THE PROFFERED BOON.

Otago Witness, Issue 492, 4 May 1861, Page 3

THE PROFFERED BOON.

(From the New Zealand London Examiner, February 14.)

More than once the English have been called the proudest of nations. It is their pride which renders them so unpopular in ali parts of the world ; yet, without their pride they would not be so strong, so selfreliant, so persistent, or indomitable. True pride, however, hath always false pride as its shadow, its ape, and its exaggeration. And false pride is surely one of England's saddest and most signal curses ; and it is seldom so fatally shown as when it hinders English families of the poorer sort in every class from embracing the freedom, the prosperity, and the independence which emigration presents. What privations and humiliations are thousands of English households not willing to suffer rather than confess their woes, and seek the only adequate remedy ! It may not be wholly vain to reason with this monstrous folly. In any case we deem it a solemn duty to reason with it. Granting that England abounds more in the comforts and conveniences of life than any other country, at what a costly price are they procured ! The richer a community, the poorer it is also, and through the operation of causes which it is easy to study. First of all, wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few ; secondly, it is by the wealthy, and not by the poor, that the style and cost of living are determined. Hence we have as a result struggling millions who have to buy everything at an extravagant rate. We do not wish to enter or to entangle our readers in the labyrinths of political economy. But we simply ask their attention to obvious facts around them. In England there is an' enormous, a gorgeous opulence, but there is also a tragic pauperism festering and devouring in hidden and gloomy depths. And between the pauperism and the princely splendour what various forms of trial and misery ! Now, whenever in England the battle for bread becomes helpless, emigration offers the sole chance of redemption. If any one amongst us fails onee — even if from no fault of his own — he is inexorably condemned by English society to perpetual failure. Identifying fortune with merit, our conntrymen identify failure with crime. Those on whom this huge injustice falls have not the courage to resent it ; but imitate, flatter, cringe to the very persons who have branded them as infamous. This especially applies to the less successful of the middle classes. They drag on painful and ignominious days of the most sordid and squalid starvation, and resort to the most rediculous shifts rather than boldly face the real difficulties of their position. The satirist, the moralist, the writer of fiction, have here full scope : our object, if humbler, is directer and more practical than theirs. We maintain that the most contemptible of all paupers is he who dooms himself to the torture of keeping up what he calls appearances — an imposter which deceives no mortal except the wretched imposter himself. And yet the force is carried on in the name of respectability — an excellent word, if it retained its original meaning. The thing really to be respected is honest, strenuous, pertinacious toil. But where is the field for honourable labour to be obtained ? Not in England itself. When trade is good there is generally sufficient employment for the working men, properly so called. But when trade is bad those who sacrifice everything to a beggarly gentility are worse off than usual, fof articles of consumption are then dearer, and whether in good trade or in bad, there is no employment into which they are willing or even able to enter. How common is the case of people with small fixed incomes, whose children have never been taught anything useful. The sons may have geiieroiis and noble qualities ; the daughters may be gifted and accomplished ; but the sons have not learned any profession, and the daughters know and are skilled in matters the most various, but matters which the hard fight and the hot

fever of existence disdain. Now, what should such families do ? They should transfer themselves, father and mother, son and daughter, to an English colony, giving, if possible, N«w Zealand, fertile and healthy Ingarania, the preference. In setting forth the claims of New Zealand, we have striven to address one order of our countrymen after another, and we have striven to address in plain speech, avoiding vain and declamatory words. Emigration is a courageous and decisive act, not to be rashly undertaken. This is why, instead of presenting a picture to enchant and deceive, we have carefully discriminated, and have been quite as anxious to deter as to incite where incitement would be wrong. The advantages of emigration become the clearer the more accurately we classify and distinguish. There are hosts of our countrymen whom we would not, if we could, dislodge from their stronghold of their dear native soil. Why should the prosperous middle classes emigrate, or the working men, who are receiving high wages, and who are preparing for themselves and their children a long and prosperous career ? But a man owes his country no allegiance who has only an artificial, not a natural connection with it. Attachment is due to our native realm just in the degree that we have root and growth in it. If it offers us no root and no growth, no present and no future, patriotism, which otherwise is so noble and so holy, ceases. Let us face the entire effect of* this ; those of us who have most need to apply it. If either through our own fault or the fault of society, our position is completely artificial, and we belong to no class that hath life in it, we are simply obtruders, dead branches, that can only revive in a foreign climate. This is what we have to bring home to a tribe of human beings, more miserable perhaps than the most leprous Proletarian. For him, at least, there is the pauper's dole, the provision of the workhouse. But they whom we are striving to teach and would fain serve, have on no side a sunny outlook just as their bond with the community is wholly broken. Let them cast their false pride aside ; let them rise to true pride and rouse their remaining energies ; let them seek in New Zealand a fresh home, a fresh scene for both body and soul. In a few years they would have, if not riches) that which is better, the consciousness of having grandly done their duty.

We wish that some of our more earnest periodicals would develop and illustrate a topic which we have been compelled to treat with exceeding brevity. How far more profound is its importance than tho.se subjects on which they expend day after day so much ingenious and eloquent dissertation.

SOCIETY FOR THE ELEVATION OF