IMMIGRATION.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1369, 13 October 1886, Page 3

IMMIGRATION.

Although we should be among the i last to advocate the resumption of State-paid immigration as it obtained in the seventies, when people of any sort, suitable or unsuitable, were poured into New Zealand by tens of thousands j or, indeed, its resumption under any system of selection, however good, until the country has absorbsd the present surplus labor, and created a market for more j still it is not to be denied that until the colony is again in a position to open wide its gates to the influx of population, it is vain to look for anything like rapid progress. No one expects a sick child to possess a healthy appetite, but neither does anyone expect a child to grow and thrive without it. So, also, while in the present condition of things we are unable to absorb a large inrush of population, yet without such an accession from without our growth mmt necessarily be a slow one. It needs only to glance at the United States to perceive what Immense benefits accrue to new countries from the influx of population from the older world. According to the New York Immigration Commissioner, Mr Charles F. Ulrich, Castle Garden has received during the last five and a half years over two million immigrants, of wh m six thousand have been returned to the countries whence they came, as being lame, halt, blind, or otherwise unsuitable. The two millions odd allowed to land brought with them more than 150.000. dollars into the country, and their productive value (says the Commissioner) “ runs into “the thousand millions.” Yet, we are told, “the State Board of Charities, with ample facilities and power, has returned since 1880 only 448 paupers gleaned from the various institutions of New York State.” “ How many of these (continues Mr Ulrich) had passed through Castle Garden is not known to me, although I have endeavored to ascertain. Assume that every one of the 448 came through Castle Garden, does not the wealth and productive power of the vast mass of the millions completely swallow up the pitiful and to-be-pitied 448 ?” Writing on this same subject, our Taranaki contemporary (the Herald) shows that since 1850 over fifteen millions of people have emigrated from Europe —the annual average from the United Kingdom alone being upwards of 200,000. Two-thirds of the whole number (that is to say about ten millions) went to the United States—three-fourths of them in the bloom of life, and about 90 per cent, of the peasant class —while between 1850 and 1884 some 2% million settlers, 84 per cent, of whom were British, were absorbed by the British Colonies. As to the effects of that immigration the same paper says — “The population of Canada has risen from 2,470,000 to 4,560,000, and its commerce from 67 millions sterling to 51‘4 millions; the population of Australasia has risen from 480,000 to 3.220.000, and its commerce from 10*5 millions sterling to iiS’3 millions. The revenue of Australasia rose from in 1850 to in 1884, and that of Canada from to ,£7,940,000 in the same period. In Australasia every settler is found to increase the revenue in the same degree as if £260 had been added to the public wealth, and, speaking generally, it is estimated that new settlors add to the wealth, revenue, and commerce of a country to an extent equivalent to a productive capital of £2OO per head. All this shows conclusively that immigration is the very life-blood of a young country, because the incomers “ bring sinew, brain, and capital, and enrich the commonwealth,” and if New Zealand is to keep her place with the other colonies in the race of progress, it behoves her statesmen to address themselves to the extension of manufacturing industries, and the spread of settlement, so that not only may employment be afforded tor the present population, but a demand created for further labor, which will enable the resumption of immisration on an extensive scale.