CROWDING TO MANITOBA.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume IV, Issue 830, 30 December 1882, Page 2

CROWDING TO MANITOBA.

The Western exodus does not decrease. It is calculated that the immigration to America is fifty-three per cent, higher than last year. The agricultural depression is the probable cause of this, both farmers and laborers being anxious to leave an extraordinarily capricious climate, and a country sorely tried by foreign competition. Such is the growth of our home population that we can well afford this constant stream outwards, more particularly as the bulk of it is no longef swallowed up by the United States, it being directed to another portion of the British Empire. Manitoba and the new provinces of the Far West of Canada, are those which attract such crowds of new-comers. The advantages they offer are in the shape a prolific virgin soil, obtainable on .the easiest rates, are sufficient to induce the ambitious and industrious to settle there. Nor are other facilities wanting. The construction of a railroad at the rapid rate of three miles a day shows that the local authorities are doing their best to provide for all the passenger traffic But in one respect the emigrants are very badly off. As has been pointed put by General Lowry, no provision has as yet been made for their religious welfare, and the new territory is still lamentably deficient in English churches and English clergymen. These cannot be started for want of funds. Although the two great societies—that for Propagating the Gospel, and that for Promoting Christian Knowledge—are prosperous, they have many calls upon them. The good work if it is to be undertaken—as it assuredly ought—muLt depend mainly upon private enterprise,