The Otago Witness.

Otago Witness, Issue 1179, 4 July 1874, Page 17

The Otago Witness.

DUNEDIN, SATURDAY, JULY 4. If itwerenotforthefacttliatthe successful conduct of the Immigration Departments the very foundation of thepresent policy, we should be unwilling to trouble our readers with a constant reference to the matter. So much is written and said and thought about the disgraceful character of the doings in the Home Department, that we fancy a certain lassitude is creeping over thepublic mind on the subject, a sort of conviction that the outburst of indignation will be conducted into the proper channel at the proper time, and that the offenders will be called to account. We have often noted, however, that when the opinion of the general public has been very loudly and unmistakeably expressed upon a subject some little time before the Assembly sit?, the indignation expressed upon platforms, and in the papers, is " taken as acted on," as some speakers ask that their speeches should be " taken as read." In other words, the very violence of the feeling manifested tends to exhaust itself, more immediately interesting subjects turn up, and the iniquities of three months since are allowed to sleep quietly while somenewer trouble isexamined and " commissioned" &c, &c, and made the cause celebre of the session. We are a fickle people ; nowhere are sins and virtues more readily forgotten. Nowhere — not even in Paris — are men more prone to a nine days' wonder and no more. It would be nothing* less than a calamity if the present session of the Assembly were to be allowed to pass by without some sternly definite expression of opinion upon the Immigration Department and its action towards Otago. We say Otago, because it has been more than hinted that Dr Featherston has sent us the culls of his selected emigrants, and that the Northern Provinces have not had the same serious cause of complaint that we have had. The Canterbury Press has endeavoured to torture the righteous indignation of the Superintendent into a more narrownational testimony of regard to his own countrymen. No doubt, it was an ingenious effort to distract attention from the real gravamen. To describe the Superintendent, when he deprecated the swamping Otago with "shoddy and devil's dust," as being anxious to keep .the Province exclusively Scotch, was a ,mere political manoeuvre to draw away attention from the evil under which we suffer. National antipathy and proclivity, indeed ! why there is not an Englishman in Otago, be he a very Cockney of the Cockneys, who would not rather see the Province handed over in perpetuity to the inhabitants of Glasgow, and to them alone, than that we should be deluged with the scum of the cepsjpoQjpQf London, &nd %9% 9 outoftptf

of the back-slums of Birmingham and Liverpool. We have been called upon to pay £15 per head for the exportation from England of a perfect happy family of harlots ; ballet-girls and burglars have met here in pleasant reunion, and the Hay market and Penfconville have shaken hands on the Port Chalmers jetty. What reformatory do you come from 1 is the question which the future mothers of our people a«k. Was the grub better at Dartmoor or Newgate? is the exciting subject of debate among the fathers. The last six months has seen an evil inflicted upon us of which a generation or two will not see the end. Crime, pauperism, prostitution — each and all the grossest evils of humanity — have been consigned to usj wholesale, and "when we indignantly remonstrate, we are sneered at by some yawning parasite of the Government, and told not to be so Scotch down there, "a little admixture of nationalities will not hurt you." Whatever may prove to be the original moving cause of the wrong 1 done to us, we can have no doubt that the greed of gold, as represented by ten shillings per head, has been the immediate reason of the evil. We do not ouspect Dr Featherston — respectable old gentleman as lie is — of the meanness of even winking 1 at the inexpiable orimes of his subordinates. He did not choose them for the most part, and he only acfcg under regulations. At the same time, considering his character, position, and salary, we do think that a little more original movement upon his part might have been fairly looked for. We do not expect from an Agent-General the same rigid adherence to instructions that a Government clerk is expected to furnish. No matter what the rules and regulations were, common sense should have told him not to permit prostitutes and burglars to come out here at the public expense. If he could not take that much responsibility upon his shoulders, he is not fit for the office he holds. Our especial object, however, is not to attempt to fix the blame upon anyone, but to express a hope that the Otago , members more especially will not be prevented by any adroit political jugglery from demanding a searching examination into the whole management and conduct of the Emigration Department at Home. If the present se-^ion is permitted to pass by without such examination, and without the punishment of the guilty parties, we shall have condoned a crime unparalleled in the history of the Colonies, and shall deserve the punishment which must fall upon us of increased taxation for gaols and police, as well as the less easily denned loss brought upon the community by a shameful admixture of crime and infamy with our population.