IMMIGRATION.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 16, Issue 820, 8 September 1870, Page 3

IMMIGRATION.

[Evening News.j A strange, and to some, no doubt, an unexpected cry, reaches us by this mail from Dunedin. In the Government Gazette, —the Provincial Government, we presume—of Wednesday, the 27th .ultimo, there appeared a list of about two hundred assisted immigrants, who may be expected in a week or two, and the Otago Daily Times of a recent date is quite at a loss to know what to do with them. This does not say much for Mr Vogel’s magnificent immigration scheme, which is to cost the country a million of money, if carried, and which, as we have maintained from the first, will only afford another illustration of the difficulty of “ meddling ” with immigration without “ muddling ” it. Ic is vastly easy to get up a cry about the want of laboring men, as appears to have been done in Otago at harvest time last year, or even to induce people to come out to the colonies with the promise of constant work at a high rate of wages, but it is not easy to steer clear under such circumstances of what all must hold to be in the highest degree reprehensible, —“ keeping the promise to the ear and breaking it to the hope.” Of the two hundred immigrants expected in Dunedin by the *E. P. Bouverie * and the ‘ Leucadia ’ within the next week or two, how many will get constant employment, even at remunerative, or bare living wages, within, say, one, two, or even three months after their landing? Will one-half, or even onefourth of them do so ? Having regard to what the Otago Daily Times says of the want of preparation for their arrival, we very much doubt it. Or if that should be the case, whafc is to bo (Jone with them when sheepvsheariug and harvest time is over ? Employment will have to be found for them on public works, and they will have to earn their bread, not by “ the sweat of the brow,” but by “ the government stroke.” There was something very pleasant in the cry of * 4 land, labour, and capital,” when raised by Edward Gibbon Wakefield, Wilmtt Horton, Charles Buffer, and the knot of economical enthusiasts by whom they were surrounded upwards of a quarter of a century ago, and as applied by them to absolutely new countries, there was as much of sound sense in it as of a charm about it. But circumstances alter cases, and we never hear it now said, —we have the first and last of these, and only want labor to make the combination complete, without asking, what are you going to do with it when you get it? And what preparation have you made to receive it ? When labor and capital went out hand in baud, and nothing remained to be done but to take up rich land at a mere nominal price, it was one story, But now that all the best available land is in the hands of capitalists, and labor only is sought for the enhancement of its value, it is another. The charm of the combination is dissolved. To come out as day laborers to a distant colony, without much prospect of ever being anything else, is not very inviting, even to those who find themselves “ pinched ”at home, We do not, of course, set our ourselves against a judicious scheme of immigration. On the contrary, we look upon a large influx of people as the life-blood of all new countries, and think those there already bound to do all in their power to promote it, consistent with what is due to their own honor, and to the well being and welldoing of those asked to cast in their lot with them. But let nothing be done rashly, or without such an amount of preparation for all who are brought out as will guard those who invited them against being cursed as. enemies, instead of being blessed as benefactors.