the necessity for the labour those immigrants brought. Since the introduction of a system of’free immigration, the stream that has been poured into Port Chalmers and Lyttelton has been large, and notwithstanding the prejudice to which we have alluded, and the fact that disease followed the poor peoxile who had loft their mother country to endeavour to bettor their fortunes in the Great Britain of the South, no difficulty has been found in providing for them. Any prejudice that may have existed for a time in Dunedin has been overcome ; and the whole of the people who have arrived there in search of employment have found it. In the Southland portion of Otago, the complaint is that immigrants cannot be obtained in numbers sufficient to meet the wants of employers. The land there is being rapidly taken up by settlors. The timber which abounds there is wanted by the carpenters and houss-buildcra of the Colony, as well as by exporters, in larger quantities than the saw-mills can turn it out. The plains in the south of Otago as well as of Canterbury, have been somewhat prolific of grain this year, and the profits the fanners have reaped will dispose them all the more to take up new land, and cultivate still more extensively and carefully, with the help of new hands, the country they at present possess. Westland, although some of her residents have been moving towards those distant fields which have been tempting the miner, has found employment at once for those of the immigrants lately received hero whose dostina'fion was the, West Coast. Even Nelson—quiet, steady, and undemonstrative Nelson —calls‘out for “more men from England,” and is unwilling to be left out longer in the cold. In the North Island, again, wo find nothing but a repetition of the demand for as many people as can be induced to come to it from the mother country. Hawke’s Bay is clamorous for more people. In Poverty Bay district the settlers have been exhibiting not a little anxiety to sec settled amongst them a now Colony of practical farmers from the North of Ireland. The Waikato calls for more settlors. Taranaki is so dissatisfied at the prospect of not receiving a fair share of the current immigration, that it is about to dispatch a special agent to England to secure as much as possible of that which is still to come under the regulations of the Government; while in Wellington wo have seen something like six or seven hundred immigrants of all classes —artizans and laborers, farm servants, domestic servants, married people with families, couples without children, and young people—readily engaged by employers in town and country.-' So far, therefore, there has been no sign visible of the work of immigration being overdone, or of the wants of the Colony in that respect being over-sup-plied if thofreosystom wcrocontinuod, and no limitation placed upon the number to bo brought into New Zealand at the public expense. Yet there is no doubt that it is prudent that some limit should be placed upon the numbers volunteering or engaging to transfer themselves from England to these shores. If no betterreaultfollows, the restriction will, at least; have tho effect of lessening tho apprehensions of some few loading men in tho community who have doubts on tho subject, and which they have been active to show they did not conceal. It is probable, however, that while the total number of immigrants to be imported will bo restricted, the nomination system will bo encouraged and extended rather than otherwise. This wo shall regard as desirable. Tho safest of all kinds of immigration is that which arises fromtho action of tho colonists themselves individually; for none will bo invited by them to throw in their fortunes witlx it who will not at least find

a home in New Zealand on their arrival, and provision for work or settlement. Whether the revelations of the Cork workhouse affair have had anything to do with tho decision of the Government or not, there can be but one opinion as to the propriety of the decision that has been arrived at.