IMMIGRATION POLICIES AND THEIR RESULTS.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1240, 26 February 1878, Page 3

IMMIGRATION POLICIES AND THEIR RESULTS.

Remarking on the policy of immigration, or non-immigration, adopted by the various Australian colonies, the "Sydney Morning Herald" says :—"ln New Zealand a return recently published by the Government shows chat from 1861 to 1876 the number of immigrants was 323,471, of whom two-thirds remained as a permanent accession to the population, so that we cannot have gained very largely at the expense of that colony. South Australia and Queensland are imitating the vigorous policy of New Zealand, and if we continue to follow the doubtful hesitating policy which is all our successive Ministries appear to be capable of, we may expect to bo outstripped in numbers as in enterprise by one or two more of our pushing neighbours, aa we have been by Victoria. And yet not one of those colonies is so capable of absorbing and usefully employing new population. Our railway system is but in its infancy, and the day is not far distant when this land will need as many thousand miles as it has now hundreds. We have scarcely begun the great work of water supply and irrigation, so essential to a country with a climate like ours. There is not a city or town in the colony possessing proper sewerage and other sanitary works ; in fact, there is not one, including the metropolis itself, that has decent streets. All these are almost boundless avenues of industry, and it is impossible to carry many of them out without a large accession of labour. Will the G-overoment never dare to be equal to the wants and resources of the colony ? With a surplus of nearly four millions, and an estimated land revenue for the year of nearly two millions, Parliament is asked to spend £75,000 for immigration, and an agita fcion is threatened against even that.