The New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 27, 1873. IMMIGRATION.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume I, Issue 35, 27 December 1873, Page 5

The New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 27, 1873. IMMIGRATION.

It has been announced that the General Government has handed over the entire management of immigration in Otago to the Provincial Government. If this report be true — and as it has not been contradicted there is no reason to doubt its truth — people will be curious to know the precise terms of the agreement. There is for this Province a dual system ol immigration — the Colonial aud Provincial system. Otago has an Immigration Agent-General in Glasgow, who employes local agents, and is sending home a special agent to recruit in Scotland. "We are curious to kuow if under this new arrangement the Agent-General of the Colony is to be suspended, so far as immigration to Otago is concerned ; and are none but Scotchmen to be permitted in the future to emigrate at the public expense to this Province ? Are we to have no more English, Irish, or Welsh immigration? It is quite certain that the Provincial Government, if it could help it, would not permit any but Scotchmen to come here j and the taxpayers throughout the Colony wil! ask — isitright they should pay lorau almost exclusively Scj' itch emigration to Otago 1 Wluldt on this subject, it u»ay be jis well to refresh the memories of our readers as to a fact with which, of course, they are well acquainted, but to which they may juot always advert sufficiently. Within the last two years

scores of emigrant vessels have been despatched at the expense of the colony from English, Scotch, Prussian, and Norwegian ports, but not even one from an Irish port. Let Irishmen bear this in mind when asked to applaud the Hon. the Premier, and his Agent-General who is too pious to allow his conscience to be defiled with the sin of permitting Irishmen to come into the country in numbers sufficient to establish Popery here. There are more reasons than one why this •'zclusively Scotch Immigration is not desirable even for Scotchmen themselves, and we would beg to call^their attention to the , BOXfIIB SYSTKir, The Bey. Dr. Begg, in hi* speech in the Drill Shed spoke very feelingly and strongly in reference to this system which still prevails in some parts of Scotland. Chambers' Encyclopedia says that for single men a grievous laxity of morals is the consequence of this system; and that it has been introduced in some places for females with still more deplorable results. In this speech Dr. Begg said, " I may say that when I was first appointed minister of Liberton , pariah, out of four or five thousand acres of land yielding perhaps £30,000 a year, there was not a single cottage with two apartments ; and there I was shocked to see the dead and livintr, the sick and the healthy, all mixed indiscrimately together." Did the liev. Doctor whilst here Bee no large farms without cottages, <iid he see ucthiug like the Bothie System in all Otagu ? It must be so, else when speaking on the bubject in refereuce to Scotland surely he would have had a word of reprobation for the beginning of such a bad system in this New Scotland. It is really a pity that one who interested himself so much and so successfully on this subject tit enty years ago iv h:s native country, did not go through all Otago, or at all events the agricultural districts. For had he done so, and then made enquiries of the superintendent of the Immigration Depot here, he would have discovered to his horror that something very like the Bothie System does prevail in Otago, and that the people who remain longest in the Depot without employment are married people. Such being the case, is it any wonder that in harvest time, for example, there is always — and particularly this year — such a patiic as to the scarcity of laborers. Whac has become of the beautiful plan of which we used to hear so much in connection with the Public Works and Immigration Scheme t Land was to ok reserved and villages laid «>ut for Immigrants along the railway Hues for settlement by independent and indus trious laborers. The scheme was wise and philanthropic; but unfortunately it has not yet got beyond the paper on which it was originally written, and consequently, as might have been anticipated, it will be extremely difficult — for some years at least — to save the crops. Some, indeed many of our readers may not know what a Bothie is. For their informa: tmn we here transcribe the description giveu of it by Chambers. Bothie, literally a hut, has come in recent times to mean " a house in which uumarried farm laborers are lodged. — A straining after economy in the working of farms has introduced in Scotland the practice of employing only uumarried young men, several of whom are usually lodged together in a Bothie, which is fitted up with some plain articles of furniture. As the inmates prepare their own food, and live without any kind of domestic control, a grievous laxity of morals is, of course, the consequence. In some places, Bothies for lodging groups of unmarried female laborers on farms have also been introduced with still more deplorable results. The prevalence of Bothies is sometimes very great, even in single parishes. In the parish of Wick there are 21 Bothies, containing 77 young men, and 65 young wumen." We fear a beginning of this system has been made in Otago, and we draw attention to it with the view of doing our part in preventing if possible its establishment here.