IMMIGRATION.

Evening Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2264, 9 August 1870, Page 2

IMMIGRATION.

To the Editor of the Evenim Star. Sir,—l soe by the editorial of your contemporary of Friday last that the subject of immigration is again, prominently brought before the notice of the public ; and while I agree with the writer that immigration, if conducted on such a systematic principle as he proposes would prove beneficial to the Colony, I think it is not immigration that is wanted to remedy the existing commercial depression. The writer never once alludes to the hundreds of unemployed at present parading the streets of this City, and it must be patent to every thinking man that such a state of matters is anything hut a healthy sign. 1 make hold to assert, sir, that in this Province alone there are men of all trades and profes-ion’s unable to find employment—not what are termed “loafers,” but men who arc able and willing to work were they only able to find it; and yet, in the face of all this, Mr Birch asserts in the Assembly that Otago will support a stream of immigration at the rate of ten thousand a year. What are those immigrants to do when they arrive but simply to swell the

numbebof unemployed who crowd the City, and meet onemt every comer ? I think it is high tijne for the Government to talk of immigration when work has been found for the hundreds of able-bodied men iu our midst, many with families dependent on them, and not knowing where to find the n-;xt meal. A forced system of immigration never yet succeeded, and never will. Let the people who think they can better their circumstances in the Colony come and judge for themselves. I am sure that no one wishes to sec pauperism introduced into the country —things are bad enough already. It immigrants are wanted at all, it is men with capital that can develop the resources of the country. It wss only lately that on reading a Home paper I found some of the grossest mis-statements in reference to the golden (?) prospects of emigrants leaving for Otago. There was asserted to be a demand for workmen in almost every branch, and they bad only to land on the shores of this “land of promise ” when they would obtain immediate employment. Such a bait—got up, no doubt, by the shipowners to serve their own ends—would have the intended effect, were it not counteracted by the fact of letters reaching Home from the colonists to their friends, giving a true account of matters, and advising those in situations on no account to leave them in the vain hope of bettering themselves in the Colony. But I would ask—From whom has this great cry of immigration originated ? Certainly not from the colonists as a body. I will tell you who are the parties who wish to flood the country with laboring men. It is our ruuholders and large farmers, who grumble at the already low rate of wages they pay for labor, and who wish to bring about a state of things similar to that existing in the old country—viz., of having men at their mircy, and thus dictate to them their own terms. It is not the welfare of the country that those men—some of whom are representatives in the Assembly—have in view; it is to gratify their own selfish ends. They would be the lords of the country, while their less fortunate fellowmen, who did not happen to come here early enough to secure the tat of the land, would -be reduced to the condition of the laborer in the mother country It is well known that England would bo only too glad to get rid of her pauper population with which she is already over-burdeued, but that is no reason why the Colony should be taxed with them. The Benevolent lusti ution of this City is already filled with the offspring of parents who are unable to provide for them. Indeed, so far from immigration being wanted, there are many who would leave the country

if they had only the means to take them away—men who are compelled against their will to become dependent on society at large, which must he felt by all classes more or less. If the Government of the day, instead of voting so much money towards immigration, ■would only turn its attention to opening up the country by making liberal land law's, and throwing open the broad acres which are monopolised by runholders—then, and then only, can we expect to see a better state of things than the present. The honest spirit of independence is more or less implanted in the breast of every true Briton ; and when the emigrant leaves the land of his forefathers for another country, he is buoyed up with the hope not merely of earning a livelihood, but with the laudable ambition of becoming his own landlord, and having a spot of earth, however small, that he can call his own. When once the Government of this Colony offers inducements to the settler in the way of acquiring land on easy terms for agricultural or pastoral pursuits, I will answer for it there will be no lack of immigration into this Province. At present there is no such inducement held out. Even those who are successful on the goldfields, and accumulate some capital, find that they cannot meet with a good investment here in the way of purchasing land, and consequently they leave our shores for other countries—thus taking so much capital out of the Colony. At present people are leaving England in thousands for America, from the simple fact that the immigrant has the pr. spect held out to him of acquiring land there for settlement on such terms as are not to be met within the Colonies, Let the legislators of New Zealand only take a leaf from their American cousins in this respect, if they wish to see a more prosperous state of things than the present. Apologising for encroaching so much on your valuable space, I am, &c„ J. B. Chisholm, Dunedin, August G, 1870.