IMMIGRATION AND TAXATION.

Colonist, Volume XVI, Issue 1809, 12 September 1874, Page 3

IMMIGRATION AND TAXATION.

Ts a leading article on the subject of immigration the Melbourne Argus has the following :—"Some of Mr Vogel's critics in Victoria lift up their hands and their eyes in mournful amazement at the fact of New Zealand having incurred a national debt as large as our own; but the Treasurer of that Colony is doing his best to multiply his channels of income by his immigration policy. If he can quadruple the population of those islands during the next few years, the pressure of their financial obligations will be no greater than our own, and New Zealand, bisected from north to south by a trunk line ofrailway, bringing the produce f every district into direct communication with all the principal seaports, will have a magnificent future before her. We, however, are to be contented, it seems, with the natural increase of our population ; and a vounc country which is thus situated is of necessity, heavily handicapped when brought into competion with rivals which are building up their strength from without. In the former case, 14 or 15 years muse elapse before each accession to the population can become, though in ever so slight a degree, a bread-winner and a tax-payer, while a large percentage of the children born in the country die before they are ten years old. But in the latter case every industrious adult landing in a British Colony, or in the United States, becomes a producer and a contributor to the revenue forthwith. Viewed merely as a machine, we might assess the cost to the Mother Country of every able-bodied man who emigrated from her shores at something like £200. And as he is confessedly the most valuable of all machines, because his physical strength and acquired skill or experience are supplimented by an active intelligence, it might be imagined that any community oC practical Englishmen settled in a new country would regard his acquisition as dirt-cheap if it involved an outlay of only one-tenth of that amount."