EMIGRATION.

Wellington Independent, Volume XXVI, Issue 3355, 25 November 1871, Page 3

EMIGRATION.

The leader in the London " Times" on cmi-

gration to Now Zealand, though professing to be based on information contained in the letter of its Wellington correspondent, is really nothing more than a poor resume of the arguments contained in the memorandum on imrai* gration which was written by Mr Fox for the information of the New Zealand Commissioners. It asserts that emigration will not cure the evil of an over stocked labor market ; and, though we are not prepared to dispute the assertion, wo deny that the reason advanced to support it are sufficient for the purpose. It inquires, "If men are unemployed because they are too shiftless to emigrate from London to Lancashire, what chance is there that they will be transformed in character by a voyage to the Antipodes ?" To which we reply that this depends upon circumstances. The probability is that men who are too shiftless to do the ono will not be willing to undertake the other. A sea voyage in itself may not be potent in transforming character, but a change in circumstances and prospects is, aa •witness the amount of work got out of an Irish laborer on an American railway with the amount got out of him in his native country. The unemployed may not he too shiftless to migrate, but too poor to do so. If they have families it may be as impossible for them fo migrate from London to Lancashire as for them to emigrate to the Antipodes. If they migrated, without taking with them their wires and children, the chances are that they would be brought back and sent to gaol for deserting them ; if they " sloped " with them the ohancea are that they would bo arrested at the suit of parties to whom they had got in debt for supplies which had perhaps been the means of keeping their families from starvation. Who will say that under such circumstances their " deportation," at their own desire, to the Antipodes, would not prove beneficial to all parties concerned—to themselves, to their families to the country they were leaving, and to tho country they were going to ? Those families who would be most benefited by emigrating, and who would confer the greatest advantngeß on the country they went to, are precisely those who cannot migrate from Loii' don to Lancashire in search of employment ; no£j£&H%tJ they are too spiritless and ehifllcfig, fyut because ,hey are too poor. If such fanriliev ui-cj to emigrate the means for their doing go must be found either by the country thej burden or the country they will benefit ; and wo can see no reason why the cost Bhould not be equitably apportioned between the two.